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ESSAYS 

CLASSICAL  AND   MODERN 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  Luhted 

LONDON    .    BOMBAY    ■    CALODTTA    ■    MADRAS 
MKI.BODENB 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW   YORK        BOSTON     ■    CHIOAOO 
PALLAS    ■    BAN   FRANCISCO 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA.  Lrn. 

TORONTO 


ESSAYS 


CLASSICAL  &  MODERN 


BT 


F.  W.  H.  MYERS 


MACMILLAN   AND   CO.,   LIMITED 

ST.   MARTIN'S  STREET,  LONDON 

1921 


COPYRIGHT 

The  present  volume  contains  Glaisical  Ettayt  and 
Modern  Essays,  originally  published  aa  two  separate 
volumes  in  1883. 


CONTENTS 

CLASSICAL  ESSAYS 

PAOB 

Greek  Oracles    .......         1 

ViROIL  ........      106 

Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninub        .        .         .        ,177 

MODEEN  ESSAYS 

Giuseppe  Mazzini .227 

George  Sand 296 

Victor  Hugo 331 

Ernest  Renan 389 

Archbishop  Trench's  Poems         .         .         .         .461 
George  Eliot       .......     477 

Arthur  Penrhtn  Stanley 502 

A  New  Eirenicon 615 

ROSSETTI    AND    IHK    RELIGION    OP    BeADTY  .  .638 


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PREFATOKY   NOTE 

Is  reprinting  this  Essay  from  Helleniea,  I  have 
thought  it  needless  to  repeat  my  original  list  of 
authorities  consulted.  Since  the  Essay  was  written 
M.  Bouch^-Leclercq  has  published  his  Histoire  de 
la  Divination  dans  I'Antiquiti,  where  the  biblio- 
graphy of  the  subject  is  given  with  exhaustive 
fulness.  The  chief  resources  to  oracles  in  classical 
authors  have  been  long  ago  collected,  and  are  now 
the  common  property  of  scholars.  The  last  con- 
siderable addition  to  the  list  was  made  by  G.  Wolff, 
and  they  have  been  judiciously  arranged  by  Maury 
and  others.  What  is  needed  is  a  true  comprehension 
of  them,  towards  which  less  progress  has  been 
made  than  the  ordinary  reader  may  suppose.  Even 
Bouch^-Leclercq,  whose  accuracy  and  completeness 
within  his  self-proposed  limits  deserve  high  admira- 
tion, expressly  excludes  from  his  purview  the  lessons 
and  methods  of  comparative  ethnology,  and  hardly 


viii  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

cares  to  consider  what  those  phenomena  in  reality 
were  whose  history  he  is  recounting.  I  can  claim 
little  more  of  insight  into  their  true  nature  than 
suffices  to  make  me  conscious  of  ignorance,  but  I 
have  at  least  tried  to  indicate  where  the  problems 
lie,  and  in  what  general  directions  we  must  look  for 
their  solution. 

It  is  indeed  true  (as  was  remarked  by  several 
critics  when  this  Essay  first  appeared)  that  I  have 
kept  but  inadequately  my  implied  promise  of  illus- 
trating ancient  mysteries  by  the  light  of  modem 
discovery.  But  my  difficulty  lay  not  in  the  defect 
but  in  the  excess  of  parallelism  between  ancient 
and  modern  phenomena.  I  found  that  each  explicit 
reference  of  this  kind  would  raise  so  many  questions 
that  the  sequence  of  the  narrative  would  soon  have 
been  destroyed.  I  was  obliged,  therefore,  to  content 
myself  with  suggestions  and  allusions  —  allusions 
necessarily  obscure  to  the  general  reader  in  the 
absence  of  any  satisfactory  treatise  on  similar 
phenomena  to  which  he  could  be  referred.  I  am 
not  without  hope  that  this  blank  may  before  long 
be  filled  up  by  a  research  conducted  on  a  wider  and 
sounder  basis  than  heretofore ;  and,  should  the  sway 
of  recognised  law  extend  itself  farther  over  that 
shadowy  land,  I  shall  be  well  content  if  this  Essay 


PREFATORY  NOTE.  ix 

shall  be  thought  to  have  aimed,  however  imper- 
fectly, at  that  "  true  interrogation "  which  is  "  the 
half  of  science." 

POSTSCRIPT,  1887. 

Since  the  above  words  were  written  in  1883, 
some  beginning  of  the  suggested  inquiries  has  been 
recorded  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research.  Some  discussions  on  human 
automatism  which  will  there  be  found  are  not 
without  bearing  on  the  subject  of  the  present  essay. 

POSTSCRIPT,  1897. 

The  work  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research 
has  now  been  pushed  much  further;  and  its 
Proceedings  (Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Triibner  &  Co.) 
are  indispensable  for  persons  interested  in  the 
inquiries  above  referred  to. 


CLASSICAL  ESSAYS 


GEEEK    ORACLES. 

Tcjj  6api^4fxivaif  d  re  irapBivos  Tjtdeds  re, 


It  is  not  only  in  the  domain  of  physical  inquiry 
that  the  advance  of  knowledge  is  self-accelerated  at 
every  step,  and  the  very  excellence  of  any  given 
work  insures  its  own  speedier  supersession.  All 
those  studies  which  bear  upou  the  past  of  mankind 
are  every  year  more  fully  satisfying  this  test  of  the 
genuinely  scientific  character  of  the  plan  on  which 
they  are  pursued.  The  old  conception  of  the  world's 
history  as  a  collection  of  stories,  each  admitting  of 
a  complete  and  definitive  recital,  is  giving  way  to 
a  conception  which  would  compare  it  rather  with 
a  series  of  imperfectly-read  inscriptions,  the  sense 
of  each  of  which  is  modified  by  the  interpretations 
which  we  giadually  find  for  its  predecessors. 

And  of  no  department  is  this  truer  than  of  the 
comparative  history  of  religions.     The  very  idea  of 

S  B 


2  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i- 

such  a  study  is  of  recent  growth,  and  no  sooner  is 
the  attempt  made  to  colligate  by  general  laws  the 
enormous  mass  of  the  religious  phenomena  of  the 
world  than  we  find  that  the  growing  science  is  in 
danger  of  being  choked  by  its  own  luxuriance — that 
each  conflicting  hypothesis  in  turn  seems  to  draw 
superabundant  proof  from  the  myriad  beliefs  and 
practices  of  men.  "We  may,  indeed,  smile  at  the 
extravagances  of  one-sided  upholders  of  each  suc- 
cessive system.  We  need  not  believe  with  Bishop 
Huet^  that  Moses  was  the  archetype  both  of  Adonis 
and  of  Priapus.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  need  we 
suppose  with  Pierson^  that  Abraham  himself  was 
originally  a  stone  god.  We  may  leave  Dozy*  to 
pursue  his  own  conjecture,  and  deduce  the  strange 
story  of  the  Hebrew  race  from  their  worship  of  the 
planet  Saturn.  Nor  need  the  authority  of  Anony- 
mus  de  Itebus  Incrcdibilibus*  constrain  us  to  accept 
his  view  that  Paris  was  a  young  man  who  wrote 
essays  on  goddesses,  and  Phaethon  an  unsuccessful 
astronomer. 

But  it  is  far  from  easy  to  determine  the  relative 
validity  of  the  theories  of  which  these  are  exagger- 
ated expressions,^ to  decide  (for  instance)  what 
place  is  to  be  given  to  the  direct   transference  of 

'  Demonstr.  Evang.  iii.  3,  viii.  5. 

*  Ap.  Kuenen,  Religicm  of  Israel,  i.  390. 

'  Ibid.  i.  262. 

*  Opuacula  Mytkologica  (Amst.  1688). 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  3. 

beliefs  from  nation  to  nation,  to  fetish-worship,  to 
the  worship  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  to  the  deification 
of  dead  men.  In  an  essay  like  the  present,  dealing 
only  with  a  fragment  of  this  great  inquiry,  it  will 
be  safest  to  take  the  most  general  view,  and  to  say 
that  man's  fear  and  wonder  invest  every  object,  real 
or  imaginary,  which  strongly  impresses  him, — beasts 
or  stones,  or  souls  and  spirits,  or  fire  and  the  sun  in 
heaven, — with  an  intelligence  and  a  power  darkly 
resembling  his  own ;  and,  moreover,  that  certain 
phenomena,  real  or  supposed, — dreams  and  epQepsy, 
eclipse  and  thunder,  sorceries  and  the  uprising  of 
the  dead, — recur  from  time  to  time  to  supply  him 
with  apparent  proof  of  the  validity  of  his  beliefs, 
and  to  modify  those  beliefs  according  to  the  nature 
of  his  country  and  his  daily  life.  Equally  natural 
is  it  that,  as  his  social  instincts  develop  and  his 
power  of  generalisation  begins,  he  will  form  such 
conceptions  as  those  of  a  moral  government  of  the 
world,  of  a  retributory  hereafter,  of  a  single  Power 
from  which  aU  others  emanate,  or  into  which  they 
disappear. 

Avoiding,  therefore,  any  attempt  to  take  a  side 
among  conflicting  theories,  I  will  draw  from  the 
considerations  which  follow  no  further  moral  than 
one  which  is  weU-nigh  a  truism,  though  too  often 
forgotten  in  the  heat  of  debate,  namely,  that  we  are 
assuredly  not  as  yet  in  a  position  to  pass  a  final 
judgment  on  the  forms  which  religion  has  assumed 


4  ■        CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

in  the  past ;  we  have  traversed  too  small  a  part  of 
the  curve  of  human  progress  to  determine  its  true 
character ;  even  yet,  in  fact,  "  we  are  ancients  of  the 
earth,  and  in  the  morning  of  the  times."  The  diffi- 
culty of  bearing  this  clearly  in  mind,  great  in  every 
age,  'becomes  greater  as  each  age  advances  more 
rapidly  in  knowledge  and  critical  power.  In  this 
respect  the  eighteenth  century  teaches  us  an  obvious 
lesson.  That  century  witnessed  a  marked  rise  in 
the  standard  of  historical  evidence,  a  marked  en- 
lightenment in  dealing  with  the  falsities  and  super- 
stitions of  the  past.  The  consequence  was  that  all 
things  seemed  explicable ;  that  whatever  could  not 
be  reduced  to  ordinary  rules  seemed  only  worthy  of 
being  brushed  aside.  Since  that  day  the  standard 
of  evidence  in  history  has  not  decHned, — it  has 
become  stricter  still;  but  at  the  same  time  the 
need  of  sympathy  and  insight,  if  we  wovdd  compre- 
hend the  past,  has  become  strongly  felt,  and  has 
modified  or  suspended  countless  judgments  which 
the  philosophers  of  the  last  century  delivered  with- 
out misgiving.  The  difference  between  the  two 
great  critics  and  philosophers  of  France,  at  tliat  day 
and  in  our  own,  shows  at  a  glance  the  whole  gulf 
between  the  two  points  of  view.  How  little  could 
the  readers  of  Voltaire  have  anticipated  Eenan ! 
How  little  could  they  have  imagined  that  their 
master's  trenchant  arguments  would  so  soon  have 
fallen  to  the  level  of  half-educated  classes  and  half- 


l]  greek  oracles.  6 

civilised  nations, — would  have  been  formidable  only 
in  sixpenny  editions,  or  when  translated  into  Hindo- 
stani  for  the  confutation  of  missionary  zeal ! 

"What  philosophical  enlightenment  was  in  the 
last  century,  science,  physical  or  historical,  is  in  our 
own.  Science  is  the  power  to  which  we  make  our 
first  and  undoubting  appeal,  and  we  run  a  corre- 
sponding risk  of  assuming  that  she  can  already  solve 
problems  wholly,  which  as  yet  she  can  solve  only  in 
part, — of  adopting  vmder  her  supposed  guidance 
explanations  which  may  hereafter  be  seen  to  have 
the  crudity  and  one-sidedness  of  Voltaire's  treatment 
of  Biblical  history. 

The  old  school  of  theologians  were  apt  to  assume 
tliat  because  all  men — or  all  men  whom  they  chose 
to  count — had  held  a  certain  belief,  that  belief  must 
be  true.  Our  danger  lies  rather  in  being  too  ready 
to  take  for  granted  that  when  we  have  explained 
how  a  belief  arose  we  have  done  with  it  altogether ; 
that  because  a  tenet  is  of  savage  parentage  it  hardly 
needs  formal  disproof  In  this  view  the  wide  diffu- 
sion of  a  belief  serves  only  to  stamp  its  connection 
with  uncivilised  thought,  and  "  quod  semper,  quod 
ubique,  quod  ab  omnibus,"  has  become  to  many 
minds  rather  the  badge  of  superstition  than  the  test 
of  catholic  truth.  That  any  one  but  ourselves  should 
have  held  a  creed  seems  to  lower  the  average  intelli- 
gence of  its  adherents. 

Yet,  on  behalf  of  savages,  and  our  ancestors  in 


6  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

general,  there  may  be  room  for  some  apology.  If 
we  reflect  how  large  a  part  of  human  knowledge 
consists  of  human  emotion,  we  may  even  say  that 
they  possessed  some  forms  of  knowledge  which  we 
have  since  lost.  The  mind  of  man  (it  has  been 
well  said),  like  the  earth  on  which  he  walks,  under- 
goes perpetual  processes  of  denudation  as  well  as  of 
deposit.  We  ourselves,  as  children,  did  in  a  sense 
know  much  which  we  know  no  more ;  our  picture 
of  the  imiverse,  incomplete  and  erroneous  as  it  was, 
wore  some  true  colours  which  we  cannot  now  recall. 
The  child's  vivid  sensibility,  reflected  in  his  vivifying 
imagination,  is  as  veritably  an  inlet  of  truth  as  if 
it  were  an  added  clearness  of  physical  vision ;  and 
though  the  child  himself  has  not  judgment  enough 
to  use  his  sensibilities  aright,  yet  if  the  man  is  to 
discern  the  poetic  truth  about  Nature,  he  will  need 
to  recall  to  memory  his  impressions  as  a  child. 

Now,  in  this  way  too,  the  savage  is  a  kind  of 
child ;  his  beliefs  are  not  always  to  be  summarily 
referred  to  his  ignorance ;  there  may  be  something 
in  them  which  we  must  realise  in  imagination  before 
we  venture  to  explain  it  away.  Ethnologists  have 
recognised  the  need  of  this  difficult  self-identification 
with  the  remote  past,  and  have  sometimes  remarked, 
with  a  kind  of  envy,  how  much  nearer  the  poet  is 
than  the  philosopher  to  the  savage  habit  of  mind. 

There  is,  however,  one  ancient  people  in  whose 
case  much  of  this  difficulty  disappears,  whose  re- 


l]  greek  oracles.  7 

ligion  may  be  traced  backwards  through  many 
phases  into  primitive  forms,  while  yet  it  is  easy  to 
study  its  records  witli  a  fellow-feeling  which  grows 
with  our  knowledge  till  it  may  approach  almost  to 
an  identity  of  spirit.  Such  is  the  ascendency  which 
the  great  works  of  the  Greek  imagination  have  estab- 
lished over  the  mind  of  man,  that  it  is  no  paradox 
to  say  that  the  student's  danger  lies  often  in  excess 
rather  than  in  defect  of  s)Tnpathy.  He  is  tempted 
to  ignore  the  real  superiority  of  our  own  religion, 
morality,  civilisation,  and  to  re-shape  in  fancy  an 
adult  world  on  an  adolescent  ideal.  But  the  remedy 
for  over-estimates,  as  well  as  for  under-esti mates, 
lies  in  an  increased  definiteness  of  knowledge,  an 
ever-clearer  perception  of  the  exact  place  in  the 
chain  of  development  which  Greek  thought  and 
worship  hold.  The  whole  story  of  Greek  mythology 
must  ere  long  be  retold  in  a  form  as  deeply  modified 
by  comparative  ethnology  as  our  existing  treatises 
have  been  modified  by  comparative  philology.  Such 
a  task  would  be  beyond  my  powers ;  but  while 
awaiting  some  more  comprehensive  treatment  of  the 
subject  by  a  better-qualified  hand,  I  have  in  this 
Essay  endeavoured  to  trace, — by  suggestion  rather 
than  in  detail,  but  with  constant  reference  to  the 
results  of  recent  science,  —  the  development  and 
career  in  Greece  of  one  remarkable  class  of  religious 
phenomena  which  admits  to  some  extent  of  separate 
treatment 


8  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

Greek  oracles  reflect  for  a  thousand  years  ^  the 
spiritual  needs  of  a  great  people.  They  draw  their 
origin  from  an  Animism  ^  which  almost  all  races 
share,  and  in  their  early  and  inarticulate  forms  they 
contain  a  record  of  most  of  the  main  currents  in 
which  primitive  beliefs  are  wont  to  run.  After- 
wards— closely  connected  both  with  the  idea  of 
supernatural  possession  and  with  the  name  of  the 
sun-god  Apollo — they  exhibit  a  singular  fusion  of 
nature- worship  with  Shahmanism  or  sorcery.  Then, 
as  the  non-moral  and  naturalistic  conception  of  the 
deity  yields  to  the  moral  conception  of  him  as  an 
idealised  man,  the  oracles  reflect  the  change,  and  the 
Delphian  god  becomes  in  a  certain  sense  the  con- 
science of  Greece. 

A  period  of  decline  follows ;  due,  as  it  would 
seem,  partly  to  the  depopulation  and  political  ruin 
of  Greece,  but  partly  also  to  the  indifference  or 
scepticism  of  her  dominant  schools  of  philosophy. 
But  this  decline  is  followed  by  a  revival  wliich 
forms  one  of  the  most  singular  of  those  apparent 
checks  which  complicate  the  onward  movement  of 
thought  by  ever  new  modifications  of  the  beliefs  of 
the  remote  past.     So  far  as  this  complex  moveinent 

'  Roughly  speaking,  from  700  B.C.  to  300  a.d.,  but  the  earliest 
oracles  probably  date  much  farther  back. 

'  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  by  Animism  is  meant  a  belief 
in  the  existence  around  us  of  souls  or  spirits,  whether  disembodied, 
as  ghosts,  or  embodied  in  fetishes,  animals,  etc.  Shahmanism  is  a 
word  derived  from  the  title  of  the  Siberian  wizards,  who  procure  by 
agitated  trance  some  manifestation  from  their  gods. 


I.]  .  GREEK  ORACLES.  9 

can  be  at  present  understood,  it  seems  to  have  been 
connected  among  the  mass  of  the  people  with  the_ 
wide-spread  religious  upheaval  of  the  first  Christian 
centuries,  and  to  have  been  at  last  put  an  end  to  by 
Christian  baptism  or  sword.  Among  the  higher 
minds  it  seems  to  have  rested  partly  on  a  perplexed 
admission  of  certain  phenomena,  partly  on  the 
strongly-felt  need  of  a  permanent  and  elevated  re- 
velation, which  yet  should  draw  its  origin  from  the 
Hellenic  rather  than  the  Hebrew  .past.  And  the 
story  reaches  a  typical  conclusion  in  the  ultimate 
disengagement  of  the  highest  natures  of  declining 
Greece  from  mythology  and  ceremonial,  and  the 
absorption  of  definite  dogma  mto  an  overwhelming 
ecstasy. 

II. 

The  attempt  to  define  the  word  "oracle"  con- 
fronts us  at  once  with  the  difficulties  of  the  subject. 
The  Latin  term,  indeed,  which  we  are  forced  to 
employ,  points  specially  to  cases  where  the  voice  of 
God  or  spirit  was  actually  heard,  whether  directly 
or  through  some  human  intermediary.  But  the 
corresponding  Greek  term  (jiavrelov)  merely  signifies 
a  seat  of  soothsaying,  a  place  where  divinations  are 
obtained  by  whatever  means.  And  we  must  not 
regard  the  oracles  of  Greece  as  rare  and  majestic 
phenomena,  shrines  founded  by  a  full-grown  mytho- 
logy for  the  direct  habitation  of  a  god.    Rather  they 


10  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

are  the  products  of  a  long  process  of  evolution,  the 
modified  survivals  from  among  countless  holy  places 
of  a  primitive  race. 

Greek  literature  has  preserved  to  us  abundant 
traces  of  the  various  causes  which  led  to  the  ascrip- 
tion of  sanctity  to  some  particular  locality.  Oftenest 
it  is  some  chasm  or  cleft  in  the  ground,  filled, 
perhaps,  with  mephitic  vapours,  or  with  the  mist  of 
a  subterranean  stream,  or  merely  opening  in  its 
dark  obscurity^ an  inlet  into  the  mysteries  of  the 
underworld.  Such  was  the  chasm  of  the  Clarian,^ 
the  Delian,^  the  Delphian  Apollo ;  and  such  the 
oracle  of  the  prophesying  nymphs  on  Cithseron.' 
Such  was  Trophonius'  cave,*  and  his  own  name 
perhaps  is  only  a  synonym  for  the  Mother  Earth, 
"  in  many  names  the  one  identity,"  who  nourishes 
at  once  and  reveals.* 

Sometimes — as  for  instance  at  Megara,'  Sicyon, 
Orchomenus,  Laodicea — the  sanctity  gathers  around 
some  (SatVuXo?  or  fetish-stone,  fashioned,  it  may  be, 

'  Iambi,  rfe  Myst.  p.  74. 
'  Lehegue,  Recherches  sur  Dilos,  p.  89. 

'  Paus.  ix.  3.  See  also  Paus.  v.  14,  for  a  legend  of  an  oracle  of 
Eartli  herself  at  Olyrapia.  ' 

*  Paus.  ix.  39. 

'  Tpoipiinos  from  rpiipu).  The  visitor,  who  lay  a  long  time,  oi 
fni\a  avfxtppovCiv  ivapyCJs  c^r'  iyfrriyopiv  elr  uivetpoirdXet  (Plut.  de  Oenio 
SocraXis,  22),  had  doubtless  been  partially  asphyxiated.  St.  Patrick's 
Purgatory  was  perhaps  conducted  on  the  same  plan. 

•  Paus.  i.  43,  and  for  further  references  on  boetyls  see  Lebigue, 
p.  85.     See  also  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilisation,  p.  225. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  11 

into  a  column  or  pyramid,  and  probably  in  most 
cases  identified  at  first  with  the  god  himself,  though, 
after  the  invention  of  statuary,  its  significance  might 
be  obscured  or  forgotten.  Such  stones  outlast  all 
religions,  andoremain  for  us  in  their  rude  shapeless- 
ness  the  oldest  memorial  of  the  aspirations  or  the 
fears  of  man. 

Sometimes  the  sacred  place  was  merely  some 
favourite  post  of  observation  of  the  flight  of  birds, 
or  of  lightning,  like  Teiresias'  "  ancient  seat  of 
augury,"'  or  the  hearth^  from  which,  before  the 
sacred  embassy  might  start  for  Delphi,  the  Pythaists 
watched  above  the  crest  of  Parnes  for  the  summons 
of  the  heavenly  flame. 

Or  it  might  be  merely  some  spot  where  the 
divination  from  burnt- ofierings  seemed  unusually 
true  and  plain, — at  Olympia,  for  instance,  where,  as 
Pindar  tells  us,  "  soothsayers  divining  from  sacrifice 
make  trial  of  Zeus  who  lightens  clear."  It  is  need- 
less to  speak  at  length  of  groves  and  streams  and 
mountain -summits,  which  in  every  region  of  the 
world  have  seemed  to  bring  the  unseen  close  to  man 
by  waving  mystery,  or  by  rushing  murmur,  or  by 
nearness  to  the  height  of  heaven.^     It  is  enough  to 

'  Soph.  Jnt.  1001  ;  Paus.  ix.  16  ;  and  cf.  Eur.  Phoen.  841. 

'  Strabo,  ix.  p.  619.  They  watched  diri  t^s  {crxdpa!  toO  acTpa-rralov 
Ai6y.  See  also  Eur.  Ion.  295.  Even  a  place  where  lots  were  custom- 
arily drawn  might  become  a  seat  of  oracle. — Paus.  vii.  25. 

^  There  is  little  trace  in  Greece  of  "weather-oracles," — such  as 
the  Blocksberg, — hills  deriving  a  prophetic  reputation  from  the 


12  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [t 

undeiBtand  that  in  Greece,  as  in  other  countries  over 
which  successive  waves  of  immigration  have  passed, 
the  sacred  places  were  for  the  most  part  selected  for 
primitive  reasons,  and  in  primitive  times;  then  as 
more  civilised  races  succeeded  and  ApoUo  came, — 
whence  or  in  what  guise  cannot  here  be  discussed, 
— the  old  shrines  were  dedicated  to  new  divinities, 
the  old  symbols  were  metamorphosed  or  disappeared. 
The  fetish-stones  were  crowned  by  statues,  or  re- 
placed by  statues  and  buried  in  the  earth.^  The 
Sibyls  died  in  the  temples,  and  the  sun-god's  island 
holds  the  sepulchre  of  the  moon -maidens  of  the 
northern  sky.^ 

It  is  impossible  to  arrange  in  quite  logical  order 
phenomena  wliich  touch  each  other  at  so  many 
points,  but  in  making  our  transition  from  these 
impersonal  or  hardly  personal  oracles  of  divination 
to  the  "  voice-oracles  "^  of  classical  times,  we  may 

indications  of  coming  rain,  etc.,  drawn  from  clouds  on  their 
aiunmits.  The  sanctity  of  Olympus,  as  is  well  known,  is  connected 
with  a  supposed  elevation  above  all  elemental  disturbances. 

'  Pind.  01.  viii.  3,  and  for  further  references  see  Hei-mann, 
.Grieck.  Ant.  ii.  247.  Mauiy  (ii.  447)  seems  to  deny  this  localisa- 
tion on  insufficient  grounds. 

^  The  Hyperboreae,  see  reff.  ap.  Lebfegue,  p.  69.  M.  Bouch^- 
Leclercq's  discussion  (vol.  ii. )  of  the  Sibylline  legends  is  more 
satisfactory  than  that  of  Klausen  {Aeneas  mid  die  Penaten,  p.  107, 
foil.)  He  describes  the  Sibylline  type  as  "une  personnificalion 
gracieuse  de  la  mantique  intuitive,  intermediaire  entre  le  babil 
iuconscient  de  la  nymphe  fcho  et  la  sagacite  inliumaine  de  lo 
Sphinx. " 

'  Xpr/afjLoi  (fideyfiariKol. 


l]  greek  oracles.  13 

first  mention  the  well-known  Voice  or  Eumour 
which  as  early  as  Homer  runs  heaven-sent  through 
the  multitude  of  men,  or  sometimes  prompts  to 
revolution  by  "the  word  of  Zeus."* 

To  this  we  may  add  the  belief  that  words 
spoken  at  some  critical  and  culminant,  or  even  at 
some  arbitrarily- chosen  moment,  liave  a  divine  sig- 
nificance. We  find  some  trace  of  this  in  the  oracle 
of  Teiresias,^  and  it  appears  in  a  strange  form  in 
an  old  oracle  said  to  have  been  given  to  Homer, 
which  tells  him  to  beware  of  the  moment  when 
some  young  children  shall  ask  him  a  riddle  which 
he  is  unable  to  answer.*  Cases  of  omens  given  by 
a  chance  word  in  classical  times  are  too  familiar 
to  need  further  reference.^  What  we  have  to 
notice  here  is,  that  this  casual  method  of  learn- 
ing the  will  of  heaven  was  systematised  into  a 
practice  at  certain  oracular  temples,  where  the 
applicant  made  his  sacrifice,  stopped  his  ears,  went 
into  the  market-place,  and  accepted  the  first  words 

'  (aaa,  iprjiJiit,  KX-qduy,  6n(pr) — II.  ii.  93;  Herod,  ix.  100  ;  Od.  iii. 
215,  etc.  These  words  are  probably  used  sometimes  for  regular 
oracular  communications. 

»  Od.  xi.  126. 

^  dXXd  vku)v  iralSajv  aXviyixa  tpijXa^ai.  PaU3.  x.  24;  Anth.  Pal. 
ziv.  66.  This  conundrum,  when  it  was  at  lengtli  put  to  Homer, 
was  of  so  vulgar  a  character  that  no  real  discredit  is  reflected  on 
the  Father  of  Poetry  by  his  perplexity  as  to  its  solution.  (Homeri 
et  Hesiodi  certamen,  ad  Jin.)  Heraclitus,  however,  used  the  fact 
U)  illustrate  the  limitation  of  even  the  highest  human  powers. 

*  Herodotus  i.^:.  yl,  may  be  selected  as  an  example  of  a  happy 
chance  in  forcing  an  omen. 


14  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [t 

he  happened  to  hear  as  a  divine  intimation.  We 
hear  of  oracles  on  this  pattern  at  Memphis/  and  at 
Pharse  in  Acha;a.^ 

From  these  voices,  which,  though  clearly  audible, 
are,  as  it  were,  unowned  and  impersonal,  we  may 
pass  to  voices  which  have  a  distinct  personality, 
but  are  heard  only  by  the  sleeping  ear.  Dreams 
of  departed  friends  are  likely  to  be  the  first  pheno- 
menon which  inspires  mankind  with  the  idea  that 
they  can  hold  converse  with  a  spiritual  world.  We 
find  dreams  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  theology  of 
almost  aU  nations,  and  accordingly  it  does  not 
surprise  us  to  find  Homer  asserting  that  dreams 
come  from  Zeus,^  or  painting,  with  a  pathos  which 
later  literature  has  never  surpassed,  the  strange 
vividness  and  agonising  insufficiency  of  these  fugi- 
tive visions  of  the  night.* 

And  throughout  Greek  literature  presaging 
dreams  which  form,  as  Plutarch  says,  "  an  unfixed 
and   wandering  oracle   of   Night  and   Moon"'  are 

'  Dio  Chrys.  ad  Alex.  32,  13,  jratSes  dTroyy/XXoi/o-t  irai^ovTes  ri 
SoKoOy  r^  ^ey. 

»  Paus.  vii.  22. 

'  7Z.  i.  63.     Or  from  Hermes,  or  earth,  or  the  gods  below. 

*  II.  xxiii.  97.  If  we  accept  the  theory  of  an  older  Achilleid  wo 
find  the  importance  of  augury  proper  decreasing,  of  dreams  in- 
creasing, in  the  Homeric  poems  themselves.  Geddes,  Eom.  Probl. 
p.  186  ;  cf.  Mure,  Bist.  Or.  Lit.  i.  492.  Similarly  Apollo's  darts 
grow  more  gentle,  and  his  visitations  more  benign. — Geddes, 
p.  140. 

»  Plut.  Ser.  Num.  Vind.  22. 


1.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  16 

abundant  in  every  fonn,  from  the  high  behest  laid 
on  Bellerophon  "  when  in  the  dark  of  night  stood 
by  him  the  shadowy-shielded  maid,  and  from  a 
dream,  suddenly,  a  waking  vision  she  became,"'  - 
down  to  the  dreams  in  the  temples  of  Serapis  or  of 
Aesculapius  which  Aristides  the  Khetorician  has 
embalmed  for  us  in  his  Sacred  Orations, — the 
dream  which  "  seemed  to  indicate  a  bath,  yet  not 
without  a  certain  ambiguity,"  or  the  dream  which 
left  biTTi  in  distressing  uncertainty  whether  he  were 
to  take  an  emetic  or  no.^ 

And  just  as  we  have  seen  that  the  custom  of 
observing  birds,  or  of  noting  the  omens  of  casual 
speech,  tended  to  fix  itself  permanently  in  certain 
shrines,  so  also  dream-oracles,  or  temples  where  the 
inquirer  slept  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  an  answer 
from  the  god  seen  in  vision,  or  from  some  other 
vision  sent  by  him,  were  one  of  the  oldest  forms  of 
oracular  seats.  Brizo,  a  dream-prophetess,  preceded 
Apollo  at  Delos.'  A  similar  legend  contrasts  "  the 
divination  of  darkness"  at  Delphi  with  Apollo's  clear 
prophetic  song.*  Night  herself  was  believed  to  send 
visions  at  Megara,^  and  coins  of  Commodus  still 
show  us  her  erect  and  shrouded  figure,  the  torches 
that  glimmer  in  her  shade.     Amphiaraus,*  Amphilo- 

•  Find.  01.  xiiL  100. 

'  Ar.  Rhet.  vol.  i.  p.  275  (Dind.),  Ixo'  /f''  Tiva  (vvoiop  XoOrfmv, 
oif  /j^vToi  x*^P*'^  7^  iiTOPoias,  and  i.  285. 

'  Athen.  viii.  2,  and  see  Lebfegue,  p.  218 ;  corap.  Aesch.  Jg.  276. 

*  Eur.  Iph.  Taur.  1234  foil      '  Palis,  i.  40.       •  Paus.  i.  34. 


18  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

chus,'  Charon,'  Pasiphae,'  Herakles,*  Dionysus,' 
and  above  all  Asklepios,^  gave  answers  after  this 
fashion,  mainly,  but  not  entirely,  in  cases  of  sick- 
ness. The  prevalence  of  heroes,  rather  than  gods, 
as  the  givers  of  oracles  in  dreams  seems  still  further 
to  indicate  the  immediate  derivation  of  this  form 
of  revelation  from  the  accustomed  appearance  of 
departed  friends  in  sleep. 

The  next  step  takes  us  to  the  most  celebrated 
class  of  oracles, — those  in  which  the  prophetess,  or 
more  rarely  the  prophet,  gives  vent  in  agitated  trance 
to  the  words  which  she  is  inspired  to  utter.'^  We 
encounter  here  the  phenomena  of  possession,  so 
familiar  to  us  in  the  Bible,  and  of  which  theology 
still  maintains  the  genuineness,  while  science  would 
explain  them  by  delirium,  hysteria,  or  epilepsy.     It 

'  Dio  Cass.  Ixxii.  7. 

'  Eustath.  Schol.  ad  Dionys.  Perieg.  1153. 

'  Cic.  de  Div.  i.  43  ;  Pint.  Agis  9,  and  cf.  Maury,  ii.  453. 

*  Paus.  ix.  24,  corap.  inscr.  ap.  G.  Wolff,  de  Noviss.  p.  29,  and 
see  Plut.  de  Malign.  Herod,  31,  for  the  dream  of  Leonidas  in 
Herakles'  temple.  '  Paus.  x.  33. 

'  Ar.  Rhet.  passim;  Iambi.  Myst.  3,  3,  etc.  See  also  Val. 
Max.  i.  7  ;  Died.  Sic.  v.  62  ;  Ar.  Rhet.  Sacr.  Serm.  iii.  311,  for 
dreams  sent  by  Athene,  the  Soteres,  Hemithea.  Further  references 
will  be  found  in  Maury,  iii.  456,  and  for  the  relation  of  ApBllo  to 
dreams  see  Bouehe-Leclercq,  i.  204. 

'  Pindar's  phrase  (for  the  prophecy  of  lamus),  4>uvhv  aKbviiv 
■j/tvSiuv  iyvuffTov,  01.  vi.  66,  reminds  us  of  Socrates'  inward  moni- 
tor. The  expressions  used  about  the  Pythia  vary  from  this  concep- 
tion  of  mere  clairatidience  to  the  idea  of  an  absolute  possesfivn, 
which  for  the  time  holds  the  individuality  of  the  prophetess  entirely 
iu  abeyance. 


1.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  17 

was  this  phenomenon,  connected  first,  as  Pausanias 
tells  us,^  with  the  Apolline  oracles,  which  gave  a 
wholly  new  impressiveness  to  oracular  replies.  No 
longer  confined  to  simple  affirmation  and  negation, 
or  to  the  subjective  and  ill-remembered  utterances 
of  a  dream,  they  were  now  capable  of  embracing  all 
topics,  and  of  being  preserved  in  writing  as  a  revela- 
tion of  general  applicability.  These  oracles  of  in- 
spiration, —  taken  in  connection  with  the  oracles 
uttered  by  visible  phantoms,  which  become  prominent 
at  a  later  era, — may  be  considered  as  marking  the 
highest  point  of  development  to  which  Greek  oracles 
attained.  It  will  be  convenient  to  defer  our  con- 
sideration of  some  of  these  phenomena  till  we  come 
to  the  great  controversy  between  Porphyry  and 
Eusebius,  in  which  they  were  for  the  first  time  fully 
discussed.  But  there  is  one  early  oracle  of  the  dead, 
different  in  some  respects  from  any  that  succeeded 
it,^  which  presents  so  many  points  for  notice  that  a 

'  Paus.  i.  34.  We  should  have  expected  this  prophetic  frenzy  to 
have  been  connected  with  Bacchus  or  the  Nymphs  rather  than  with 
Apollo,  and  it  is  possible  that  there  may  have  been  some  transference 
of  the  phenomena  from  the  one  worship  to  the  other.  The  causes 
which  have  determined  the  attributes  of  the  Greek  deities  are  often 
too  fanciful  to  admit  of  explanation  now. 

"  The  distinction  drawn  by  Nagelsbach  between  this  and  other 
"Todtenorakeln"  (Ncuhhom.  Tlwologie,  p.  189)  is  surely  exagger- 
ated. See  Klausen,  Aeneas  und  die  Penaten,  p.  129  foil.,  for  other 
legends  connecting  Odysseus  with  early  necromancy,  and  on  this 
general  subject  see  Herod,  v.  92  ;  Eur.  Ale.  1131  ;  Plat.  Leg.  x. 
909  ;  Plut.  Cim.  6,  de  Ser.  Num.  Find.  17  ;  Tylor,  Prim.  Cull.  ii. 
11.     The  fact,  on  which  Nagelsbach  dwells,  that  Odysseus,  after 

C 


18  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

few  reflections  on  the  state  of  belief  which  it  indi- 
cates will  assist  us  in  comprehending  the  nature  of 
the  elevation  of  Greek  faith  which  was  afterwards 
effected  under  the  influence  of  Delphi. 

For  this, — the  first  oracle  of  which  we  have  a 
full  account,  —  the  descent  of  Odysseus  to  the 
underworld,  "  to  consult  the  soul  of  the  Theban 
Teiresias,"  shows  in  a  way  which  it  would  be  hard 
to  parallel  elsewhere  the  possible  co-existence  in  the 
same  mind  of  the  creed  and  practices  of  the  lowest 
races  with  a  majesty,  a  pathos,  a  power,  which 
human  genius  has  uever  yet  overpassed.  The 
eleventh  book  of  the  Odyssey  is  steeped  in  the 
Animism  of  barbarous  peoples.  The  Cimmerian 
entrance  to  the  world  of  souls  is  the  close  parallel 
(to  take  one  instance  among  many)  of  the  extreme 
western  cape  of  Vanua  Levi,  a  calm  and  solemn 
place  of  cliff  and  forest,  where  the  souls  of  the 
Fijian  dead  embark  for  the  judgment  -  seat  of 
Ndengei,  and  whither  the  living  come  on  pilgrim- 
age, thinking  to  see  ghosts  and  gods.'  Homer's 
ghosts  cheep  and  twitter  precisely  as  the  shadow- 
consulting  Teiresias,  satisfied  his  affection  and  his  curiosit}'  by 
interviews  with  other  ghosts  in  no  way  alters  the  original  injunc- 
tion laid  on  him,  the  purport  of  his  journey — '/'vxv  xf'><'^l'-"''>'' 
97)j8aiou  Teipecr/ao.  NSgelsbach's  other  argument,  that  in  later  times 
we  hear  only  of  a  dream-oracle,  not  an  apparition-oracle,  of  Teire- 
sias seems  to  me  equally  weak.  Readers  of  Pausanias  must  surely 
feel  what  a  chance  it  is  which  has  determined  the  oraclea  of  which 
we  have  heard. 

'  Prim.  Cull.  i.  408. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  19 

souls  of  the  Algonquin  Indians  chirp  like  crickets, 
and  Polynesian  spirits  speak  in  squeaking  tones,  and 
the  accent  of  the  ancestral  Zulu,  when  he  reappears 
on  earth,  has  earned  for  him  the  name  of  Whistler.' 
The  expedition  of  Odysseus  is  itself  paralleled  by 
the  exploit  of  Ojibwa,  the  eponymous  hero  of  the 
Ojibbeways,  of  the  Finnish  hero  Wainamoinen,  and 
of  many  another  savage  chief.  The  revival  of  the 
ghosts  with  blood,  itself  closely  paralleled  in  old 
Teutonic  mythologies,^  speaks  of  the  time  when  the 
soul  is  conceived  as  feeding  on  the  fumes  and  sha- 
dows of  earthly  food,  as  when  the  Chinese  beat  the 
drum  which  summons  ancestral  souls  to  supper,  and 
provide  a  pail  of  gruel  and  a  spoon  for  the  greater 
convenience  of  any  ancestor  who  may  unfortunately 
have  been  deprived  of  his  head.' 

Nay,  even  the  inhabitants  of  that  underworld  are 
only  the  semblances  of  once  living  men.  "  They  them- 
selves," in  the  terrible  words  of  the  opening  sentence 
of  the  Iliad,  "  have  been  left  a  prey  to  dogs  and  every 
bird."  Human  thought  has  not  yet  reached  a  point 
at  which  spirit  could  be  conceived  of  as  more  than 
the  shadow  of  matter. 

And  if  further  evidence  were  needed,  the  oracle 
of  Teiresias  himself — opening  like  a  chasm  into 
Hades  through  the  sunlit  soil  of  Greece — reveals 
unwittingly  all  the  sadness  which  underlies  that 
freshness  and  power,  the  misgiving  which  so  often 
>  Prim.  Cult.  ii.  42.  =  Ibid.  ii.  346.  '  Ibid.  ii.  30. 


20  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i 

unites  the  savage  and  the  philosopher,  the  man  who 
comes  before  religions  and  the  man  who  comes  after 
them,  in  the  gloom  of  the  same  despair.  Himself 
alone  in  his  wisdom  among  the  ineffectual  shades, 
Teiresias  offers  to  Odysseus,  in  the  face  of  all  his 
unjust  afflictions,  no  prevention  and  no  cure ;  "  of 
honey-sweet  return  thou  askest,  but  by  God's  will 
bitter  shall  it  be ;" — for  life's  struggle  he  has  no 
remedy  but  to  struggle  to  the  end,  and  for  the  wan- 
dering hero  he  has  no  deeper  promise  than  the 
serenity  of  a  gentle  death. 

And  yet  Homer  "  made  the  theogony  of  the 
Greeks."'  And  Homer,  through  the  great  ages 
which  followed  liim,  not  only  retained,  but  deep- 
ened his  hold  on  the  Hellenic  spirit.  It  was  no 
mere  tradition,  it  was  the  ascendency  of  that  essen- 
tial truth  and  greatness  in  Homer,  which  we  still 
so  strongly  feel,  which  was  the  reason  why  he  was 
clung  to  and  invoked  and  explained  and  allegorised 
by  the  loftiest  minds  of  Greece  in  each  successive 
age;  why  he  was  transformed  by  Polygnotus,  trans- 
formed by  Plato,  transformed  by  Porphyry.  Nay, 
even  in  our  own  day, — and  this  is  not  the  least  sig- 
nificant fact  in  religious  history, — we  have  seen  one 
of  the  most  dominant,  one  of  the  most  religious 
intellects  of  our  century,  falling  under  the  same 
spell,  and  extracting  from  Homer's  almost  savage 

'  Herod,   ii.   53,  oiSroi  Si  (Homer  and  Hesiod)  el<ri  oi  Toi-jaayrtt 
Bioyovl-qv  "E\\i7<n,  k.t.  \. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  21 

animism  the  full-grown  mysteries  of  the  Christian 
faith. 

So  dangerous  would  it  be  to  assume  such  a 
congruence  throughout  the  whole  mass  of  the 
thought  of  any  epoch,  however  barbarous,  that  the 
baseness  or  falsity  of  some  of  its  tenets  should  be 
enough  to  condemn  the  rest  unheard.  So  ancient, 
so  innate  in  man  is  the  power  of  apprehending 
by  emotion  and  imagination  aspects  of  reality  for 
which  a  deliberate  culture  might  often  look  in  vain. 
To  the  dictum, —  so  true  though  apparently  so  para- 
doxical,— which  asserts  "  that  the  mental  condition 
of  the  lower  races  is  the  key  to  poetry,"  we  may 
reply  with  another  apparent  paradox — that  poetry  is 
the  only  tiling  which  every  age  is  certain  to  recog- 
nise as  truth. 

Having  thus   briefly   considered   the  nature    of 

each  of  the  main  classes  of  oracular  response,  it  is 

natural  to  go  on  to  some  inquiry  into  the  history  of 

the  leading  shrines  where  these  responses  were  given. 

The  scope  of  this  essay  does  not  admit  of  a  detailed 

notice  of  each  of  the  very  numerous  oracular  seats  of 

which  some  record  has  reached   us.^      But  before 

passing  on  to  Delphi,  I  must  dwell  on  two  cases  of 

special    interest,    where    recent    explorations    have 

brought  us  nearer  than  elsewhere  to  what  may  be 

1  Tlie  number  of  Greek  oracular  seats,  with  the  Barbarian  seats 
known  to  the  Greeks,  has  been  estimated  at  260,  or  an  even  larger 
number  ;  but  of  very  many  of  these  we  know  no  more  than  the 


SS  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

called  the  private  business  of  an  oracle,  or  to  the 
actual  structiire  of  an  Apolline  sanctuary. 

The  oracle  of  Zeus  at  Dodona  takes  the  highest 
place  among  all  the  oracles  which  answered  by  signs 
rather  than  by  inspired  speech.^  It  claimed  to  be 
the  eldest  of  all,  and  we  need  not  therefore  wonder 
that  its  phenomena  present  an  unusual  confluence 
of  streams  of  primitive  belief.  The  first  mention  of 
Dodona,^ — in  that  great  invocation  of  Achilles  which 
is  one  of  the  glimpses  which  Homer  gives  us  of  a 
world  far  earlier  than  his  own,-^seems  to  indicate 
that  it  was  then  a  seat  of  dream-oracles,  where  the 
rude  Selloi  perhaps  drew  from  the  earth  on  which 
they  slept  such  visions  as  she  sends  among  men. 
But  in  the  Odyssey'  and  in  Hesiod*  the  oracle 
is  spoken  of  as  having  its  seat  among  the  leaves,  or 
in  the  hollow  or  base  of  an  oak,  and  this  is  the  idea 
which  prevailed  in  classical  times.'  The  doves,* — 
if  doves  there  were,  and  not  merely  priestesses,  whose 
name,  Peleiades,  may  be  derived  from  some  other 
root,' — introduce   another   element    of    complexity. 

'  Strab.  viii.  Fragm.  ixPVf-V^f^  5'  «"  ^'^  Xdyav  dXX4  SuS.  rivan 
<n!iiP6\uv,  wairep  to  iv  Ai^&ij  'A/i/iuyiaKdi'.  So  Suid.  i»j  voc.  AuSiivri, 
etc.  2  n.  xvi.  233. 

3  Od.  xiv.  327,  xix.  296. 

*  Hes.  Fr.  39.  7,  •'aHi'  r'  iv  irvenhi  <t>i]yoO.     See  Plat.  Phaedr.  275. 
»  Aesch.  Prmn..  832  ;  Soph.  Track.  172  and  1167. 

*  See  Herod,  ii.  54,  and  comp.  Od.  xii.  63. 

'  See  Herm.  Oriech.  Anliq.  ii.  250.  Dr.  Robertson  Smith  suggesta 
"  that  the  Dove-soothsayers  were  so  named  from  their  croon  .  .  .  and  that 
tlie  ii4\icx<ro.  (tlie  Pythia)  in  like  manner  is  the  humming  priestess." 
—  Journal  of  PhUoloyy,  vol.  xiv.  p.  120. 


tl  GREEK  ORACLES.  23 

Oracles  were  also  given  at  Dodona  by  means  of 
lots/  and  by  the  falHng  of  water.''  Moreover,  Ger- 
man industry  has  established  the  fact,  that  at 
Dodona  it  thunders  on  more  days  than  anywhere 
else  in  Europe,  and  that  no  peals  are  louder  anywhere 
than  those  which  echo  among  the  Acroceraunian 
mountains.  It  is  tempting  to  derive  the  word 
Dodona  from  the  sound  of  a  thunderclap,  and  to 
associate  this  old  Pelasgic  sanctuary  with  the  pro- 
pitiation of  elemental  deities  in  their  angered  hour.' 
But  the  notices  of  the  oracle  in  later  days  are  per- 
plexingly  at  variance  with  all  these  views.  They 
speak  mainly  of  oracles  given  by  the  sound  of  cal- 
drons, —  struck,  according  to  Strabo,^  by  knuckle- 

'  Cic.  de  Div.  ii.  32.  =  .Seiv.  ad  Am.  iii.  466. 

'  I  do  not  thiuk  that  we  can  get  beyond  some  such  vague  con- 
jecture as  tliis,  and  A.  Mommsen  and  Sclmiidt's  elaborate  calcula- 
tions as  to  months  of  maximum  frequency  of  thunderclaps  and 
centres  of  maximum  frequency  of  earthquakes,  as  determining  the 
time  of  festivals  or  the  situation  of  oracular  temples,  seem  to  me 
to  be  quite  out  of  place.  If  a  savage  possessed  the  methodical 
patience  of  a  Gennan  observer,  he  would  be  a  savage  no  more. 
Savants  must  be  content  to  leave  Aristotle's  Tvxri  xal  rb  ai>T(5/iaT0>', 
— chance  and  spontaneity, — as  causes  of  a  large  part  of  the  action 
of  primitive  men. 

The  dictum  of  Gotte  {Delphiscke  Orakel,  p.  13)  seems  to  me 
equally  unproveable  :  "  Dodona,  wohin  die  schwarzen  aegyptischen 
Tauben  geflogen  kamen,  ist  wohl  unbestreitbar  eine  aegyptische 
Cultstatte,  die  Schwesteranstalt  von  Ammonium,  bcide  Thebens 
Tdchter."  The  geographical  position  of  Dodona  is  much  against 
this  view,  the  doves  are  very  problematical,  and  the  possible  ex- 
istence of  a  primitive  priesthood  in  the  Selloi  is  no  proof  of  an 
Egyptian  influence. 

*  Strab.  lib.  vii.  Fragm.  ap.  Hermann,  Giiech.  Ant.  ii.  2il, 
where  see  further  citations. 


S4  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  {i. 

bones  attached  to  a  wand  held  by  a  statue.  The 
temple  is  even  said  to  have  been  made  of  caldrons,' 
or  at  least  they  were  so  arranged,  as  a  certain  Demon 
tells  us,**  that  "all  in  turn,  when  one  was  smitten, 
the  caldrons  of  Dodona  rang."  The  perpetual  sound 
thus  caused  is  alluded  to  in  a  triumphant  tone  by 
other  writers,'  but  it  is  the  more  difficult  to  determine 
in  what  precise  way  the  will  of  Zeus  was  understood. 
Among  such  a  mass  of  traditions,  it  is  of  course 
easy  to  find  analogies.  The  doves  may  be  compared 
to  the  hissing  ducks  of  the  Abipones,  which  were 
connected  with  the  souls  of  the  dead,*  or  with  the 

.'  Steph.  Byz.  s.  voc.  AuSiivij,  quoted  by  Carapanos,  in  whose 
monograph  on  Dodona  citations  on  all  these  points  will  be  found. 

=  Miiller,  Fragm.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  125. 

5  Callini.  Hymn,  in  Del.  286  ;  Philostr.  Iinag.  ii.  33  (a  slightly 
different  account). 

*  Prim.  Cult.  ii.  6.  The  traces  of  animal  worship  in  Greece  are 
many  and  interesting,  but  are  not  closely  enough  connected  with 
our  present  subject  to  be  discussed  at  length.  Apollo's  possible 
characters,  as  the  Wolf,  the  Locust,  or  the  Fieldmouse  (or  the 
Slayer  of  wolves,  of  locusts,  or  of  fieldmice),  have  not  perceptibly 
affected  his  oracles.  Still  less  need  we  be  detained  by  the  fish-taUed 
Eurynome,  or  the  horse-faced  Demeter  (Pans.  viii.  41,  42).  And 
although  from  the  time  when  the  boy-prophet  lamus  lay  among 
the  wall-flowers,  and  "the  two  bright-eyed  serpents  fed  him  with 
the  harmless  poison  of  the  bee  "  (Find.  01.  vi.  28),  snakes  appear 
frequently  in  connection  with  prophetic  power,  their  worship  falls 
under  the  head  of  divination  rather  than  of  oracles.  The  same 
remark  may  be  made  of  ants,  cats,  and  cows.  The  bull  Apis  occu- 
pies a  more  definite  position,  but  though  he  was  visited  by  Greeks, 
his  worship  was  not  a  product  of  Greek  thought.  The  nearest 
Greek  approach,  perhaps,  to  an  animal-oracle  was  at  the  fount  of 
Myrai  in  Cilicia  (Plin.  H.N.  xxxii.  2),  where  fish  swam  up  to  eat 
or  reject  the  food  thrown  to  them.     "Diripere  eos  carnes  objectas 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  25 

doves  in  Popayan,  which  are  spared  as  inspired  by 
departed  souls.  The  tree-worship  opens  up  lines  of 
thought  too  well  known  for  repetition.  We  may 
liken  the  Dodonaean  "  voiceful  oak  "  to  the  tamarisks 
of  Beersheba,  and  the  oak  of  Shechem, — its  whisper 
to  the  "sound  of  a  going  in  the  tops  of  the  mul- 
berry-trees," which  prompted  Israel  to  war,^  and  so 
on  down  the  long  train  of  memories  to  Joan  of  Arc 
hanging  with  garlands  the  fairies'  beech  in  the  woods 
of  Domremy,  and  telling  her  persecutors  that  if  they 
would  set  her  in  a  forest  once  more  she  would  hear 
the  heavenly  voices  plain.^  Or  we  may  prefer, 
with  another  school,  to  trace  this  tree  also  back  to 
the  legendary  Ygdrassil,  "the  celestial  tree  of  the 
Aryan  family,"  with  its  spreading  branches  of  the 
stratified  clouds  of  heaven.  One  legend  at  least 
points  to  the  former  interpretation  as  the  more 
natural.  For  just  as  a  part  of  the  ship  Argo,  keel 
or  prow,  was  made  of  the  Dodonaean  oak,  and  Argo's 
crew  heard  with  astonishment  the  ship  herself  pro- 
phesy to  them  on  the  sea  : — 

laetum  est  consul  tan  tibus, "  says  Pliny,  "caudis  abigere  dinim. " 
The  complaint  of  a  friend  of  Plutarch's  {Quttst.  conviv.  iv.  4)  "that 
it  was  impossible  to  obtain  from  fishes  a  single  instructive  look  or 
sound,"  is  thus  seen  to  have  been  exaggerated.  And  it  appears 
that  live  snakes  were  kept  in  the  cave  of  Trophonius  (Philostr.  Vil. 
Apoll.  viii.  19),  in  order  to  inspire  terror  In  visitors,  who  were 
instructed  to  appease  them  with  cakes  (Suid.  s.  v.  nth.TovTTa). 

>  2  Sam.  V.  24. 

'  "  Dixit  quod  si  esset  in  uno  nemore  bene  audiret  voces  venientes 
ad  earn." — On  Tree- worship,  see  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilisation, 
p.  206  foil. 


26  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

"  But  Jason  and  the  builder,  Argus,  knew 
Whereby  the  prow  foretold  things  strange  and  new ; 
Nor  wondered  aught,  but  thanked  the  gods  therefore, 
As  far  astern  they  left  the  Mysian  shore,"  ^ — 

so  do  we  find  a  close  parallel  to  this  among  the 
Siamese,^  who  believe  that  the  inhabiting  nymphs 
of  trees  pass  into  the  guardian  spirits  of  boats  built 
with  their  wood,  to  which  they  continue  to  sacrifice. 
Passing  on  to  the  answers  which  were  given  at 
this  shrine,  we  find  that  at  Dodona,*  as  well  as  at 
Delphi,*  human  sacrifice  is  to  be  discerned  in  the 
background.  But  in  the  form  in  which  the  legend 
reaches  us,  its  horror  has  been  sublimed  into  pathos. 
Coresus,  priest  of  Bacchus  at  Calydon,  loved  the 
maiden  Callirhoe  in  vain.  Bacchus,  indignant  at 
his  servant's  repulse,  sent  madness  and  death  on 
Calydon.  The  oracle  of  Dodona  announced  that 
Coresus  must  sacrifice  Callirhoe,  or  some  one  who 
would  die  for  her.  No  one  was  willing  to  die  for 
her,  and  she  stood  up  beside  the  altar  to  be  slain. 
But  when  Coresus  looked  on  her  his  love  overcame 
his  anger,  and  he  slew  himself  in  her  stead.  Then 
her  heart  turned  to  him,  and  beside  the  fountain  to 
which  her  name  was  given  she  died  by  her  own 
hand,  and  followed  him  to  the  underworld. 

'  Monis'  Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  Book  iv.  ad  Jin. 
2  Prim.  Cult.  ii.  198.  »  Paus.  vii.  21. 

*  Eus.  Pr.  Ev.  V.  27,  irapBlvoii  AlirvrlSav  icX^pos  icaXet,  etc.    ^eo 
»lso  the  romantic  story  of  Melanippus  and  Coniietho,  Paus.  vii.  19. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  27 

There  is  another  legend  of  Dodona^  to  which 
the  student  of  oracles  may  turn  with  a  certain  grim 
satisfaction  at  the  thought  that  the  ambiguity  of 
style  which  has  so  often  baffled  him  did  once  at 
least  carry  its  own  penalty  with  it.  Certain  Boeotian 
envoys,  so  the  story  runs,  were  told  by  Myrtde,  the 
priestess  of  Dodona,  "  that  it  would  be  best  for  them 
to  do  the  most  impious  thing  possible."  The  Boeo- 
tians immediately  threw  the  priestess  into  a  caldron 
of  boiLuig  water,  remarking  that  they  could  not  think 
of  anything  much  more  impious  than  that. 

The  ordinary  business  of  Dodona,  however,  was 
of  a  less  exciting  character.  M.  Carapanos  has  dis- 
covered many  tablets  on  which  the  inquiries  of 
visitors  to  the  oracle  were  inscribed,  and  these  give 
a  picture,  sometimes  grotesque,  but  oftener  pathetic, 
of  the  simple  faith  of  the  rude  Epirots  who  dwelt 
round  about  the  shrine.  The  statuette  of  an  acrobat 
hanging  to  a  rope  shows  that  the  "  Dodonsean  Pelas- 
gian  Zeus  "  did  not  disdain  to  lend  his  protection  to 
the  least  dignified  forms  of  jeopardy  to  life  and  limb. 
A  certain  Agis  asks  "  whether  he  has  lost  his 
blankets  and  pillows  himself,  or  some  one  outside 
has  stolen  them."  An  unknown  woman  asks  simply 
how  she  may  be  healed  of  her  disease.  Lysanias 
asks  if  he  is  indeed  the  father  of  the  child  which 
his  wife  Nyla  is  soon  to  bear.     Evandrus  and  his 

>  Ephor.  ad  Strab.  ix.  2  ;  Heracl.  Pont.  Fragm.  Hist.  ar.  ii.  198  ; 
Proclus,  Chrcst.  ii.  248,  and  see  Carapanos. 


28  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

wife,  in  broken  dialect,  seek  to  know  "by  what 
prayer  or  worship  they  may  fare  best  now  and  for 
ever."  And  there  is  something  strangely  pathetic 
in  finding  on  a  broken  plate  of  lead  the  imploring 
inquiry  of  the  fierce  and  factious  Corcyreans, — made, 
alas  !  in  vain, — "  to  what  god  or  hero  offering  prayer 
and  sacrifice  they  might  live  together  in  unity  ?"^ 
"  For  the  men  of  that  time,"  says  Plato,^  "  since  they 
were  not  wise  as  ye  are  nowadays,  it  was  enough  in 
their  simplicity  to  listen  to  oak  or  rock,  if  only  these 
told  them  true."  To  those  rude  tribes,  indeed,  their 
voiceful  trees  were  the  one  influence  which  lifted 
them  above  barbarism  and  into  contact  with  the  sur- 
rounding world.  Again  and  again  Dodona  was 
ravaged,'  but  so  long  as  the  oak  was  standing  the 
temple  rose  anew.  When  at  last  an  Illyrian  bandit 
cut  down  the  oak^  the  presence  of  Zeus  was  gone, 
and  the  desolate  Thesprotian  valley  has  known  since 
then  no  other  sanctity,  and  has  found  no  other  voice. 
I  proceed  to  another  oracular  seat,  of  great  mythical 
celebrity,  though  seldom  alluded  to  in  classical  times, 
to  which  a  recent  exploration*  has  given  a  striking 
interest,  bringing  us,  as  it  were,  into  direct  connec- 
tion across  so  many  ages  with  the  birth  and  advent 
of  a  god. 

'  Tivi  Ka  Qidv  fi  T]pijiuv  $vovT€s  Kal  wx^/'fot  ^^ovooUv  ^vl  TayaSdv. 

»  Phaedr.  276. 

»  Strab.  vii.  6  ;  Polyb.  ix.  67,  aud  cf.  Wolff,  de  N'oviss.  p   13. 

*  Serv.  ad  Aen.  iii.  466. 

'  Seckerches  sur  Dilos,  par  J.  A.  Lebfegue,  1876, 


t]  GREEK  ORACLES.  29 

On  the  slope  of  Cynthus,  near  the  mid-point  of 
the  Isle  of  Delos,  ten  gigantic  blocks  of  granite, 
covered  with  loose  stones  and  the  debris  of  ages, 
form  a  rude  vault,  half  hidden  in  the  hill.  The 
islanders  call  it  the  "  dragon's  cave ;"  travellers  had 
taken  it  for  the  remains  of  a  fortress  or  of  a  reser- 
voir. It  was  reserved  for  two  French  savants  to 
show  how  much  knowledge  the  most  familiar  texts 
have  yet  to  yield  when  they  are  meditated  on  by 
minds  prepared  to  compare  and  to  comprehend.  A 
familiar  passage  in  Homer,*  illustrated  by  much 
ancient  learning  and  by  many  calculations  of  his 
own,  suggested  to  M.  Burnouf,  Director  of  the  French 
School  of  Archaeology  at  Athens,  that  near  this  point 
had  been  a  primitive  post  of  observation  of  the 
heavens ;  nay,  that  prehistoric  men  had  perhaps 
measured  their  seasons  by  the  aid  of  some  rude 
instrument  in  this  very  cave.  An  equally  familiar 
line  of  Virgil,^  supported  by  some  expressions  in  a 
Homeric  hymn,  led  M.  Lebfegue  to  the  converging 
conjecture  that  at  this  spot  the  Delian  oracle  had 
its  seat ;  that  here  it  was  that  Leto's  long  wander- 
ings ended,  and  Apollo  and  Artemis  were  born. 
Every  schoolboy  has  learnt  by  heart  the  sounding 
lines  which  tell  how  Aeneas  "  venerated  the  temple 
built  of  ancient  stone,"  and  how  at  the  god's  unseen 
coming  "  threshold  and  laurel  trembled,  and  all  the 

'  Od,  XV.  403.    Em.  Burnouf,  Revue  Archiologique,  Aug.  8,  1873. 
'  Am.  iii.  84 ;  Horn.  Hymn.  Del.  16-18,  and  79-81. 


30  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

mountain  round  about  was  moved."  But  M.  Lebfegue 
was  the  first  to  argue  hence  with  confidence  that  the 
oracle  must  have  been  upon  the  mountain  and  not 
on  the  coast,  and  that  those  ancient  stones,  like  the 
Cyclopean  treasure-house  of  Mycenae,  might  be  found 
and  venerated  still.  So  far  as  a  reader  can  judge 
without  personal  survey,  these  expectations  have 
been  amply  fulfilled.^  At  each  step  M.  Lebfegue's 
researches  revealed  some  cliaracteristic  of  an  oracular 
shrine.  In  a  waUed  external  space  were  the  re- 
mains of  a  marble  base  on  which  a  three-legged 
instrument  had  been  fixed  by  metal  claws.  Then 
came  a  transverse  wall,  shutting  off  the  temple 
within,  which  looks  westward,  so  that  the  worshipper, 
as  he  approaches,  may  face  the  east.  The  floor  of 
this  temple  is  reft  by  a  chasm, — the  continuation  of 
a  ravine  which  runs  down  the  hiU,  and  across  which 
the  sanctuary  has  been  intentionally  built.  And  in 
the  inner  recess  is  a  rough  block  of  granite,  smoothed 
on  the  top,  where  a  statue  has  stood.  The  statue 
has  probably  been  knocked  into  the  chasm  by  a  rock 
falling  through  the  partly-open  roof.  Its  few  frag- 
ments show  that  it  represented  a  young  god.  The 
stone  itself  is  probably  a  fetish,  surviving,  with  the 
Cyclopean  stones  wliich  make  the  vault  above  it, 

'  II.  Ilomolle  {Fouilles  de  Dilos,  1879)  gives  no  direct  opinion 
on  tlie  matter,  but  his  researches  indirectly  confirm  M.  Lebegiie'a 
view,  in  so  far  as  that  among  the  numerous  inscriptions,  etc.,  which 
lie  has  found  among  the  ruins  of  the  temple  of  Apollo  on  the  coast, 
there  seems  to  be  no  trace  of  oracular  re-sponse  or  inquiiy. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  31 

from  a  date  perhaps  many  centuries  before  the 
ApoUine  religion  came.  This  is  all,  but  this  is 
enough.  For  we  have  here  in  narrow  compass  all 
the  elements  of  an  oracular  shrine ;  the  westward 
aspect,  the  sacred  enclosure,  the  tripod,  the  sanc- 
tuary, the  chasm,  the  fetish-stone,  the  statue  of  a 
youthful  god.  And  when  the  situation  is  taken  into 
account,  the  correspondence  with  the  words  both  of 
Virgil  and  of  the  Homerid  becomes  so  close  as  to  be 
practically  convincing.  It  is  true  that  the  smallness 
of  scale, — the  sanctuary  measures  some  twenty  feet 
by  ten, — and  the  remote  archaism  of  the  structure, 
from  which  all  that  was  beautiful,  almost  all  that 
was  Hellenic,  has  long  since  disappeared,  cause  at 
first  a  shock  of  disappointment  like  that  inspired  by 
the  size  of  the  citadel,  and  the  character  of  the 
remains  at  Hissarlik.  Yet,  on  reflection,  this  seem- 
ing incongruity  is  an  additional  element  of  proof. 
There  is  something  impressive  in  the  thought  that 
amidst  all  the  marble  splendour  which  made  Delos 
like  a  jewel  in  the  sea,  it  was  this  cavernous  and 
prehistoric  sanctuary,  as  mysterious  to  Greek  eyes 
as  to  our  own,  which  their  imagination  identified 
with  that  earliest  temple  which  Leto  promised,  in 
her  hour  of  trial,  that  Apollo's  hands  should  build. 
This,  the  one  remaining  seat  of  oracle  out  of  the 
hundreds  which  Greece  contained,  was  the  one  sanc- 
tuary which  the  Far-darter  himself  had  wrought ; — 
no  wonder  that  his  mighty  workmanship  has  out- 


tt  CLASSICAL  ESSAT&  [l 

lasted  the  deogns  of  xDOi !  All  else  is  gooe.  The 
temjdes,  tba  amphitheatres,  the  colonnades,  wfaidi 
gjitteied  on  everj  crest  and  co^  at  the  holy  islaod, 
hare  sank  into  decay.  Bat  he  vho  sails  amoi^  the 
ides  of  Greece  may  still  vatch  aroond  sea-girt  Ddos 
'  the  dark  wave  welling  shoreward  beneath  the  shrill 
and  breezy  air  ;"*  he  may  still  note  at  sonrise,  as  on 
that  sonrise  when  the  god  was  bom,  "  the  whole 
island  abloom  with  shafts  of  gold,  as  a  hill's  crested 
sommit  blooms  with  woodland  flowers."'  'And 
thon  thyself,  lord  d  the  silver  bow,"  he  may  exclaim 
with  the  Homerid  in  that  borst  <rf  exaltation  in 
which  the  nniting  Ionian  race  seems  to  leap  to  the 
consdonsness  of  all  its  g^ory  in  an  hoar, — ^"thon 
walkedst  here  in  very  presence,  on  Cynthns'  leafy 
oown !" 

"Ah,  many  a  forest,  maoj  a  peak  is  thine. 
On  many  a  promontoty  stands  thj  shrine, 
Bat  b^st  and  first  thy  lore,  thy  home,  is  here ; 
Of  all  thine  isles  thy  Delian  isle  most  dear ; — 
There  the  long-robed  lonians,  man  and  maid. 
Press  to  thy  feast  in  all  their  pomp  arrayed, — 
To  thee,  to  Artemis,  to  Leto  pay 
The  heartfelt  hononr  on  thy  natal  day ; —  - 
Immortal  woald  he  deem  them,  erer  younft 
Who  then  shoold  walk  the  Ionian  folk  among, 
Shotdd  those  tall  men,  those  stately  wires  behold. 
Swift  ships  seafaring  and  long-garnered  gold : — 

»  BymM.  Del.  27.  »  Ibid.  13S-1M. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  33 

But  chiefliest  far  his  eyes  and  ears  would  meet 
Of  sights,  of  sounds  most  marvellously  sweet, 
The  Delian  girls  amid  the  thronging  stir, 
The  loved  hand-maidens  of  the  Far-darter  ; 
The  Delian  girls,  whose  chorus,  long  and  long. 
Chants  to  the  god  his  strange,  his  ancient  song, — 
Till  whoso  hears  it  deems  his  own  voice  sent 
Thro'  the  azure  air  that  music  softly  blent, 
So  close  it  comes  to  each  man's  heart,  and  so 
His  own  soul  feels  it  and  his  glad  tears  flow." 

Such  was  the  legend  of  the  indigenous,  the  Hellenic 
Apollo.  But  the  sun  does  not  rise  over  one  horizon 
alone,  and  the  glory  of  Delos  was  not  left  uncon- 
tested or  unshared.  Another  hymn,  of  inferior 
poetical  beauty,  but  of  equal,  if  not  greater,  authority 
among  the  Greeks,  relates  how  Apollo  descended 
from  the  Thessalian  Olympus,  and  sought  a  place 
where  he  might  found  his  temple :  how  he  was 
refused  by  Tilphussa,  and  selected  Delphi ;  and  how, 
in  the  guise  of  a  dolphin,  he  led  thither  a  crew  of 
Cretans  to  be  the  servants  of  his  shrine.  With  this 
hymn,  so  full  of  meaning  for  the  comparative  mytho- 
logist,  we  are  here  only  concerned  as  introducing  us 
to  Apollo  in  the  aspect  in  which  we  know  him  best, 
"  giving  his  answers  from  the  laurel-wood,  beneath 
the  hollows  of  Parnassus'  hill."^ 

At  Delphi,  as  at  Dodona,  we  seem  to  trace  the 
relics  of  many  a  form  of  worship  and  divination 
which  we  cannot  now  distinctly  recall     From  that 
1  Hymn.  Pyth.  214. 

D 


34  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

deep  cleft  "  in  rocky  Pytho,"  Earth,  the  first  pro- 
phetess, gave  her  earliest  oracle,*  in  days  which  were 
already  a  forgotten  antiquity  to  the  heroic  age  of 
Greece.  The  maddening  vapour,  which  was  supposed 
to  rise  from  the  chasm,''  belongs  to  nymph-inspira- 
tion rather  than  to  the  inspiration  of  Apollo.  At 
Delphi,  too,  was  the  most  famous  of  all  fetish- 
stones,  believed  in  later  times  to  be  the  centre  of 
the  earth.'  At  Delphi  divination  from  the  sacrifice 
of  goats  reached  an  immemorial  antiquity.^  Delphi, 
too,  was  an  ancient  centre  of  divination  by  fire,  a 
tradition  which  survived  in  the  name  of  Pyrcon,' 
given  to  Hephaestus'  minister,  while  Hephaestus 
shared  with  Earth  the  possession  of  the  shrine,  and 
in  the  mystic  title  of  the  Flame-kindlers,*  assigned 
in  oracular  utterances  to  the  Delphian  folk.  At 
Delphi,  too,   in   ancient  days,  the   self-moved  lots 

'  Aesch.  Eum.  2 ;  Paus.  x.  5  ;  cf.  Eur.  Iph.  Tawr.  1225  sqq. 

'  Strabo,  ix.  p.  419,  etc.  In  a  paper  read  before  the  British 
Archaeological  Association,  March  5,  1879,  Dr.  Phenfe  has  given  an 
interesting  account  of  subterranean  chambers  at  Delphi,  which 
seem  to  indicate  that  gases  from  the  subterranean  Castalia  were 
received  in  a  chamber  where  tlie  Pythia  may  have  sat.  But  in  the 
absence  of  direct  experiment  this  whole  question  is  physiologically 
very  obscure.  It  is  even  possible,  as  M.  Bouch^-Leclercq  urges, 
that  the  Pythia's  frenzy  may  be  a  survival  from  a  previous 
Dionysiac  worship  at  Delphi,  and  thus  originally  traceable  to  a 
quite  orthodox  intoxicant. 

'  Paus.  X.  16,  etc. 

•  Died.  Sic.  xvi.  26.  Pliny  {Hist.  Nat.  vii.  56)  ascribes  the  in 
vention  of  tliis  mode  of  divination  to  Delphos,  a  son  of  Apollo, 

'  Paus.  X.  5. 

»  Piut.  Pyth.  2i. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLEa  35 

sprang  in  the  goblet  in  obedience  to  Apollo's  will.' 
The  waving  of  the  Delphic  laurel,^  which  in  later 
times  seemed  no  more  than  a  token  of  the  wind  and 
spiritual  stirring  which  announced  the  advent  of 
the  god,  was  probably  the  relic  of  an  ancient  tree- 
worship,  like  that  of  Dodona,'  and  Daphne,  priestess 
of  Delphi's  primeval  Earth-oracle,*  is  but  one  more 
of  the  old  symbolical  figures  that  have  melted  back 
again  into  impersonal  nature  at  the  appearing  of 
the  God  of  Day.  Lastly,  at  Delphi  is  laid  the 
acene  of  the  sharpest  conflict  between  the  old  gods 
and  the  new.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Python, — whether  he  were  a  survival  of 
snake-worship,  or  a  winding  stream  which  the  sun's 
rays  dry  into  rotting  marsh,  or  only  an  emblem  of 
the  cloud  which  trails  across  the  sunlit  heaven, — 
his  slaughter  by  Apollo  was  an  integral  part  of  the 
early  legend,  and  at  the  Delphian  festivals  the 
changes  of  the  "  Pythian  strain  "  commemorated  for 
many  a  year  that  perilous  encounter, — the  god's 
descent  into  the  battlefield,  his  shout  of  summons, 

'  Suidas,  iii.  p.  237;  cf.  Callim.  Bymn.  in  Apoll.  46,  etc 

"  Ar.  Plut.  213 ;  Callim.  Hymn,  in  A2>oll.  1,  etc. 

'  I  cannot,  however,  follow  M.  Maury  (Religions  de  la  Orlce,  ii. 
442)  in  supposing  (as  he  does  in  the  case  of  the  Delian  laurel,  AeJi. 
iii.  73)  that  such  tree-moTements  need  indicate  an  ancient  habit  of 
divining  from  their  sound.  The  idea  of  a  wind  accompanjdng 
divine  manifestations  seems  more  widely  diffused  in  Greece  than 
the  Dodonsean  idea  of  vocal  trees.  Cf.  (for  instance)  Plut.  De  Def, 
orac,  of  the  Delphian  adytum,  ci'6j5/as  dj^airf/iTrXarat  Koi  TviiiiJATos, 

*  Paus.  X.  5. 


36  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

his  cry  of  conflict,  his  paean  of  victory,  and  then 
the  gnashing  of  the  dragon's  teeth  in  his  fury,  the 
hiss  of  his  despair.'  And  the  mythology  of  a  later 
age  has  connected  with  this  struggle  the  first  ideas 
of  moral  conflict  and  expiation  which  the  new 
religion  had  to  teach ;  has  told  us  that  the  victor 
needed  purification  after  his  victory;  that  he  en- 
dured and  was  forgiven ;  and  that  the  god  himself 
first  wore  his  laurel-wreath  as  a  token  of  supplica- 
tion, and  not  of  song.^ 

With  a  similar  ethical  purpose  the  simple  nar- 
rative of  the  Homerid  has  been  transformed  into  a 
legend'  of  a  type  which  meets  us  often  in  the 
middle  ages,  but  which  wears  a  deeper  pathos  when 
it  occurs  in  the  midst  of  Hellenic  gladness  and 
youth, — the  legend  of  Trophonius  and  AgamedeS; 
the  artificers  who  built  the  god's  home  after  his 
heart's  desire,  and  whom  he  rewarded  with  the 
guerdon  that  is  above  all  other  recompense,  a  speedy 
and  a  gentle  death. 

In  the  new  temple  at  any  rate,  as  rebuilt  in 
historic  times,  the  moral  significance  of  the  Apolline 
religion  was  expressed  in  unmistakable  imagery. 
Even  as  "  four  great  zones  of  sculpture  "  girded  the 
hall  of  Camelot,  the  centre  of  the  faith  which  was 

'  fi/iTTftpa,  KaTaK€\€v<rfi6i,  ffdXtny^,  SaKTvKoif  6^ovTtffpjb^,  cvpiyyei. 
See  August  Momnisen's  Delphiha  on  this  topic. 

'  Bbtticlier,  Bamncultus,  p.  353  ;  and  see  reff.  ap.  Herm.  Orieca, 
Ant.  ii.  127.     Cf.  Eur.  Irni,  114  sqq. 

»  Cic,  Tusc  i.  47;  cf.  Tlut.  De  Cansol.  ad  Apollon.  14. 


l]  greek  oracles.  37 

civilising  Britain,  "  with  many  a  mystic  symbol "  of 
the  victory  of  man,  so  over  the  portico  of  the  Delph- 
ian god  were  painted  or  sculptured  such  scenes  as 
told  of  the  triumph  of  an  ideal  humanity  over  the 
monstrous  deities  which  are  the  offspring  of  savage 
fear.^ 

There  was  "  the  light  from  the  eyes  of  the  twin 
faces  "  of  Leto's  children ;  there  was  Herakles  with 
golden  sickle,  lolaus  with  burning  brand,  withering 
the  heads  of  the  dying  Hydra, — "  the  story,"  says 
the  girl  in  the  Ion  who  looks  thereon,  "  which  is 
sung  beside  my  loom;"  there  was  the  rider  of  the 
winged  steed  slaying  the  fire-breathing  Chimaera ; 
there  was  the  tumult  of  the  giants'  war ;  Pallas 
lifting  the  aegis  against  Enceladus ;  Zeus  crushing 
Mimas  with  the  great  bolt  fringed  with  flame,  and 
Bacchus  "with  his  un  warlike  ivy -wand  laying 
another  of  Earth's  children  low." 

It  is  important  thus  to  dwell  on  some  of  the 
indications, — and  there  are  many  of  them, — which 
point  to  the  conviction  entertained  in  Greece  as  to 
rhe  ethical  and  civilising  influence  of  Delphi,  inas- 
much as  the  responses  which  have  actually  been 
preserved  to  us,  though  sufficient,  when  attentively 
considered,  to  support  this  view,  are  hardly  such  as 
would  at  once  have  suggested  it.    The  set  collections 

'  The  passage  in  the  Ion,  190-218,  no  doubt  describes  either  the 
portico  which  the  Athenians  dedicated  at  Delphi  about  426  B.C. 
(Pans.  X.  11),  or  (as  the  words  of  the  play,  if  taken  strictly,  would 
indicate)  the  fa9ade  of  the  temple  itself. 


38  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  Lt 

of  oracles,  which  no  doubt  contained  those  of  most 
ethical  importance,  have  perished  ;  of  aU  the  "  dark- 
written  tablets,  groaning  with  many  an  utterance  ot 
Loxias,"  1  none  remam  to  us  except  such  fragments 
of  Porphyry's  treatise  as  Eusebius  has  embodied  in 
his  refutation.     And  many  of  the  oracles  which  we 
do  possess  owe  their  preservation  to  the  most  trivial 
causes,— to  their  connection  with  some  striking  anec- 
dote, or  to  something  quaint  in  their  phraseology 
which  has  helped  to  make  them  proverbial.     The 
reader,    therefore,    who    passes    from    the    majestic 
descriptions  of   the  Ion  or   the  Mmenides  to  the 
actual  study  of  the  existing  oracles  will  at  first  run 
much  risk  of  disappointment.     Both  style  and  sub- 
ject will  often  seem  unworthy  of  these  lofty  claims. 
He  will  come,  for  instance,  on  such  oracles  as  that 
which  orders  Temenus  to  seek  as  guide  of  the  army 
a  man  with  three  eyes,  who  turns  out  (according  to 
different  legends)  to  be  either  a  one-eyed  man  on  a 
two-eyed  horse,  or  a  two-eyed  man  on  a  one-eyed 
mule.''      This  oracle  is  composed  precisely  on  the 
model  of  the  primitive  riddles  of  the  Aztec  and  the 
Zulu,  and  is  almost  repeated  in  Scandinavian  legend, 
where  Odin's  single  eye  gives  point  to  the  enigma.' 
A<^ain,  the  student's  ear  will  often  be  offended  by 

1  Eur  Fr  625.  Collections  of  oracles  continued  to  be  referred 
to  till  the  Turks  took  Constantinople,  i.e.  for  about  2000  years. 
See  reff.  ap.  Wolff,  de  Novisa.  p.  48. 

'  ApoUod.  u.  8 ;  Pau3.  v.  8.  '  Prim.  Cult,  u  So. 


l]  greek  oracles.  39 

roughnesses  of  rhythm  which  seem  unworthy  of  the 
divine  inventor  of  the  hexameter.^  And  the  con- 
stantly-recurring prophecies  are,  for  the  most  part, 
uninteresting  and  valueless,  as  the  date  of  their 
composition  cannot  be  proved,  nor  their  genuineness 
in  any  way  tested.  As  an  illustration  of  the  kind 
of  difficulties  which  we  here  encounter,  we  may 
select  one  remarkable  oracle,^  of  immense  celebrity 
in  antiquity,  which  certainly  suggests  more  questions 
than  we  can  readily  answer.  The  outline  of  the 
familiar  story  is  aa  follows: — Croesus  wished  to 
make  war  on  Cyrus,  but  was  afraid  to  do  so  without 
express  sanction  from  heaven.  It  was  therefore 
all -important  to  him  to  test  the  veracity  of  the 
oracles,  and  his  character,  as  the  most  religious  man 
of  his  time,  enabled  him  to  do  so  systematically, 
without  risk  of  incurring  the  charge  of  impiety. 
He  sent  messages  to  the  six  best-known  oracles  then 
existing, — to  Delphi,  to  Dodona,  to  Branchidae,  to 
the  oracles  of  Zeus  Amnion,  of  Trophonius,  of 
Amphiaraus.  On  the  hundredth  day  from  leaving 
Sardis,  his  envoys  were  to  ask  what  Croesus  was  at 
that  moment  doing.     Four  oracles  failed ;  Amphi- 

1  Bald  though  the  god's  style  may  often  be,  he  possesses  at  any 
rate  a  sounder  notion  of  metre  than  some  of  his  German  critics. 
Lobjck  {Jglaophamus,  p.  852),  attempting  to  restore  a  lost  response, 
suggests  the  line 

ffTevvypriv  S^ivoevv  cOpvyaaropa  ov  Kara  yaiaf. 
He  apologises  for  the  quantity  of  the  tirst  syllable  of  eipvyiffropa, 
but  seems  to  think  that  no  further  remark  is  needed. 

°  Herod,  i.  47. 


40 


CLASSICAL  ESSATS. 


aans  ws  nady  li^t;  ApoUo  at  BdpM  entirely 
soooeeded.  For  the  Prthia  answered,  -wiiii  exaxA 
trati,,  that  Qcraas  'sras  engaged  in  bofling  a  lamb 
and  a  tortnise  togedier  in  a  copper  vesel  -with  a 
oofpo-  Bd.  The  messengas,  tAo  had  not  them- 
selTes  fawra  lAat  Chesos  iras  going  to  do,  Rtamed 

to  Saidis  and  repcrted,  and  -w^re  then  omee  mwe 
despalri»ed  to  Delphi,  ^th  gifts  so  spkndid  that 
in  the  days  «f  HeiodofaB  they  were  still  the  ^ly 
of  die  sanctuazy.  Dtey  now  asked  the  pn^Jeally 
impiHtant  qoestkn  m  to  graug  to  war,  and  received 
a.  qidUdug  answen«hich,  in  ^ect,  loxed  on  Croesns 
to  bis  destznetian. 

'Saw  hoe  the   two    thfngs    certain    are    tliat 
Ciasas  did  said  flirae  gifts  to  Delphi,  and  did  go 
to  war  wifli  Cyras.     Beyond  these  fiacts  there  is  no 
sue  footii^     Short  and  pithy  ftagmente  of  poetry, 
KkE  &e  orade    on  which   the    stoiy  hangs,   are 
genaalfy  amm^  du  eadiest  and  most  endozisg 
bagmfSitB  of  goniine  histoxy.     On  i^  oflier  hand, 
tiiey  are  joEt  Aentteranees  which  later  stoiy-telleis 
xie  most  eagst  to  invent     2v  or  most  we  argue  from 
tiiar  dbazactoistie  dictiffli,  for  the  peaido-oracalar 
is  a  style  whidi  has  in  all  agra  been  enltrrated 
widi  soooBBB.     T3ifi  feet  which  it  is  hardest  to  dis- 
pose rf  fe   the   ex^ence  <rf  the   piodigiotis,  tlie 
ramralled  rffeings  rf  Coesob  at  Delphi     Why 
woe  ttey  srait  fl»ae,  raileffi  fot  some  sodi  reason 
as  Haodcrins  ^res  ?     Or  are  th^  snflBdaitly  ex- 


s^  liMntlffli   ((SAOL^E.  <& 

jaiBI  lit  jri»t   ^a*''    m-T  TrrmJ-rmy'iJitfiCTt-  k  H  lae  35HILC 

liTniTwr  i  "jnttlf  H  T/Tt^  ■^iiii..rt.:-i  W  i  soomc  SnUVSBt 

uliHI    lii     rril..  m  Mjm^    '  CBKBIB.  X    it    BTaK    ~in- 

uly  -ni'!i:.ii<r  XiS    III HIMIII rfi  JULlMiU^  S  itIS  Tnr.        ^  m 
I   '  -irrnr  '^    i,   TirrnuBnrr    v'JuL  "vaiia. 


Sib 

-   IK  31   jr  1    _  ~     —jas 

'  -   ■      rl-  ;        iar 

^^ ^"=az- 

T^:    la   »n»r    31   "»:k    m.  s  f^nm^mTiT    -nTMar    «.TiirnVT    nir 

:.ai   'fm  '    "    jf 

. : _  1 :  _____      _  n;  "vaiHr  t  ^  i    -Hir 


42  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

this,  we  have  said  all ;  no  case  is  so  reported  as  to 
enable  us  altogether  to  exclude  the  possibility  of 
coincidence,  or  of  the  fabrication  of  the  prophecy 
after  the  event.  But,  on  the  other  hand, — and  this 
is  a  more  surprising  circumstance, — it  is  equally 
difficult  to  get  together  any  satisfactory  evidence  for 
the  conjecture  which  the  parallel  between  Delphi 
and  the  Papacy  so  readily  suggests,  —  that  the 
power  of  the  oracle  was  due  to  the  machinations  of 
a  priestly  aristocracy,  with  widely-scattered  agents, 
who  insinuated  themselves  into  the  confidence,  and 
traded  on  the  credulity,  of  mankind.  We  cannot 
but  suppose  that,  to  some  extent  at  least,  this  must 
have  been  the  case ;  that  when  "  the  Pythia  philip- 
pised  "  she  reflected  the  fears  of  a  knot  of  Delphian 
proprietors ;  that  the  unerring  counsel  given  to 
private  persons,  on  which  Plutarch  insists,  must 
have  rested,  in  part  at  least,  on  a  secret  acquaint- 
ance with  their  affairs,  possibly  acquired  in  some 
cases  under  the  seal  of  confession.  In  the  paucity, 
however,  of  direct  evidence  to  this  effect,  our 
estimate  of  the  amount  of  pressure  exercised  by  a 
deliberate  human  agency  in  determining  the  policy 
of  Delphi  must  rest  mainly  on  our  antecedent  view 
of  what  is  likely  to  have  been  the  case,  where  the 
interests  involved  were  of  such  wide  importance.' 

*  For  this  view  of  the  subject,  see  Hiillmann,  Wilrdigung  des 
Delphischen  Orakels ;  Gotte,  Das  Delphische  Orakel.  August 
Monimsen  {DcljMka)  takes  a  somewhat  similar  view,  and  calls  the 
Pythia  a  "  blosse  Figurantin,"  but  his  erudition  has  added  little 


l]  GKEEK  oracles.  43 

For  indeed  the  political  influence  of  the  Delphian 
oracle,  however  inspired  or  guided, — the  value  to 
Hellas  of  this  one  unquestioned  centre  of  national 
counsel  and  national  unity,  —  has  always  formed 
one  of  the  most  impressive  topics  with  which  the 
historian  of  Greece  has  had  to  deal.  And  I  shall 
pass  this  part  of  my  subject  rapidly  by,  as  already 
familiar  to  most  readers,  and  shall  not  repeat  at 
length  the  well-known  stories, — the  god's  persistent 
command  to  expel  the  Peisistratids  from  Athens,  his 
partiality  for  Sparta,  as  shown  both  in  encourage- 
ment and  warning,^  or  the  attempts,  successful^  and 
unsuccessful,'  to  bribe  his  priestess.  Nor  shall  I 
do  more  than  allude  to  the  encouragement  of 
colonisation,  counsel  of  great  wisdom,  wliich  the 
god  lost  no  opportunity  of  enforcing  on  both  the 
Dorian  and  the  Ionian  stocks.  He  sent  the  Cretans  to 
Sicily,^  and  Alcmaeon  to  the  Echinades  f  he  ordered 
the  foundation  of  Byzantium  °  "  over  against  the 
city  of  the  blind ;"  he  sent  Archias  to  Ortygia  to 

to  the  scanty  store  of  texts  on  which  Hiillmann,  etc.,  depend.  I 
may  mention  here  that  Hendess  has  collected  most  of  the  existing 
oracles  (except  those  quoted  by  Eusebius)  in  a  tract,  Oracula  quae 
supersunt,  etc. ,  which  is  convenient  for  reference. 

1  Herod,  vi.  62;  Thuc.  i.  118,  123;  ii.  54.  Warnings,  ap. 
Pans.  iii.  8  ;  ix.  32  ;  Died.  Sic.  xi.  50  ;  xv.  54.  Plut.  Lys.  22 ; 
Agesil.  3. 

'  Cleisthenes,  Herod,  v.  63,  66;  Pleistoanax,  Thuc.  v.  16. 

'  Lysander ;  Plut.  Lys.  26  ;  Ephor.  Fr.  127  ;  Nep.  Lys.  3.  See 
also  Herod,  vi.  66. 

*  Herod,  vii.  170.  »  Thuc.  ii.  102. 

«  Strab.  vii.  320 ;  Tac.  Ann.  xii.  63  ;  but  see  Herod,  iv.  144, 


44  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

found  Syracuse,^  the  Bceotians  to  Heraclea  at 
Pratos,*  and  the  Spartans  to  Heraclea  in  Thessaly. 
And  in  the  story  which  Herodotus '  and  Pindar  * 
alike  have  made  renowned,  he  singled  out  Battus, — 
anxious  merely  to  learn  a  cure  for  his  stammer,  but 
type  of  the  man  with  a  destiny  higher  than  he 
knows, — to  found  at  Gyrene  "  a  charioteering  city 
upon  the  silvern  bosom  of  the  hill."  And,  as  has 
often  been  remarked,  this  function  of  colonisation 
had  a  religious  as  well  as  a  political  import.  The 
colonists,  before  whose  adventurous  armaments 
Apollo,  graven  on  many  a  gem,  stUl  hovers  over 
the  sea,  carried  with  them  the  civilising  maxims  of 
the  "  just-judging  "  ^  sanctuary  as  well  as  the  brand 
kindled  on  the  world's  central  altar-stone  from  that 
pine-fed  "^  and  eternal  fire.  Yet  more  distinctly 
can  we  trace  the  response  of  the  god  to  each  suc- 
cessive stage  of  ethical  progress  to  which  the  evolu- 
tion of  Greek  thought  attains. 

The  moralising  Hesiod  is  honoured  at  Delphi 
in  preference  to  Homer  himself  The  Seven  Wise 
Men,  the  next  examples  of  a  deliberate  effort  after 
ethical  rules,  are  connected  closely  with  the  Pythian 
shrine.  Above  the  portal  is  inscribed  that  first 
condition  of  all  moral  progress,  "Know   Thyself"; 

'  Paus.  V.  7.  '  Justin,  xvi  3. 

'  Herod,  iv.  155.  •  Pi/th.  iv. 

"  Pyth.  xi.  9. 

«  Pint,    de  EI  apud  Delphos       Cf.    Aesch.    Bum.    40  ;    aioepK 
1036, 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  45 

nor  does  the  god  refuse  to  encourage  the  sages 
whose  inferior  ethical  elevation  suggests  to  them 
only  such  maxims  as,  "Most  men  are  bad,"  or 
"  Never  go  bail."  ^ 

Solon  and  Lycurgus,  the  spiritual  ancestors  of 
the  Athenian  and  the  Spartan  types  of  virtue,  re- 
ceive the  emphatic  approval  of  Delphi,  and  the 
"  Theban  eagle,"  the  first  great  exponent  of  the  de- 
veloped faith  of  Greece,  already  siding  with  the 
spirit  against  the  letter,  and  refusing  to  ascribe  to 
a  divinity  any  immoral  act,  already  preaching  the 
rewards  and  punishments  of  a  future  state  in  strains 
of  impassioned  revelation, — this  gi-eat  poet  is  dear 
above  all  men  to  Apollo  during  his  life,  and  is 
honoured  for  centuries  after  his  death  by  the  priest's 
nightly  summons,  "  Let  Pindar  the  poet  come  in  to 
the  supper  of  the  god."  ^  It  is  from  Delphi  that 
reverence  for  oaths,  respect  for  the  life  of  slaves,  of 
women,  of  suppliants,  derive  in  great  measure  their 
sanction  and  strength.'  I  need  only  allude  to  the 
well-known  story  of  Glaucus,  who  consulted  the 
god  to  know  whether  he  should  deny  having  re- 
ceived the  gold  in  deposit  from  his  friend,  and  who 
was  warned  in  lines  which  sounded  from  end  to  end 
of  Greece  of  the  nameless  Avenger  of  the  broken 

'  I  say  nothing  de  EI  apud  Delphos,  about  the  mystic  word 
which  five  of  the  wise  men,  or  perhaps  all  seven  together,  put  up 
in  wooden  letters  at  Delphi,  for  their  wisdom  has  in  this  instance 
wholly  transcended  our  interpretation. 

"  Pans.  ix.  23.  ^  Herod,  ii.  134  ;  vi.  139,  etc. 


46  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i, 

oath, — whose  wish  was  punished  like  a  deed,  and 
whose  family  was  blotted  out.  The  numerous  re- 
sponses of  which  this  is  the  type  brought  home  to 
men's  minds  the  notion  of  right  and  wrong,  of 
reward  and  punishment,  with  a  force  and  im- 
pressiveness  which  was  still  new  to  the  Grecian 
world. 

More  surprising,  perhaps,  at  so  early  a  stage  of 
moral  thought,  is  the  catholicity  of  the  Delphian 
god,  his  indulgence  towards  ceremonial  differences 
or  ceremonial  offences,  his  reference  of  casuistical 
problems  to  the  test  of  the  inward  Tightness  of  the 
heart.'  It  was  the  Pythian  Apollo  who  replied  to 
the  inqiury,  "  How  best  are  we  to  worship  the 
gods  ?"  by  the  philosophic  answer,  "  After  the 
custom  of  your  country,"  ^  and  who,  if  those  customs 
varied,  would  only  bid  men  choose  "  the  best."  It 
was  Apollo  who  rebuked  the  pompous  sacrifice  of  the 
rich  Magnesian  by  declaring  his  preference  for  the 
cake  and  frankincense  which  the  pious  Achaean 
offered  in  himibleness  of  heart.'     It  was  Apollo  who 

'  See,  for  instance,  the  story  of  the  young  man  and  the  brigands, 
Ael.  Hist.  Var.  iii.  4.  3. 

^  Xen.  Mem.  iv.  3.  7}  re  -yap  Jlvdia.  vbfii^  7r6\ews  d»'at/>et  ^otoi'i'Tas 
fio-e/SiSs  Sk  iroiiiv.  The  Pythia  often  urged  the  maintenance  or 
renewal  of  ancestral  rites.     Paus.  viii.  24,  etc. 

'  Theopomp.  Fr.  283  ;  cf  Sopater,  Prolegg.  in  Ariatid.  Panath. 
p.  740,  ciaU  yuoi  x^'fi^s  XI/Sokos,  (c.r.X.  (Wolff,  de  Noviss.  p.  5  ; 
Lob,  Agl.  1006),  and  compare  the  story  of  Poseidon  (Plut.  de  Prof, 
in  Virt.  12),  who  first  reproached  Stilpon  in  a  dream  for  the  cheap- 
ness of  his  offerings,  but  on  learning  that  he  could  afford  nothing 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  47 

warned  the  Greeks  not  to  make  superstition  an 
excuse  for  cruelty ;  who  testified,  by  his  command- 
ing interference,  his  compassion  for  human  infirmi- 
ties, for  the  irresistible  heaviness  of  sleep,^  for  the 
thoughtlessness  of  childhood,*  for  the  bewilderment 
of  the  whirling  brain.* 

Yet  the  impression  which  the  Delphian  oracles 
make  on  the  modern  reader  will  depend  less  on 
isolated  anecdotes  like  these  than  on  something  of 
the  style  and  temper  which  appears  especially  in 
those  responses  which  Herodotus  has  preserved, — 
something  of  that  delightful  mingling  of  naiveti 
with  greatness,  which  was  the  world's  irrecoverable 
bloom.  What  scholar  has  not  smiled  over  the 
god's  answer*  to  the  colonists  who  had  gone  to  a 
barren  island  in  mistake  for  Libya,  and  came  back 
complaining  that  Libya  was  unfit  to  live  in  ?  He 
told  them  that  "  if  they  who  had  never  visited  the 

better,  smiled,  and  promised  to  send  abundant  anchoriea.  For  the 
Delphian  god's  respect  for  honest  poverty,  see  Plin.  ff.  N.  vii.  47. 

'  Evenius.     Herod,  ix.  93. 

'  Paus.  viii.  23.  This  is  the  case  of  the  Arcadian  children  who 
hung  the  goddess  in  play. 

'  Paus.  vi.  9  ;  Plut.  Xomul.  28  (Cleomedes).  For  further  in- 
stances of  the  inculcation  of  mercy,  see  Thuc.  ii.  102 ;  Athen.  xL 
p.  504. 

*  Herod,  iv.  157.  There  seems  some  analogy  between  this 
story  and  the  Norse  legend  of  second-sight,  which  narrates  how 
"  Mgimund  shut  up  three  Finns  in  a  hut  for  three  nights  that 
they  might  visit  Iceland  and  inform  him  of  the  lie  of  the  country 
where  he  was  to  settle.  Their  bodies  became  rigid,  they  sent  their 
souls  on  the  errand,  and  awakening  after  three  days,  they  gave  a 
description  of  the  Vatnsdael. "— iVtm.  Cult,  i  396. 


48  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

sheep-bearing  Libya  knew  it  better  than  he  who 
luid,  he  greatly  admired  their  cleverness."  Who 
has  not  felt  the  majesty  of  the  lines  which  usher 
in  the  test-oracle  of  Croesus  with  the  lofty  asser- 
tion of  the  omniscience  of  heaven  ?  '^  lines  which 
deeply  impressed  the  Greek  mind,  and  whose  graven 
record,  two  thousand  years  afterwards,  was  among 
the  last  relics  which  were  found  among  the  ruins  of 
Delphi.' 

It  is  Herodotus,  if  any  one,  who  has  caught  for 
us  the  expression  on  the  living  face  of  Hellas.  It 
is  Herodotus  whose  pencil  has  perpetuated  that 
ilying  moment  of  young  unconsciousness  when  evil 
itself  seemed  as  if  it  could  leave  no  stain  on  her 
expanding  soul,  when  all  her  faults  were  reparable, 
and  all  her  wounds  benign ;  when  we  can  still  feel 
that  in  her  upward  progress  all  these  and  more 
might  be  forgiven  and  pass  harmless  away — 

"  For  the  time 
Was  May-time,  and  as  yet  no  sin  was  dreamed." 

And  through  all  this  vivid  and  golden  scene  the 
Pythian  Apollo — "  the  god,"  as  he  is  termed  with  a 
sort  of  familiar  affection — is  the  never-failing  coun- 
sellor and  friend.  His  providence  is  all  the  divinity 
which  the  growing  nation  needs.     His  wisdom  is 

»  Herod,  i.  47. 

^  Cyriao  of  Ancona,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  found  a  slab  of 
marble  with  the  couplet  oi5o  t'  iyiii,  etc.,  inscribed  on  it.  See 
Foucart,  p.  139. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  49 

not  inscrutable  and  absolute,  but  it  is  near  and 
kind ;  it  is  like  the  counsel  of  a  young  father  to 
his  eager  boy.  To  strip  the  oracles  from  Hero- 
dotus' history  would  be  to  deprive  it  of  its  deepest 
unity  and  its  most  characteristic  charm. 

And  in  that  culminating  struggle  with  the  bar- 
barians, when  the  young  nation  rose,  as  it  were,  to 
knightly  manhood  through  one  great  ordeal,  how 
moving  —  through  all  its  perplexities  —  was  the 
attitude  of  the  god !  We  may  wish,  indeed,  that 
he  had  taken  a  firmer  tone,  that  he  had  not  trembled 
before  the  oncoming  host,  nor  needed  men's  utmost 
supplications  before  he  would  give  a  word  of  hope. 
But  this  is  a  later  view ;  it  is  the  view  of  Oenomaus 
and  Eusebius,  rather  than  of  Aeschylus  or  Hero- 
dotus.^ To  the  contemporary  Greeks  it  seemed  no 
shame  nor  wonder  that  the  national  protector, 
benignant  but  not  omnipotent,  should  tremble  with 
the  fortunes  of  the  nation,  that  all  his  strength 
should  scarcely  suffice  for  a  conflict  in  which  every 
fibre  of  the  forces  of  Hellas  was  strained,  "as 
though  men  fought  upon  the  earth  and  gods  in 
upper  air." 

And  seldom  indeed  has  history  shown  a  scene 

so  strangely  dramatic,  never  has  poetry  entered  so 

deeply  into    human   fates,   as   in    that    council   at 

Athens^  when  the  question  of  absolute  surrender 

'  Herod,  vii.  139,  seems  hardly  meant  to  blame  the  god,  though 
it  praises  the  Athenians  for  hoping  against  hope. 
»  Herod,  vii.  143. 


60  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

or  desperate  resistance  turned  on  the  interpretation 
which  was  to  be  given  to  the  dark  utterance  of  the 
god.  It  was  an  epithet  which  saved  civilisation  ; 
it  was  the  one  word  which  blessed  the  famous  islet 
instead  of  cursing  it  altogether,  which  gave  courage 
for  that  most  fateful  battle  wMch  the  world  has 
known — 

"  Thou,  holy  Salamis,  sons  of  men  shalt  slay, 
Or  on  earth's  scattering  or  ingathering  day." 

After  the  great  crisis  of  the  Persian  war  Apollo 
is  at  rest.^  In  the  tragedians  we  find  him  risen 
high  above  the  attitude  of  a  struggling  tribal  god. 
Worshippers  surround  him,  as  in  the  Ion,  in  the 
spirit  of  glad  self-dedication  and  holy  service ;  his 
priestess  speaks  as  in  the  opening  of  the  Eumenides, 
where  the  settled  majesty  of  godhead  breathes 
through  the  awful  calm.  And  now,  more  magnifi- 
cent though  more  transitory  than  the  poet's  song,  a 
famous  symbolical  picture  embodies  for  the  remain- 
ing generations  of  Greeks  the  culminant  conception 
of  the  religion  of  Apollo's  shrine. 

"  Not  all  the  treasures,"  as  Homer  has  it,  "  which 
the  stone  threshold  of  the  Far-darter  holds  safe 
within "  would  now  be  so  precious  to  us  as  the 
power  of  looking  for  one  hour  on  the  greatest  work 
of  the  greatest  painter  of  antiquity,  the  picture  by 

1  It  is  noticeable  that  tlie  god  three  times  defended  his  own 
shrine, — against  Xerxes  (Herod,  viii.  36),  Jason  of  Pherae  (Xen. 
Hell.  vi.  4),  Brennus  (Pans.  x.  23). 


t]  GREEK  ORACLES.  Bl 

Polygnotus  in  the  Hall  of  the  Cnidians  at  Delphi, 
of  the  descent  of  Odysseus  among  the  dead.^  For 
as  it  was  with  the  oracle  of  Teiresias  that  the  roll 
of  responses  began,  so  it  is  the  picture  of  that  same 
scene  which  shows  us,  even  through  the  meagre 
description  of  Pausanias,  how  great  a  space  had 
been  traversed  between  the  horizon  and  the  zenith 
of  the  Hellenic  faith.  "The  ethical  painter,"  as 
Aristotle  calls  him,^  the  man  on  whose  works  it 
ennobled  a  city  to  gaze,  the  painter  whose  figures 
were  superior  to  nature  as  the  characters  of  Homer 
were  greater  than  the  greatness  of  men,  had  spent 
on  this  altar-piece,  if  I  may  so  term  it,  of  the 
Hellenic  race  his  truest  devotion  and  his  utmost 
skill.  The  world  to  which  he  introduces  us  is 
Homer's  shadow-world,  but  it  reminds  us  also  of  a 
very  different  scene.  It  recalls  the  visions  of  that 
Sacred  Field  on  whose  walls  an  unknown  painter 
has  set  down  with  so  startling  a  reality  the  faith  of 
mediaeval  Christendom  as  to  death  and  the  hereafter. 
In  place  of  Death  with  her  vampire  aspect  and 
wiry  wings,  we  have  the  fiend  Eurynomus,  "  painted 
of  the  blue-black  colour  of  flesh-flies,"  and  battening 

1  For  this  picture  see  Pans.  x.  28-31  ;  also  Weleker  (KUine 
Schri/ten),  and  W.  W.  Lloyd  in  the  Classical  Museum,  who  both 
give  Riepenhausen's  restoration.  While  differing  from  much  in 
Welcker's  view  of  the  picture,  I  have  followed  him  in  supposing 
that  a  vase  figured  in  his  Alte  Denkmaler,  vol.  iii.  plate  29,  repre- 
sents at  any  rate  the  figure  and  expression  of  Polygnotus'  Odyssetis. 
The  rest  of  my  description  can,  I  think,  be  justified  from  Pausanias. 

=  At.  Fol.  viii  8  ;  Poet.  ii.  2. 


52  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  Li- 

on the  corpses  of  the  slain.  In  place  of  the  kings 
and  ladies,  who  tell  us  in  the  rude  Pisan  epigraph 
how 

"  Ischermo  di  savere  e  di  richezza 
Di  nobUtate  ancora  e  di  prodezza 
Vale  niente  ai  colpi  de  costei," — 

ft  is  Theseus  and  Sisyphus  and  Eriphyle  who  teach 
us  that  might  and  wealth  and  wisdom  "  against 
those  blows  are  of  no  avaU."  And  Tityus,  whose 
scarce  imaginable  outrage  in  the  Pythian  valley 
upon  the  mother  of  Apollo  herself  carries  back  his 
crime  and  his  penalty  into  an  immeasurable  past, — 
Tityus  lay  huge  and  prone  upon  the  pictured  field, 
but  the  image  of  him  (and  whether  this  were  by 
chance  or  art  Pausanius  could  not  say)  seemed  melt- 
ing into  cloud  and  nothingness  through  the  infinity 
of  his  woe.  But  there  also  were  heroes  and  heroines 
of  a  loftier  fate, — Memnon  and  Sarpedon,  Tyro  and 
Penthesdea,  in  attitudes  that  told  that  "calm  pleasures 
there  abide,  majestic  pains  ;" — Achilles,  with  Patro- 
clus  at  his  right  hand,  and  near  Achilles  Protesilaus, 
fit  mate  in  valour  and  in  constancy  for  that  type  of 
generous  friendship  and  passionate  woe.  And  there 
was  Odysseus,  still  a  breathing  man,  but  with  no 
trace  of  terror  in  his  earnest  and  solemn  gaze,  de- 
manding from  Teiresias,  as  Dante  from  Virgil,  aU 
that  that  strange  world  could  show ;  while  near  him 
a  woman's  figure  stood,  his  mother  Anticleia,  wait- 
ing to  call  to  him  in  those  words  which  in  Homer's 


l]  greek  oracles.  63 

song  seem  to  strike  at  once  to  the  very  innermost 
of  all  love  and  all  regret.  And  where  the  mediaeval 
painter  had  set  hermits  praying  as  the  type  of  souls 
made  safe  through  their  piety  and  their  knowledge 
of  the  divine,  the  Greek  had  told  the  same  parable 
after  another  fashion.  For  in  Polygnotus'  picture 
it  was  Tellis  and  Cleoboia,  a  young  man  and  a  maid, 
who  were  crossing  Acheron  together  with  hearts  at 
peace ;  and  amid  all  those  legendary  heroes  these 
figures  alone  were  real  and  true,  and  of  a  youth  and 
a  maiden  who  not  long  since  had  passed  away  ;  and 
they  were  at  peace  because  they  had  themselves 
been  initiated,  and  Cleoboia  had  taught  the  mysteries 
of  Demeter  to  her  people  and  her  father's  house. 
And  was  there,  we  may  ask,  in  that  great  company, 
any  heathen  form  wliich  we  may  liken,  however 
distantly,  to  the  Figure  who,  throned  among  the 
clouds  on  the  glowing  Pisau  wall,  marshals  the 
blessed  to  their  home  in  light?  Almost  in  the 
centre,  as  it  would  seem,  of  Polygnotus'  picture  was 
introduced  a  mysterious  personality  who  found  no 
place  in  Homer's  poem, — a  name  round  which  had 
grown  a  web  of  hopes  and  emotions  which  no  hand 
can  disentangle  now,  —  "  The  minstrel  sire  of  song, 
Orpheus  the  well-beloved,  was  there." 

It  may  be  that  the  myth  of  Orpheus  was  at 
first  nothing  more  than  another  version  of  the  world- 
old  story  of  the  Sun ;  that  his  descent  and  resurrec- 
tion were  but  the  symbols  of  the  night  and  the  day; 


54  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

that  Eurydice  was  but  an  emblem  of  the  lovely 
rose-clouds  which  sink  back  from  his  touch  into 
the  darkness  of  evening  only  to  enfold  him  more 
brightly  in  the  dawn.  But  be  this  as  it  may,  the 
name  of  Orpheus  ^  had  become  the  centre  of  the  most 
aspiring  and  the  deepest  thoughts  of  Greece;  the 
lyre  which  he  held,  the  willow-tree  on  which  in  the 
picture  his  liaud  was  laid,  were  symbols  of  mystic 
meaning,  and  he  himself  was  the  type  of  the  man 
"  who  has  descended  and  ascended " —  who  walks 
the  earth  with  a  heart  that  turus  continually  towards 
his  treasure  in  a  world  unseen. 

When  tliis  great  picture  was  painted,  the  sanctu- 
ary and  the  religion  of  Delphi  might  well  seem 
indestructible  and  eternal.  But  the  name  of 
Orpheus,  introduced  here  perhaps  for  the  first  time 
into  the  centre  of  the  Apolline  faith,  brings  with  it 
a  hint  of  that  spirit  of  mysticism  which  has  acted 
as  a  solvent, — sometimes  more  powerful  even  than 
criticism,  as  the  sun  in  the  fable  of  Aesop  was  more 
powerful  than  the  wind, — upon  the  dogmas  of 
every  religion  in  turn.  And  it  suggests  a  forward 
glance  to  an  oracle  given  at  Delphi  on  a  later  day,^ 
and  cited  by  Porphyry  to  illustrate  the  necessary 
evanescence  and  imperfection  of  whatsoever  image 

1  See,  for  instance,  Maury,  Religions  de  la  Orice,  chap,  xviii. 
Aellus  Lampridius  (Alex.  Sev.  Vita,  29)  says — "In  Larario  et 
Apollonium  et  Christum,  Abraliam  et  Orpheum,  et  hujusmodi  deoa 
habebat." 

=  Eus.  Pr.  Ev.  vi.  3. 


L]  GREEK  ORACLES.  55 

of  spiritual  things  can  be  made  visible  on  earth.     A 
time  shall  come  when  even  Delphi's  mission  shaU 
have  been  fulfilled ;  and  the  god  himself  has  pre- 
dicted without  despair  the  destruction  of  his  hoUest 
shrine — 
"  Ay,  if  ye  bear  it,  if  ye  endure  to  know 
That  Delphi's  self  with  all  things  gone  must  go. 
Hear  with  strong  heart  the  unfaltering  song  divine 
Peal  from  the  laurelled  porch  and  shadowy  shrine. 
High  in  Jove's  home  the  battling  winds  are  torn, 
From  battling  winds  the  bolts  of  Jove  are  born  ; 
These  as  he  will  on  trees  and  towers  he  flings, 
And  quells  the  heart  of  hons  or  of  kings  ; 
A  thousand  crags  those  flying  flames  confound, 
A  thousand  navies  in  the  deep  are  drowned, 
And  ocean's  roaring  billows,  cloven  apart. 
Bear  the  bright  death  to  Amphitrite's  heart. 
And  thus,  even  thus,  on  some  long-destined  day. 
Shall  Delphi's  beauty  shrivel  and  burn  away, — 
Shall  Delphi's  fame  and  fane  from  earth  expire 
At  that  bright  bidding  of  celestial  fire." 

The  ruin  has  been  accomplished.  All  is  gone,  save 
such  Cyclopean  walls  as  date  from  days  before 
Apollo,  such  ineffaceable  memories  as  Nature  herself 
has  kept  of  the  vanished  shrine.^  Only  the  Cory- 
cian  cave  still  shows,  with  its  gleaming  stalagmites, 
as  though  the  nymphs  to  whom  it  was  hallowed 
were  sleeping  there  yet  in  stone ;  the  Phaedriades 

'  See  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere's  Picturesque  Sketches  in  Oreece  and 
Turkey  for  a  striking  description  of  Delphian  scenery.  Other 
details  will  be  found  in  Foucirt,  pp.  113,  114  ;  and  cf.  Pans.  x.  33. 


56  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

or  Shining  Crags  still  flash  the  sunlight  from  their 
streams  that  scatter  into  air;  and  dwellers  at 
Castri  still  swear  that  they  have  heard  the  rushing 
Thyiades  keep  their  rout  upon  Parnassus'  brow. 


III. 

Even  while  Polygnotus  was  painting  the  Lesche 
of  the  Cnidians  at  Delphi  a  man  was  talking  in  the 
Athenian  market-place,  from  whose  powerful  in- 
dividuality, the  most  impressive  which  Greece  had 
ever  known,  were  destined  to  flow  streams  of  in- 
fluence which  should  transform  every  department 
of  belief  and  thought.  In  tracing  the  history  of 
oracles  we  shall  feel  the  influence  of  Socrates  mainly 
in  two  directions ;  in  his  assertion  of  a  personal  and 
spiritual  relation  between  man  and  the  unseen 
world,  an  oracle  not  without  us  but  witliin ;  and  in 
his  origination  of  the  idea  of  science,  of  a  habit  of 
mind  which  should  refuse  to  accept  any  explanation 
of  phenomena  which  failed  to  confer  the  power  of 
predicting  those  phenomena  or  producing  them  anew. 
We  shall  find  that,  instead  of  the  old  acceptance  of 
the  responses  as  heaven-sent  mysteries,  and  the  old 
demands  for  prophetic  knowledge  or  for  guidance  in 
the  affairs  of  life,  men  are  more  and  more  concerned 
with  the  questions :  How  can  oracles  be  practically 
produced  ?  and  what  relation  between  God  and  man 
do  they  imply  ?     But  first  of  all,  the  oracle  which 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  67 

concerned  Socrates  himself,  which  declared  him  to 
be  the  wisest  of  mankind,  is  certainly  one  of  the 
most  noticeable  ever  uttered  at  Delphi.  The  fact 
that  the  man  on  whom  the  god  had  bestowed  this 
extreme  laudation,  a  laudation  paralleled  only  by 
the  mythical  words  addressed  to  Lycurgus,  should  a 
few  years  afterwards  have  been  put  to  death  for 
impiety,  is  surely  one  of  a  deeper  significance  than 
has  been  often  observed.  It  forms  an  overt  and 
impressive  instance  of  that  divergence  between  the 
law  and  the  prophets,  between  the  letter  and  the 
spirit,  which  is  sure  t(j  occur  in  the  history  of  all  re- 
ligions, and  on  the  manner  of  whose  settlement  the 
destiny  of  each  religion  in  turn  depends.  In  this 
case  the  conditions  of  the  conflict  are  striking  and 
unusual.'  Socrates  is  accused  of  failing  to  honour 
the  gods  of  the  State,  and  of  introducing  new  gods 
under  the  name  of  demons,  or  spirits,  as  we  must 
translate  the  word,  since  the  title  of  demon  has 
acquired  in  the  mouths  of  the  Fathers  a  bad  signi- 
fication. He  replies  that  he  does  honour  the  gods 
of  the  State,  as  he  understands  them,  and  that  the 
spirit  who  speaks  with  him  is  an  agency  which  he 
cannot  disavow. 

The  first  count  of  the   indictment   brings   into 
prominence  an  obvious  defect  in  the  Greek  religion, 

'  On  the  trial  of  Socrates  and  kindred  points  see,  besides  Plato 
{Apol.,  Phacd.,  Euthyphr.)  and  Xenoplion  {Mem.,  Apol.),  Diog. 
Laert.  ii.  40,  Diod.  Sic.  xiv.  37,  Plut.  De  genio  Socraiis. 


58  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

the  absence  of  any  inspired  text  to  which  the 
orthodox  could  refer.  Homer  and  Hesiod,  men 
like  ourselves,  were  the  acknowledged  authors  of 
the  theology  of  Greece ;  and  when  Homer  and 
Hesiod  were  respectfully  received,  but  interpreted 
with  rationalising  freedom,  it  was  hard  to  know  by 
what  canons  to  judge  the  interpreter.  The  second 
count  opens  questions  which  go  deeper  still.  It 
was  indeed  true,  though  how  far  Anytus  and 
Meletus  perceived  it  we  cannot  now  know,  that  the 
demon  of  Socrates  indicated  a  recurrence  to  a  wholly 
different  conception  of  the  unseen  world,  a  concep- 
tion before  which  Zeus  and  Apollo,  heaven-god  and 
sun -god,  were  one  day  to  disappear.  But  who, 
except  Apollo  himself,  was  to  pronounce  on  such  a 
question  ?  It  was  he  who  was  for  the  Hellenic 
race  the  source  of  continuous  revelation ;  his  utter- 
ances were  a  sanction  or  a  condemnation  from  which 
there  was  no  appeal.  And  in  this  debate  his  verdict 
for  the  defendant  had  been  already  given.  We 
have  heard  of  Christian  theologians  who  are  "  more 
orthodox  than  the  Evangelists."  In  this  case  the 
Athenian  jurymen  showed  themselves  more  jealous 
for  the  gods'  honour  than  were  the  gods  themselves. 
To  us,  indeed,  Socrates  stands  as  the  example  of 
the  truest  religious  conservatism,  of  the  temper  of 
mind  which  is  able  to  cast  its  own  original  convic- 
tions in  an  ancestral  mould,  and  to  find  the  last 
outcome  of  speculation  in  the  humility  of  a  trustful 


l]  greek  oracles.  59 

faith.  No  man,  as  is  well  known,  ever  professed  a 
more  childlike  confidence  in  the  Delphian  god  than 
he,  and  many  a  reader  through  many  a  century  has 
been  moved  to  a  smile  which  was  not  far  from  tears 
at  his  account  of  his  own  mixture  of  conscientious 
belief  and  blank  bewilderment  when  the  infaUible 
deity  pronounced  that  Socrates  was  the  wisest  of 
mankind. 

A  spirit  balanced  like  that  of  Socrates  could 
hardly  recur ;  and  the  impulse  given  to  philosophical 
inquiry  was  certain  to  lead  to  many  questionings  as 
to  the  true  authority  of  the  Delphic  precepts.  But 
before  we  enter  upon  such  controversies,  let  us  trace 
through  some  further  phases  the  influence  of  the 
oracles  on  public  and  private  life. 

For  it  does  not  appear  that  Delphi  ceased  to  give 
utterances  on  the  public  affairs  of  Greece  so  long  as 
Greece  had  public  affairs  worthy  the  notice  of  a  god. 
Oracles  occur,  with  a  less  natural  look  than  when 
we  met  them  in  Herodotus,  inserted  as  a  kind  of 
unearthly  evidence  in  the  speeches  of  Aeschines  and 
Demosthenes.'  Hyperides  confidently  recommends 
his  audience  to  check  the  account  which  a  messenger 
had  brought  of  an  oracle  of  Amphiaraus  by  despatch- 
ing another  messenger  with  the  same  question  to 
Delphi^     Oracles,  as  we  are  informed,  foretold  the 

'  e.g.  Dem.  iteid.  53  : — t<^  Srifiif  tuv  'A.dT)valuv  6  roC  Aios  artixa-ivei, 
etc. 

'  Hyper.  Euxen.  p.  8. 


60  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

battle  of  Leuctra/  the  battle  of  Chaeionea,*  the 
destruction  of  Thebes  by  Alexander.'  Alexander 
himself  consulted  Zeus  Ammon  not  only  on  his  own 
parentage  but  as  to  the  sources  of  the  Nile,  and  an 
ingenuous  author  regrets  that,  instead  of  seeking 
information  on  this  purely  geographical  problem, 
which  divided  with  Homer's  birthplace  the  curiosity 
of  antiquity,  Alexander  did  not  employ  his  prestige 
and  his  opportunities  to  get  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  evil  set  at  rest  for  ever.*  We  hear  of 
oracles  given  to  Epaminondas,*  to  the  orator  Calli- 
stratus,*  and  to  Philip  of  Macedon/  To  Cicero  the 
god  gave  advice  which  that  sensitive  statesman 
would  have  done  well  to  follow, — to  take  his  own 
character  and  not  the '  opinion  of  the  multitude  as 
his  guide  in  life.* 

Nero,  too,  consulted  the  Delphian  oracle,  which 
pleased  him  by  telling  him  to  "  beware  of  seventy- 
three,"^  for  he  supposed  that  he  was  to  reign  till  he 
reached  that  year.  The  god,  however,  alluded  to 
the  age  of  his  successor  Galba.  Afterwards  Nero, — 
grown  to  an  overweening  presumption  which  could 
brook  no  rival  worship,  and  become,  as  we  may  say, 
AntapoUo  as  well  as  Antichrist,— murdered  certain 
men  and  cast  them  into  the  cleft  of  Delphi,  thus 


1  Paus.  ix.  14.           =  Plut.  Dem.  19.  '  Diod.  xvii.  10. 

*  Max.  Tyr.  Diss.  25.  °  Paus.  viii.  11.  "  Lycurg.  Leocr.  160. 
'  Diod.  xvi  91. 

8  Plut.  Cic.  5.  '  Suet.  A'cro,  38. 


l]  greek  oracles.  61 

extingTiishing  for  a  time  the  oracular  power.' 
Plutarch,  who  was  a  contemporary  of  Nero's, 
describes  in  several  essays  this  lowest  point  of 
oracular  fortunes.  Not  Delphi  alone,  but  the  great 
majority  of  Greek  oracles,  were  at  that  time  hushed, 
a  silence  which  Plutarch  ascribes  partly  to  the 
tranquillity  and  depopulation  of  Greece,  partly  to  a 
casual  deficiency  of  Demons, — the  immanent  spirits 
who  give  inspiration  to  the  shrines,  but  who  are 
themselves  liable  to  change  of  circumstances,  or 
even  to  death.^ 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  cause  of  this 
oracular  eclipse,  it  was  of  no  long  duration.  The 
oracle  of  Delphi  seems  to  have  been  restored  in  the 
reign  of  Trajan;  and  in  Hadrian's  days  a  characteristic 
story  shows  that  it  had  again  become  a  centre  of 
distant  inquirers.  The  main  preoccupation  of  that 
imperial  scholar  was  the  determination  of  Homer's 
birthplace,  and  he  put  the  question  in  person  to  the 
Pjrthian  priestess.  The  question  had  naturally  been 
asked  before,  and  an  old  reply,  purporting  to  have 
been  given  to  Homer  himself,  had  already  been 
engraved  on  Homer's  statue  in  the  sacred  precinct. 

'  Dio  Cass.  Ixiii.  14.  Suetonius  and  Dio  Cassius  do  not  know 
why  Nero  destroyed  Delphi ;  but  some  such  view  as  that  given  in 
the  text  seems  the  only  conceivable  one. 

'  Plut.  de  Defect,  orac.  11.  We  may  compare  the  way  in  which 
Heliogabalus  put  an  end  to  the  oracle  of  the  celestial  goddess  of  the 
Carthaginians,  by  insisting  on  marrying  her  statue,  on  the  ground 
that  she  was  the  Moon  and  he  was  the  Sun. — Hcrodian,  v.  6. 


62  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

But  on  the  inquiry  of  the  sumptuous  emperor  the 
priestess  changed  her  tone,  described  Homer  as  "  an 
immortal  siren,"  and  very  handsomely  made  him  out 
to  be  the  grandson  both  of  Nestor  and  of  Odysseus.^ 
It  was  Hadrian,  too,  who  dropped  a  laurel-leaf  at 
Antioch  into  Daphne's  stream,  and  when  he  drew  it 
out  there  was  writ  thereon  a  promise  of  liis  imperial 
power.  He  choked  up  the  fountain,  that  no  man 
might  draw  from  its  prophecy  such  a  hope  again.* 
But  Hadrian's  strangest  achievement  was  to  found 
an  oracle  himself.  The  worshippers  of  Antinous 
at  Antinoe  were  taught  to  expect  answers  from 
the  deified  boy  :  "  They  imagine,"  says  the  scornful 
Origen,  "  that  there  breathes  from  Antinous  a  breath 
divine."* 

For  some  time  after  Hadrian  we  hear  little  of 
Delphi  But,  on  the  other  hand,  stories  of  oracles 
of  varied  character  come  to  us  from  all  parts  of  the 
Roman  world.  The  buU  Apis,  "  trampling  the  un- 
showered  grass  with  lowings  loud,"  refused  food  from 
the  hand  of  Germanicus,  and  thus  predicted  his  ap- 
proaching death.*  Germanicus,  too,  drew  the  same 
dark  presage  from  the  oracle  at  Colophon  of  the 
Clarian  Apollo.'     And  few  oracular  answers  have 

^  Anth.  Pal.  xiv.  102  : — d-yvuiurov  jj.'  ipiets  yej/e?}?  Kal  iraTpiSosatijs 

ifippoatov  2«/)^yos,  etc 
'  Sozonien,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19. 

^  Orig.  ad.   Cels.  ap.  Wolff,  de  Noviss.  p.  43,  where  see  othei 
citations. 

«  riin.  viii.  46.  '  Tac.  Ann.  ii.  64. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  63 

been  more  impressively  recounted  than  that  which 
was  given  to  Vespasian  by  the  god  Carmel,  upon 
Carmel,  while  the  Eoman's  dreams  of  empire  were 
still  hidden  in  his  heart.  "  Whatsoever  it  be,  Ves- 
pasian, that  thou  preparest  now,  whether  to  build 
a  house  or  to  enlarge  thy  fields,  or  to  get  thee  ser- 
vants for  thy  need,  there  is  given  unto  thee  a  mighty 
home,  and  far-reaching  borders,  and  a  multitude  of 
men."^ 

The  same  strange  mingling  of  classic  and  Hebrew 
memories,  which  the  name  of  Carmel  in  this  connec- 
tion suggests,  meets  us  when  we  find  the  god  Bel  at 
Apamea, — that  same  Baal  "  by  whom  the  prophets 
prophesied  and  walked  after  things  that  do  not 
profit "  in  Jeremiah's  day,  —  answering  a  Eoman 
emperor  in  words  drawn  from  Homer's  song.  For 
it  was  thus  that  the  struggling  Macrinus  received 
the  signal  of  his  last  and  irretrievable  defeat :  * — 

"  Ah,  king  outworn  !  young  warriors  press  thee  sore, 
And  age  is  on  thee,  and  thou  thyself  no  more." 

In  the  private  oracles,  too,  of  these  post- classical 
times  there  is  sometimes  a  touch  of  romance  which 
reminds  us  how  much   human   emotion    there   has 

'  Tac.  Hist.  ii.  78.  Suetonius,  Vesp.  5,  speaks  of  Carmel's  oracle, 
though  it  seems  that  the  answer  was  given  after  a  simple  extispi- 
cium. 

'  Dio  Cass.  Ixxviii.  40 ;  Horn.  77.  viii.  103.  Capitolinus,  in  his 
life  of  Macrinus  (c.  3),  shows  incidentally  that  under  the  Antonines 
it  was  customary  for  the  Roman  proconsul  of  Africa  to  consult  the 
oracle  of  the  Dea  Caelestis  Carthaginiensium. 


64  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

been  in  generations  which  we  pass  rapidly  by ;  how 
earnest  and  great  a  thing  many  a  man's  mission  has 
seemed  to  him,  wliich  to  us  is  merged  in  the  dulness 
and  littleness  of  a  decliQing  age.  Tliere  is  something 
of  this  pathos  in  the  Pythia's  message  to  the  wander- 
ing preacher/  "Do  as  thou  now  doest,  xmtil  thou  reach 
the  end  of  the  world,"  and  in  the  dream  which  came 
to  the  weary  statesman  in  Apollo  Grannus'  shrine,^ 
and  bade  him  write  at  the  end  of  his  life's  long 
labour  Homer's  words — 

"But  Hector  Zeus  took  forth  and  bare  him  far 
From  dust,  and  dying,  and  the  storm  of  war." 

And  in  the  records  of  these  last  centuries  of  pagan- 
ism we  notice  that  the  established  oracles,  the 
orthodox  forms  of  inquiry,  are  no  longer  enough  to 
satisfy  the  eagerness  of  men.  In  that  upheaval  of 
the  human  spirit  which  bore  to  the  surface  so  much 
of  falsehood  and  so  much  of  truth, — the  religion 
of  Mithra,  the  religion  of  Serapis,  the  religion  of 
Christ, — questions  are  asked  from  whatever  source, 
glimpses  are  sought  through  whatsoever  in  nature 
has  been  deemed  transparent  to  the  influences  of 
an  encompassing  Power.     It  was  in  this  age '  that  at 

'  Dio  Chrysostom,  irt/J  (pvyTJs,  p.  255.  This  message  had,  per- 
haps, a  political  meaning. 

"  Dio  Cassius,  ad  fin. ;  Horn.  II.  xi.  163. 

'  The  following  examples  of  later  oracles  are  not  precisely  syn- 
chronous. They  Olustrate  the  character  of  a  long  period,  and  the 
date  at  which  we  happen  to  hear  of  each  has  depended  largely  on 
accident. 


,.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  65 

Hierapolis  the  "  clear  round  stone  of  the  onyx  kind," 
which  Damascius  describes,  showed  in  its  mirroring 
depths  letters  which  changed  and  came,  or  some- 
times emitted  that  "thin  and  thrilling  soxind,"^ 
which  was  interpreted  into  the  message  of  a  slowly- 
utteriug  Power.  It  was  in  this  age  that  Chosroes 
drew  his  divinations  from  the  flickering  of  an  eternal 
fire.*  It  was  in  this  age  that  the  luminous  meteor 
would  fall  from  the  temple  of  Uranian  Venus  upon 
Lebanon  into  her  sacred  lake  beneath,  and  declare 
her  presence  and  promise  her  consenting  grace.*  It 
was  in  this  age  that  sealed  letters  containing  num- 
bered questions  were  sent  to  the  temple  of  the  sun 
at  Hierapolis,  and  answers  were  returned  in  order, 
wliile  the  seals  remained  still  intact.*  It  was  in 
this  age  that  the  famous  oracle  which  predicted  the 
death  of  Valens  was  obtained  by  certain  men  who 
sat  round  a  table  and  noted  letters  of  the  alphabet 

1  Damasc.  ap.  Phot.  348,  (puvrtv  XerroS  <ri;pi<J-^aTos.  See  also 
Paus.  vii.  21,  aud  compare  Spartian,  Did.  Jul.  7,  where  a  child  sees 
the  images  in  a  mirror  applied  to  the  top  of  his  head  rendered 
abnormally  sensitive  by  an  unexplained  process. 

2  Procop.  Bell.  Pers.  ii.  24.  The  practice  of  divining  from 
sacrificial  flame  or  smoke  was  of  course  an  old  one,  though  rarely 
connected  with  any  regular  seat  of  oracle.  Cf.  Herod,  viii.  134. 
The  Tvpetov  in  the  x^p'o"  'ASiap^iydvoiv,  which  Chosroes  consulted, 
was  a  fire  worshipped  in  itself,  and  sought  for  oracular  purposes. 

'  Zosimns,  Ann.  i.  67. 

*  Macrob.  Sat.  i.  23.  FonteneUe's  criticism  {Eistoire  des  Oracles) 
on  the  answer  given  to  Trajan  is  worth  reading  along  with  the 
passage  of  Macrobius  as  an  example  of  Voltairian  mockery,  equally 
incisive  and  unjust.  Cf.  Anim.  Marcell.  xiv.  7  for  a  variety  of 
this  form-of  response. 


66  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

which  were  spelt  out  for  them  by  some  automatic 
agency,  after  a  fasliion  which,  from  the  description 
of  Ammianus  we  cannot  precisely  determine.^  This 
oracle,  construed  into  a  menace  against  a  Christian 
Emperor,  gave  rise  to  a  persecution  of  paganism  of 
so  severe  a  character  that,  inasmuch  as  philosophers 
were  believed  especially  to  affect  the  forbidden 
practice,  the  very  repute  or  aspect  of  a  philosopher, 
as  Sozomen  tells  us,*  was  enough  to  bring  a  man 
under  the  notice  of  the  police.  This  theological 
rancour  will  the  less  surprise  us,  if  we  believe  with 
some  modern  criticism  that  St.  Paul  himself,  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Simon  Magus,  had  not  escaped 
the  charge,  at  the  hands  of  a  polemical  Father,  of 
causing  the  furniture  of  his  house  to  move  without 
contact,  in  obedience  to  his  unholy  will.' 

Finally,  to  conclude  this  strange  Hst  with  an 
example  which  may  by  many  minds  be  considered 
as  typical  of  the  rest,  it  was  in  this  age  that,  at  the 
Nymphaeum  at  ApoUonia  in  Epirus,  an  Ignis  Fatuus* 
gave  by  its  waving  approach  and  recession  the  re- 

'  Amm.  Marcell.  xxix.  2,  and  xxxi.  1. 

^  Sozomen.  vi.  35. 

'  Pseudo-Clemens,  Homil.  ii.  32.  638,  to  iv  otxlf  aKdy)  us  aM- 
fiara  ipepb^eva  irpbs  virtjpcaiav  /SX^Treff^ai  iroici,  Cf.  Kenan,  Let 
Jpdtres,  p.  153,  note,  etc. 

*  There  can,  I  think,  be  little  doubt  that  such  was  the  true  cha- 
racter of  the  flame  which  Dio  Cassius  (xli.  46)  describes :  vpis  Si  raj 
inx'^ffcis  Twv  ifx^puv  iirav^ei  Kal  is  v'pos  i^alperai,  etc.  Maury's  ex- 
planation (ii.  446)  is  slightly  different.  The  fluctuations  of  the  flame 
on  Etna  (Paus.  iii.  23)  were  an  instance  of  a  common  Tolcanic 
phenomenon. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  67 

sponses  which  a  credulous  people  sought, — except 
that  this  Will-o'-the-Wisp,  with  unexpected  diiB- 
dence,  refused  to  answer  questions  which  had  to  do 
with  marriage  or  with  death. 

Further  examples  are  not  needed  to  prove  what 
the  express  statement  of  Tertullian  and  others  tes- 
tifies/ that  the  world  waa  still  "  crowded  with 
oracles  "  in  the  first  centuries  of  our  era.  We  must 
now  retrace  our  steps  and  inquire  with  what  eyes 
the  post-Socratic  philosophers^  regarded  a  pheno- 
menon so  opposed  to  ordinary  notions  of  enlighten- 
ment or  progress. 

Plato's  theory  of  inspiration  is  too  vast  and  far- 
reaching  for  discussion  here.  It  must  be  enough  to 
say  that,  although  oracles  seemed  to  him  to  consti- 
tute but  a  small  part  of  the  revelation  offered  by 
God  to  man,  he  yet  maintained  to  the  full  their 
utnity,  and  appeared  to  assume  their  truth.     In  his 

'  Tertullian,  de  Anima,  46  :  Nam  et  oraculis  hoc  genus  stipatus 
est  orbis,  etc.  Cf.  Plin.  Hist.  Nat.  yiii.  29  :  Nee  non  et  hodie  mul- 
tifariam  ab  oraculis  medicina  potitur.  Pliny's  oracular  remedy  for 
hydrophobia  (viii.  42)  is  not  now  pharmacopceal. 

"  For  a  good  account  of  pre-Socratic  views  on  this  topic,  see 
Bouche-Leclerq,  i.  29.  But  the  fragments  of  the  early  sages  tan- 
talise even  more  than  they  instruct.  A  genuine  page  of  Pythagoras 
would  here  be  beyond  price.  But  it  is  the  singular  fate  of  the  ori- 
ginal Ipse  of  our  Ipse  Dixit  that  while  the  fact  of  his  having  said 
anything  is  proverbially  conclusive  as  to  its  truth  we  have  no  trust- 
worthy means  of  knowing  what  he  really  did  say.  Later  ages 
depict  him  as  the  representative  of  continuous  inward  inspiration, 
— aa  a  spirit  linked  with  the  Past,  the  Future,  the  Unseen,  by  a 
vision  which  is  presence  and  a  commerce  which  is  identity. 


68  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

ideal  polity  the  oracles  of  the  Delphian  god  were  to 
possess  as  high  an  authority,  and  to  be  as  frequently 
consulted,  as  in  conservative  Lacedaemon,  and  the 
express  decision  of  heaven  v^as  to  be  invoked  in 
matters  of  practical'  as  well  as  of  ceremonial"^  import. 

Aristotle,  who  possessed,  —  and  no  man  had  a 
better  right  to  it,  —  a  religion  all  his  own,  and  to 
which  he  never  converted  anybody,  delivered  him- 
self on  the  subject  of  oracular  dreams  with  all  his 
sagacious  ambiguity.  "  It  is  neither  easy,"  he  said, 
"to  despise  such  things,  nor  yet  to  believe  them."' 

The  schools  of  philosophy  which  were  dominant 
in  Greece  after  the  death  of  Aristotle  occupied 
themselves  only  in  a  secondary  way  with  the  ques- 
tion of  oracles.  The  Stoics  and  Academics  were 
disposed  to  uphold  their  validity  on  conservative 
principles,  utilising  them  as  the  most  moral  part  of 
the  old  creed,  the  point  from  which  its  junction 
with  philosophy  was  most  easily  made.  Cicero's 
treatise  on  divination  contains  a  summary  of  the 
conservative  view,  and  it  is  to  be  remarked  that 
Cratippus  and  other  Peripatetics  disavowed  the 
grosser  forms  of  divination,  and  believed  only  in 
dreams  and  in  the  utterances  of  inspired  frenzy.^ 

'  Lcyes,  vi.  914.  '  Leges,  v.  428 ;  Epinomia,  362. 

'  Ar.  Div.  per  Som.  i.  L  He  goes  on  to  suggest  that  dreams, 
though  not  OflnrepLTTa,  may  be  Saxiiivia.  Elsewhere  he  hints  that 
the  soul  may  draw  her  knowledge  of  the  future  from  her  own  true 
nature,  which  she  resumes  in  sleep.  See  reff.  ap.  Bouch4  -  Leclercq, 
i.  65.  «  See  Cic.  de  Div.  i.  3. 


t]  GREEK  ORACLES.  69 

Epicureans  and  Cynics,  on  the  other  hand,  felt 
no  such  need  of  maintaining  connection  with  the 
ancient  orthodoxy,  and  allowed  free  play  to  their 
\vit  in  dealing  with  the  oracular  tradition,  or  even 
considered  it  as  a  duty  to  disembarrass  mankind  of 
this  among  other  superstitions.  The  sceptic  Lucian 
is  perhaps  of  too  purely  mocking  a  temper  to  allow 
us  to  ascribe  to  him  much  earnestness  of  purpose 
in  the  amusing  burlesques^  in  which  he  depicts  the 
difficulty  which  Apollo  feels  in  composing  his 
official  hexameters,  or  his  annoyance  at  being 
obliged  to  hurry  to  his  post  of  inspiration  whenever 
the  priestess  chooses  "to  chew  the  bay-leaf  and 
drink  of  the  sacred  spring."  ^ 

The  indignation  of  Oenomaus,  a  cynic  of  Had- 
rian's age,  is  of  a  more  genuine  character,  and  there 

1  Jupiter  Tragoedua;  Bis  Accusaius,  etc.  I  need  not  remind 
the  reader  that  such  scoffing  treatment  of  oracles  does  not  now 
appear  for  the  first  time.  The  parodies  in  Aristophanes  hit  off 
the  pompous  oracular  obscurity  as  happily  as  Lucian's.  A  recent 
German  writer,  on  the  other  hand  (Hotfmann,  Orakelwesen),  main- 
tains, by  precept  and  example,  that  no  style  can  be  more  appro- 
priate to  serious  topics. 

*  Bi3  Accusatus,  2.  I  may  remark  that  although  narcotics  are 
often  used  to  produce  abnormal  utterance  (Lane's  Egyptians,  ii.  33  ; 
Maury,  ii.  479),  this  mastication  of  a  laurel-leaf  or  bay-leaf  cannot 
be  considered  as  more  than  a  symbolical  survival  of  such  a  practice. 
See,  however,  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
vol.  iv.  p.  152,  note,  for  a  most  remarkable  effect  of  laurel-water  on 
a  hysterical  subject.  The  drinking  of  water  (Iambi.  Myst.  Aeg. 
72  ;  Anacreon  xiii.),  or  even  of  blood  (Paus.  ii.  24),  would  be 
equally  inoperative  for  occult  purposes ;  and  though  Pliny  says 
that  the  water  in  Apollo's  cave  at  Colophon  shortened  the  drinker's 
life  {Hist.  Nat.  ii.  106),  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  what  natural  salt 
could  produce  hallucination. 


70  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [t 

is  much  sarcastic  humour  in  his  account  of  his  own 
visit  to  the  oracle  of  Apollo  at  Colophon ;  how  the 
first  response  which  he  obtained  might  have  been 
taken  at  random  from  a  book  of  elegant  extracts, 
and  had  also,  to  his  great  disgust,  been  delivered  in 
the  self-same  words  to  a  commercial  traveller  im- 
mediately before  him  ;  how,  to  his  second  question, 
"  Who  will  teach  me  wisdom  ? "  the  god  returned  an 
answer  of  almost  meaningless  imbecility  ;  and  how, 
when  he  finally  asked,  "  Where  shall  I  go  now?"  the 
god  told  him  "  to  draw  a  long  bow  and  knock  over 
untold  green  -  feeding  ganders."*  "And  who  in  the 
world,"  exclaims  the  indignant  philosopher,  "  will 
inform  me  what  these  untold  ganders  may  mean  ? " 

Anecdotes  like  this  may  seem  to  warn  us  that 
our  subject  is  drawing  to  a  close.  And  to  students 
of  these  declining  schools  of  Greek  philosophy,  it 
may  weU  appear  that  the  Greek  spirit  had  burnt 
itself  out ;  that  aU  creeds  and  all  speculations  were 
being  enfeebled  into  an  eclecticism  or  a  scepticism, 
both  of  them  equally  shallow  and  unreal.  But  this 
was  not  to  be.  It  was  destined  that  every  seed 
which  the  great  age  of  Greece  had  planted  should 
germinate  and  grow ;  and  a  school  was  now  to 
arise  which  should  take  hold,  as  it  were,  of  the 
universe  by  a  forgotten  clew,  and  should  give  fuller 

>  Eu3.  Pr.  Ev.  V.  23— 

fK  Tayv<TTp6(fioio  XSas  (T<pev56i'rj^  Uh  iv^p 
X^yai  tvapi^eiv  fioXalaiv,  ctffir^Toi'S,  Tronj^6povi. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  71 

meaning  and  wider  acceptance  to  some  of  the  most 
remarkable,  though  hitherto  least  noticed,  utterances 
of  earlier  men.  We  must  go  back  as  far  as  Hesiod 
to  imderstand  the  Neoplatonists. 

For  it  is  in  Hesiod's  celebrated  story  of  the  Ages 
of  the  World'  that  we  find  the  first  Greek  con- 
ception, obscure  though  its  details  be, — of  a  hier- 
archy of  spiritual  beings  who  fill  the  unseen  world, 
and  can  discern  and  influence  our  own.  The  souls 
of  heroes,  he  says,  become  happy  spirits  who  dwell 
aloof  from  our  sorrow;  the  souls  of  men  of  the 
golden  age  become  good  and  guardian  spirits,  who 
flit  over  the  earth  and  watch  the  just  and  unjust 
deeds  of  men ;  and  the  souls  of  men  of  the  silver 
age  become  an  inferior  class  of  spirits,  themselves 
mortal,  yet  deserving  honour  from  mankind.^  The 
same  strain  of  thought  appears  in  Thales,  who  de- 
fines demons  as  spiritual  existences,  heroes,  as  the 
souls  of  men  separated  from  the  body.^  Pythagoras 
held  much  the  same  view,  and,  as  we  shall  see  below, 
believed  that  in  a  certain  sense  these  spirits  were 
occ-asionally  to  be  seen  or  felt.*  Heraclitus  held 
"  that  all  things  were  full  of  souls  and  spirits,"®  and 

>  Hes.  0pp.  109,  sqq. 

'  It  is  uncertain  where  Hesiod  places  the  abode  of  this  class 
of  spirits  ;  the  MSS.  read  inxSlx'^oi;  Gaisford  (with  Tzetzes)  and 
Wolff,  de  Daemonibits,  vrox^dvioi. 

'  Athenag.  Legal,  pro  Christo,  21  ;  cf.  Plut.  de  Plac.  Phil.  i.  8. 

■■  Porph.  vU.  Pylh.  3S4  ;  reff.  ap.  WoUf.  For  obsession,  Bee 
Pseudo-Zaleucus,  ap.  Stob.  Flor.  xliv.  20. 

'  Dio".  Laert.  Ix.  6. 


72  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

Empedocles  has  described  in  lines  of  startling  power^ 
the  wanderings  through  the  universe  of  a  lost  and 
homeless  soul.  Lastly,  Plato,  in  the  Epinomis?  brings 
these  theories  into  direct  connection  with  our  subject 
by  asserting  that  some  of  these  spirits  can  read  the 
minds  of  living  men,  and  are  still  Uable  to  be  grieved 
by  our  wrong-doing,'  while  many  of  them  appear  to  us 
in  sleep  by  visions,  and  are  made  known  by  voices 
and  oracles,  in  our  health  or  sickness,  and  are  about 
us  at  our  dying  hour.  Some  are  even  visible  occasion- 
ally in  waking  reality,  and  then  again  disappear,  and 
cause  perplexity  by  their  obscure  self-manifestation.* 
Opinions  like  these,  existing  in  a  corner  of  the 
vast  structure  of  Platonic  thought,  passed,  as  it 
seems,  for  centuries  with  little  notice.  Almost  as 
unnoticed  was  the  gradual  development  of  the  creed 
known  as  Orphic,  which  seems  to  have  begun  with 
making  itself  master  of  the  ancient  mysteries,  and 

>  Plut.  de  Iside,  26. 

°  I  believe,  with  Grote,  etc.,  that  the  Epinomis  is  Plato's;  at 
any  rate  it  was  generally  accepted  as  such  in  antiquity,  which  is 
enough  for  the  present  purpose. 

'  JEpinomis,  361.  /ift^xo''''''  ^^  (ppoviiaewi  OavnaffTrjs,  fire  7^i'ou5 
6yTa  cvfiadoOs  t€  Kal  fiv^fjiopos,  yiyvtiaKew  fxkv  ^ufiirairay  r-qv  ijfUTipav 
airrd.  dtdvotav  \iyu)fiev,  Kai  r6v  re  Ka\6v  ijfiuiv  Kal  u.-yaSiv  dfia 
Bavfiaarw!    dffTrdffffflot    Kal    t6v    a<p6Spa    KaKiy   lucew,    dve    XijTnjt 

*  Kal  TOUT  (Ivai  T&re  fuv  oput/xeyoy  dXXorc  Si  airoKpvtpdky  ddjjXow 
yiyvbixevoy,  OaS/w.  Kar  a/ivSpcw  6tfiiv  Tapexip^^oy.  The  precise  mean- 
ing of  iiivSpi  S^is  is  not  clear  without  further  knowledge  of  the 
phenomena  which  Plato  had  in  his  mind.  Comp.  the  dXayiiTr^  itai 
a/ivSpav  fuTjv,  HffTep  dyaBviilaaiy,  which  is  all  that  reincaruated 
demons  can  look  for  (Plut.  de  Defect.  10). 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  73 

only  slowly  spread  through  the  profane  world  its 
doctrine  that  this  life  is  a  purgation,  that  this  body 
is  a  sepulchre,^  and  that  the  Divinity,  who  sur- 
rounds us  Uke  an  ocean,  is  the  hope  and  home  of 
the  souL  But  a  time  came  when,  under  the  im- 
pulse of  a  great  religious  movement,  these  currents 
of  beUef,  which  had  so  long  run  underground,  broke 
into  sight  again  in  an  unlooked-for  direction.  These 
tenets,  and  many  more,  were  dwelt  upon  and  ex- 
panded with  new  conviction  by  that  remarkable 
series  of  men  who  furnish  to  the  history  of  Greek 
thought  so  singular  a  concluding  chapter.  And 
no  part,  perhaps,  of  the  Neoplatonic  system  shows 
more  clearly  than  their  treatment  of  oracles  how 
profound  a  change  the  Greek  religion  has  undergone 
beneath  all  its  apparent  continuity.  It  so  happens 
that  the  Neoplatonic  philosopher  who  has  written 
most  on  our  present  subject,  was  also  a  man  whose 
spiritual  history  affords  a  striking,  perhaps  an 
unique,  epitome  of  the  several  stages  through  which 
the  faith  of  Greece  had  up  to  that  time  passed.  A 
Syrian  of  noble  descent,^  powerful  intelligence,  and 

'  See,  for  instance,  Plato,  Crat.  264.  Sokovci  iikvroi  ixoi  fjuiXiirra 
&€ff$cu  ol  dfjupl  'Optpea  tovto  6vofia  {aC^fia  qvasi  crjfia)  ws  diKijtf 
dLSovarj^  rrjs  ^vxvs  uip  5^  ^v€Ka  5/5ai(rc,  k.t.X. 

'  G.  Wolff,  P(yrph.  de  Phil,  etc.,  has  collected  a  mass  of  autho- 
rities on  Porphyry's  life,  and  has  ably  discussed  the  sequence  of  his 
writings.  But  beyond  this  tract  I  have  found  hardly  anything 
written  on  this  part  of  my  subject, — on  which  I  have  dwelt  the 
more  fully,  inasmuch  as  it  seems  hitherto  to  have  attracted  so  little 
attention  bom  scholars. 


74  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [t 

upright  character,  Porphyry  brought  to  the  study 
of  the  Greek  religion  little  that  was  distinctively 
Semitic,  unless  we  so  term  the  ardour  of  his  reli- 
gious impulses,  and  his  profound  conviction  that 
the  one  thing  needful  for  man  lay  in  the  truest 
knowledge  attainable  as  to  his  relation  to  the  divine. 
Educated  by  Longinus,  the  last  representative  of 
expiring  classicism,  the  Syrian  youth  absorbed  all, 
and  probably  more  than  all,  his  master's  faith. 
Homer  became  to  him  what  the  Bible  was  to  Luther ; 
and  he  spent  some  years  in  producing  the  most  per- 
fect edition  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  which  had  yet 
appeared,  in  order  that  no  fragment  of  the  inspired 
text  might  fail  to  render  its  full  meaning.  But,  as 
it  seems,  in  the  performance  of  this  task  his  faith 
received  the  same  shock  which  had  been  fatal  to 
the  early  piety  of  Greece.  The  behaviour  of  the  gods 
in  Homer  was  too  bad  to  be  condoned.  He  dis- 
cerned, what  is  probably  the  truth,  that  there  must 
be  some  explanation  of  these  enormities  which  is 
not  visible  on  the  surface,  and  that  nothing  sliort 
of  some  profound  mistake  could  claim  acceptance 
for  such  legends  as  those  of  Zeus  and  Kronos,  of 
Kronos  and  Uranus,  amid  so  much  else  that  is 
majestic  and  pure.*     Many  philologists  woidd  answer 

■  The  impossibility  of  extracting  a  spiritual  religion  from 
Homer  is  characteristically  expressed  by  Proclus  {ad.  Tim.  20), 
who  calls  Homer  iwdOeidv  re  vofpav  xal  f(i>))i'  tpCKbaotjiov  ovx  oWs  Tt 
vapa^ovvai. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  76 

now  that  the  mistake,  the  disease  of  language,  lay 
in  the  expression  in  terms  of  human  appetite  and 
passion  of  the  impersonal  sequences  of  the  great 
phenomena  of  Nature ;  that  the  most  monstrous 
tales  of  mythology  mean  nothing  worse  or  more 
surprising  than  that  day  follows  night,  and  night 
again  succeeds  to  day.  To  Porphyry  such  explana- 
tions were  of  course  impossible.  In  default  of 
Sanskrit  he  betook  himself  to  allegory.  The  truth 
which  must  be  somewhere  in  Homer,  but  which 
plainly  was  not  in  the  natural  sense  of  the  words, 
must  therefore  be  discoverable  in  a  non-natural 
sense.  The  cave  of  the  nymphs,  for  instance,  which 
Homer  describes  as  in  Ithaca,  is  not  in  Ithaca. 
Homer  must,  therefore,  have  meant  by  the  cave 
something  quite  other  than  a  cave ;  must  have 
meant,  in  fact,  to  signify  by  its  inside  the  tem- 
porary, by  its  outside  the  eternal  world.  But  this 
stage  in  Porphyry's  development  was  not  of  long 
duration.  As  his  conscience  had  revolted  from  Homer 
taken  literally,  so  his  intelligence  revolted  from 
such  a  fashion  of  interpretation  as  this.  But  yet 
he  was  not  prepared  to  abandon  the  Greek  reli- 
gion. That  religion,  he  thought,  must  possess  some 
authority,  some  sacred  book,  some  standard  of  faith, 
capable  of  being  brought  into  harmony  with  the 
philosophy  which,  equally  with  the  religion  itself, 
was  the  tradition  and  inheritance  of  the  race.  And 
such  a  rule  of  faith,  if  to  be  found  anywhere,  must 


76  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

be  found  in  the  direct  communications  of  the  gods 
to  men.  Scattered  and  fragmentary  though  these 
were,  it  must  be  possible  to  extract  from  them  a 
consistent  system.^  This  is  what  he  endeavoured 
to  do  in  his  work,  On  the  Philosophy  to  be  dravm 
from  Oracles,  a  book  of  which  large  fragments  remain 
to  us  imbedded  in  Eusebius'  treatise  On  tlie  Prepa- 
ration for  the  Gospel. 

Perhaps  the  best  guarantee  of  the  good  faith  in 
which  Porphyry  undertook  this  task  lies  in  the  fact 
that  he  afterwards  recognised  that  he  had  been  un- 
successful. He  acknowledged,  in  terms  on  which 
his  antagonist  Eusebius  has  gladly  seized,  that  the 
mystery  as  to  the  authors  of  the  responses  was  too 
profound,  the  responses  themselves  were  too  unsatis- 
factory, to  admit  of  the  construction  from  them  of 
a  definite  and  lofty  faith.  Yet  there  is  one  point  on 
which,  though  his  inferences  undergo  much  modi- 
fication, his  testimony  remains  practically  the  same." 
This  testimony,  based,  as  he  implies  and  his  bio- 
graphers assert,  on  personal  experience,'  is  mainly 
concerned  with  the  phenomena  of  possession  or  in- 
spiration by  an  unseen  power.     These  phenomena, 

*  (is  h>  iK  fxbvov  /SejSalou  rds  i\irl5a%  toS  aiiiOrjuai  dpui/iwos  (Eus. 
Pr.  Ev.  iv.  6)  is  the  strong  expression  which  Porphyry  gives  to  his 
sense  of  the  importance  of  this  inquiry. 

'  There  is  one  sentence  in  the  epistle  to  Anebo  which  would 
suggest  a  contrary  view,  but  the  later  De  Abslinentia,  etc.,  seem  to 
me  to  justify  the  statement  in  the  text 

'  See,  for  instance,  Eus.  Pr.  Ev.  iv.  6  :  yndXiffxa  yap  <pL\o(r6<po>i 
oOtos  tCjv  Kad'  Tjfias  Soxei  Kal  dalfjLotrt  Kal  ols  07;jt  Oeoli  (jifxiKtjK^i/at, 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  77 

so  deeply  involved  in  the  conception  of  oracles,  and 
which  we  must  now  discuss,  are  familiar  to  the 
ethnologist  in  almost  every  region  of  the  globe. 
The  savage,  readily  investing  any  unusual  or  strik- 
ing object  in  nature  with  a  spirit  of  its  own,  is 
likely  to  suppose  further  that  a  spirit's  temporary 
presence  may  be  the  cause  of  any  unusual  act  or 
condition  of  a  human  being.  Even  so  slight  an 
abnormality  as  the  act  of  sneezing  has  generally 
been  held  to  indicate  the  operation  or  the  invasion 
of  a  god.  And  when  we  come  to  graver  departures 
from  ordinary  well-being — nightmare,  consumption, 
epilepsy,  or  madness — the  notion  that  a  disease- 
spirit  has  entered  the  sufferer  becomes  more  and 
more  obvious.  Eavings  which  possess  no  applica- 
bility to  surrounding  facts  are  naturally  held  to  be 
the  utterances  of  some  remote  intelligence.  Such 
ravings,  when  they  have  once  become  an  object  of 
reverence,  may  be  artificially  reproduced  by  drugs 
or  other  stimuli,  and  we  may  thus  arrive  at  the 
belief  in  inspiration  by  an  easy  road.^ 

There  are  traces  in  Greece  of  something  of  this 
reverence  for  disease,  but  they  are  faint  and  few ; 
and  the  Greek  ideal  of  soundness  in  mind  and  body, 
the  Greek  reverence  for  beauty  and  strength,  seem 
to  have  characterised  the   race  from  a  very  early 

'  On  this  subject  see  Prim.  Cult.  chap.  xiv.  ;  Lubbock,  Origin 
of  Civilisalion,  pp.  252-6,  etc.  The  Homeric  phrase  jTvyepin  5^  oi 
IxpO'f  Saliioiv  {Od.  V.  396)  seems  to  be  the  Greek  expression  which 
comes  nearest  to  the  doctrine  of  disease-spirits. 


78  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  Jt. 

period.  It  is  possible  indeed  that  the  first  tradi- 
tion of 

"  Blind  Tham3Tis  and  blind  Maeonides, 
And  Teiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old," 

may  have  represented  a  primitive  idea  that  the 
"  celestial  light  shone  inward  "  when  the  orbs  of 
vision  were  darkened.  But  the  legends  which  have 
reached  iis  scarcely  connect  Homer's  blindness  with 
his  song,  and  ascribe  the  three  prophets'  loss  of 
sight  to  their  own  vanity  or  imprudence.  In 
nymph -possession,  which,  in  spite  of  Pausanias' 
statement,  is  perhaps  an  older  phenomenon  than 
Apolline  possession,  we  find  delirium  honoured,  but 
it  is  a  delirium  proceeding  rather  from  the  inhala- 
tion of  noxious  vapours  than  from  actual  disease.^ 
And  in  the  choice  of  the  Pythian  priestess — while 
we  find  that  care  is  taken  that  no  complication  shall 
be  introduced  into  the  process  of  oracular  inquiry 
by  her  youth  or  good  looks, ^ — there  is  little  evi- 
dence to  show  that  any  preference  was  given  to 
epileptics.^     Still  less  can  we  trace  any  such  reason 

'  See  Maury,  ii.  475.  Nymph-oracles  were  especially  common 
in  Bceotia,  where  there  were  many  caves  and  springs. — Pans.  ix. 
2,  etc.  The  passage  from  Hippocrates,  De  Morbo  Saero,  cited  by 
Maury,  ii.  470,  is  interesting  from  its  precise  parallelism  with 
savage  beliefs,  but  cannot  be  pressed  as  an  authority  for  primitiva 
tradition. 

-  Diod.  Sic.  xvi.  27. 

'  Maury  (ii.  514)  cites  Hut.  de  Defect,  orac.  46,  and  Schol.  Ar. 
Plut.  39,  in  defence  of  the  view  that  a  hysterical  subject  was  chosen 
as  Pythia.  But  Plutarch  expressly  says  {de  Defect.  60)  that  it  waa 
necessary  that  the  Pythia  should  be  free  from  perturbation  when 


1.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  79 

of  choice  in  other  oracular  sanctuaries.  We  find 
here,  in  fact,  the  same  uncertainty  which  hangs  over 
the  principle  of  selection  of  the  god's  mouthpiece 
in  other  shahmanistic  countries,  where  the  medicine- 
man or  angekok  is  sometimes  described  as  haggard 
and  nervous,  sometimes  as  in  no  way  distinguish- 
able from  his  less  gifted  neighbours. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  do  we  find  in  Greece 
much  trace  of  that  other  kind  of  possession  of  which 
the  Hebrew  prophets  are  our  great  example,  where 
a  peculiar  loftiness  of  mind  and  character  seem  to 
point  the  prophet  out  as  a  fitting  exponent  of  the 
will  of  heaven,  and  a  sudden  impulse  gives  vent  in 
words,  almost  unconscious,  to  thoughts  which  seem 
no  less  than  divine,  The  majestic  picture  of  Am- 
phiaraus  in  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  the  tragic 
personality  of  Cassandra  in  the  Agamemnon,  are 
the  nearest  parallels  which  Greece  offers  to  an 
Elijah  or  a  Jeremiah.^     These,  however,  are  mythi- 

called  on  to  prophesy,  and  the  Scholion  on  Aristophanes  is  equally 
indecent  and  unphysiologicaL  Moreover,  Plutarch  speaks  of  the 
custom  of  pouring  cold  water  over  the  priestess  in  order  to  ascer- 
tain by  her  healthy  way  of  shuddering  that  she  was  sound  in  body 
and  mind.  This  same  test  was  applied  to  goats,  etc.,  when  about 
to  be  sacrificed.  There  is  no  doubt  evidence  (cf.  Maury,  ii.  461) 
that  the  faculty  of  divination  was  supposed  to  be  hereditary  in 
certain  famOies  (perhaps  even  in  certain  localities,  Herod,  i.  78), 
but  I  cannot  find  that  members  of  such  families  were  sought  for  as 
priests  in  oracular  seats. 

'  The  exclamation  of  Helen  (Od.  xv.  172) — 

iOivciTOi  ^dWovai  Kal  ths  TcX^ctr^oi  6tu — 


80  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  It 

cal  characters;  and  so  little  was  the  gift  of  pro- 
phecy associated  with  moral  greatness  lq  later  days, 
that  whUe  Plato  attributes  it  to  the  action  of  the 
divinity,  Aristotle  feels  at  liberty  to  refer  it  to  bile.^ 
It  were  much  to  be  wished  that  some  system- 
atic discussion  of  the  subject  had  reached  us  from 
classical  times.  But  none  seems  to  have  been  com- 
posed, at  any  rate  none  has  come  down  to  us,  tUl 
Plutarch's  inquiry  as  to  the  causes  of  the  general 
cessation  of  oracles  in  his  age.^  Plutarch's  temper 
is  conservative  and  orthodox,  but  we  find,  neverthe- 
less, that  he  has  begun  to  doubt  whether  Apollo  is 
in  every  case  the  inspiring  spirit.  On  the  contrary, 
he  thinks  that  sometimes  this  is  plainly  not  the 
case,  as  in  one  instance  where  the  Pythia,  forced  to 
prophesy  while  under  the  possession  of  a  dumb  and 
evil  spirit,  went  into  convulsions  and  soon  afterwards 
died.  And  he  recurs  to  a  doctrine,  rendered  ortho- 
dox, as  we  have  akeady  seen,  by  its  appearance  in 
Hesiod,  but  little  dwelt  on  in  classical  times,  a  doc- 
trine which  peoples  the  invisible  world  with  a  hier- 
archy of  spirits  of  differing  character  and  power. 
These  spirits,  he  believes,  give  oracles,  whose  cha- 

is  as  it  were  a  naive  introduction  to  the  art  of  prophecy.  Mene- 
laus,  when  appealed  to  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  portent  observed, 
is  perplexed  :  the  more  confident  Helen  volunteers  an  explanation, 
and  impassioned  rhetoric  melts  into  inspired  prediction. 

'  riat.  Ion.  5. — Ar.  Prohl.  xxx. — I  cannot  dwell  here  on  Plat. 
Phaedr.  153,  and  similar  passages,  which  suggest  a  theory  of  ini 
spiratiou  which  would  carry  us  far  beyond  the  present  topic. 

'  Flat,  de  Defect,  orac.  ;  de  Fifth.  ;  de  EI  apud  Delphos. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  81 

racter  therefore  varies  with  the  character  and  con- 
dition of  the  inspiring  spirit ;  and  of  this  it  is  hard 
to  judge  except  inferentially,  since  spirits  are  apt  to 
assume  the  names  of  gods  on  whom  they  in  some 
way  depend,  though  they  may  by  no  means  resemble 
them  in  character  or  power.  Nay,  spirits  are  not 
necessarily  immortal,  and  the  death  of  a  resident 
spirit  may  have  the  effect  of  closing  an  oracular 
shrine.  The  deatli  of  Pan  himself  was  announced 
by  a  flying  voice  to  Thamus,  a  sailor,  "  about  the 
isles  Echinades ;"  he  was  told  to  tell  it  at  Palodes, 
and  when  the  ship  reached  Palodes  there  was  a 
dead  calm.  He  cried  out  that  Pan  was  dead,  and 
there  was  a  wailing  in  all  the  air.^ 

In  Plutarch,  too,  we  perceive  a  growing  disposi- 
tion to  dwell  on  a  class  of  manifestations  of  which 
we  have  heard  little  since  Homer's  time, — evocations 
of  the  visible  spirits  of  the  dead.'  Certain  places, 
it  seems,  were  consecrated  by  inmiemorial  belief  to 
this  solemn  ceremony.  At  Cumae,'  at  Phigalea,*  at 
Heraclea,'  on  the  river  Acheron,  by  the  lake  Aver- 

'  This  quasi-human  character  of  Pan  (Herod,  ii.  146  ;  Find.  Fr. 
68  ;  Hyg.  Fati.  224),  coupled  with  the  indefinite  majesty  which  his 
name  suggested,  seems  to  have  been  very  impressive  to  the  later 
Greeks.  An  oracle  quoted  by  Porphyry  (ap.  Eus.  Pr.  Ev.)  cSxoii.ai 
^fxrrbs  yeyus  Uavl  crv/upnos  8e<}  k.tX,  is  curiously  parallel  to  some 
Christian  hymns  in  its  triumphant  sense  of  human  kinship  with 
the  divinity. 

=  Quacst.  Rom.  ;  de  Defect.  Otoa.  ;  de  Ser.  Num.  Find. 

s  Died.  Sic.  iv.  22  ;  Ephor.  ap.  Strab.  v.  244. 

*  Paus.  iii.  17.  '  Plut.  Cim.  6. 

G 


82  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

aus/  men  strove  to  recall  for  a  moment  the  souls 
who  had  passed  away,  sometimes,  as  Periander 
sought  Melissa,^  in  need  of  the  accustomed  wifely 
counsel ;  sometimes,  as  Pausanias  sought  Cleonice,^ 
goaded  by  passionate  remorse ;  or  sometimes  with 
no  care  to  question,  with  no  need  to  confess  or 
to  be  forgiven,  but  as,  in  one  form  of  the  legend, 
Orpheus  sought  Eurydice,*  travelUng  to  the  Thespro- 
tian  Aornus,  in  the  hope  that  her  spirit  would  rise 
and  look  on  liim  once  again,  and  waiting  for  one 
who  came  not,  and  dying  in  a  vain  appeal. 

But  on  such  stories  as  these  Plutarch  will  not 
dogmatically  judge;  he  remarks  only,  and  the  re- 
mark was  more  novel  then  than  now,  that  we  know 
as  yet  no  limit  to  the  communications  of  soul  with 
soul. 

This  transitional  position  of  Plutarch  may  pre- 
pare us  for  the  still  wider  divergence  from  ancient 
orthodoxy  which  we  find  in  Porphyry.  Porphyry 
is  indeed  anxious  to  claim  for  oracular  utterances  as 
high  an  authority  as  possible ;  and  he  continues  to 
ascribe  many  of  them  to  Apollo  himself.  But  he 
no  longer  restricts  the  phenomena  of  possession  and 
inspiration  within  the  traditional  limits  as  regards 
either  their  time,  their  place,  or  their  author.  He 
maintains  that  these  phenomena  may  be  reproduced 

'  Liv.  xxiv.  12,  etc.     The  origin  of  this  i/envofiayTcToy  was  pro 
bably  Greek.     See  reff.  ap.  Maury,  ii.  467. 

*  Diod.  iv.  22  ;  Herod,  v.  92,  gives  a  rather  different  story. 
«  Plut.  Cim.  6.     Pans.  iii.  17.  *  Pans.  ix.  30. 


I.]  GREEK  OKACLES.  83 

according  to  certain  rules  at  almost  any  place  and 
time,  and  that  the  spirits  who  cause  them  are  of  very 
multifarious  character.  I  shall  give  his  view  at 
some  length,  as  it  forms  by  far  the  most  careful  in- 
quiry into  the  nature  of  Greek  oracles  which  has 
come  down  to  us  from  an  age  in  which  they  existed 
stiU;  and  it  happens  also  that  while  the  grace  of 
Plutarch's  style  has  made  his  essays  on  the  same 
subject  familiar  to  all,  the  post-classical  date  and 
style  of  Porphyry  and  Eusebius  have  prevented  their 
more  serious  treatises  from  attracting  much  attention 
from  English  scholars. 

According  to  Porphyry,  then,  the  oracular  or 
communicating  demon  or  spirit, — we  must  adopt 
spirit  as  the  word  of  wider  meaning, — manifests 
himself  in  several  ways.  Sometimes  he  speaks 
through  the  mouth  of  the  entranced  "  recipient,"* 
sometimes  he  shows  himself  in  an  immaterial,  or 
even  in  a  material  form,  apparently  according  to 
his  own  rank  in  the  invisible  world.^    The  recipient 

'  Sox^if,  from  Sixofuu,  is  the  word  generally  used  for  the  human 
intermediary  between  the  god  or  spirit  and  the  inquirers.  See  Lob. 
Agl.  p.  108,  on  the  corresponding  word  jtarajSoXiKos  for  the  spirit 
who  is  thus  receired  for  a  time  into  a  human  being's  organism. 
Cf.  also  Firmicus  Matemus  De  errore  prof,  rclig.  13:  "Serapis 
vocatus  et  intra  corpus  hominis  conlatus  taUa  respondit ; "  and  the 
phrase  iyKaTOX'l'r''^^  Tif  2,apdiriSi  {Inacr.  Smym.  3163,  ap.  Wolff, 
de  Nov.) 

2  Porphyry  calls  these  inferior  spirits  5ain6>>ia  OXiKi,  and  Proclus 
{ad  Tim.  142)  defines  the  distinction  thus :  rdf  Saiiibvuv  o/  lUv  in  t5 
avffTtiaiL  irXeov  rb  irvpiov  ix°*^^^  oparol  6vTes  oiid^f  ^x°^^^^  avrirvTrwi, 
oi  Si  Kal  yr/t  /itrfiXjji^ATes  vrorlTTOvffi  rp  a^.      It  is  only  the  spirits 


84  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

falls  into  a  state  of  trance,  mixed  sometimes  witli 
exhausting  agitation  or  struggle,'  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Pytliia.  And  the  importance  attached  to  a 
right  choice  of  time  and  circimistances  for  the  in- 
duction of  this  trance  reminds  us  of  Plutarch's 
story,  already  mentioned,  of  the  death  of  a  Pythian 
priestess  compelled  to  prophesy  when  possessed  by 
an  evil  spirit.  Another  inconvenience  in  choosing 
a  wrong  time  seems  to  have  been  that  false  answers 
were  then  given  by  the  spirit,  who,  however,  would 
warn  the  auditors  that  he  could  not  give  informa- 
tion,^ or  even  that  he  would  certainly  teU  falsehoods,^ 
on  that  particular  occasion.  Porphyry  attributes 
this  occasional  falsity  to  some  defect  in  the  surround- 
ing conditions,*  which  confuses  the  spirit,  and  pre- 
vents him  from  speaking  truly.  For  on  descending 
into  our  atmosphere  the  spirits  become  subject  to 
the  laws  and  influences  which  rule  mankind,  and 

Trho  partake  of  earthly  nature  who  are  capable  of  being  touched. 
These  spirits  may  be  of  a  rank  inferior  to  mankind  ;  Proolus,  ad 
Tim.  24,  calls  them  ^ifxas  dTroTuxoi'tras  fUv  tov  di'0puTrLKov  voO,  irpos 
Si  rd,  f(pa  i^^^'^as  dtddeatv. 

1  oi>  ^ipei  /u  ToD  5oxi}os  i)  rdXaira  Kapdla  (Procl.  ad  Retnpubli- 
cam,  380)  is  the  exclamation  of  a  spirit  whose  recipient  can  no 
longer  sustain  his  presence. 

'-  Eus.    Pt.   Ev.   vi.    5,    ariiupov   oix  ivkoiKC   X^^ei;"   ierpav   iSot 

^  Ihid.  K\ii€  ^ii]v  Kdpros  re  \6ywv '  ipevdijyopa  Xt^u :  * '  Try  no 
longer  to  enchain  me  with  your  words  ;  I  shall  tell  you  falsehoods. " 

*  i)  KOToordcris  ToC  vepUxovTO!.  Eua.  Pr.  Ev.  iv.  5,  xal  tA 
irfpUx""  ivayKdl^ov  \j/evSii  ylveadai  Tck  /ULVTela,  oi  rois  Tropicroi 
iKbvra^  TpoBTidivai.  to  ipevSo^.  .  .  .  irii)>i)vev  ipa,  adds  Porphyry 
with  satisfaction,  Triffev  voWdKis  rb  i/'cDSos  <rwlaTaT(u. 


5 


l]  greek  oracles.  85 

are  not  therefore  entirely  free  agents.*  When  a 
confusion  of  this  kind  occurs,  the  prudent  inquirer 
should  defer  his  researches, — a  rule  with  which  in- 
experienced investigators  fail  to  comply.* 

Let  us  suppose,  however,  that  a  favourable  day 
has  been  secured,  and  also,  not  less  important,  a 
"guileless  intermediary."^  Some  confined  space 
would  then  be  selected  for  the  expected  manifesta- 
tions, "  so  that  the  influence  should  not  be  too  widely 
diffused."*  This  place  seems  sometimes  to  have 
been  made  dark,  —  a  circumstance  which  has  not 
escaped  the  satire  of  the  Christian  controversialist; 
whose  derision  is  still  further  excited  by  the  "  bar- 
barous yells  and  singing  "*  with  wliich  the  unseen 
visitant  was  allured, — a  characteristic,  it  may  be 
noticed  in  passing,  of  shahmanislic  practices,  where- 
ever  they  have  been  found  to  prevail.  During 
these  proceedings  the  human  agent  appears  to  have 

1  Porph.  ap.  Philoponum,  de  Mundi  Great,  iv.  20,  with  the  com- 
ments of  Philoponus,  wliose  main  objection  to  these  theories  lies 
in  their  interference  with  the  freedom  of  the  will. 

*  Pr.   Ev.  vi.   6,   oi    di   lUvovat    <cai   \ifuv   ivayKaiovai    Sta.   ttjv 

>  Ibid.  V.  8,  iLaTnrcua'  i/jupl  Kiprivov  ifjia/iriToio  5oxi;os. 

*  (to!  &IJM  diroffTijpffoi're!  airro  iyraOda  (v  rm  artpiif  x<^P^V  "(Tte 
^i,  ^«7ro\i>  Siaxeffffla.,  Iamb,  de  Myst.  iu.  14.  The  maxims  of 
lamblichus  in  these  matters  are  in  complete  conformity  with  those 

of  Porphyry.  .      ,       ., 

»  Eus.  Pr.  Ev.  iv.  1,  rai  rb  ffxAror  bk  ov  lUKpb.  avvifryftv  ttj  KaO 

iavroii^  uTro0^ff€i. 

»  Ibid.   V.    12,    dffii/iois    «    khI    jSopjSdpois    ijxois   re   Kal    4>uv<ui 

KTlXoV/livol. 


86  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  L^- 

fallen  into  an  abnormal  slumber,  which  extinguished 
for  the  time  his  own  identity,  and  allowed  the  spirit 
to  speak  through  liis  lips, — "  to  contrive  a  voice  for 
himself  through  a  mortal  instrument."^  In  such 
speeches,  of  which  several  are  preserved  to  us,  the 
informing  spirit  alludes  to  the  human  being  through 
whom  he  is  speaking  in  the  third  person,  as  "the 
mortal"  or  "the  recipient;"  of  himself  he  speaks  in 
the  first  person,  or  occasionally  in  the  third  person, 
as  "  the  god  "  or  "  the  king."  ^ 

The  controlling  spirits  do  not,  however,  always 
content  themselves  with  this  vicarious  utterance. 
They  appear  sometimes,  as  already  indicated,  in 
visible  and  tangible  form.  Of  this  phase  of  the 
proceedings,  however,  Eusebius  has  preserved  to  us 
but  scanty  notices.  His  mind  is  preoccupied  with 
the  presumption  and  hizarrerie  of  the  spirits,  who 
sometimes  profess  themselves  to  be  (for  instance) 
the  sun  and  moon ;  sometimes  insist  on  being  called 
by  barbarous  names,  and  talking  a  barbarous  jargon.' 
The  precise  nature  of  such  appearances  had  been,  it 
seems,  in  dispute  since  the  days  of  Pythagoras,  who 
conjectured  that  the  apparition  was  an  emanation  from 
the  spirit,  but  not,  strictly  speaking,  the  spirit  itself.^ 

^  Ibid.  V.  8  avXoij  S'  ^k  ^poT^oio  tf>l\'qv  ireKviJjaaTO  (ptxjv^v, 

^  0WS,  /3/)076y,  SoxctJs.      Pv-  Ev.  v.  9,  Xuere  Xoiirbv  6.vaK7a,  ^poTos 

'  Pr.  Ev.  V.  10  (quoting  Porph.  ad  Anch. ),  t(  Si  /tai  ra  Aarifw, 
^oiXerai  dvdfiaTa  kclI  rutv  darifiuv  rd  ^dp^apa  irpb  tCjv  ^Kaari^ 
olKeiwv,  etc. 

*  Pythag.  ap.  Aon.  Gaz.  ap.  Theophr.   p.  61,  Boisson.     Trbrepop 


1.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  87 

In  the  Neoplatonic  view,  these  spirits  entered  by 
a  process  of  "  introduction  "  ^  into  a  material  body 
temporarily  prepared  for  them  ;  or  sometimes  it  was 
said  that  "  the  pure  flame  was  compressed  into  a 
sacred  Form."  ^  Those  spirits  who  had  already  been 
accustomed  to  appear  were  best  instructed  as  to  how 
to  appear  again  ;  but  some  of  them  were  inclined  to 
mischief,  especially  if  the  persons  present  showed  a 
careless  temper.' 

deol  ^  Saifioves  ^  roimav  dwi^^oiaif  Kal  Trbrfpov  Sa[/xo}v  eU  6.\\os  eli'ai 
doKwv  1j  TToWol  Kal  (Ttp^v  avrCiv  Siafpipovres,  ol  fj^f  i}/j.€poLf  ol  S'  dypioi^ 
Kal  ol  fUv  ^vloT€  TiXtjBrj  X^-yoircs  ol  5'  fiXws  Ki^5tj\oi  ....  t^Xoi 
irpoteTai  dai^ofos  d.irdppotav  elvat  t6  <f>d(XfJia. 

'  (tcKpidit.     See  Lob.  Ag!.  p.  730. 

*  Pr.  Ev.  V.  8  : —  Upo^aL  tvttoi^ 

avv6\i^o/j.4t'OV  wpos  ayvov^ 
I  may  just  notice  here  the  connection  between  this  idea  of  the 
entrance  of  a  spirit  into  a  quasi-human  form  built  up  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  that  recrudescence  of  idol-worship  which  marks  one  phase 
of  Neoplatonism.  In  an  age  when  such  primitive  practices  as 
"caiTying  the  dried  corpse  of  a  parent  round  the  fields  that  he 
might  see  the  state  of  the  crops  "  (Spencer's  Sociologi/,  §  154),  were 
no  longer  possible,  this  new  method  of  giving  temporary  materiality 
to  disembodied  intelligences  suggested  afresh  that  it  might  be  prac- 
ticable so  to  prepare  an  image  as  that  a  spirit  would  be  content  to 
live  there  permanently.  An  oracle  in  Pausanias  (ix.  38)  curiously 
illustrates  this  view  of  statues.  The  land  of  the  Orchomenians  was 
infested  by  a  spirit  which  sat  on  a  stone.  The  Pythia  ordered  them 
to  make  a  brazen  image  of  the  spectre  and  fasten  it  with  iron  to 
the  stone.  The  spirit  would  still  be  there,  but  he  would  now  be 
permanently  fixed  down,  and,  being  enclosed  in  a  statue,  he  would 
no  longer  form  an  obnoxious  spectacle. 

^  Pr.  Ev.  V.  8,  e^os  Trotrnrdfievoi  tt^s  iainCiv  Trapovaia^  evpiad^ffTepov 
ipoiTuai  Kal  fxaXiara  fav  Kal  (praet  dyadol  Tvyx<ivutrtf,  ol  5^,  k&v  ?0os 
^Xwci  ToO  irapayiviaBat^  ^d^Tjv  tlvo.  TpoffvfioOvTat.  Troiet*',  Kal  fidXiffra 
fdv  dp.e\^<rT€p6v  tls  Sok^  dva<jTpl(peo6a.i  iv  toU  irpdyfiaat.    This  notion 


88  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

After  a  time  the  spirit  becomes  anxious  to  depart ; 
but  is  not  always  able  to  quit  the  intermediary  as 
promptly  as  it  desires.  We  possess  several  oracles 
uttered  under  these  circumstances,  and  giving  direc- 
tions which  we  can  but  imperfectly  understand.  It 
appears  that  the  recipient,  for  what  reason  we  are  left 
to  conjecture,  was  in  some  way  bound  with  withes 
and  enveloped  in  fine  linen,  which  had  to  be  cut 
and  unwrapped  at  the  end  of  the  ceremony.^  The 
human  agent  had  then  to  be  set  on  his  feet  and  taken 
from  the  corner  where  he  had  been  outstretched,  and 
a  singular  collaboration  seems  to  have  taken  place, 
the  spirit  giving  his  orders  to  the  bystanders  by  a 
voice  issuing  from  the  recipient's  still  senseless  form.^ 
At  last  the  spirit  departs,  and  the  recipient  is  set  free 

Eusebius,  in  a  passage  marked  by  strong  common 
sense,'  has  pointed  out  some  obvious  objections  to 
oracles  obtained  in  this  fashion.     Some  of  these  so- 

of  a  congruity  between  the  inquirer  and  the  responding  spirit  is 
curiously  illustrated  by  a  story  of  Caracalla  (Dio  Cass.  IxxviL),  who 
ifjivxa-yilrfrtae  iih  fiXXas  ri  Tivai  Kal  Tr]v  to5  varphs  rod  re  Ko/jtiidSov 
^vx'fjy  ctire  5'  ovv  oudels  aiixip  ouoh,  ttXtji/  tou  Kofi^dSov.  "EtpTj  yip 
TavTa '  ^OLve  Hk7}s  S.aaoVf  6eol  ^v  alrovat  Xe^^pt^.  No  ghost  would 
address  Caracalla  except  the  ghost  of  Commodus,  who  spoke  to 
denounce  to  him  his  doom. 

*  iV.  Ev.  V.  8  : — iraveo  SJj  Trepl(ppuv  diptov,  dvavave  Si  0wra, 
Bo.fii'ojp  ^kXijuiv  TToXtof  Tuirov,  175*  dird  yvliov 
NeiXaltjv  dOdftjv  xfpffif  art^aputs  airdeipa^. 
And   again,   when   the   bystanders  delay  tlie   release,   tlie  spirit 
exclaims —  fflvSovos  dfiirh-acrov  vetfieXijVj  \va6v  re  fiox^la. 

^  Pr.  Ev.  V.  8  ; — fjyj/lTrpwpov  atpe  rapffov,  lax^  ^a^tv  sk  fivx^v.     And 
again,  Aparc  tpuira  ya.lr)6€v  avaaTiiaavTis  iralpot^  etc. 

'  Pr.  Ev.  iv.  2. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  89 

called  "  recipients,"  it  appears,  had  been  put  to  the 
torture  and  had  made  damaging  confessions.  Further 
penalties  had  induced  them  to  explain  how  their 
fraud  was  carried  out.  The  darkness  and  secrecy 
of  the  proceedings  were  in  any  case  suspicious  ;  and 
the  futility  of  many  of  the  answers  obtained,  or  their 
evident  adaptation  to  the  wishes  of  the  inquirers, 
pointed  too  plainly  to  their  human  origin.  The 
actual  method  of  producing  certain  phenomena  has 
exercised  the  ingenuity  of  other  Fathers.  Thus 
figures  could  be  shown  in  a  bowl  of  water  by  using 
a  moveable  bottom,  or  lights  could  be  made  to  fly 
about  in  a  dark  room  by  releasing  a  vulture  with 
flaming  tow  tied  to  its  claws.^ 

But  in  spite  of  these  contemptuous  criticisms 
the  Christian  Fathers,  as  is  well  known,  were  dis- 
posed to  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  some  at  least 
of  these  communications,  and  showed  much  anxiety 
to  induce  the  oracles,  which  often  admitted  the  great- 
ness and  wisdom,  to  acknowledge  also  the  divinity, 
of  Christ.' 

Eusebius  himself,  in  another  work,'  adduces  a 

letter  of  Constantine's  describing  an  oracle  said  to 

have    been  uttered    directly    by    Apollo    "  from    a 

certain  dark  hole,"  in  which  the  god  asserted  that 

he  could  no  longer  speak  the  truth  on  account  of 

'  Pseudo-Origen,  PhilosophuTnena,  p.  73. 

'  Pr.  Ev.  iv.  iii.  7.     Aug.  de  Civil.  Dei,  xix.  24      Lact    I-astil. 
IT.  13. 

'  Vit.  Const,  u.  50  ;  cf.  Wolff,  de  Noviss.  p.  4. 


90  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

the  niimber  of  saints  who  were  now  on  the  earth. 
But  this  has  so  little  the  air  of  an  Apolline  mani- 
festation that  it  is  suspected  that  a  Christian  man 
had  crept  into  a  cave  and  delivered  this  unauthor- 
ised response  with  a  polemical  object.^ 

Into  so  obscure,  so  undignified  a  region  of  mingled 
fraud  and  mystery  does  it  seem  that,  by  the  admis- 
sion of  friends  and  foes  alike,  the  oracles  of  Greece 
had  by  this  time  fallen.  Compared  with  what  had 
been  stripped  away,  that  which  was  left  may  seem 
to  us  like  the  narrow  vault  of  the  Delian  sanctuary 
compared  with  the  ruined  glories  of  that  temple- 
covered  isle.  There  was  not,  indeed,  in  Porphyry's 
view  anything  inconsistent  with  the  occasional  pre- 
sence and  counsel  of  a  lofty  and  a  guardian  spirit. 
There  was  nothing  which  need  make  him  doubt 
that  the  Greeks  had  been  led  upwards  through  their 
long  history  by  some  providential  power.  Nay,  he 
himself  cites,  as  we  shall  see,  recent  oracles  higher 
in  tone  than  any  which  have  preceded  them.  Yet 
as  compared  with  the  early  ardour  of  that  imagina- 
tive belief  which  peopled  heaven  with  gods  and 
earth  with  heroes,  we  feel  that  we  are  now  sent 
back  to  "  beggarly  elements  ;"  that  the  task  o'f  sift- 
ing truth  from  falsehood  amid  so  much  deception 
and  incompetency  on  the  part  both  of  visible  and 

'  The  well-known  story,  rpriydp^oi  rifi  Taraff  EfffeXffe — Greg 
Nyss.  548  (and  to  be  found  in  all  lives  of  Gregory  Thaumaturgus), 
illustrates  this  Christian  rivalry  with  pagan  oracles  or  apparitions. 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  91 

invisible  agencies,'  of  erecting  a  consistent  creed  on 
such  mean  and  shifting  foundations,  might  well 
rebut  even  the  patient  ardour  of  this  most  untiring 
of  "  seekers  after  God."  And  when  we  see  him  re- 
cognising all  this  with  painful  clearness,  giving  vent, 
in  that  letter  to  Anebo  which  is  so  striking  an 
example  of  absolute  candour  in  an  unscrupulous 
and  polemic  age,  to  his  despair  at  the  obscurity 
which  seems  to  deepen  as  he  proceeds,  we  cannot  but 
wonder  that  we  do  not  see  him  turn  to  take  refuge  in 
the  new  religion  with  its  offers  of  certainty  and  peace. 
Why,  we  shall  often  ask,  should  men  so  much 
in  earnest  as  the  Neoplatonists  have  taken,  with  the 
gospel  before  them,  the  side  they  took  ?  Why 
should  they  have  preferred  to  infuse  another  alle- 
gory into  the  old  myths  which  had  endured  so 
much?  to  force  the  Pythian  Apollo,  so  simple- 
hearted  through  all  his  official  ambiguity,  to  strain 
his  hexameters  into  the  ineffable  yearnings  of  a 
theosophic  age  ?  For  we  seem  to  see  the  issues  so 
clearly !  when  we  take  up  Augustine  instead  of 
Proclus  we  feel  so  instantly  that  we  have  changed  to 
the  winning  side !  But  to  Greek  minds — and  the  glory 
of  the  Syrian  Porphyry  was  that,  of  all  barbarians, 
he  became  the  most  intensely  Greek — the  struggle 

'  The  disappointing  falsity  of  the  manifesting  spirits  who  pre- 
tended to  be  the  souls  of  departed  friends,  etc. ,  is  often  aUuded  to  ; 
e.g.  in  the  ad  Ancbonem  :  ol  5i  iXvai  iiiv  l^uSey  rWevTai  rb  v-n-rjKCoy 
yivo^  aTrarjjX^s  <pv<retaSf  TravT6iiop(f>iiv  re  Kal  TroXiTpoirov,  i/7roKpLf6fia/oy 
Kal  Scois  Kal  daifiorat  Kal  xj/vxas  rcByjiKoruy,  etc. 


92  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

presented  itself  in  a  very  different  fashion.  They 
were  fighting  not  for  an  effete  mythology,  but  for 
the  whole  Past  of  Greece ;  nay,  as  it  seemed  in  a 
certain  sense,  for  the  civilisation  of  the  world.  The 
repulse  of  Xerxes  had  stirred  in  the  Greeks  the  con- 
sciousness of  their  uniqueness  as  compared  with  the 
barbarism  on  every  side.  And  now,  when  Hellen- 
ism was  visibly  dying  away,  there  awoke  in  the 
remaining  Greeks  a  still  more  momentous  concep- 
tion, the  conception  of  the  uniqueness  and  precioiis- 
ness  of  Greek  life  not  only  in  space  but  in  duration, 
as  compared  not  only  with  its  barbarian  compeers, 
but  with  the  probable  future  of  the  world.  It  was 
no  longer  against  the  Great  King,  but  against  Time 
itself,  that  the  unequal  battle  must  be  waged.  And 
while  Time's  impersonal  touch  was  slowly  laid  upon 
all  the  glory  which  had  been,  a  more  personal  foe 
was  seen  advancing  from  the  same  East  from  whose 
onset  Greece  had  already  escaped,  "  but  so  as  by 
fire."  Christ,  like  Xerxes,  came  against  the  Greek 
spirit  Zvpiijyeve';  apfia  Sicokcov,  driving  a  Syrian 
car;  the  tide  of  conquest  was  rolling  back  again, 
and  the  East  was  claiming  an  empire  such  as  the 
West  had  never  won. 

We,  indeed,  knowing  all  the  flower  of  Euro- 
pean Christianity  in  Dante's  age,  all  its  ripening 
fruit  in  our  own,  may  see  that  this  time  from  the 
East  light  came ;  we  may  trust  and  claim  that  we 
are  living  now  among  the  scattered  forerunners  of 


t]  GREEK  ORACLES.  93 

such  types  of  beauty  and  of  goodness  as  Athens 
never  knew.  But  if  so  much  even  of  our  own 
ideal  is  iu  the  future  still,  how  must  it  have  been  to 
those  whose  longest  outlook  could  not  overpass  the 
dreary  centuries  of  barbarism  and  decay  ?  So  vast 
a  spiritual  revolution  must  needs  bring  to  souls  of 
differing  temper  very  different  fates.  Happy  were 
they  who,  Like  Augustine  and  Origen,  could  frankly 
desert  the  old  things  and  rejoice  that  all  things 
were  become  new.  Happy,  too,  were  those  few 
saintly  souls — an  Antoninus  or  a  Plotinus — whose 
lofty  calm  no  spiritual  revolution  seemed  able  to 
reach  or  mar.  But  the  pathetic  destiny  was  that 
of  men  like  Julian  or  Porphyry,  men  who  were  dis- 
qualified from  leading  the  race  onward  into  a  noble 
future  merely  because  they  so  well  knew  and  loved 
an  only  less  noble  past. 

And  yet  it  is  not  for  long  that  we  can  take 
Porphyry  as  an  example  of  a  man  wandering  in  the 
twilight  between  "dying  lights  and  dawning,"  be- 
tween an  outworn  and  an  untried  faith.  The  last 
chapter  in  the  history  of  oracles  is  strangely  con- 
nected with  the  last  stage  of  the  spiritual  history  of 
this  upward-striving  man. 

For  it  was  now  that  Porphyry  was  to  encounter 
an  influence,  a  doctrine,  an  aim,  more  enchanting 
than  Homer's  mythology,  profounder  than  ApoUo'a 
oracles,  more  Christian,  I  had  almost  written,  than 
Christianity  itself.     More  Christian  at   least   than 


94  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

such  Christianity  as  had  chiefly  met  Porphyry's 
eyes ;  more  Christian  than  the  violence  of  bishops, 
the  wrangles  of  heretics,  the  fanaticism  of  slaves, 
was  that  single-hearted  and  endless  effort  after  the 
union  of  the  soul  with  God  which  filled  every 
moment  of  the  life  of  Plotinus,  and  which  gave  to 
his  living  example  a  potency  and  a  charm  which 
his  writings  never  can  renew.^  "  Without  father, 
without  mother,  without  descent,"  a  figure  appear- 
ing solitary  as  Melchisedek  on  the  scene  of  history, 
charged  with  a  single  blessing  and  lost  in  the  un- 
known, we  may  yet  see  in  this  chief  of  mystics  the 
heir  of  Plato,  and  affirm  that  it  is  he  who  has  com- 
pleted the  cycle  of  Greek  civilisation  by  adding  to 
that  long  gallery  of  types  of  artist  and  warrior, 
philosopher  and  poet,  the  stainless  image  of  the  saint. 

It  may  be  that  the  holiness  which  he  aimed  at 
is  not  for  man.  It  may  be  that  ecstasy  comes  best 
unsought,  and  that  the  still  small  voice  is  heard 
seldomer  in  the  silence  of  the  wilderness  than 
through  the  thunder  of  human  toil  and  amid  human 
passion's  fire. 

But  those  were  days  of  untried  capacities,  of 
unbounded    hopes.      In    the    Neoplatonist    lectnre- 

'  Eunapius  {ml.  Porph. )  manages  to  touch  the  heart,  in  spite  of 
his  affectation.s,  when  he  describes  the  friendship  between  Porphyry 
and  Plotinus.  Of  Porphyry's  first  visit  to  Rome  he  says  : — r^v 
fjLcylffT'qv  'Pu:/J.iji>  ISdv  iiridvfirjaai  .  .  .  iireiSi]  T6.xt.a7a  els  aMiv 
d(ptK€To  Kal  7^  ^yi(j7ifi  nXwWctfj  ffvvTjKBcv  els  ItiuXiat^,  TrdvTtav  ireXd* 

6€70  7Q1V  SXKlOV^  K.7.\. 


I.J  GREEK  ORACLES. 


96 


room,  as  at  the  Christian  love-feast,  it  seemed  that 
religion  had  no  need  to  compromise,  that  all  this 
complex  human  spirit  could  be  absorbed  and  trans- 
figured in  one  desire. 

Counsels  of  perfection  are  the  aliment  of  strenu- 
ous souls,  and  henceforth,  in  each  successive  book  of 
Porphyry's,  we  see  him  rising  higher,  resting  more 
confidently  in  those  joys  and  aspirations  which  are 
the  heritage  of  all  high  religions,  and  the  substance 
of  the  communion  of  saints. 

And  gradually,  as  he  dwells  more  habitually  in 
the' thought  of  the  supreme  and  ineffable  Deity,  the 
idea  of  a  visible  or  tangible  communion  with  any 
Being  less  august  becomes  repugnant  to  his  mind. 
For  what  purpose  should  he  draw  to  him  those 
unknown  intelligences  from  the  ocean  of  environing 
souls  ?  "  For  on  those  things  which  he  desires  to 
know  there  is  no  prophet  nor  diviner  who  can 
declare  to  him  the  truth,  but  himself  only,  by  com- 
munion with  God,  who  is  enshrined  indeed  in  his 
heart." ^  "  By  a  sacred  silence  we  do  Him  honour, 
and  by  pure  thoughts  of  what  He  is."^  "  Holding 
Him  fast,  and  being  made  like  unto  Him,  let  us 
present  ourselves,  a  holy  sacrifice,  for  our  offering 
unto  God." ' 

'  De  Abstin.  ii.  54. 

2  Ibid.  ii.  3i,  5ia  Si  iriyi)'  Ka0apd!  Kal  tCiv  Trepl  a^ov  Ka6apC>v 
fvvoiwy  dprqaKevofiev  aury. 

'  Ibid.  iL  34,  Set  &pa  awaipBhrai  koI  oiimudivTai  airrif  rrpi  ainuy 
ivayuyriv  6valav  Upd.y  wpoaayayeTv  rtfi  dei^. 


9«  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [h 

And  in  his  letter  to  the  well-loved  wife  of  his 
old  age, — than  which  we  find  no  higher  expression 
of  the  true  Platonic  love  (so  often  degraded  and 
misnamed) — no  nobler  charge  and  counsel  of  man 
to  woman  in  all  the  stores  which  antiquity  has 
bequeathed, —  in  this  last  utterance  we  find  him 
risen  above  all  doubt  and  controversy,  and  rapt  in 
the  contemplation  of  that  Being  whom  "  no  prayers 
can  move  and  no  sacrifice  honour,  nor  the  abun- 
dance of  offerings  find  favour  in  His  sight ;  only 
the  inspired  thought  fixed  firmly  on  Him  has  cog- 
nisance of  God  indeed."*  It  may  seem  that  as  we 
enter  on  this  region  we  have  left  oracles  behind. 
But  it  is  not  so.  The  two  last  oracles  which  I  shall 
cite,  and  which  are  among  the  most  remarkable  of 
all,  are  closely  connected  with  this  last  period  of 
Porphyry's  life.  The  first  of  them  is  found,  by  no 
chance  we  may  be  sure,  on  a  leaf  of  the  manuscript 
which  contains  his  letter  to  Marcella.  It  is  intro- 
duced to  us  by  an  unknown  writer  as  "  an  oracle 
concerning  the  Eternal  God."^ 

'  TO  ivdfov  tppdfTjfia  KoKCjs  riSpatr/xevov  awdtrTercu  rtfi  $e(^,  — See  the 
Ad  Uarcellam  passim. 

^  This  oracle  was  very  probably  actually  delivered  in  a  shrino, 
as  the  utterances  of  this  period  were  often  tinged  with  Neoplatonism. 
I  have  followed  Wolff's  emendations,  and  must  refer  the  reader  to 
his  Porph.  Fragm.  p.  144,  and  especially  his  AMU.  IV.  de  Daemon- 
ibus,  p.  225,  in  support  of  the  substantial  accuracy  of  ray  rendering. 
It  is  impossible  to  reproduce  all  the  theology  which  this  hymn  con- 
tains ;  I  have  tried  to  bring  out  the  force  of  the  most  central  and 
weighty  expressions,  such  as  defdois  dx^Toiffi  Ti6Tjyu>v  vovv  drdXavroy. 
The  oracle  will  also  be  found  in  Stcuchus,  de  Perenni  Philosophia, 


t]  GREEK  ORACLES.  97 

"  0  God  ineffable,  eternal  Sire, 

Throned  on  the  whirling  spheres,  the  astral  fire, 

Hid  in  whose  heart  thy  whole  creation  lies, — 

The  whole  world's  wonder  mirrored  in  thine  eyes, — 

List  thou  thy  children's  voice,  who  draw  anear, 

Thou  hast  begotten  us,  thou  too  must  hear  ! 

Each  life  thy  life  her  Fount,  her  Ocean  knows, 

Fed  while  it  fosters,  filling  as  it  flows ; 

Wrapt  in  thy  light  the  star-set  cycles  roll, 

And  worlds  within  thee  stir  into  a  soul ; 

But  stars  and  souls  shall  keep  their  watch  and  way, 

Nor  change  the  going  of  thy  lonely  day. 

Some  sons  of  thine,  our  Father,  King  of  kings, 
Kest  in  the  sheen  and  shelter  of  thy  wings, — - 
Some  to  strange  hearts  the  unspoken  message  bear, 
Sped  on  thy  strength  through  the  haunts  and  homes  of 

air, — 
Some  where  thine  honour  dwelleth  hope  and  wait. 
Sigh  for  thy  courts  and  gather  at  thy  gate ; 
These  from  afar  to  thee  their  praises  bring, 
Of  thee,  albeit  they  have  not  seen  thee,  sing ; 
Of  thee  the  Father  wise,  the  Mother  mild. 
Thee  in  all  children  the  eternal  Child, 
Thee  the  first  Number  and  harmonious  Whole, 
Form  in  all  forms,  and  of  all  souls  the  Soul." 

The  second  oracle  above  alluded  to,  the  last  which 
I  shall  quote,  was  given,  as  Porphyry  tells  us,  at 
Delphi  to  his  friend  Amelius,  who  inquired,  "  Where 
was  now  Plotiaus'  soul  ? " ' 

iii.  \i  ;  Orelli,  Opusc.  gr.  vett.  senicnt.  i.  319 ;  and  Mai's  edition  of 
the  Ad  Marcellam. 

1  Porph.  xrit.  Plot.  22.     It  is  seldom  that  the  genuineness  of  an 

H 


98  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS,  [i. 

Whatever  be  the  source  of  this  poem,  it  stands 
out  to  us  as  one  of  the  most  earnest  utterances  of 
antiquity,  though  it  has  little  of  classical  perfection 
of  form.  Nowhere,  indeed,  is  the  contest  more 
apparent  between  the  intensity  of  the  emotions  which 
are  struggling  for  utterance  and  the  narrow  limits 
of  human  speech,  which  was  composed  to  deal  with 
the  things  that  are  known  and  visible,  and  not  with 
those  that  are  inconceivable  and  unseen. 

Little,  in  truth,  it  is  which  the  author  of  this 
oracle  could  express,  less  which  the  translator  can 
render ;  but  there  is  enough  to  show  once  more  the 
potency  of  an  elect  soul,  what  a  train  of  light  she 
may  leave  behind  her  as  she  departs  on  her  unknown 
way ;  when  for  those  who  have  lived  in  her  presence, 
but  can  scarcely  mourn  her  translation,  the  rapture 
of  love  fades  into  the  rapture  of  worship.  Plotinus 
was  "  the  eagle  soaring  above  the  tomb  of  Plato ; " 
no  wonder  that  the  eyes  which  followed  his  flight 
must  soon  be  blinded  with  the  sun. 

"  Pure  spirit — once  a  man — pure  spirits  now 
Greet  thee  rejoicing,  and  of  these  art  thou ; 


oracle  can  be  established  on  grounds  which  would  satisfy  the  critical 
historian.  But  this  oracle  has  better  external  evidence  than  most 
others.  Of  Porphyry's  own  good  faith  there  is  no  question,  and 
though  we  know  less  of  the  character  of  his  fellow-philosopher 
Amelius,  it  seems  unlikely  that  he  would  have  wished  to  deceive 
Porphyry  on  an  occasion  so  solemn  as  the  death  of  their  beloved 
master,  or  even  that  he  could  have  deceived  him  as  to  so  consider- 
able an  undertaking  as  a  journey  to  Delphi. 


l]  GKEEK  oracles.  99 

Not  vainly  was  thy  whole  soul  alway  bent 

With  one  same  battle  and  one  the  same  intent 

Through  eddying  cloud  and  earth's  bewildering  roar 

To  win  her  bright  way  to  that  stainless  shore. 

Ay,  'mid  the  salt  spume  of  this  troublous  sea, 

This  death  in  life,  this  sick  perplexity. 

Oft  on  thy  struggle  through  the  obscure  unrest 

A  revelation  opened  from  the  Blest — 

Showed  close  at  hand  the  goal  thy  hope  would  win, 

Heaven's  kingdom  round  thee  and  thy  God  within.' 

So  sure  a  help  the  eternal  Guardians  gave, 

From  life's  confusion  so  were  strong  to  save, 

Upheld  thy  wandering  steps  that  souglit  the  day 

And  set  them  steadfast  on  the  heavenly  way. 

Nor  quite  even  here  on  thy  broad  brows  was  shed 

The  sleep  which  shrouds  the  living,  who  are  dead  ; 

Once  by  God's  grace  was  from  thine  eyes  unfurled 

This  veil  that  screens  the  immense  and  whirling  world, 

Once,  while  the  spheres  around  thee  in  music  ran. 

Was  very  Beauty  manifest  to  man  ; — 

Ah,  once  to  have  seen  her,  once  to  have  known  her  there, 

For  speech  too  sweet,  for  earth  too  heavenly  fair ! 

But  now  the  tomb  where  long  thy  soul  had  lain 

Bursts,  and  thy  tabernacle  is  rent  in  twain  ; 

Now  from  about  thee,  in  thy  new  home  above, 

Has  perished  all  but  life,  and  all  but  love, — 

And  on  all  lives  and  on  all  loves  outpoured 

Free  grace  and  full,  a  Spirit  from  the  Lord, 


'  (tpait-rj  youv  Ti^  IWii^Tlvt^  (TKoirds  iyyvdt  vaitjji^'  tAo$  7<ip  ourtfj 

T€TpdKi$  TTOU,  &r€  ffvyTj/xTji'  airri^,  tou  (TKOTTOU  tovtov  ivefyyeii}  d/i/^^y 
Koi  oil  dvvd/jLei. — (Porph.  vit.  Plot.) 


100  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [l 

High  in  that  heaven  whose  windless  vaults  enfold 

Just  men  made  perfect,  and  an  age  all  gold. 

Thine  own  Pythagoras  is  with  thee  there, 

And  sacred  Plato  in  that  sacred  air, 

And  whoso  followed,  and  all  high  hearts  that  knew 

In  death's  despite  what  deathless  Love  can  do. 

To  God's  right  hand  they  have  scaled  the  starry  way — 

Pure  spirits  these,  thy  spirit  pure  as  they. 

Ah  saint !  how  many  and  many  an  anguish  past, 

To  how  fair  haven  art  thou  come  at  last ! 

On  thy  meek  head  what  Powers  their  blessing  pour, 

Filled  full  with  life,  and  rich  for  evermore  ! " 

This,  so  far  as  we  know,  was  the  last  utterance 
of  the  Pythian  priestess.  Once  more,  indeed,  a 
century  afterwards,  a  voice  was  heard  at  Delphi. 
But  that  voice  seems  rather  to  have  been,  in 
Plutarch's  phrase,  "a  cry  floating  of  itself  over 
solitary  places,"  than  the  deliverance  of  any  re- 
cognised priestess,  or  from  any  abiding  shrine.  For 
no  shrine  was  standing  more.  The  words  which 
answered  the  Emperor  Julian's  search  were  but  the 
whisper  of  desolation,  the  last  and  loveliest  expres- 
sion of  a  sanctity  that  had  passed  away.  A  strange 
coincidence  !  that  from  that  Delphian  valley,  whence, 
as  the  legend  ran,  had  soimded  the  first  of  all  hexa- 
meters,^— the  call,  as  in  the  childhood  of  the  world, 
to  "  birds  to  bring  their  feathers  and  bees  their 
wax "  to  build  by  Castaly  the  nest-like  habitation 

^  ^v/j,(pipeT€  TTTepti  T    olujvol  Krjpdv  re  /jJXiTTai.  —  Plut.  de  PytK 
xvii. ;  and  rclf.  ap.  Hendess,  Oi-ac.  Oraec.  p.  36. 


l]  greek  oracles.  101 

of  the  young  new-entering  god,  —  from  that  same 
ruined  place  where  "  to  earth  had  fallen  the  glorious 
dwelling,"  from  the  dry  channel  where  "  the  water- 
springs  that  spake  were  quenched  and  dead,"  — 
shoiild  issue  in  unknown  fashion  the  last  fragment 
of  Greek  poetry  which  has  moved  the  hearts  of 
men,  the  last  Greek  hexameters  which  retain  the 
ancient  cadence,  the  majestic  melancholy  flow !  ^ 

Stranger  still,  and  of  deeper  meaning,  is  the  fate 
which  has  ordained  that  Delplii,  born  with  the 
birth  of  Greece,  symbolising  in  her  teaching  such 
light  and  truth  as  the  ancient  world  might  know, 
silenced  once  only  in  her  long  career,  and  sUenced 
not  by  Christ,  but  by  Antichrist,  should  have  pro- 
claimed in  her  last  triumphant  oracle  the  canonisa- 
tion of  the  last  of  the  Greeks,  should  have  responded 
with  her  last  sigh  and  echo  to  the  appeal  of  the 
last  of  the  Eomaiis. 

And  here  I  shall  leave  the  story  of  Greek 
oracles.  It  may  be,  indeed,  that  some  strange  and 
solitary  divinities — the  god  Jaribolus  at  Palmyra,^ 
the    god     Marnas    at     Gaza,'    the    god    Besa    at 

oi'KH't  ^oi^os  ^x^*-  KaXu^ay,  ov  fidyrida  daipyrjv, 
oil  irtt7ai'  XaX^ouffOi' *  dWcr/Srro  Kal  XdXof  ijStjp. 
— Ge.  Cedren.  Hist.  Comp.  i.  304 ;  and  see  Mr.  Swinburne's  poem, 
"The  Last  Oracle." 

"^  Inscr.  Or.  4483  ap  Wolff,  de  Noviss.  p.   27.     There  is,  how- 
ever, no  proof  of  Jaribolian  utterance  later  than  a.  i>.  242. 

'  llarc.  Diac.  vit.  Poijg/i.  Ejrisc.  ap.  Acta  Sanctonim,  and  Wolff, 
de  Xoviss.  p.  26.     Circ.  A.D.  400. 


102  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

Abydos* — still  uttered  from  time  to  time  some  perish- 
ing prophecy,  some  despairing  protest  against  the  new 
victorious  faith.  But  that  such  oracles  there  stiU 
were  is  proved  rather  from  Christian  legislation 
than  from  heathen  records.  On  these  laws  I  will 
not  dwell,  nor  recount  how  far  the  Christian 
emperors  fell  from  their  divine  ideal  when  they 
punished  by  piUage,^  by  torture,'  and  by  death* 
the  poor  unlearned  "  villagers,"  whose  only  crime  it 
was  that  they  still  found  in  the  faith  of  their  fathers 
the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  and  an  evidence 
of  things  not  seen.  Such  stains  will  mar  the 
noblest  revolutions,  but  must  not  blind  us  to  the 
fact  that  a  spiritual  revolution  follows  only  on  a 
spiritual  need.  The  end  of  the  Greek  oracles  was 
determined  not  from  without,  but  from  within. 
They  had  passed  through  all  their  stages.  Fetish- 
ism, Shahmanism,  Nature-worship,  Polytheism,  even 
Monotheism  and  Mysticism,  had  found  in  turn  a 
home  in  their  immemorial  shrines.  Their  utter- 
ances had  reflected  every  method  in  which  man  has 

'  Amm.  Mare.  six.  12  (a.d.  359). 

1  Cod.  Theod.  xvi.  10  (Thcodosius  I.) 

'  Aniiii.  Marc.  xxi.  12  (Constautius). 

*  Cod.  Justin,  ix.  18  (Constantius) ;  TTieod.  leg.  Novell,  iii. 
(Theodosius  II.)  These  laws  identify  paganism  as  far  as  possible 
with  magic,  and,  by  a  singular  inversion,  Augustine  quotes  Virgil's 
authority  {Ae7i.  iv.  492)  in  defence  of  the  persecution  of  his  ovra 
faith.  See  Maury,  Magie,  etc.,  p.  127.  The  last  struggle  of  expir- 
ing paganism  was  in  defence  of  the  oracijjar  temple  of  Serapis  at 
Alexaudiia,  A.o.  3S9 


I.]  GREEK  ORACLES.  103 

sought  commuuion  with  the  Unseen,  from  systematic 
experiment  to  intuitive  ecstasy.  They  had  com- 
pleted the  cycle  of  their  scripture  from  its  Theogony 
to  its  Apocalypse ;  it  was  time  that  a  stronger 
wave  of  revelation  should  roll  over  the  world,  and 
that  what  was  best  and  truest  in  the  old  religion 
should  be  absorbed  into  and  identified  with  the 
new.^ 

And  if  there  be  some  who  feel  that  the  youth, 
the  naiveti,  the  unquestioning  conviction,  must 
perish  not  from  one  religion  only,  but  from  all ; 
that  the  more  truly  we  conceive  of  God,  the  more 
unimaginable  He  becomes  to  us,  and  the  more  in- 
finite, and  the  more  withdrawn ;  that  we  can  no 
longer  "  commune  with  Him  from  oak  or  rock  as  a 
young  man  communes  with  a  maid ; " — to  such 
men  the  story  of  the  many  pathways  by  which 
mankind  has  striven  to  become  cognisant  of  the 
Unseen  may  have  an  aspect  of  hope  as  well  as  of 
despondency. 

For  before  we  despair  of  a  question  as  unanswer- 
able we  must  know  that  it  has  been  rightly  asked. 
And  there  are  problems  which  can  become  clearly 

'  I  need  hardly  remind  the  reader  that  the  Church  continued 
till  the  Renaissance  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  Greek  oiacles, 
though  condemning  the  "demons  "who  inspired  them.  To  refer 
them,  in  fact,  entirely  to  Ulusion  and  imposture  is  an  argument 
not  without  danger  for  the  advocate  of  any  revealed  religion. 
"Celui,"  says  M.  Bouche-Leclercq,  "qui  croit  i  la  Providence  et 
\  I'efficacite  de  la  priere  doit  se  rappeler  qu'il  accepte  tous  les  prin- 
cipes  sur  lesquels  repose  la  divination  antique. " 


104  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [i. 

defined  to  us  only  by  the  aid  of  premature  and  im- 
perfect solutions.  There  are  many  things  which 
we  should  never  have  known  had  not  inquiring 
men  before  us  so  often  deemed  vainly  that  they  knew. 

Suspense  of  judgment,  indeed,  in  matters  of  such 
moment,  is  so  irksome  an  attitude  of  mind,  that  we 
need  not  wonder  if  confidence  of  view  on  the  one 
side  is  met  by  a  corresponding  confidence  on  the 
other ;  if  the  trust  felt  by  the  mass  of  mankind  in 
the  adequacy  of  one  or  other  of  the  answers  to  these 
problems  which  have  been  already  obtained  is  re- 
butted by  the  decisive  assertion  that  all  these 
answers  have  been  proved  futile  and  that  it  is  idle 
to  look  for  more. 

Yet  such  was  not  the  temper  of  those  among 
the  Greeks  who  felt,  as  profoundly  perhaps  as  we, 
the  darkness  and  the  mystery  of  human  fates.  To 
them  it  seemed  no  useless  or  unworthy  thing  to 
ponder  on  these  cliief  concerns  of  man  with  that 
patient  earnestness  which  has  unlocked  so  many 
problems  whose  solution  once  seemed  destined  to 
be  for  ever  vxnknown.  "  For  thus  will  God,"  as 
Sophocles  says  in  one  of  those  passages  (Fr.  707) 
whose  high  serenity  seems  to  answer  our  perplexities 
as  well  as  his  own — 

"  Thus  then  will  God  to  wise  men  riddling  show 
Such  hidden  lore  as  not  the  wise  can  know ; 
Fools  in  a  moment  deem  his  meaning  plain, 
His  lessons  lightly  learn,  and  learn  in  vain." 


I.J  GREEK  ORACLES.  105 

And  even  now,  in  the  face  of  philosophies  of 
materialism  and  of  negation  so  far  more  powerful 
than  any  which  Sophocles  had  to  meet,  there  are 
yet  some  minds  into  which,  after  all,  a  doubt  may 
steal, — whether  we  have  indeed  so  fully  explained 
away  the  beliefs  of  the  world's  past,  whether  we 
can  indeed  so  assuredly  define  the  beliefs  of  its 
future, — or  whether  it  may  not  still  befit  us  to 
track  with  fresh  feet  the  ancient  mazes,  to  renew 
the  world-old  desire,  and  to  set  no  despairing  limit 
to  the  knowledge  or  the  hopes  of  man. 


VIEGIL 

"Light  among  the  vanished   ages  ;    star  that  gildest  yet   this 
phantom  shore  ; 
Golden  branch  amid  the  shadows,  kings  and  realms  that  set  to 
rise  no  more." 

In  literature,  as  in  life,  affection  and  reverence  may 
reach  a  point  which  disposes  to  silence  rather  than 
to  praise.  The  same  ardour  of  worship  which 
prompts  to  missions  or  to  martyrdom  when  a  saving 
knowledge  of  the  beloved  object  can  be  communi- 
cated so,  will  shrink  from  aU  public  expression 
when  the  beauty  which  it  reveres  is  such  as  can  be 
made  manifest  to  each  man  only  from  within.  A 
sense  of  desecration  mingles  with  the  sense  of  in- 
capacity in  describing  what  is  so  mysterious,  so 
glorious,  and  so  dear. 

Perhaps  the  admirer  may  hear  the  object  of 
his  reverence  ignorautly  misapprehended,  unwisely 
judged.  Still  he  will  shrink  from  speech ;  he  will 
be  unwilling  to  seem  to  proffer  his  own  poor  and 
disputable  opinion  on  matters  which  lie  so  far  above 
any  support  which  he  can  give.     Yet,  possibly,  if 


u.]  VIRGIL.  107 

his  admiration  has  notoriously  been  shared  for  nine- 
teen centuries  by  all  whose  admiration  was  best 
worth  having,  he  may  venture  to  attempt  to  prove 
the  world  right  where  others  have  attempted  the 
bolder  task  of  proving  it  mistaken ;  or  rather,  if  the 
matter  in  question  be  one  by  its  very  nature  in- 
capable of  proof,  he  may  without  presumption  restate 
in  terms  adapted  to  modern  readers  the  traditional 
judgment  of  sixty  generations  of  men.^ 

The  set  which  the  German  criticism  of  this  cen- 
tury has  made  against  Virgil  is  a  perfectly  explicable, 
and  in  one  sense  a  perfectly  justifiable  thing.  It  is 
one  among  many  results  which  have  followed  from 
the  application  of  the  historical  faculty,  pure  and 
simple,  to  the  judgment  of  Art.  Since  every  work 
of  art  is  a  historical  product,  it  can  be  used  to  illus- 

1  In  writing  on  an  author  who  has  been  so  constantly  discussed 
for  many  centuries  it  is  impossible  to  refer  each  fragment  of  criti- 
cism to  its  original  source.  Most  of  the  sounder  reflections  on  Virgil 
have  occurred  to  many  minds  and  long  ago,  and  form  an  anony- 
mous— almost  an  cecumenical — tradition.  Among  modern  writers 
on  Virgil,  I  have  consulted  Bernhardy,  Boissier,  Cantu,  Coraparetti, 
Conington,  Gladstone,  Henry,  Heyne,  Keble,  Long,  Nettleship, 
Rihbeck,  Sainte-Beuve,  Sellar,  Teutlel,  Wagner,  etc.  ;  some  ol 
them  with  mere  dissent  and  surprise,  others — especially  Boissierand 
Conington— with  great  interest  and  profit.  But  next  to  Virgil's 
own  poems,  1  think  that  the  Diviua  Commedia  is  the  most  important 
aid  to  his  right  apprehension.  The  exquisite  truth  and  delicacy 
of  Dante's  conception  of  his  great  master  become  more  and  more 
apparent  if  the  works  of  the  two  are  studied  in  connection. 

Since  this  essay  was  first  published,  the  greatest  poet  of  our 
times  has  offered  to  Virgil  a  crowning  homage, — in  accents  that 
recall  his  own. 


108  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [il. 

trate  the  growth  of  the  national  life  from  which  it 
springs ;  it  can  be  represented  as  the  necessary 
result  of  its  epoch  and  its  environment.  The  several 
arts,  however,  offer  very  different  facility  to  the 
scientific  historian.  Music,  the  most  unmixedly 
imaginative  of  the  arts,  has  baffled  all  efforts  to 
correlate  her  growth  with  the  general  march  of 
society.  Painting  bears  a  more  intimate  relation  to 
life,  and  in  much  of  the  preference  which  has  been 
lately  shown  for  early  na'ivetd  over  self-conscious 
excellence  we  may  detect  a  mixture  of  the  historical 
with  the  purely  aesthetic  instinct.  The  historic 
instinct,  indeed,  works  in  admirably  with  the  tastes 
of  an  elaborate  civilisation.  For  the  impulse  of 
historic  science  is  naturally  towards  the  Origines  or 
sources  of  things ;  it  seeks  to  track  styles  and 
processes  to  their  fountain-head,  and  to  iind  them 
exliibitiug  themselves  without  self  -  consciousness 
or  foreign  admixture;  it  would  even  wish  to 
eliminate  the  idiosyncrasies  of  individual  artists 
from  its  generalised  estimate  of  the  genius  of  a 
nation.  And  in  highly-cultivated  societies  there  is 
a  somewhat  similar  craving — a  wish  to  escape  from 
all  that  speaks  of  effort  or  preparation,  into  the 
refreshing  simplicity  of  a  spontaneous  age.  This 
craving  was  strongly  felt  under  the  Eoman  Empire ; 
it  is  potent  among  ourselves ;  it  is  wholly  natural 
and  innocent  so  long  as  it  is  not  allowed  to  sway 
us  in  our  estimate  of  the  highest  art. 


11.]  VIRGIL.  109 

But  if  the  historical  spirit  can  thus  modify  the 
judgments  passed  upon  painting,  much  more  is  this 
the  case  with  regard  to  poetry.  For  poetry  is  the 
most  condensed  and  pregnant  of  all  historical 
phenomena ;  it  is  a  kind  of  crystallised  deposit  of 
the  human  spirit.  It  is  most  necessary  that  the 
historian  and  the  philologer  should  be  allowed  free 
range  over  this  rich  domain.  And  there  is  no 
doubt  a  sense  in  which  poems,  as  they  become  more 
remote  from  us,  are  fuller  of  the  rough  reality  of 
tilings.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  song  of  the 
Fratres  Arvales  is  of  more  value  than  the  Fourth 
Eclogue.  And  there  is  a  sense — and  this  is  a 
point  on  which  the  Germans  have  especially  dwelt 
— in  which  the  whole  Latin  literature  of  the 
Augustan  age,  whose  outer  fonn,  at  least,  is  so  con- 
fessedly derived  from  Greek  models,  is  of  less 
interest  than  those  models  themselves.  If  we  wish 
to  understand  the  native  type,  the  original  essence 
of  epic  or  lyric  poetry,  we  must  go  to  Homer  and 
not  to  Virgil,  to  Sappho  and  not  to  Horace.  Yet 
this  test,  like  all  sweeping  and  a  priori  methods  of 
estimating  works  of  art,  requires  in  practice  so 
many  limitations  as  to  be  almost  valueless.  It  is 
impossible  to  judge  a  literature  by  its  originality 
alone,  without  condemning  much  that  is  best  in  our 
modern  literatures  more  severely  than  we  condemn 
the  Augustan  poets.  Imitation  is  very  much  a 
matter  of  chronology ;  it  may  be  conscioiis  or  un- 


no  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

conscious, — ostentatious  or  concealed, — but  as  the 
world  goes  on,  it  tends  iiresistibly  to  form  a  larger 
and  larger  element  in  aU  new  productions.  And 
yet  each  new  production  may  be  in  essentials 
superior  to  its  type  or  forerunner.  Its  relative 
merit  can  be  determined  by  experience  alone — can 
only  be  judged,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  poetry 
by  the  uncertain  and  difficult  process  of  comparing 
the  amount  of  delight  and  elevation  received  from 
each  work  by  the  consensus  of  duly  qualified  men. 
For,  in  the  face  of  some  recent  German  criticism,  it 
seems  important  to  repeat  that  in  order  to  judge 
poetry  it  is  before  all  things  necessary  to  enjoy  it. 
We  may  all  desire  that  historical  and  philological 
science  should  push  her  dominion  into  every  recess 
of  human  action  and  human  speech.  But  we  must 
utter  some  protest  when  the  very  heights  of  Par- 
nassus are  invaded  by  a  spirit  which  surely  is  not 
Science,  but  her  unmeaning  shadow ;  —  a  spirit 
which  would  degrade  every  masterpiece  of  human 
genius  into  the  mere  pabulum  of  hungry  professors, 
and  which  values  a  poet's  text  only  as  a  field  for 
the  rivalries  of  sterile  pedantry  and  arbitrary  con- 
jecture. 

It  is  sometimes  said,  Apropos  of  the  new  unction 
with  which  physical  science  has  assumed  the  office 
of  the  preacher,  that  men  of  the  world  must  be 
preached  to  either  by  men  of  the  world  or  by  sainta 
—  not   by   persons,  however    eminent    and    right- 


n.]  VIRGIL.  Ill 

minded,  whose  emotions  have  been  confined  to  the 
laboratory.  There  is  something  of  a  similar  incon- 
gruity in  the  attitude  of  a  German  commentator 
laboriously  endeavouring  to  throw  a  new  light  on 
some  point  of  delicate  feeling  or  poetic  propriety. 
Thus  one  of  them  objects  to  Dido's  "  auburn  tress  " 
on  the  ground  that  a  widow's  hair  should  be  of  a 
darker  colour.  Another  questions  whether  a  broken 
heart  can  be  properly  termed  "  a  fresh  wound,"  if  a 
lady  has  been  suffering  from  it  for  more  than  a 
week.  A  third  bitterly  accuses  Virgil  of  exaggerat- 
ing the  felicity  of  the  Golden  Age.  And  Eibbeck 
alters  the  text  of  Virgil,  in  defiance  of  all  the  manu- 
scripts, because  the  poet's  picture  (A.  xii.  55)  of 
Amata,  "  self-doomed  to  die,  clasping  for  the  last 
time  her  impetuous  son-in-law,"  seems  to  him  tame 
and  unsatisfactory.  By  the  alteration  of  moritura 
into  monitura  he  is  able  to  represent  Amata  as 
clinging  to  Turnus,  not  "  with  the  intention  of  kill- 
ing herself,"  but  "  with  the  intention  of  giving 
advice,"  which  he  considers  as  the  more  impressive 
and  fitting  attitude  for  a  mother-in-law.^ 

It  seems  somewhat  doubtful  whither  this  lofty 
d  priori  road  may  lead  us.  And  yet  it  is  impossible 
to  criticise  any  form  of  art  without  the  introduction 

'  A  single  instance  will  give  an  idea  of  Eibbeck's  fitness  to  deal 
with  metrical  questions.  In  A.  ix.  67,  "qua  temptet  ratione 
aditua,  et  quae  via  clauses, "  he  reads  (against  all  the  MSS.)  et  qua 
vi  clamos,  and  proves  at  some  length  the  elegance  of  bis  trispondaic 
termination. 


112  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [il 

of  subjective  impressions  of  some  kiad.  It  would 
be  in  vain  to  attempt  to  give  any  such  general  expo- 
sition of  poetical  excellence  as  should  carry  conviction 
to  all  minds.  Some  obvious  shortcomings  may  be 
pointed  out,  some  obvious  merits  insisted  on ;  but 
when  a  higher  region  is  reached  we  find  that  a 
susceptibility  to  the  specific  power  of  poetry  is  no 
more  communicable  than  an  ear  for  music.  To 
most  readers  the  subtle,  the  unexpressed,  the  infi- 
nite element  in  poetry  such  as  Virgil's  will  remain 
for  ever  tmacknowledged  and  unknown.  Like  the 
golden  bough  which  unlocked  the  secrets  of  the 
underworld — 

"  Itself  will  follow,  and  scarce  thy  touch  await, 
If  thou  be  chosen,  and  if  this  be  fate  ; 
Else  for  no  force  shalt  thou  its  coming  feel. 
Nor  shear  it  from  the  stem  with  shattering  steel."* 

'  A.  vi.  146.  The  translations  from  Virgil  which  I  have  given 
in  this  essay,  though  faithful  to  his  meaning,  as  I  apprehend  it, 
are  not  verbally  exact  ;  while,  like  all  my  predecessors,  I  have 
failed  to  convey  any  adequate  notion  of  his  music  or  his  dignity, 
and  may  well  fear  the  fate  of  Salmoneus,  "  who  thought  to  rival 
with  flash  of  lamps  and  tramp  of  horses  the  inimitable  thunderbolt 
and  storm."  But  to  reproduce  a  great  poet  in  another  language  is 
as  impossible  as  to  reproduce  Nature  on  canvas  ;  and  the  same 
controversy  between  a  literal  and  an  impressionaJ  rendering  divides 
landscape-painters  and  translators  of  poetry.  In  the  case  of  an 
author  so  complex  and  profound  as  Virgil,  every  student  will 
naturally  discern  a  different  phase  of  his  significance,  and  it  seems 
almost  a  necessary  element  in  any  attempt  to  criticise  him  that 
the  critic  should  try  to  show  the  view  which  he  takes  of  a  few 
well-known  passages.     Jlr.  Morris'  brilliant  and  accurate  version 


n.]  VIRGIL.  113 

A  few  general  considerations,  however,  may  at 
any  rate  serve  to  indicate  the  kinds  of  achieve- 
ment at  which  Virgil  aimed  —  the  kinds  of  merit 
which  are  or  are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  his  poems. 

The  range  of  human  thoughts  and  emotions 
greatly  transcends  the  range  of  such  symbols  as 
man  has  invented  to  express  them ;  and  it  becomes 
therefore,  the  business  of  Art  to  use  these  symbols 
in  a  double  way.  They  must  be  used  for  the  direct 
representation  of  thought  and  feeling ;  but  they 
must  also  be  combined  by  so  subtle  an  imagination 
as  to  suggest  much  which  there  is  no  means  of 
directly  expressing.  And  this  can  be  done ;  for 
experience  shows  that  it  is  possible  so  to  arrange 
forms,  colours,  and  sounds  as  to  stimulate  the 
imagination  in  a  new  and  inexplicable  way.  This 
power  makes  the  painter's  art  an  imaginative  as 
well  as  an  imitative  one ;  and  gives  birth  to  the 
art  of  the  musician,  whose  symbols  are  hardly  imi- 
tative at  all,  but  express  emotions  which,  till  music 
suggests  them,  have  been  not  only  unknown  but 
unimaginable.  Poetry  is  both  an  imitative  and  an 
imaginative  art.  As  a  choice  and  condensed  form 
of  emotional  speech,  it  possesses  the  reality  which  de- 
pends on  its  directly  recalling  our  previous  thoughts 
and  feelings.  But  as  a  system  of  rhythmical  and 
melodious  effects  —  not  indebted  for  their  potency 

represents  a  riew  so  diifereut  from  mine  (though  quite  equally 
legitimate),  that  it  would  hardly  have  served  my  present  purpose. 

I 


114  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

to  their  associated  ideas  alone  —  it  appeals  also 
to  that  mysterious  power  by  which  mere  arrange- 
ments of  sound  can  convey  an  emotion  which  no 
one  could  have  predicted  beforehand,  and  which  no 
known  laws  can  explain. 

It  is  true  that  the  limits  of  melody  within  which 
poetry  works  are  very  narrow.  Between  an  ex- 
quisite and  a  worthless  line  tliere  is  no  difference 
of  sound  in  any  way  noticeable  to  an  unintelligent 
ear.  For  the  mere  volume  of  sound  —  the  actual 
sonority  of  the  passage  —  is  a  quite  subordinate 
element  in  the  effect,  which  is  produced  mainly  by 
relations  and  sequences  of  vowels  and  consonants, 
too  varying  and  delicate  to  be  reproducible  by  rule, 
although  far  more  widely  similar,  among  European 
languages  at  least,  than  is  commonly  perceived.* 
But  this  limitation  of  the  means  employed,  which 
may  itself  be  an  added  source  of  pleasure  from  the 
sense  which  it  may  give  of  difficulty  overcome,  is 
by  no  means  without  analogies  in  other  forms  of 
art.  The  poet  thrills  us  with  delight  by  a  collo- 
cation of  consonants,  much  as  the  etcher  suggests 
infinity  by  a  scratch  of  the  needle. 

'  An  interesting  confirmation  of  this  statement  may  be  obtained 
by  reading  some  passage  of  Latin  poetry  first  according  to  the 
English  and  then  according  to  the  Italian  or  the  revived  Latin 
pronunciation.  The  effects  observed  in  the  first  case  are  not 
altered — are  merely  enriched — by  the  transference  of  the  vowel 
sounds  to  another  scale.  But  this  natural  music  of  language  (if 
■we  may  so  term  it)  is  too  complex  a  subject  to  be  more  than 
touched  on  here. 


il]  VIRGIL.  116 

And,  indeed,  in  poetry  of  the  first  order,  almost 
every  word  (to  use  a  mathematical  metaphor)  is 
raised  to  a  higher  power.  It  continues  to  be  an 
articulate  sound  and  a  logical  step  in  the  argxmient ; 
but  it  becomes  also  a  musical  sound  and  a  centre 
of  emotional  force.  It  becomes  a  musical  sound ; — 
that  is  to  say,  its  consonants  and  vowels  are  arranged 
to  bear  a  relation  to  the  consonants  and  vowels  near 
it,  —  a  relation  of  which  accent,  quantity,  rhyme, 
assonance,  and  alliteration  are  specialised  forms,  but 
which  may  be  of  a  character  more  subtle  than  any 
of  these.  And  it  becomes  a  centre  of  emotional 
force ;  that  is  to  say,  the  complex  associations 
which  it  evokes  modify  the  associations  evoked  by 
other  words  in  the  same  passage  in  a  way  quite 
distinct  from  grammatical  or  logical  connection. 
The  poet,  therefore,  must  avoid  two  opposite  dangers. 
If  he  thinks  too  exclusively  of  the  music  and  the 
colouring  of  his  verse  —  of  the  imaginative  means 
of  suggesting  thought  and  feeling — what  he  writes 
will  lack  reality  and  sense.  But  if  he  cares  only  to 
communicate  definite  thought  and  feeling  according 
to  the  ordinary  laws  of  eloquent  speech,  his  verse  is 
likely  to  be  deficient  in  magical  and  suggestive  power. 

And  what  is  meant  by  the  vague  praise  so  often 
bestowed  on  Virgil's  unequalled  style  is  practically 
this,  that  he  has  been,  perhaps,  more  successful 
than  any  other  poet  in  fusing  together  the  expressed 
and  the  suggested  emotion ;  that  he  has  discovered 
the  hidden  music  which  can  give  to  every  shade  of 


116  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

feeling  its  distinction,  its  permanence,  and  its  charm ; 
that  his  thoughts  seem  to  come  to  us  on  the  wings 
of  melodies  prepared  for  them  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world.  But  in  treating  of  so  airy  and 
abstract  a  matter  it  is  well  to  have  frequent 
recourse  to  concrete  illustration.  Before  we  attempt 
further  descriiDtion  of  Virgil's  style,  or  his  habitual 
mood  of  mind,  let  us  clear  our  conceptions  by  a 
careful  examination  of  some  few  passages  from  his 
poems.  As  we  turn  the  leaves  of  the  book  we  find 
it  hard  to  know  on  what  passages  it  were  best  to 
dweU.  What  varied  memories  are  stu-red  by  one 
line  after  another  as  we  read !  What  associations 
of  all  dates,  from  Virgil's  own  lifetime  down  to  the 
political  debates  of  to-day !  On  this  line  ^  the 
poet's  own  voice  faltered  as  he  read.  At  this ' 
Augustus  and  Octavia  melted  into  passionate  weep- 
ing. Here  is  the  verse '  which  Augustine  quotes 
as  typical  in  its  majestic  rhythm  of  all  the  pathos 
and  the  glory  of  pagan  art,  from  which  the  Christian 
was  bound  to  flee.  This  is  the  couplet*  which 
F^nelon  could  never  read  without  admiring  tears. 
This  line  Filippo  Strozzi  scrawled  on  his  prison- 
wall,  when  he  slew  himself  to  avoid  worse  ill.^ 
These  are  the  words*  which,  like  a  trumpet-call, 

1  Hoc  solum  nomeu  quouiam  de  conjiige  restat.     A.  iv.  324. 

"  Tu  Marcellus  eris,  etc.     A.  vl  883. 

'  Infelix  simulacrum  atque  ipsius  umbra  Creusae.     A.  ii.  772. 

*  Aude,  hospes,  contemnere  opes,  et  te  quoque  dignum 
Fiuge  deo,  rebusque  veni  non  asper  egenis.     A.  viii.  364. 

^  Exoriare  aliquia  iiostris  ex  ossibus  ultor.     A.  iv.  025. 

•  Heu  !  fuge  crudelis  terras,  fuge  litus  avarum.      A.  iii.  44. 


II.]  VIRGIL.  117 

roused  Savonarola  to  seek  the  things  that  are  above. 
And  tliis  line  ^  Dante  heard  on  the  lips  of  the 
Church  Triumphant,  at  the  opening  of  the  Paradise 
of  God.  Here,  too,  are  the  long  roU  of  prophecies, 
sought  tremblingly  in  the  monk's  secret  cell,  or  echo- 
ing in  the  ears  of  emperors  ^  from  Apollo's  shrine, 
which  have  answered  the  appeal  made  by  so  many 
an  eager  heart  to  the  Virgilian  Lots — that  strange 
invocation  which  has  been  addressed,  I  believe,  to 
Homer,  Virgil,  and  the  Bible  alone ;  the  offspring 
of  men's  passionate  desire  to  bring  to  bear  on  their 
own  lives  the  wisdom  and  the  beauty  which  they 
revered  in  the  past,  to  make  their  prophets  in  such 
wise  as  they  might — 

"  Speak  from  those  lips  of  immemorial  speech, 
If  but  one  word  for  each." 

Such  references  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 
But  there  is  not  at  any  rate  need  to  prove  the 
estimation  in  which  Virgil  has  been  held  in  the 
past.  The  force  of  that  tradition  would  only  be 
weakened  by  specification.  "  The  chastest  poet," 
in  Bacon's  words,  "  and  royalest,  Virgilius  Maro, 
that  to  the  memory  of  man  is  known,"  has  lacked 
in  no  age  until  our  own  the  concordant  testimony 
of  the  civilised  world.  No  poet  has  lain  so  close 
to  so  many  hearts ;  no  words  so  often  as  his  have 

'  Manibu3  date  lilia  plenis.     A.  vi.  884. 

s  Claudius,     Hadrian,    Severus,   etc.,     "in     tempio    Apollinis 
Cumani. " 


118  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [u 

sprung  to  men's  lips  in  moments  of  excitement  and 
self-revelation,  from  the  one  iierce  line  retained  and 
chanted  by  the  untameahle  boy  who  was  to  be 
Emperor  of  Rome/  to  the  impassioned  prophecy  of 
the  great  English  statesman^  as  he  pleaded  till  morn- 
ing's light  for  the  freedom  of  a  continent  of  slaves. 

And  those  who  have  followed  by  more  secret 
ways  the  influence  which  these  utterances  have 
exercised  on  mankind  know  well,  perhaps  them- 
selves have  shared,  the  mass  of  emotion  which  has 
slowly  gathered  round  certain  lines  of  Virgil's  as  it 
has  round  certain  texts  of  the  Bible,  till  they  come 
to  us  charged  with  more  than  an  individual  passion 
and  with  a  meaning  vnder  than  their  own — with 
the  cry  of  the  despair  of  all  generations,'  with  the 
yearning  of  all  loves  unappeased,*  with  the  anguish 
of  aU  partings,'  "  beneath  the  pressure  of  separate 
eternities." 

Perhaps  there  will  be  no  better  way  of  forming 
an  intimate  conception  of  the  poet's  own  nature 
than  by  analysing  his  treatment  of  two  or  three  of 

'  Clodius  Albinus.      Arma  amens  capio  ;   nee  sat  rationis  in 
armis.     A  ii.  314. 

2  Pitt.     G.  i.  250. 

Kosque  ubi  primus  equis  Oriens  adilavit  anhelis, 
Illic  sera  rubens  aeeendit  lumina  Vesper. 

^  Quo  res  summa  loco,  Panthu !  quam  prendimus  arcem  ?    A. 
ii.  322. 

*  Ilium  absens  absentem  auditque  videtque.     A.  iv.  83. 

'  Quern  fugis  ?  extremum  fato,  quod  to  adloquor,  hoc  est.     A 
vi.  466. 


a.]  VIEGIL.  119 

his  principal  characters,  and  especially  of  his  hero, 
so  often  considered  as  forming  the  weakest  element 
in  his  poem,  ^neas,  no  doubt,  looks  at  once  tame 
and  rigid  beside  the  eager  and  spontaneous  warriors 
of  the  Homeric  epoch,  and,  so  far  as  the  iEneid  is 
a  poem  of  action  and  adventure,  he  is  not  a  stirring 
or  an  appropriate  hero.  But  we  must  not  forget 
that  there  was  a  special  difficulty  in  making  his 
character  at  once  consistent  and  attractive.  He  is 
a  man  who  has  survived  his  strongest  passion,  his 
deepest  sorrow  ;  who  has  seen  his  "  Ilium  settle  into 
flame,"  and  from  "  Creusa's  melancholy  shade,"  and 
the  great  ghost  of  Hector  fallen  in  vain,  has  heard 
the  words  which  sum  the  last  disaster  and  close 
the  tale  of  Troy.  It  is  no  fault  of  his  that  he  is 
left  alive ;  and  the  poem  opens  with  tlie  cry  of  his 
regret  that  he  too  has  not  been  able  to  fall  dead 
upon  the  Trojan  plain,  "  where  Hector  lies,  and  huge 
Sarpedon,  and  Simois  roUs  so  many  warriors'  corses 
to  the  sea."  But  it  is  not  always  at  a  man's 
crowning  moment  that  his  destiny  and  his  duty 
close ;  and  for  those  who  fain  had  perished  with 
what  they  held  most  dear,  fate  may  reserve  a  more 
tedious  trial,  and  the  sad  triumphs  of  a  life  whose 
sun  has  set.  It  is  to  this  note  that  all  the  adven- 
tures of  ^neas  respond.  We  find  him  when  he 
lands  at  Carthage  at  once  absorbed  in  the  pictures 
which  show  the  story  of  Priam  and  of  his  city's 
fall— 


120  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [u. 

"  What  realm  of  earth,  he  answered,  doth  not  know, 
0  friend,  our  sad  pre-eminence  of  woe  1 
Tears  waken  tears,  and  honour  honour  brings, 
And  mortal  hearts  are  moved  by  mortal  things."  i 

Then  he  himself  tells  that  tale,  with  an  intensity  of 
pathos  too  well  known  to  need  further  allusion. 
And  when  his  story  brings  him  to  calmer  scenes — 
to  his  meeting  with '"  Hector's  Andromache  "  on  the 
Chaonian  shore  —  those  who  have  loved  and  lost 
will  recognise  in  their  colloquy  the  touches  that 
paint  the  fond  illusion  of  the  heart  which  clings, 
with  a  half  smile  at  its  own  sad  persistency,  to  the 
very  name  and  semblance  of  the  places  by  love 
made  dear,^  which  seeks  in  the  eyes  or  movements 
of  surviving  kindred  some  glance  or  gesture  of  the 
dead.'  Take  one  more  instance  only — the  meeting 
of  ^neas  with  Deiphobus  in  the  underworld — and 
note  how  the  same  cry  breaks  from  him  *  as  that 
with  which  he  greeted  the  vision  of  Hector,^  —  a 
cry  of  reverence  heightened  by  compassion — -that 

'  Quis  jam  locus,  inquit.  Achate, 
Quae  regio  in  terris  nostri  non  plena  laboris  ? 
En  Priamus  !  sunt  hie  etiam  sua  praemia  laudi  ; 
Sunt  lacrimae  rerum,  et  mentera  mortalia  tangunt.  A.  i.  459. 
^  Procedo,  et  parvam  Troiam  simulataque  magnis 
Pergama  et  arentem  Xanthi  cognomine  rivum 
Adguosco,  Scaeaeque  amplector  limina  porfcie.     A.  iii.  349. 

^  Cape  dona  extrema  tuoruni 
0  mihi  sola  mei  super  Astyanactis  imago  ! 
Sic  oculos,  sic  ille  manus,  sic  ora  ferebat ; 
Et  nunc  aequali  tecum  pubesceret  aevo.     A.  iii.  488, 
*  A  vL  502.  ^  A.  ii.  285. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  121 

mingling  of  emotions  which  makes  the  utmost 
ardour  of  worship  and  of  love — a  cry  of  indignation 
such  as  rends  the  generous  heart  at  the  sight  of  an 
exalted  spirit  on  which  vileness  and  treachery  have 
been  allowed  to  work  their  wilL  How  delicately 
does  the  "  anima  cortese  Mantovana  "  stand  revealed 
in  the  lofty  reverence  with  which  ^neas  addresses 
the  maimed  Deiphobus/  even  while  he  "  hardly 
knows  him,  as  he  trembles  and  strives  to  hide  his 
ghastly  wounds  ! "  How  strangely  sweet  the  cadence 
in  which  the  living  friend  laments  that  he  could 
not  see  that  other,  as  he  lay  in  death,^  could  only 
invoke  his  spirit  with  a  threefold  salutation,  and 
rear  an  empty  tomb  !  In  such  sad  converse  ^neas 
loses  the  brief  time  granted  for  his  visit  to  the 
underworld,  till  the  Sibyl  warns  him  that  it  is 
being  spent  in  vain — 

"  The  night  is  going,  Trojan  ;  shall  it  go 
Lost  in  an  aimless  memory  of  woe  ? "  ^ 

But  he  does  not  part  from  his  murdered  friend  till 
he  has  given  the  assurance  that  all  that  could  be 
done  has  been  done ;  that  he  has  paid  the  utter- 
most honour  and  satisfied  the  unforgetful  shade. 

Yet  once  more  ;  perhaps  the  deepest  note  of  all 
is  struck  when  the  old  love  is  encountered  by  a 
new,  and  yet  both  that  memory  and  that  fresh  joy 

'  Deijihobe  armipotens,  genus  alto  a  sanguine  Teucri.     A.  vi.  500. 

"  A.  vi.  507. 

'  Nox  ruit,  Aenea,  nos  flendo  ducimus  horas.     A.  vi.  539. 


122  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [u 

must  give  place  to  an  over-ruling  call.  When  Dido 
implores  ^neas  to  remain  in  Carthage,  after  the  mes- 
senger of  Jove  has  bidden  him  depart,  he  answers  in 
words  whose  solemn  movement  reveals  a  long-un- 
uttered  pain,  and  shows  that  neither  in  Carthage, 
nor  yet  in  Italy,  can  his  heart  expect  a  home  ^ — 

"  Me  had  the  fates  allowed  my  woes  to  still, — 
Take  my  sad  life,  and  shape  it  at  my  will, — ■ 
First  had  I  sought  my  buried  home  and  joy, 
Loves  unforgotten,  and  the  last  of  Troy  ; — 
Ay,  Priam's  palace  had  re-risen  then, 
A  ghost  of  Ilium  for  heart-broken  men." 

It  is  thus  that  the  solemn  appeal  evokes  the 
unlooked-for  avowal ;  once  and  for  all  he  makes  it 
known  that  the  memory  which  to  others  is  growing 
dim  and  half-forgotten  in  the  past,  is  to  him  ever 
present  and  ever  guiding,  and  always  and  unalterably 
dear. 

No  doubt  it  is  probable  that  Virgil  would  liave 
been  ill  able  to  describe  a  more  buoyant  and  ad- 
venturous hero.  No  doubt  it  is  true  that  such  a 
nature  as  that  of  ^neas  is  iU  fitted  to  fill  the  lead- 
ing role  in  a  poem  of  action.  But  granting  that  we 
have  him  here  in  the  wrong  place,  and  should  have 
preferred  a  character  whom  the  poet  could  not  draw, 
we  yet  surely  cannot  say,  when  we  remember  Eneas' 
story,  that  the  picture  given  of  him  is  meaningless 
or  untrue;  we  cannot  call  it  unnatural  that  we 
>  A.  iv.  340 


n.)  VIRGIL,  123 

should  find  in  all  his  conduct  something  predeter- 
mined, hieratic,  austere ;  we  cannot  wonder  if  the 
only  occasion  on  which  he  rises  to  passionate  excite- 
ment is  where  he  implores  the  Sibyl  for  pity's  sake 
to  bring  him  to  the  sight  and  presence  of  the  soul 
he  holds  so  dear;'  or  if,  when  from  that  soul  in 
Paradise  he  has  learnt  the  secrets  of  the  dead,  his 
temper  thenceforth  is  rather  that  of  the  Christian 
saint  than  of  the  Pagan  warrior,  and  he  becomes  the 
type  of  those  mediaeval  heroes,  those  Galahads  and 
Percivals,  whose  fiercest  exploits  are  performed  with 
a  certain  remoteness  of  spirit  —  who  look  beyond 
blood  and  victory  to  a  concourse  of  unseen  specta- 
tors and  a  sanction  that  is  not  of  men. 

It  is,  however,  on  another  character  that  the 
personal  interest  of  the  u3Eneid  has  been  generally 
felt  to  turn.  The  story  of  Dido  has  been  said  to 
mark  the  da^\Ti  of  romance.  It  is  no  doubt  the 
case,  though  how  far  this  is  accidental  it  is  hard  to 
say,  that  the  ancients  have  dealt  oftener  with  the 
tragedies  resulting  from  the  passion  of  love,  than 
with  the  delineation  of  that  passion  itself.  Sappho, 
in  her  early  world,  had  written,  as  it  were,  the  epi- 
graph over  love's  temple-door  in  letters  of  iire. 
Catullus  had  caught  the  laughing  glory  of  Septimius 
and  Acme — of  amorous  girl  and  boy ;  Lucretius 
had  painted,  with  all  the  mastering  force  of  Eome, 
the  pangs  of  passion  baffled  by  its  own  intensity  and 
"  A.  vi  117 


124  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

festering  unsated  in  a  heart  at  war.  But  once  only, 
perhaps,  do  we  find  the  joy  of  love's  appearing,  the 
desolation  of  his  flight,  sung  of  before  Virgil's  days 
with  a  majesty  and  a  pathos  like  his  own.  No  one 
who  has  read  has  forgotten  how  "  once  to  Ilion's 
towers  there  seemed  to  come  the  spirit  of  a  windless 
calm — a  gentle  darling  of  wealth,  soft  dart  of  answer- 
ing eyes,  love's  soul-subduing  flower."  Few  have 
heard  unmoved  of  the  "  semblances  of  mournful 
dreams "  which  brought  to  that  deserted  husband 
"  an  empty  joy ;  for  all  in  vain,  when  liis  delight  he 
seemed  to  see,  forth  gliding  from  his  arms  the  vision 
vanished  far,  on  swift  wings  following  the  ways  of 
sleep."  In  ^Eschylus,  as  in  Virgil,  the  story  derives 
its  pathos  from  the  severing  of  happy  loves.  In 
.^schylus  they  are  separated  by  the  woman's  mis- 
doing; in  Virgil  by  a  liigher  obligation  which  the 
man  is  bidden  to  fulfil,  yet  an  obligation  which  the 
woman  bitterly  denies,  and  which  we  are  ourselves 
half  unwilling  to  allow.  Neither  of  these  plots  is 
quite  satisfactory.  For  in  the  atmosphere  of  noble 
poetry  we  cannot  readily  endure  that  love  should 
either  be  marred  by  sin  or  unreconciled  with  duty; 
and  no  cause  of  lovers'  separation  is  in  harmony  with 
our  highest  mood,  unless  it  be  the  touch  of  death, 
whose  power  is  but  a  momentary  thing,  or  so  high  a 
call  of  honour  as  can  give  to  the  parting  death's  pro- 
mise and  not  only  his  pain. 

The  power  with  which  Dido  is  drawn  is  unques- 


11.]  VIRGIL.  126 

tionable.  Her  transitions  of  feeling,  her  ardent 
soliloquies,  reveal  a  dramatic  force  in  VirgU  of  a  very 
unexpected  kind — an  insight  into  the  female  heart 
which  is  seldom  gained  by  the  exercise  of  imagina- 
tion alone.  But  when  we  compare  the  Fourth 
^neid  with  later  poems  on  the  same  lofty  level — 
with  the  Vita  Nuova,  for  instance,  or  with  Laodamia 
— we  feel  how  far  our  whole  conception  of  woman- 
hood has  advanced  since  Virgil's  day  under  the 
influence  of  Christianity,  chivalry,  civilisation.  A 
nature  like  Dido's  will  now  repel  as  much  as  it 
attracts  us.  For  we  have  learnt  that  a  woman  may 
be  childlike  as  well  as  impassioned,  and  soft  as  well 
as  strong;  that  she  may  glow  with  all  love's  fire 
and  yet  be  delicately  obedient  to  the  lightest  whisper 
of  honour.  The  most  characteristic  factor  in  Dido's 
story  is  of  a  more  external  kind.  It  is  the  contrast 
between  the  queen's  stately  majesty  and  the  sub- 
duing power  of  love  which  is  most  effectively  used 
to  intensify  the  dramatic  situation.  And  the  picture 
suggests  a  few  reflections  as  to  the  way  in  which  the 
wealth  and  magnificence  of  Eoman  society  affected 
the  poets  of  the  age. 

It  happens  that  three  great  Latin  poets,  in  strik- 
ingly similar  passages,^  have  drawn  the  contrast 
between  a  simple  and  a  splendid  life.  Horace,  here, 
as  elsewhere,  shows  himself  the  ideal  poet  of  society ; 
more  cultivated,  sensitive,  affectionate  than  the  men 
'  Lucr.  ii.  24.     Virg.  G.  ii.  468.     Hor.  Cann.  iii.  1,  41. 


126  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [a 

and  women  among  whom  he  moves,  yet  not  so  far 
above  them  or  aloof  from  them  but  that  he  can 
delight,  even  more  keenly  than  they,  in  their  luxury 
and  splendour  —  can  enjoy  it  without  envy,  as  he 
can  dispense  with  it  without  regret.  Lucretius  is 
the  aristocrat  with  a  mission ;  to  him  the  lamp- 
bearing  images,  and  the  blaze  of  midnight  banquets, 
and  the  harp  that  echoes  beneath  the  ceiling's  fretted 
gold — all  these  are  but  a  vam  and  bitter  jest  which 
cannot  drive  superstition  from  the  soul,  nor  kill  those 
fears  of  death  which  "mingle  xmabashed  amongst 
kings  and  kesars,"  awed  not  at  all  by  golden  glitter 
or  by  purple  sheen.  Virgil  is  the  rustic  of  genius, 
well  educated,  of  delicately  refined  nature,  wholly 
free  from  base  admirations  or  desires,  but  "reared 
amid  the  woods  and  copses,"  and  retaining  to  the 
last  some  touch  of  shyness  in  the  presence  of  tliis 
world's  grandeur;  ever  eager  to  escape  from  the 
palace -halls  into  his  realm  of  solitude  and  song. 
The  well-known  passage  in  the  Georgics  depicts,  as 
we  may  well  imagine,  in  its  vein  of  dignified  irony, 
his  own  sensations  when  he  mixed  with  the  society 
which  so  eagerly  sought  him  at  Eome.  We  have 
his  embarrassment  at  the  crowd  of  visitors  coming 
and  going  as  he  calls  on  PoUio  or  Maecenas  at  the 
fashionable  hour  of  7  a.m.  ;  his  ennui  as  he  ac- 
companies over  the  house  a  party  of  virtuosi,  open- 
mouthed  at  the  aesthetic  furniture ;  and  even  his 
disgust   at   the   uncomfortable  magnificence  of   his 


u.]  VIEGIL.  127 

bedchamber,  and  at  the  scented  oil  which  is  served 
to  him  with  his  salad  at  dinner.*  And  what  a 
soaring  change  when  from  the  stately  metrical  roll 
which  reflects  the  pomp  and  luxury  of  the  imperial 
city,  he  mounts  without  an  effort  into  that  airy  rush 
which  blends  together  all  "  the  glory  of  the  divine 
country,"  its  caverns,  and  its  living  lakes,  and  haunts 
of  wild  things  in  the  glade,  its  "  life  that  never  dis- 
appoints," its  life -long  affections,  and  its  faith  in 
God  12 

Yet  Virgd's  familiarity  with  the  statelier  life  of 
Rome  was  not  unfruitful.  It  has  given  to  him  in  his 
.(Eneid  an  added  touch  of  dignity,  as  of  one  who  has 
seen  face  to  face  such  greatness  as  earth  can  offer, 
and  paints  without  misgiving  the  commerce  of 
potentates  and  kings.  And  thus  it  is  that  he  has 
filled  every  scene  of  Dido's  story  with  a  sense  of 
royal  scope  and  unchartered  power ;  as  of  an  exist- 
ence where  all  honours  are  secure  already,  and  all 
else  that  is  wished  for  won,  only  the  heart  demands 
an  inner  sanctuary,  and  life's  magnificence  still  lacks 
its  crowning  joy.  First  we  have  the  banquet,  when 
love  is  as  yet  unacknowledged  and  unknown,  but 
the  "  signs  of  his  coming  and  sounds  of  liis  feet " 

1  Si  non  ingentem  foribus  domus  alta  superbLs 
Mane  salutantum  totis  vomit  aedibus  undam, 
Nee  varies  inhiaut  [lulchra  testudiiie  postis, 
Inlusasque  auro  vestes,  Ephyreiaque  sera. 
Alba  neque  Assyrio  fucatur  lana  veneno, 
Kec  casia  liquidi  cornimpitur  usus  olivi.     G,  ii.  401. 
"-  G.  ii.  473. 


128  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

have  begun  to  raise  all  tilings  to  an  iutenser  glow ; 
when  the  singer's  song  rises  more  glorious,  and  all 
voices  ring  more  full  and  free/  and  ancestral  cere- 
monies are  kindled  into  life  by  the  ungovernable 
gladness  of  the  soul.^  Then  comes  the  secluded 
colloquy  between  queen  and  princess,^  as  they  dis- 
cuss the  guest  who  made  the  night  so  strange  and 
new ;  and  then  the  rush  of  Dido's  gathering  passion 
among  the  majestic  symbols  of  her  sway.* 

"With  him  the  queen  the  long  ways  wanders  down, 
And  shows  him  Sidon's  wealth  and  Carthage  town, 
And  oft  would  speak,  but  as  the  words  begin 
Fails  her  breath  caught  by  mastering  Love  within  ; — 
Once  more  in  feast  must  she  the  night  employ, 
Must  hear  once  more  her  Trojan  tell  of  Troy, 
Hang  on  his  kingly  voice,  and  shuddering  see 
The  imagined  scenes  where  every  scene  is  he. 
Then  guests  are  gone  and  night  and  morn  are  met, 
Far  off  in  heaven  the  solemn  stars  have  set, — 
Thro'  the  empty  halls  alone  she  mourns  again, 
Lies  on  the  couch  where  hath  her  hero  lain, 
Sees  in  the  dark  his  kingly  face,  and  hears 
His  voice  imagined  in  her  amorous  ears." 

And  through  all  the  scenes  that  follow,  the  same 
royal  accent  runs  till  the  last  words  that  lift  our 
imagination  from  the  tumultuous  grief  around  the 
dying  Dido,  to  the  scarce  more  terrible  tragedy  of 
a  great  nation's  fall.* 

'  A.  i.  725.  '  A.  i.  738.  »  A.  iv.  10 

*  A.  iv.  74.  »  A.  iv.  669. 


a.]  TIRGIL.  129 

"  Not  else  than  thus,  when  foes  have  forced  a  way, 
On  Tyre  or  Carthage  falls  the  fatal  day ; — 
'Mid  such  wild  woe  crash  down  in  roaring  fire 
Temples  and  towers  of  Carthage  or  of  Tyre." 

And  assuredly  the  "Deeds  of  the  Eoman  People,"' 
the  title  which  many  men  gave  to  the  ^neid  when 
it  first  appeared,  would  not  have  been  complete 
without  some  such  chapter  as  tliis.  The  prophecy 
of  Anchises,  the  shield  of  Vulcan,  record  for  us  the 
imperial  city's  early  virtue,  her  world-wide  sway ; 
but  it  is  in  this  tale  of  Carthage  that  the  poet  has 
written  in  a  burning  parable  the  passion  and  the 
pomp  of  Rome. 

And  yet  in  spite  of  all  the  force  and  splendour 
with  which  Dido  is  described,  we  feel  instinctively 
that  she  is  not  drawn  by  a  lover's  hand.  We  have 
in  her  no  indication  of  the  poet's  own  ideal  and 
inward  dream.  If  that  is  to  be  sought  at  all,  it 
must  be  sought  elsewhere.  And,  perhaps,  if  the 
fancy  be  permitted,  we  may  imagine  that  we  discern 
it  best  in  the  strange  and  yearning  beauty  of  the 
passages  which  speak  of  the  glorious  girlhood  of 
Camilla,  the  maid  imwon ;  Camilla,  whose  death  a 
nymph  avenges,  and  whose  tale  Diana  tells ;  Camilla, 
whose  name  leapt  first  of  all  to  Virgil's  lips  as  he 
spoke  to  Dante  of  their  Italy  in  the  imderworld.^ 
Surely  there  is  something  more  than  a  mere  poetic  fer- 
vour in  the  lines  which  describe  the  love  which  lit  on 

'  "  Gesta  populi  Eomani. "  '^  Inf.  i.  107. 

K 


130  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

the  girl  while  yet  a  child,  and  followed  her  till  her 
jjlorious  hour;'  the  silent  reverence  which  watched 
the  footsteps  of  the  maiden  "  whom  so  many  mothers 
for  their  sons  desired  in  vain  ; "  ^  the  breath  caught 
with  a  wistful  wonder,  the  long  and  lingering  gaze,' 
the  thrill  of  admiration  which  stirs  the  heart  with 
the  very  concord  of  joy  and  pain.  Where  has  he 
more  subtly  mingled  majesty  with  sweetness  than  in 
the  lines  which  paint  her  happy  nurture  among  the 
woodlands  where  her  father  was  a  banished  king  ? 
her  wild  and  supple  strength  enhanced  by  the  con- 
trasting thought  of  the  "  flowing  gown  and  golden 
circlet,"*  which  might  have  weighted  the  free  limbs 
with  royal  purple  or  wound  among  the  tresses  that 
were  hooded  with  the  tiger's  spoil. 

Thus  much,  at  least,  we  may  say,  that  while  in 
poetry  the  higher  and  truer  forms  of  love,  as  distin- 
guished both  from  friendship  and  from  passion, 
appear  first  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in  Dante  above 
all,  yet  passages  hke  these  reveal  to  us  the  early  stir- 
ring of  conceptions  which  were  hereafter  to  be  so 
dominant  and  so  sublime — the  dawning  instinct  of 

'  A.  xi.  537.  2  ^_  jjj  53i_ . 

'  Illam  omnis  tectis  agiisque  effusa  inventus 

Turbaque  miratiir  matrum  et  prospectat  euntem, 
Attonitis  inhiaus  animis,  ut  regius  ostro 
Velet  honos  levis  humeros,  ut  fibula  crinem 
Auro  intemectat,  Lyciam  ut  gerat  ipsa  pharetrara 
Et  pastoralem  praefixa  cuspide  myrtum. — A.  vii.  812. 

'  Pro  crinali  auro,  pro  longae  tegmine  pallae 
Tigridis  exuviae  per  dorsum  a  vertice  pendent,  etc. — A.  xi.  57fl. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  131 

a  worship  which  should  be  purer  and  more  pervad- 
ing than  any  personal  desire — of  a  reverence  which 
should  have  power  for  a  season  to  keep  Love  him- 
self at  bay,  and  to  which  a  girl's  gladness  and 
beauty  should  become  a  part  "  of  something  far 
more  deeply  interfused,"  and  touch  the  spirit  with 
the  same  sense  of  yearning  glory  which  descends 
on  us  from  the  heaven  of  stars. 

To  dwell  thus  on  some  of  the  passages  in  Virgil 
whose  fuU  meaning  escapes  a  hasty  perusal,  may 
help  us  to  realise  one  of  his  characteristic  charms 
— his  power  of  concentrating  the  strangeness  and 
fervour  of  the  romantic  spirit  within  the  severe  and 
dignified  limits  of  classical  art.  To  this  power  in 
great  measure  we  must  ascribe  his  unique  position 
as  the  only  unbroken  link  between  the  ancient  and 
the  modern  world.  In  literary  style  and  treatment, 
just  as  in  religious  dogma  and  tendency,  there  has 
been  something  in  him  which  has  appealed  in  turn 
to  ages  the  most  discrepant  and  the  most  remote. 
He  has  been  cited  in  different  centuries  as  an 
authority  on  the  worship  of  river-nymphs  and  on 
the  incarnation  of  Christ.  And  similarly  the  poems 
which  were  accepted  as  soon  as  published  as  the 
standard  of  Latin  classicality,  became  afterwards 
the  direct  or  indirect  original  of  half  the  Eenais- 
sance  epics  of  adventure  and  love. 

We  feel,  however,  that  considerations  like  these 
leave  us  still  far  from  any  actual  realisation  of  the 


132  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

means  by  which  the  poet  managed  to  produce  this 
singular  complex  of  impressions.  In  dealing  with 
poetry,  as  with  the  kindred  arts,  criticism  almost 
necessarily  ceases  to  be  fruitful  or  definite  at  the 
very  point  where  the  interest  of  the  problems  be- 
comes the  greatest.  We  must  be  content  with  such 
narrower  inquiries  as  may  give  us  at  least  a  clearer 
conception  of  the  nature  and  difficulties  of  the 
achievement  at  which  the  artist  has  aimed.  We 
may,  for  instance,  discuss  the  capabilities  of  the 
particular  language  in  which  a  poet  writes,  just  as 
we  may  discuss  the  kind  of  effects  producible  on 
violin  or  pianoforte,  in  water-colour  or  oil  And 
any  estimate  of  the  Latin,  as  a  literary  language, 
implies  at  once  a  comparison  with  the  speech  of 
that  people  from  whose  admirable  productions  Latin 
literature  was  avowedly  derived. 

No  words  that  men  can  any  more  set  side  by 
side  can  ever  affect  the  mind  again  Like  some  of  the 
great  passages  of  Homer.  For  in  them  it  seems  as 
if  all  that  makes  life  precious  were  in  the  act  of 
being  created  at  once  and  together — language  itself, 
and  the  first  emotions,  and  the  inconceivable  charm 
of  song.  When  we  hear  one  single  sentence  of 
Anticleia's  answer,*  as  she  begins — 

ovr  e/Jtey'  fv  fieyapoicriv  €&rK07ros  lo)^€aipa — 

what  words  can  express  the  sense  which  we  receive 

1  Od.  xi.  198. 


IL]  VIRGIL,  133 

of  an  effortless  and  absolute  sublimity,  the  feeling 
of  morning  freshness  and  elemental  power,  the 
delight  which  is  to  all  other  intellectual  delights 
what  youth  is  to  all  other  joys  ?  And  what  a 
language !  which  has  written,  as  it  were,  of  itself 
those  last  two  words  for  the  poet,  which  offers  them 
as  the  fruit  of  its  inmost  structure  and  the  bloom 
of  its  early  day  !  Beside  speech  like  this  Virgil's 
seems  elaborate,  and  Dante's  crabbed,  and  Shake- 
speare's barbarous.  There  never  has  been,  there 
never  will  be,  a  language  like  the  dead  Greek.  For 
Greek  had  all  the  merits  of  other  tongues  without 
their  accompanying  defects.  It  had  the  monu- 
mental weight  and  brevity  of  the  Latin  without  its 
rigid  unmanageability ;  the  copiousness  and  flexi- 
bility of  the  German  without  its  heavy  commonness 
and  guttural  superfluity ;  the  pellucidity  of  the 
French  without  its  jejuneness ;  the  force  and  reality 
of  the  English  without  its  structureless  comminu- 
tion. But  it  was  an  instrument  beyond  the  control 
of  any  but  its  creators.  When  the  great  days  of 
Greece  were  past,  it  was  the  language  which  made 
speeches  and  wrote  books,  and  not  the  men.  Its 
French  brilliancy  taught  Isocrates  to  polish  platitude 
into  epigram ;  its  German  profundity  enabled  Lyco- 
phron  to  pass  off  nonsense  as  oracles;  its  Italian 
flow  encouraged  Apollonius  Rhodius  to  shroud  in 
long-drawn  sweetness  the  langour  of  his  inventive 
souL     There  was  nothing  except  the  language  left. 


134  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

Like  the  golden  brocade  in  a  queen's  sepulclire,  its 
imperishable  splendour  was  stretched  stiffly  across 
the  skeleton  of  a  life  and  thought  which  inhabited 
there  no  more. 

The  history  of  the  Latin  tongue  was  widely 
different.  We  do  not  meet  it  full-grown  at  the 
dawn  of  history ;  we  see  it  take  shape  and  strength 
beneath  our  eyes.  We  can  watch,  as  it  were,  each 
stage  in  the  forging  of  the  thunderbolt;  from  the 
day  when  Ennius,  Naevius,  Pacuvius  inweave  their 
"  three  shafts  of  twisted  storm,"  ^  till  Lucretius 
adds  "  the  sound  and  terror,"  and  Catullus  "  the 
west  wind  and  the  fire."  It  grows  with  the  growth 
of  the  Eoman  people ;  it  wins  its  words  at  the 
sword's  point ;  and  the  "  conquered  nations  in  long 
array"  pay  tribute  of  their  thought  and  speech  as 
surely  as  of  their  blood  and  gold. 

In  the  region  of  poetry  this  union  of  strenuous 
effort  with  eager  receptivity  is  conspicuously  seen. 
The  barbarous  Saturnian  lines,  hovering  between  an 
accentual  and  a  quantitative  system,  which  were 
the  only  indigenous  poetical  product  of  Latium, 
rudely  indicated  the  natural  tendency  of  the  Latin 
tongue  towards  a  trochaic  rhythm.  Contact  with 
Greece  introduced  Greek  metres,  and  gradually 
established  a  definite  quantitative  system.  Quantity 
and  accent  are  equally  congenial   to  the  Latin  lan- 

'  Tris  imbris  toiti  radios,  tris  nuhis  aquosae 
.*.ddiderant,  rutili  tris  iguis  et  alitis  Austri.     A.  viii.  429. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  135 

guage,  and  the  trochaic  and  iambic  metres  of  Greece 
bore  transplantation  with  little  injury.  The  adapta- 
tions of  these  rhythms  by  early  Eoman  authors, 
however  uncouth,  are  at  least  quite  easy  and  un- 
constrained ;  and  so  soon  as  the  prestige  of  the 
Augustan  era  had  passed  away,  we  find  both  Pagans 
and  Christians  expressing  in  accentual  iambic,  and 
especially  in  accentual  trochaic  metres,  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  tlie  new  age.  Adam  of  S.  Victor  is 
metrically  nearer  to  Livius  Andronicus  than  to 
Virgil  or  Ovid ;  and  the  Litany  of  the  Arval 
Brethren  finds  its  true  succession,  not  in  the  Secular 
Ode  of  Horace,  but  in  the  Dies  Irce  or  the  Veni 
Creator. 

For  Latin  poetry  suffered  a  violent  breach  of 
continuity  in  the  introduction  from  Greece  of  the 
hexameter  and  the  elegiac  couplet.  The  quantita- 
tive hexameter  is  in  Latin  a  difficult  and  unnatural 
metre.  Its  prosodial  structure  excludes  a  very  large 
proportion  of  Latin  words  from  being  employed  at 
all.  It  narrowly  limits  the  possible  grammatical 
constructions,  the  modes  of  emphasis,  the  usages  of 
curtailment,  the  forms  of  narration.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  successfully  managed  its  advantages  are 
great.  All  the  strength  and  pregnancy  of  Latin 
expression  are  brought  out  by  the  stately  march  of 
a  metre  perhaps  the  most  compact  and  majestic 
which  has  ever  been  invented.  The  words  take 
their  place  like  the  organs  in  a  living  structure — 


136  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  \n. 

close  packed  hut  delicately  adjusted  and  mutually 
supporting.  And  the  very  sense  of  difficulty  over- 
come gives  an  additional  charm  to  the  sonorous 
beauty  of  the  dactylic  movement,  its  self-retarding 
pauses,  its  onward  and  overwhelming  flow. 

To  the  Greek  the  most  elaborate  poetical  effects 
were  as  easy  as  the  simplest.  In  his  poetic,  as  in 
his  glyptic  art,  he  found  all  materials  ready  to  his 
hand ;  he  had  but  to  choose  between  the  marble 
and  the  sardonyx,  between  the  ivory  and  the  gold. 
The  Eoman  hewed  his  conceptions  out  of  the  granite 
rock ;  oftenest  its  craggy  forms  were  rudely  piled 
together,  yet  dignified  and  strong;  but  there  were 
hands  which  could  give  it  finish  too,  which  could 
commit  to  the  centuries  a  work  splendid  as  well  as 
imperishable,  polished  into  the  basalt's  shimmer  and 
fervent  with  the  porphyry's  glow. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  even 
the  ^neid  has  wholly  overcome  the  difficulties  in- 
separable from  the  Latin  poetry  of  the  classical  age, 
that  it  is  entirely  free  either  from  the  frigidities  of 
an  imitation  or  from  the  constraints  of  a  tour  de 
force.  In  the  first  place,  Virgil  has  not  escaped  the 
injury  which  has  been  done  to  subsequent  poets  by 
the  example  of  the  length  and  the  subject-matter  of 
Homer.  An  artificial  dignity  has  been  attached  to 
poems  in  twelve  or  twenty-four  books,  and  authors 
have  been  incited  ta  tell  needlessly  long  stories  in 
order   to   take   rank  as  epic  poets.      And   because 


n.]  VIRGIL.  137 

Homer  is  full  of  tales  of  personal  combat — in  his 
day  an  exciting  and  all -important  thing  —  later 
poets  have  thought  it  necessary  to  introduce  a  large 
element  of  this  kind  of  description,  which,  so  soon 
as  it  loses  reality,  becomes  not  only  frigid  but  dis- 
gusting. It  is  as  if  the  first  novel  had  been  written 
by  a  schoolboy  of  genius,  and  all  succeeding  novel- 
ists had  felt  bound  to  construct  their  plots  mainly 
of  matches  at  football.  It  is  the  later  books  of 
the  .iEneid  that  are  most  marred  by  this  mistaka 
In  the  earlier  books  there  are,  no  doubt,  some  ill- 
judged  adaptations  of  Homeric  incident,^  some 
laboured  reproductions  of  Homeric  formulae,  but  for 
the  most  part  the  events  are  really  noble  and 
pathetic, — are  such  as  possess  permanent  interest 
for  civilised  men.  The  three  last  books,  on  the 
other  hand,  wliich  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  crude 
and  unpruned  condition,  contain  large  tracts  imme- 
diately imitated  from  Homer,  and  almost  devoid  of 
independent  value.  ^ 

Besides  these  defects  in  matter,  the  latter  part 
of  the  poem  illustrates  the  metrical  dangers  to 
which  Latin  hexameters  succumbed  almost  as  soon 
as  Virgil  was  gone.  The  types  on  which  they 
could  be  composed  were  limited  in  number  and 
were  becoming  exhausted.     Many  of  the  lines  in 

'  See  especially  A.  v.  263-5. 

^  The  following  passages  might  perhaps  be  omitted  en  bloc  with 
little  injury  to  Virgil's  reputation  : — A.  x.  276-762  ;  xi.  597-648, 
868-908;  xii  266-311,  529-592. 


138  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [a 

the  later  books  are  modelled  upon  lines  in  the 
earlier  ones.  Many  passages  show  that  peculiar 
form  of  bald  artificiality  into  which  this  difficult 
metre  so  readily  sinks ;  nay,  some  of  the  fibicines, 
or  stop-gaps,  suggest  a  grotesque  resemblance  to  the 
well-known  style  of  the  fourth-form  boy.'  Other 
more  ambitious  passages  give  the  painful  impression 
of  just  missing  the  effect  at  which  they  aim.^ 

We  should,  however,  be  much  mistaken  if  we 
inferred  that  this  accidental  want  of  finish — due  to 
the  poet's  premature  death — indicated  any  decHne 
of  power.  On  the  contrary,  nothing,  perhaps,  in 
Latin  versification  is  more  interesting  than  the 
traces  of  a  later  manner  in  process  of  formation, 
which  are  to  be  found  in  the  concluding  books  of 
the  .iSlneid.  The  later  manner  of  a  painter  or  poet 
generally  differs  from  his  earlier  manner  in  much 
the  same  way.  We  observe  in  him  a  certain  im- 
patience of  the  rules  which  have  guided  him  to 
excellence,  a  certain  desire  to  use  materials  more 
freely,  to  obtain  bolder  and  newer  effects.  A 
tendency  of  this  kind  may  be  discerned  in  the 
versification  of  the  later  books,  especially  of  the 
twelfth  book,  of  the  .^neid.  The  innovations  are 
individually  hardly  perceptible,  but  taken  together 
they  alter  the  character  of  the  hexameter  line  in  a 
way  more  easily  felt  than  described.  Among  the 
more  definite  changes  we  may  note  that  there  are 

»  e.g.  A.  X.  52G-9,  584-5.  »  e.g.  A.  x.  468-471,  557-560. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  139 

more  full  stops  in  the  middle  of  lines,  there  are 
more  elisions,  there  is  a  larger  proportion  of  short 
words,  there  are  more  words  repeated,  more  asson- 
ances, and  a  freer  use  of  the  emphasis  gained  by 
the  recurrence  of  verbs  in  the  same  or  cognate 
tenses.  Where  passages  thus  characterised  have 
come  down  to  us  still  in  the  making,  the  effect 
is  forced  and  fragmentary.^  Where  they  succeed 
they  combine,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  a  novel  manner 
the  rushing  freedom  of  the  old  trochaics  with  the 
majesty  which  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of 
Virgil's  style.^  Art  has  concealed  its  art,  and  the 
poet's  last  words  suggest  to  us  possibilities  in  the 
Latin  tongue  which  no  successor  has  been  able  to 
realise. 

It  is  difficult  to  dweU  long  on  such  technical 
points  as  these  without  appearing  arbitrary  or  pe- 
dantic. The  important  thing  is  to  understand  how 
deliberate,  forceful,  weighty,  VirgU's  diction  is  ;  what 
a  mass  of  thought  and  feeling  was  needed  to  give  to 
the  elaborate  structure  of  the  Latin  hexameter  any 
convincing  power  ;  how  markedly  all  those  indica- 
tions by  which  we  iastinctively  judge  the  truth  or 
the  insincerity  of  an  author's  emotion  are  intensified 
by  a  form  of  composition  in  which  "  the  style,"  not 
only   of  every  paragraph   but   of  every  clause,   is 

'  e.g.  A.  X.  597-600. 

'  e.g.  A.  xii.  48,  72,  179,  429,  615-6,  632-649,  676-680.  889-893, 
903-4. 


140  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n 

necessarily  and  indeed  "  the  man."  And  when  we 
have  learned  by  long  familiarity  to  read  between  the 
lines,  to  apportion  the  emphasis,  to  reproduce,  it  may 
be,  in  imagination  some  shadow  of  that  "  marvellous 
witchery  " '  with  which,  as  tradition  tells  us,  Virgil's 
own  reading  of  his  poems  brought  out  their  beauty, 
we  shall  be  surprised  at  the  amount  of  self-revelation 
discernible  beneath  the  calm  of  his  impersonal  song. 
And  here  again  we  shall  receive  the  same  impression 
which  remained  with  us  from  the  examination  of  the 
hero  who  is  thought  to  be  in  some  measure  the  un- 
conscious portrait  of  the  poet  himself — we  shall 
wonder  most  of  all  at  the  abiding  sadness  of  his  soul. 
We  might  have  thought  to  find  liun  like  the 
steersman  Palinurus,  in  the  scene  from  which  our 
great  English  painter  has  taken  the  cadence  which 
is  to  tell  of  an  infinite  repose,^  communing  untroubled 
with  some  heaven-descended  dream,  and  keeping 
through  the  night's  tranquillity  his  eyes  still  fixed 
upon  the  stars.  How  is  it  that  he  appears  to  us  so 
often,  like  the  same  Palinurus,  plunged  in  a  solitary 
gulf  of  death,  while  the  ship  of  human  destinies  drifts 
away  unguided — trostlos  auf  weitem  Meer  ?  How 
knew  he  that  gathering  horror  of  midnight  which 
presages  some  unspeakable  ruin  and  the  end  of  all  ?* 
Why  was  it  left  for  him,  above  aU  men,  to  tell  of  the 
anguish  of  irredeemable  bereavement,  and  Eurydice's 

'  "  Luaociniis  niiris." 
'  Turner's  Datur  l[ora  Quietl     A.  v.  844.  ■'  A.  iv.  460-4 


n.]  VIRQII*  141 

appealing  hands  as  she  vanished  backwards  into  the 
night  ? '  What  taught  him  the  passion  of  those  lines 
whose  marvellous  versification  seems  to  beat  with 
the  very  pulses  of  the  heart,^  where  the  one  soul  calls 
upon  the  other  in  the  many-peopled  fields  of  death, 
and  asks  of  all  that  company,  "  not  less  nor  more,  but 
even  that  word  alone  "  ?  WTiat  is  it  that  has  given 
such  a  mystical  intensity  to  every  glimpse  which  he 
opens  of  the  eternity  of  the  impassioned  soul  ?  — 
where  sometimes  the  wUd  pathetic  rhythm  alone 
suggests  an  undefinable  regret,^  or  a  single  epithet 
will  renew  a  world  of  mourning,  and  disclose  a  sor- 
row unassuageable  in  Paradise  itself.*  Or,  for  one 
moment,  Sychaeus'  generous  shade,  appealed  to  in 
such  varying  accents  as  the  storms  of  passion  rose 
or  fell,  deemed  sometimes  forgetful  and  distant  and 
unregarding  in  the  grave,  is  seen  at  last  in  very 
presence  and  faithful  to  the  vows  of  earth,  filled 
with  a  love  which  has  forgiven  inconstancy  as  it  has 
outlasted  death.' 

These  short  and  pregnant  passages  will  appeal  to 
different  minds  with  very  different  power.  There 
are  some  whose  emotion  demands  a  fuller  expression 
than  this,  a  more  copious  and  ready  flow — who  choose 
rather,  like  SheUey,  to  pour  the  whole  free  nature 
into  a  sudden  and  untrammelled  lay.  But  there  are 
others  who  have  learnt  to  recognise  the  last  height 

'  G.  iv.  498.  =  A.  vi.  670. 

"  A.  vi.  447.  ''  A.  vi.  4S0.  ^  A,  vi.  474. 


142  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

of  heroism,  the  last  depth  of  tenderness,  rather  in  a 
word  than  in  a  protest,  and  rather  in  a  look  than  in  a 
word  ;  to  whom  all  strong  feeling  comes  as  a  purging 
fire,  a  disengagement  from  the  labyrinth  of  things  ; 
whose  passion  takes  a  more  concentrated  dignity  as 
it  turns  inwards  and  to  the  deep  of  the  heart.  And 
such  men  will  recognise  in  Virgil  a  precursor,  a  master, 
and  a  friend  ;  they  will  call  him  the  Magnanimo,  the 
VeroM  Duca ;  they  wdl  enrol  themselves  with  eager 
loyalty  among  the  spiritual  progeny  of  a  spirit  so 
melancholy,  august,  and  alone. 

And  some,  too,  there  wLU  always  be  to  whom 
some  touch  of  poetic  gift  has  revealed  the  delight  of 
self-expression,  whUe  yet  their  infertile  instinct  of 
melody  has  failed  them  at  their  need,  and  their 
scanty  utterance  has  rather  mocked  than  assuaged  for 
them  the  incommunicable  passion  of  the  sold.  Such 
men  will  be  apt  to  think  that  not  only  would  an 
added  sanctity  have  been  given  to  all  sacred  sorrow, 
an  added  glory  to  all  unselfish  joy,  but  that  this 
earth's  less  ennobling  emotions  as  well — the  sting 
of  unjust  suspicions,^  and  the  proud  resentment  of 
stealthy  injuries,^  and  the  bewilderment  of  life's  un- 
guided  way' — even  these  would  have  been  trans- 
muted into  spiritual  strength  if  they  could  in  such 
manner  have  shaped  themselves  into  song;  as  the 
noise  of  bear,  and  wolf,  and  angered  Hon  came  to  tlie 
Trojans  with  a  majesty  that  had  no  touch  of  fear  or 

'  A.  i.  529.  =  A.  vi.  502.  ^  A.  xii.  917. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  143 

pain,  as  they  heard  them  across  the  midnight  waters, 
mixed  with  the  music  of  Circe's  echoing  isle.* 

How  was  it,  then,  with  the  poet  himself,  to  whom 
it  was  given  to  "  sweep  in  ever-highering  eagle-circles 
up"  till  his  words  became  the  very  term  and  limit  of 
human  utterance  ia  song  ?  Quin  Decios  Drusosque 
procul ; — when  he  was  summing  up  in  those  lines 
like  bars  of  gold  the  hero-roll  of  the  Eternal  City, 
conferring  with  every  word  an  immortality,  and,  like 
his  own  .^neas,  bearing  on  his  shoidders  the  fortune 
and  the  fame  of  Eome,  did  he  feel  in  that  great  hour 
that  he  had  done  all  that  man  can  do  ?  All  that 
we  know  is,  that  he  spoke  of  his  attempt  to  write 
the  .^Eneid  as  "  an  act  almost  of  insanity,"  and  that 
on  his  deathbed  he  urgently  begged  his  friends  to 
bum  the  unfinished  poem. 

"  0  dignitosa  coscienza  e  netta, 
Come  t'6  picciol  fallo  amaro  morso  ! " 

Yet  we  feel  that  Virgil's  character  would  not  have 
stood  out  complete  to  us  without  the  record  of  that 
last  desire.  It  was  the  culminating  expression  of  a 
Hfelong  temper — of  that  yearning  after  perfection 
which  can  never  rest  satisfied  with  the  things  of 
earth — which  caiTies  always  with  it,  as  Plato  would 
say,  the  haunting  reminiscence  of  that  perfect  beauty 
on  which  the  soul  has  looked  aforetime  in  the  true, 
which  is  the  ideal  world.     And  the  very  stillness 

*  A.  vii.  lu. 


141  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii 

and  dignity  of  Virgil's  outward  existence  help  to 
make  him  to  us  an  unmixed  example  of  this  mood 
of  miad.  There  is  no  trace  in  him  of  egoistic  passion, 
of  tumult,  of  vanity,  or  of  any  jealous  or  eager  love  ; 
all  his  emotions  seem  to  have  fused  or  melted  into 
that  Welt-Schmerz — that  impersonal  and  indefinable 
melancholy,  the  sound  of  which  since  his  day  has 
grown  so  familiar  in  our  ears,  which  invades  the 
sanest  and  the  strongest  spirits,  and  seems  to  yield 
to  nothing  except  such  a  love,  or  such  a  faith,  as  can 
give  or  promise  heaven.  The  so-called  "  modern  air  " 
in  Virgil's  poems  is  in  great  measure  the  result  of 
the  constantly -felt  pressure  of  this  obscure  home- 
sickness— this  infinite  desire ;  finding  vent  sometimes 
in  such  appeals  as  forestall  the  sighs  of  Christian 
saints  in  the  passion  of  high  hopes  half  withdrawn, 
when  the  Divinity  is  shrouded  and  afar' — oftener 
perceptible  only  in  that  accent  of  brooding  sorrow 
which  mourns  over  the  fate  of  men,  and  breathes  a 
pathetic  murmur  into  Nature's  peace,^  and  touches 
with  a  mysterious  forlornness  the  felicity  of  the 
underworld.* 

It  is  the  same  mood  which  "  intenerisce  il  cuore  " 
in  Dante's  song,  which  looks  from  the  unsatisfied 
eyes  of  Michael  Angelo  and  of  Tintoret, — a  mood 
commoner,  indeed,  among  the  nations  of  the  North, 

'  e.g.  G.  iv.  324-5.     A.  i.  407. 

'  Te  iieinus  Anguitiae,  vitrea  te  Fucimis  unda, 

Te  liquidi  Severe  lacus.     A.  vii.  760. 
'  Soleinque  suum,  sua  aidera  noniiit.     A.  vi.  641, 


n.]  VIRGIL.  145 

but  felt  at  times  by  Italians  who  have  had  the  power 
to  see  that  all  the  glory  round  them  does  but  add  a 
more  mysterious  awfulness  to  the  insoluble  riddle 
of  the  world. 

Nor  is  any  region  of  Italy  a  fitter  temple  for  such 
thoughts  than  the  Bay  of  Naples,  which  virtually  was 
Virgil's  home.  For  it  was  not  Mantua,  but  "  sweet 
Parthenope,"  which  fostered  his  years  of  silent  toil ; 
his  wanderings  were  on  that  southern  shore  where 
the  intense  and  azure  scene  seems  to  carry  an  unknown 
sadness  in  the  convergence  of  heaven  and  sea,  and 
something  of  an  unearthly  expectancy  in  the  still 
magnificence  of  its  glow.  It  was  there  that  inwardly 
he  bled  and  was  comforted,  inwardly  he  suffered  and 
was  strong;  it  was  there  that  what  others  learn  in 
tempest  he  learnt  in  calm,  and  became  in  ardent 
solitude  the  very  voice  and  heart  of  Eome. 

II. 

The  century  which  elapsed  between  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Fourth  Eclogue  and  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Eomans  witnessed  an  immense  expansion  of  the 
human  mind.  So  far  as  we  can  attach  definite  dates 
to  the  gradual  growth  of  world-wide  conceptions,  we 
may  say  that  in  this  century  arose  the  ideas  of  the 
civil  and  of  the  religious  unity  of  aU  families  of  men. 
These  ideas,  at  first  apparently  hostile  to  one  another, 
and  associated,  the  one  with  the  military  supremacy 


146  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

of  Rome,  the  other  with  the  spiritual  supremacy  of 
Jerusalem,  gradually  coalesced  into  the  notion  of  a 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  involving,  as  that  notion  does 
in  the  mind,  for  instance,  of  Dante,  the  concentration 
of  both  spiritual  and  temporal  power  in  the  Eternal 
City.  Again  the  conceptions  have  widened ;  and  we 
now  imagine  a  brotherhood  of  mankind,  a  universal 
Church,  without  localised  empire  or  a  visible  vice- 
gerent of  heaven. 

Throughout  aU  the  phases  which  these  great 
generalisations  have  traversed,  the  authority  of  Vii-gil 
has  been  freely  invoked.  And  when  we  turn  from 
the  personal  to  the  public  aspect  of  his  poems,  we 
are  at  once  obliged  to  discuss  in  what  sense  he  may 
be  considered  as  the  earliest  and  the  official  exponent 
of  the  world-wide  Empire  of  Rome,  the  last  and  the 
closest  precursor  of  the  world-wide  commonwealth  of 
Clirist.  The  unanimous  acceptance  of  Virgil  in  his 
lifetime — whQe  the  .<Eneid  was  yet  unwritten — as 
the  unique  poetical  representative  of  the  Roman 
State  is  a  fact  quite  as  surprising  and  significant  as 
the  ready  acceptance  of  Augustus  as  its  single  ruler. 
It  is  not,  indeed,  strange  that  a  few  short  but  lovely 
pieces,  such  as  the  Eclogues,  should  have  delighted 
literary  circles  and  suggested  to  Maecenas  that  this 
young  poet's  voice  would  be  the  fittest  to  preach  the 
revival  of  antique  simplicity  and  rural  toil.  The 
astonishing  thing  is  the  success  of  the  Georgics,  the 
fact  that  an  agricultural  poem  not  twice  as  long  as 


n.]  VIRGIL.  147 

Comus  should  at  once  have  procured  for  its  author  a 
reputation  to  which  the  literary  history  of  the  world 
affords  no  parallel.  Petrarch  was  crowned  on  the 
Capitol  amid  the  applause  of  the  literati  of  Europe. 
Voltaire  was  "  smothered  with  roses  "  in  the  crowded 
theatres  of  the  Paris  of  his  old  age.  But  the  triumph 
of  Petrarch  was  the  manifesto  of  a  humanistic  clique. 
The  triumph  of  Voltaire  was  the  iirst  thunderclap 
of  a  political  storm.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Romans  rose  to  their  feet  in  the  theatre  on  the  casual 
quotation  of  some  words  of  Virgil's  on  the  stage — 
when  they  saluted  the  poet  as  he  entered  the  house 
with  the  same  marks  of  reverence  which  they  paid 
to  Augustus  Caesar — it  was  plain  that  some  cause 
was  at  work  which  was  not  of  a  partisan,  which  was 
not  even  of  a  purely  literary  character.  Perhaps  it 
was  that  the  minds  of  men  were  agitated  by  the 
belief  that  a  new  era  was  impending,  that  "  the  great 
order  of  the  ages  was  being  born  anew,"  and  in  the 
majestic  and  catholic  tranquillity  of  VirgU's  song  they 
recognised  instinctively  the  temper  of  an  epoch  no 
longer  of  struggle  but  of  supremacy,  the  first-fruits 
of  Imperial  Eome.  We  must  at  least  attribute  some 
such  view  to  the  cultivated  classes  of  the  time.  That 
the  sublime  poem  of  Lucretius  should  obtain  only 
a  cold  miccls  d'estime,  while  the  Georgics,  a  more  ex- 
quisite work,  no  doubt,  but  a  work  of  so  much  smaller 
range,  should  be  hailed  as  raising  its  author  to  an 
equality  with  Homer,  is  a  disproportion  too  great  to 


148  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [il 

be  accounted  for  by  a  mere  literary  preference.  It 
was  a  deep-seated  recognition  of  the  truly  national 
character  of  VirgQ's  work,  of  his  unique  fitness  to 
reflect  completely  aU  the  greatness  of  the  advancing 
time,  which  led  even  rival  poets  to  predict  so  strenu- 
ously that  the  ^Eneid,  of  which  no  one  had  as  yet 
seen  a  paragraph,  would  be  co- eternal  with  the 
dominion  of  Eome.  Stranger  still  it  is  to  see  how 
tragically  the  event  surpassed  the  prophecy.  "  Light 
among  the  vanished  ages,"  we  may  exclaim  with  no 
exaggeration,  iu  Lord  Tennyson's  words — 

"  Star  that  gildest  yet  this  phantom  shore  ! 
Golden  branch  amid  the  shadows,  kings  and  realms  that 
set  to  rise  no  more  !  " 

When  we  look  at  the  intellectual  state  of  Rome  in 
the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  our  complaint  is  not 
that  VirgU  is  forgotten,  but  that  nothing  else  is 
remembered  ;  that  the  last  achievement  of  the  "  toga- 
wearing  race "  is  to  extemporise  centos  from  the 
^neid  on  any  given  theme ;  that  the  last  heads  seen 
to  rise  above  the  flood  of  advancing  barbarism  should 
be  those  of  grammarians  calling  themselves  Menalcas 
and  parsing  Tityre,  or  calling  themselves  VirgiUus 
and  parsing  Arma  virum. 

There  is  sometliing,  too,  of  Fate's  solemn  irony  in 
the  way  in  which,  as  the  ancient  world  is  re-dis- 
covered, the  first  words  borne  back  to  us  by  the 
muffled  voice  of   ruin  or  catacomb   are  scattered 


u.]  vmaiL.  149 

fragments  of  that  poem  which  was  the  last  on 
Eome's  living  lips.  There  is  something  tragic  in 
finding  Virgil's  line,  "  So  great  a  work  it  was  to 
found  the  race  of  Rome,"  cut  in  colossal  characters 
on  the  monstrous  ruins  of  the  baths  of  Titus ; 
Virgil's  words,  "  Then  all  were  silent,"  look  strangely 
in  a  half-finished  scrawl  from  a  wall  of  Pompeii's 
hushed  and  solitary  homes.^  But  the  long  tradition, 
as  has  been  already  said,  has  not  continued  un- 
broken to  our  own  day.  There  have  of  late  been 
many  critics  who  have  denied  that  the  ^neid  is 
adequately  representative  of  the  Eoman  common- 
wealth, who  have  been  struck  with  the  unqualified 
support,  the  absolute  deification  bestowed  on 
Augustus,  and  have  urged  that  the  laureate  who 
indulged  in  so  gratuitous  an  adulation  must  be 
styled  a  court,  and  not  a  national  poet. 

So  far  as  Virgil's  mere  support  of  Augustus 
goes,  this  objection,  however  natural  to  the  lovers 
of  free  government,  will  hardly  stand  the  test  of 
historical  inquiry.  For  Virgil  had  not  to  choose 
between  Augustus  and  the  Eepublic,  but  between 
Augustus  and  Antony.  The  Eepublic  was  gone  for 
ever;  and  not  Hannibal  himself,  we  may  sui-ely 
say,  was  a  more  dangerous  foe  than  Antony  to  the 
Eoman  people.  No  battle  which  that  people  ever 
fought  was  more  thoroughly  national,  more  decis- 
ively important,  than  the  battle  of  Actium.  The 
I  CONTICVEREOM. 


180  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [u 

name  of  Actium,  indeed,  can  never  waken  the  glory 
and  the  joy  which  spring  to  the  heart  at  the  name 
of  Salamis.  Not  "  Leucate's  promontory  afire  with 
embattled  armaments,"  not  "  Actian  Apollo  bending 
from  above  his  bow  "  can  stir  the  soul  like  that  one 
trump,^  that  morning  onset,  that  "small  iU-har- 
boured  islet,  oft-haunted  of  dance-loving  Pan."  ^ 
But  the  essence  of  each  battle  was  in  fact  the  same. 
Wliether  it  were  against  the  hosts  of  Susa  and 
Ecbatana,  or  against  "  the  dog  Anubis "  and  the 
Egyptian  queen,  each  battle  was  the  triumph  of 
Western  discipline,  religion,  virtue,  over  the  tide  of 
sensuality  and  superstition  which  swept  onwards 
from  the  unfathomable  East. 

And  thus  we  come  to  the  point  where  Virgil 
is,  in  reality,  closely  identified  with  the  policy  of 
the  Augustan  rigime.  Augustus  was  not  himself 
a  moral  hero.  But  partly  fortune,  partly  wisdom, 
partly  a  certain  innate  preference  for  order  and 
reverence  for  the  gods,  had  rendered  him  the  only 
available  representative,  not  only  of  the  constitution 
and  the  history,  but  of  the  morals  and  religion  of 
Eome.  The  leading  pre-occupation  of  his  official 
life  was  the  restoration  of  national  virtue.  It  is 
hard  to  trace  the  success  or  failure  of  an  attempt 
like  this  among  a  complex  society's  conflicting 
currents  of  good  and  evU.  Yet  it  seems  that  to  his 
strenuous    insistance    on    aU     of    morality    which 

'  Aesch.  Pers.  395-  '  Psyttalea.  Pers.  447. 


n.\  VIRGIL.  161 

legislation  can  achieve,  we  may  in  some  measure 
ascribe  that  moonlight  of  Roman  virtue  which 
mingles  so  long  its  chastened  gentleness  with  the 
blaze  of  the  Empire's  lurid  splendour,  the  smoke  of 
its  foul  decay.  A  reform  like  this,  however,  cannot 
be  achieved  by  a  single  ruler.  And  sincere  co- 
operation was  hard  to  find.  Papius  and  Poppaeus 
might  pass  laws  against  celibacy.  But  Papius  and 
Poppaeus  themselves  (as  Boissier  reminds  us)  re- 
mained obstinately  unmarried.  Horace  might  sing 
of  praying  to  the  gods  "  with  our  wives  and 
children."  But  no  one  was  ever  less  than  Horace 
of  a  church-goer  or  a  family  man.  Virgil,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  one  of  those  men  whose  adherence 
seems  to  give  reality  to  any  project  of  ethical  re- 
form. The  candid  and  serious  poet,  "  than  whom," 
as  Horace  says,  "  earth  bore  no  whiter  soul,"  was 
quickly  recognised  by  Maecenas  as  the  one  writer 
who  could  with  sincerity  sound  the  praises  of 
antique  and  ingenuous  virtue.  The  Georgics  came 
to  the  Roman  world  somewhat  as  the  writings 
of  Rousseau  came  to  the  French  ;  they  might  have 
little  apparent  influence  upon  conduct,  but  they 
made  a  new  element  in  the  mind  of  the  age,  they 
testified  at  least  to  the  continued  life  of  pure  ideas, 
to  the  undying  conception  of  a  contented  labour,  of 
an  unbought  and  guileless  joy. 

But  this  was  not  yet  enough.     The  spirit  of  Roman 
virtue  needed  to  be  evoked  by  a  sterner  spell.     In 


I 


152  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

the  Georgics  the  land  of  Italy  had  for  the  fiist  time 
been  impressively  presented  as  a  living  and  organic 
whole.  And  the  idea  of  Italy's  lovely  primacy 
among  all  other  countries  was  destined  to  subsist 
and  grow.  But  it  was  not  yet  towards  the  name  of 
Italy  that  the  enthusiasm  of  Virgil's  fellow-citizens 
most  readily  went  out.  However  variously  expressed 
or  shrouded,  the  religion  of  the  Komans  was  Eome. 
The  destiny  of  the  Eternal  City  is  without  doubt 
the  conception  which,  throughout  the  long  roll  of 
human  history,  has  come  nearest  to  the  unchange- 
able and  the  divine.  It  is  an  idea  majestic  enough 
to  inspire  worship,  and  to  be  the  guide  of  life  and 
death.  This  religion  of  Rome,  in  its  strictest  sense, 
has  formed  no  trifling  factor  in  the  story  of  the 
Christian  Church.  It  appears  in  its  strongest  and 
most  unquestioning  form  in  the  De  Monarchia  of 
Dante.  It  formed  a  vital  part  of  the  creed  of  the 
great  Italian  who  in  our  own  century  has  risen  to 
closest  communion  in  thought  and  deed  with  the 
heroes  of  his  country's  past.  But  nowhere,  from 
Ennius  to  Mazzini,  has  this  faith  found  such  ex- 
pression as  in  VirgU's  .iEneid.  All  is  there.  There 
is  nothing  lacking  of  noble  reminiscence,  of  high 
exhortation,  of  inspiring  prophecy.  Eoman  virtue 
is  appealed  to  through  the  channel  by  which  alone 
it  could  be  reached  and  could  be  restored ;  it  is 
renewed  by  majestic  memories  and  stimulated  by 
an  endless  hope.     The  Georgics  had  been  the  psalm 


n.]  VIRQIK  153 

of  Italy,  the  .lEneid  was   the    sacred   book   of  the 
Eeligion  of  Eome. 

It  appears,  then,  that  although  Virgil  doubtless 
lent  all  his  weight  to  the  personal  government  of 
Augustus,  he  neither  chose  that  government  in  pre- 
ference to  any  attainable  form  of  stable  freedom, 
nor  co-operated  with  it  in  an  unfitting  manner,  nor 
with  an  unworthy  aim.  There  remains  the  question 
of  the  deification  of  Augustus  —  of  the  impulse 
given  by  Virgil  to  that  worship  of  the  emperors 
which  ultimately  became  so  degi-ading  and  so  cruel 
a  farce.  And  here,  no  doubt,  in  one  passage  at 
least,  Virgil's  language  is  such  as  modern  taste  must 
condemn.  The  frigid  mythology  with  which  the 
first  Georgic  opens  is  absolutely  bad.  It  is  bad  as 
CaUimachus  is  bad,  and  as  every  other  imitation  of 
Callimachus  in  Latin  literature  is  bad  too.  It  has, 
indeed,  little  meaning ;  and  what  meaning  it  has 
would  need  an  astrologer  to  decipher.  What  are 
we  to  make  of  Tethys  and  of  Proserpine,  of  Thule 
and  of  Elysium,  or  of  the  Scorpion  who  is  willing 
to  draw  in  his  claws  to  make  room  for  Augustus  in 
heaven  ?  It  has,  indeed,  been  ingeniously  suggested 
that  the  true  point  of  this  strange  passage  may  con- 
sist in  a  veiled  but  emphatic  warning  to  Augustus 
not  to  assume  the  title  of  King,'  (a  title  of  which, 
as  in  Caligida's  case,  the  Eomans  were  far  more 
chary  than  of  the  less  practical  ascription  of  god- 
'  G.  i.  36-7.     The  suggestion  is  Mv.  Kaper's. 


164  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

head) ;  and,  moreover,  that  tlie  poet  himself  sub 
sequently  apologises '  for  the  unreality  of  the  flatter- 
ing exordium  in  which  this  lesson  is  concealed. 
Still,  we  must  regret  that  any  passage  in  Virgil 
should  require  such  apology.  We  cannot  help 
seeing  more  dignity  in  the  tone  of  Lucretius,  whose 
only  feeling  with  regard  to  earthly  potentates  was 
vexation  at  their  being  too  busy  to  allow  him  to 
explain  his  philosophy  to  them  as  fuUy  as  he  could 
have  wished.^ 

The  passages  in  the  ^neid  in  which  Augustus 
is  prospectively  deified  stand  on  a  different  footing. 
In  them  he  is  more  or  less  closely  identified  with 
Eome  herself ;  he  is  represented  as  we  see  him  in 
the  great  allegorical  statue  of  the  Vatican, — 
"  Augustus  Caesar  leading  the  Italians  on  to  war, 
with  the  Senate  and  the  people  and  the  tutelary 
gods  of  Rome,'"  the  creation  of  that  early  moment 
in  the  empire's  history  when  it  seemed  as  if  the 
conflicting  currents  of  the  Commonwealth  might 
run  at  length  in  a  single  channel,  and  the  State  be 
symboHsed  not  unworthily  in  the  man  whom  she 
had  chosen  as  her  chief  And,  indeed,  when  we 
consider  the  proportions  wliich  the  worship  of 
"  Eome  and  the  genius  of  Augustus "  gradually 
assumed,  the  earnestness  with  which  it  was  pressed 
on  by  the  people  in  face  of  what  seems  to  have 
been  the  genuine  disapproval  of  the  cautious  Emperor, 

>  G.  ii.  45-6.  "  Lucr.  i.  43.  s  A.  viii.  678. 


II.]  VIRGIL.  156 

the  speed  with  which  it  became,  without  formal 
change  or  definite  installation,  the  practical  religion 
of  the  Eoman  world,^  we  shall  see  reason  to  suppose 
that  this  strange  form  of  worship,  to  which  Virgil 
gave  perhaps  the  earliest,  though  in  part  an  uncon- 
scious expression,  was  not  the  birth  of  a  merely 
meaningless  servility,  but  represented  what  was  in 
fact  a  religious  reform  and  a  return  to  the  oldest 
instincts  of  the  Roman  people. 

The  Eoman  religion,  as  we  first  hear  of  it,  shows 
us  an  Aryan  tradition  already  strongly  modified  by 
the  Eoman  character,  by  a  tone  of  mind  abstract 
and  juristic,  rather  than  creative  or  joyous.  Some 
of  the  natural  powers  whose  worship  the  earliest 
Eomans,  in  common  with  the  earliest  Greeks,  had 
inherited  from  their  Aryan  ancestors  had  already 
acquired  a  definite  quaai-human  personality.  These 
the  Eoman  necessarily  accepted  as  persons,  though 
he  added  no  fresh  vividness  to  the  conception  of 
them.  But  his  feeble  instinct  of  anthropomorphism 
hardly  went  farther  than  this ;  and  such  deities  as 
he  himself  created,- — such  tutelary  powers,  I  should 
rather  say,  as  he  thought  might  be  useful  if  they 

'  See  M.  Boissier's  Religion  Romaine  on  all  this  subject,  and 
especially  for  an  account  of  the  colleges  of  Augustales,  which  were 
the  earliest  trade-guilds,  the  earliest  representative  bodies,  the 
model  followed  in  Christian  ecclesiastical  organisation,  and  the 
first  religious  bodies  on  a  large  scale  which  admitted  all  men,  with- 
out distinction  of  wealth  or  birth,  to  a  full  share  in  their  privileges 
and  in  their  control. 


156  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

happened  to  exist, — were  individualised  in  the  most 
shadowy  manner.  They  were  little  more  than  the 
sublimated  counterparts  or  correspondences  of  acts 
or  beings  visible  here  on  earth.  These  deified 
abstractions  were  of  very  various  magnitude  and 
dignity,  ranging  from  Minerva,  Goddess  of  Memory, 
and  Janus,  God  of  Opening,  down  to  the  crowd  of 
divinities  little  heard  of  outside  the  Indigitamenta 
or  handy-book  of  the  Gods,  the  Goddess  of  Going 
Out  and  the  Goddess  of  Coming  In,  the  God  of 
Silver  Money  and  his  father  the  God  of  Coppei 
Money,  and  the  God  of  Speaking  Intelligibly,  who 
never  made  more  than  a  single  remark.^  As  the 
Eomans  came  into  contact  with  other  nations, 
especially  with  Greece,  foreign  deities  were  intro- 
duced ;  but  these  were  identified  as  far  as  possible 
with  the  Eoman  deities  of  similar  functions,  and  did 
not  overthrow  the  balance  of  the  old  rigime.  But 
as  the  strange  Eastern  gods,  with  their  gloomy  or 
frenzied  worships,  were  added  to  the  list  this  quiet 
absorption  was  no  longer  possible.  The  Roman 
Olympus  came  to  resemble  a  sliifting  and  turbulent 
Convention,  in  which  now  one  and  now  another 
member, — -Dionysus,  Isis,  Cybele, — rises  tumultu- 
ously  into  predominance,  and  is  in  turn  eclipsed  by 
some  newer  arrival.  This  inroad  of  furious  and 
conflicting  superstitions  had  begun  in  Virgil's  time, 
and  the  battle  of  Actium  is  for  him  the  defeat  of 
1    Iterduca,  Domiduca,  Argentinus,  ^sculanus,  Aiua  Locutius. 


a]  VIRGIL.  157 

the  "monstrous  forms  of  gods  of  every  birth," ^  who 
would  have  made  their  entry  with  Antony  into 
Rome.  At  the  same  time  it  was  hard  to  suggest  an 
effective  antidote  for  these  degrading  worships.  The 
gods,  so  to  speak,  of  the  middle  period — Jupiter  and 
Juno  and  the  like,  with  a  Greek  personality  super- 
added to  their  more  abstract  significance — had  not 
vitality  enough  to  expel  the  intruders  from  their 
domain.  It  was  necessary  to  fall  back  upon  a  more 
thoroughly  national  and  primitive  conception,  and 
to  deify  once  more  the  abstraction  of  the  one 
earthly  existence  whose  greatness  was  overwhelm- 
ingly evident — the  power  of  Rome.  The  "  Fortune 
of  the  City,"  or  Roma  herself  enthroned  with  the 
insignia  of  a  Goddess,  was  the  only  queen  who 
could  overrule  at  once  the  epidemic  fanaticisms  of 
Rome  and  the  localised  cults  of  the  provinces,  and 
be  the  veritable  mistress  of  heaven. 

Nor  was  even  she  enough.  Through  the  abstrac- 
tions of  the  old  Roman  religion  there  had  always 
run  a  thread  of  more  intimate  and  personal  worship. 
Not  only  had  each  action  and  each  object  its  spiritual 
counterpart,  but  each  man  as  well.  The  nature  of 
these  Lares  was  somewhat  vaguely  and  obscurely 
conceived,  but  the  dominant  idea  seems  to  have 
been  that  they  acted  as  the  tutelary  genii  of  men 
during  life,  and  after  death  became  identical  with 
their  immortal  part.  The  Roman  worship  of  an- 
'  A.  viii.  698. 


158  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.       •  [n. 

cestors  was  indeed  of  a  different  kind  from  the  hero- 
worship  of  the  Greeks.  It  dwelt  less  on  the  idea 
of  superhuman  help  than  on  the  idea  of  family 
continuity.  The  Eomans  had  not  the  faith  which 
bade  the  Locrians  leave  a  place  always  open  in  their 
battle-ranks  for  the  Oilean  Ajax  to  fill  unseen ;  but 
they  testified  by  daily  offering  and  daily  prayer  to 
their  conviction  of  an  immanent  and  familiar  pre- 
sence which  turned  the  home  itself  into  a  never- 
vacant  shrine.  They  asked  no  oracle  from  "  Am- 
phiaraus  beneath  the  earth  ; "  but  the  images  of  his 
curule  ancestors  gathered  round  about  the  dead 
Fabius  in  the  market-place,  and  welcomed  him  in 
silence  as  he  joined  the  majority  of  his  kin.  It  is 
this  spirit  of  piety  whicli  the  plot  of  the  .lEneid  is 
designed  to  illustrate  and  to  foster.  .<Eneas  has 
no  wish  to  conquer  Latium.  He  enters  it  merely 
because  he  is  divinely  instructed  that  it  is  in  Italy, 
the  original  home  of  his  race,  that  he  must  continue 
the  worship  of  his  own  progenitor  Assaracus  and  of 
the  tutelary  gods  of  Troy.  This  point  achieved  he 
asks  for  nothing  more.  He  introduces  the  worship 
of  Assaracus;  but,  it  must  be  added,  Assaracus  is 
never  heard  of  again.  So  remote  and  legendary  a 
personage  could  not  become  the  binding  link  of  the 
Eoman  people.  Nor  had  the  Eoman  commonwealth 
ever  yet  stood  in  such  a  relation  to  any  single  family 
as  to  permit  the  identification  of  their  private  Lares 
with  the  Lares  Praestites  of  the  city  of  Rome.    But 


It]  VIRGIL.  169 

the,  case  was  altered  now.  One  family  had  risen  to 
an  isolated  pre  -  eminence  which  no  Roman  had 
attained  before.  And  by  a  singular  chance  this 
same  family  combined  a  legendary  with  an  actual 
primacy.  Augustus  was  at  once  the  representative 
of  Assaracus  and  the  master  of  the  Eoman  world. 
The  Lares  of  Augustus  were  at  once  identical  in  a 
certain  sense  with  Augustus  himself,  and  with  the 
public  Penates  worshipped  immemorially  in  their 
chapel  in  the  heart  of  the  city.  And  if,  as  is  no 
doubt  the  case,  the  worsliip  of  Eoma  and  the  Lares 
augusti  could  claim  in  Virgil  its  half-unconscious 
prophet,  we  may  reply  that  this  worship,  however 
afterwards  debased,  was  in  its  origin  and  essence 
neither  novel  nor  servile,  but  national  and  antique ; 
and  that  imtil  the  rise  of  Christianity,  towards  which 
Virgil  stands  in  a  yet  more  singular  anticipatory 
relation,  it  would  have  been  hard  to  say  what  other 
form  of  religion  could  at  once  have  satisfied  the 
ancient  instincts  and  bound  together  the  remote 
extremities  of  the  Eoman  world. 

The  relation  of  Virgil  to  Christianity,  to  which 
we  now  come,  is  an  unexpectedly  complex  matter. 
To  understand  it  clearly,  we  must  attempt  to  dis- 
entangle some  of  the  threads  of  religious  emotion 
and  belief  which  intertwine  in  varying  proportions 
throughout  his  successive  poems. 

"Eeared  among  the  woods  and  thickets,"  an 
Italian   country   cliild,  the  counterpart  of  Words- 


160  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

worth  in  the  union  of  spiritual  aspiration  with  rustic 
simplicity  in  which  his  early  years  were  spent, 
Virgil,  like  Wordsworth,  seemed  singled  out  as  the 
poet  and  priest  of  nature.  And  directly  imitated 
as  his  Eclogues  are  from  Theocritus,  a  closer  investi- 
gation reveals  the  essential  differences  between  the 
nature  of  the  two  poets.  The  idylls  of  Theocritus 
are  glowing  descriptions  of  pastoral  life,  written  by 
a  man  who  lives  and  enjoys  that  life,  and  cares  for 
no  other  ideal  The  Eclogues  of  Virgil  have  less  of 
consistency,  but  they  have  more  of  purpose.  They 
are  an  advocacy,  none  the  less  impassioned  because 
indirect,  of  the  charm  of  scenery  and  simple  pleasures 
addressed  to  a  society  leading  a  life  as  remote  from 
nature  as  the  life  of  the  French  court  in  the  days  of 
Eousseau.  Theocritus,  delighting  in  everything  con- 
nected with  rural  life,  loves  to  paint  with  vigour 
even  its  least  dignified  scenes.  VirgH — whom  the 
Neapolitans  called  the  Maid,  and  who  shrank  aside 
when  any  one  looked  at  him — is  grotesquely  artificial 
when  he  attempts  to  render  the  coarse  ladinage  of 
country  clowns.  On  the  other  hand,  where  the 
emotion  in  Theocritus  is  pure  and  worthy,  Virgil  is 
found  at  his  side,  with  so  delicate  a  reproduction  of 
his  effects,  that  it  is  sometimes  hard  to  say  whether 
the  Greek  or  the  Latin  passage  seems  the  more 
spontaneous  and  exquisite.^  And  there  is  a  whole 
region  of  higher  emotions  in  which  the  Latin  poet  is 
'  Compare  E.  viii.  37,  with  Theocr.  xi.  25. 


II.J  VIRGIL.  161 

alone.  All  Virgil's  own  are  those  sudden  touches 
of  exalted  friendship/  of  exquisite  tenderness,''  of  the 
sadness  and  the  mystery  of  love,^  which  seem  to 
murmur  amid  the  bright  flow  of  his  pastoral  poetry 
of  the  deep  source  from  whence  it  springs,  as  his 
own  Eridanus  had  his  fountain  in  Paradise  and  the 
underworld.^  All  Virgil's  own,  too,  is  the  compre- 
hending vision,  the  inward  eye  which  looks  back 
through  all  man's  wars  and  tumult  to  the  new- 
created  mountains  *  and  the  primal  spring,^  and  that 
"  wise  passiveness  "  to  which  nature  loves  to  offer 
her  consolation,  which  fills  so  often  the  interspace 
between  faiths  decayed  and  faiths  re-risen  with  a 

•  e.g.  E.  vi.  64.  The  whole  of  the  tenth  eclogue  is  an  exquisite 
example  of  the  half-tender,  half-sportiye  sympathy  by  which  one 
friend  can  best  strengthen  another  in  the  heart's  lesser  troubles, 
and  the  blank  when  light  loves  have  flown.  The  delicate  humour 
of  this  eclogue  has  perplexed  the  German  commentators,  who 
suggest  (1)  either  that  Virgil  meant  it  as  a  parody  on  the  fifth 
eclogue,  or  (2)  that  Gallus  was  in  fact  dead  when  it  was  written, 
and  that  the  poem, — ostensibly  composed  to  console  him  for  being 
jilted  by  an  actress, — was,  in  reality,  intended  as  a  sort  of  funeral 
psalm.  I  may  notice  here  the  improbability  of  the  story  that 
Virgil  altered  the  end  of  the  Fourth  Georgic,  omitting  a  panegyric 
on  Gallus  after  Gallus'  disgrace  and  death.  The  Georgics  were 
published  B.C.  29,  and  Gallus  died  B.C.  26.  It  is  hard  to  beUeve 
that  a  long  passage,  constituting  the  conclusion  and  crown  of  the 
most  popular  and  best  known  poem  that  had  ever  appeared  in 
Rome,  and  deriving  added  interest  from  the  political  scandal  in- 
volved, should,  after  being  three  years  before  the  public,  have 
perished  so  utterly  that  not  a  line,  not  a  fragment  of  a  line,  not  an 
allusion  to  the  passage,  should  anywhere  remain. 

»  e.g.  E.  iv.  60.         ^  ^^.  e.  viii.  47.         *  A.  vi  658. 
»  E.  vi.  40.  «  G.  ii.  338. 

M 


162  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

tranqiiiUised  abeyance  of  doubt  and  fear.  '  Pan 
and  old  Silvanus  and  the  sister  nymphs ; "  Silenus 
keeping  the  shepherds  spell-bound  till  twilight  with 
his  cosmic  song ;  Proteus  uttering  his  unwiUing 
oracles  upon  the  solitary  shore;  Clymene  singing  of 
love  in  the  caverned  water-world  amid  the  rivers' 
roaring  flow ; — what  are  all  these  but  aspects  and 
images  of  that  great  mother  who  has  for  all  her 
children  a  message  which  sometimes  seems  only 
the  sweeter  because  its  meaning  can  be  so  dimly 
known  ? 

Peculiar  to  Vu'gil,  too,  is  that  tone  of  expecta- 
tion which  recurs  again  and  again  to  the  hope  of 
some  approaching  union  of  mankind  beneath  a  juster 
heaven,  which  bids  the  shepherd  look  no  longer  on 
the  old  stars  with  worn-out  promises,  but  on  a  star 
new -risen  and  more  benign ;  which  tells  in  that 
mystical  poem  to  which  scholars  know  no  key,  how 
the  pure  and  stainless  shepherd  dies  and  is  raised 
to  heaven,  and  begins  from  thence  a  gentle  sway 
which  forbids  aUke  the  wild  beast's  ravin  and  the 
hunter's  cruel  gmle.* 

"  0  great  good  news  thro'  all  the  woods  that  ran ! 

0  psalm  and  praise  of  shepherds  and  of  Pan  ! 

The  hills  unshorn  to  heaven  their  voices  fling ; 

Desert  and  wilderness  rejoice  and  sing ; 
'  A  god  he  is  !  a  god  we  guessed  him  then ! 

Peace  on  the  earth  he  sends  and  joy  to  men.' " 

>  E.  V.  58. 


a.]  VIRGIL. 


163 


But  it  is,  of  course,  the  Fourth,  or  Messianic 
Eclogue  (known  to  the  English  reader  in  Pope's 
paraphrase,  Ye  nymphs  of  Solyma,  begin  the  song), 
which  has  formed  the  principal  point  of  union 
between  Virgil  and  the  new  faith.  In  every  age  of 
Christianity,  from  Augustine  to  Abelard,  from  the 
Christmas  sermon  of  Pope  Innocent  III.  to  the 
Praelectiones  Academicas  of  the  late  Mr.  Keble, 
divines  and  fathers  of  the  Church  have  asserted  the 
inspiration,  and  claimed  the  prophecies  of  this  mar- 
vellous poem.  It  was  on  the  strength  of  this  poem 
that  Virgil's  Kkeness  was  set  among  the  carven  seers 
in  the  Cathedral  of  Zamora.  It  was  on  the  strength 
of  this  poem  that  in  the  Cathedrals  of  Limoges  and 
Eheims  the  Christmas  appeal  was  made  :  "  0  Marc, 
prophet  of  the  GentUes,  bear  thou  thy  witness  imto 
Christ ; "  and  the  stately  semblance  of  the  Roman 
gave  answer  in  the  words  which  tell  how  "  the  new 
progeny  has  descended  from  heaven  on  high."  The 
prophecy  can  claim  oecumenical  acceptance,  regenera- 
tive efficacy.  The  poet  Statius,  the  martyr  Secun- 
dianus,  were  said  to  have  been  made  Christians 
by  its  perusal.  And  at  the  supreme  moment  of  the 
transference  aud  reconstruction  of  the  civil  and 
spiritual  authority  of  the  earth,  the  Emperor  Con- 
stantine  in  his  oration,  "inscribed  to  the  Assembly 
of  Saints  and  dedicated  to  the  Church  of  God," 
commented  on  this  poem  in  a  Greek  version,  as 
forming  a  link  between  the  old  and  the  new  faiths. 


164  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [il 

as  explaining  the  change  of  form,  and  justifying  the 
historical  continuity,  of  the  religion  of  the  civilised 
world. 

And  there  is  nothing  in  this  which  need  either 
surprise  or  shock  us.'  For,  in  reality,  the  link  be- 
tween Virgil  and  Christianity  depended  not   on  a 

'  There  is,  no  doubt,  a  startling  antithesis  between  the  real  and 
the  supposed  object  of  Virgil's  prophecy.  For  there  can  surely  be 
little  doubt  (as  Bishop  Louth,  Boissier,  etc.,  have  argued)  that  the 
Fourth  Eclogue  was  wi'itten  in  anticipation  of  the  birth  of  the 
child  of  Augustus  (then  Octaviauus)  and  Scribonia — the  notorious 
Julia,  born  B.C.  39,  shortly  after  the  peace  of  Brundusimn.  The 
words  "te  consule"  applied  to  PoUio  make  it  most  unlikely  that  he 
was  the  child's  father.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  have  been 
quite  in  keeping  with  Virgil's  stately  courtesy  to  address  to  PoUio, 
Antony's  representative  and  Virgil's  friend,  a  congratulatory  poem 
on  the  birth  in  his  consulship  of  a  child  to  Augustus,  with  whom 
Antony  had  just  been  reconciled.  Virgil  was  from  the  first  one  of 
the  most  ardent  supporters  of  Augustus,  and  though  the  young  heir 
of  Caesar  was  not  as  yet  clearly  the  first  man  in  Rome,  stUl,  the 
prestige  of  the  Julian  family  alone  could  make  the  expressions  of 
the  poem  seem  other  than  extravagant.  Virgil  no  doubt  desired 
to  associate  Follio  as  closely  as  possible  with  the  hopes  of  the 
Roman  commonwealth.  But  to  speak  of  "  a  world  at  peace 
through  Pollio's  virtue "  would  have  been  no  less  than  absurd. 
Moreover,  the  phrase,  "thy  Apollo  is  in  the  ascendant  now," 
points  clearly  to  Augustus,  whose  patron  Apollo  was.  The  reason 
why  the  riddle  was  not  explained  is  obvious.  The  expected  child 
turned  out  to  be  a  girl — and  a  girl  who  perhaps  gave  rise  to  more 
scandal  than  any  other  member  of  her  sex.  It  is  singular  that  the 
embarrassing  failure  of  the  prediction  at  the  time  has  been  the 
source  of  its  extraordinary  reputation  afterwards,  when  the  horo- 
scope composed  for  Julia  was  fulfilled  in  Jesus  Christ.  Like  the 
arrow  of  Acestes  (A.  v.  520),  the  prophecy  seemed  to  consume  away 
in  the  clouds  and  burn  itself  into  empty  air — 

"  Till  days  far  off  its  mighty  meaning  knew. 
And  seers  long  after  sang  the  presage  tnie." 


II.]  VIRGIL.  165 

misapplied  prediction  but  on  a  moral  sequence,  a 
spiritual  conformity.  There  was  a  time  when  both 
the  apologists  and  the  adversaries  of  Christianity 
were  disposed  to  ignore  its  connection  with  preced- 
ing faiths.  Exaggerated  pictures  of  its  miraculous 
diffusion  were  met  by  the  sneers  of  Gibbon  at  the 
contagious  spread  of  superstitions  among  the  ruins 
of  a  wiser  world.  The  tone  of  both  parties  has 
altered  as  historical  criticism  has  advanced.  It  is 
recognised  that  it  is  only  "  in  the  fulness  of  time  " 
that  a  great  religious  change  can  come;  that  men's 
minds  must  be  prepared  for  new  convictions  by  a 
need  which  has  been  deeply  felt,  and  a  habit  of 
thought  which  has  been  slowly  acquired.  And  in 
Virgil's  time,  as  has  already  been  said,  the  old 
dogmas  were  tending  to  disappear.  But  while  in 
the  lower  minds  they  were  corrupting  into  super- 
stition, in  the  higher  they  were  evaporating  into  a 
clearer  air.  The  spiritual  element  was  beginning 
to  assert  itself  over  the  ceremonial.  Instincts  of 
catholic  charity  were  beginning  to  put  to  shame  the 
tribal  narrowness  of  the  older  faith.  Philosophy 
was  issuing  from  the  lecture-room  iuto  the  forum 
and  the  street. 

And  thus  it  is  that  Virgil's  poems  lie  at  the 
watershed  of  religions.  Filled  as  they  are  with 
Eoman  rites  and  Eoman  tradition,  they  contain  also 
another  element,  gentler,  holier,  tiU  then  almost 
imknown ;  a  change  has  passed  over  them  like  the 


166  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

change  which  passes  over  a  Norwegian  midnight 
when  the  rose  of  evening  becomes  silently  the  rose 
of  dawn. 

It  is  strange  to  trace  the  alternate  attraction  and 
repulsion  which  the  early  Christians  felt  towards 
Virgil.  Sometimes  they  allegorised  the  .^Eneid  into 
a  kind  of  Siege  of  Man-soul,  in  which  the  fall,  the 
temptations,  the  deliverance  of  man,  are  recorded  in 
a  figure.  Sometimes  they  compiled  Christianised 
centos  from  his  poems, — works  which  obtained  such 
authority  that  Pope  Gelasius  found  it  necessary  to 
pronounce  ea;  caihedrd  that  they  formed  no  part  of 
the  canon  of  Scripture.  Sometimes,  as  in  Augustine, 
we  watch  the  conflict  in  a  higher  air ;  we  see  the 
ascetic  absorption  in  the  new  faith  at  war  with  the 
truer  instinct,  which  warns  him  that  all  noble 
emotions  are  in  reality  mutually  supporting,  and 
that  we  debase  instead  of  ennobling  our  devotion 
to  one  supreme  ideal  if  we  shrink  from  recognising 
the  goodness  and  greatness  of  ideals  which  are  not 
to  us  so  dear.  But  even  in  the  wild  legends  which 
in  the  Middle  Ages  cluster  so  thickly  round  the 
name  of  Virgil,  even  in  the  distorted  fancies  of  the 
hamlet  or  the  cloister,  we  can  discern  some  glimmer- 
ing perception  of  an  actual  truth.  It  is  not  true, 
as  the  Spanish  legend  tells  us,  that  "  Virgil's  eyes 
first  saw  the  star  of  Bethlehem  ;"  but  it  is  true  that 
in  none  more  fuUy  than  in  him  is  found  that  temper 
which  offers  all  worldly  wealth,  all  human  learning, 


n.]  VIRGIL.  167 

at  the  feet  of  Purity,  and  for  the  knowledge  of 
Truth.  It  is  not  true  that  Virgil  was  a  magician ; 
that  he  clove  the  rock  ;  that  he  wrought  a  gigantic 
figure  which  struck  a  note  of  warning  at  the  far- 
seen  onset  of  tumult  or  of  war ;  but  it  is  true  that 
he  was  one  of  those  who  "like  giants  stand,  to 
sentinel  enchanted  land,"  whose  high  thoughts  have 
caught  and  reflect  the  radiance  of  some  mysterious 
and  unrisen  day. 

Although  the  interest  which  subsequent  ages 
have  taken  in  the  religion  of  Virgil  has  tui-ned 
mainly  upon  his  relation  to  Christianity,  he  would 
himself,  of  course,  have  judged  in  another  light  the 
growth  of  his  inward  being.  A  celebrated  passage 
in  the  Georgics  has  revealed  to  us  his  mood  of  mind 
in  a  decisive  hour.  To  understand  it  we  must  refer 
to  the  strongest  influence  which  his  youth  was 
destined  to  undergo.  When  Virgil  was  on  the 
threshold  of  life  a  poem  was  published  which, 
perhaps,  of  all  single  monuments  of  Eoman  genius, 
conveys  to  us  the  most  penetrating  conception  of 
the  irresistible  force  of  Eome.  There  is  no  need  to 
deck  Lucretius  with  any  attributes  not  his  own. 
We  may  grant  that  his  poetry  is  often  uncouth,  his 
science  confused,  his  conception  of  human  existence 
steeped  in  a  lurid  gloom.  But  no  voice  like  his  has 
ever  proclaimed  the  nothingness  of  "  momentary 
man,"  no  prophet  so  convincing  has  ever  thundered 
in  our  ears  the  appalling  Gospel  of  Death.     Pew 


168  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

minds,  perhaps,  that  were  not  stiffly  cased  in  fore- 
gone conclusions  have  ever  met  the  storm  of  his 
passionate  eloquence  without  bending  before  the 
blast,  without  doubting  for  an  hour  of  their  inmost 
instincts,  and  half  believing  that  "  as  we  felt  no  woe 
in  times  long  gone,  when  from  all  the  earth  to  battle 
the  Carthaginians  came,"  so  now  it  may  be  man's 
best  and  only  hope  to  quench  in  annihilation  his 
unsated  longings  and  his  deep  despair. 

On  Virgil's  nature,  disposed  at  once  to  vague 
sadness  and  to  profound  inquiry,  the  six  books  on 
the  Nature  of  Things  produced  their  maximum 
effect.  Alike  in  liis  thought  and  language  we  see 
the  Lucretian  influence  mingHng  with  that  spirit  of 
natural  religion  which  seems  to  have  been  his  own 
earliest  bent ;  and  at  last,  in  the  passage  above  re- 
ferred to,^  he  pauses  between  the  two  hypotheses, 
each  alike  incapable  of  proof ;  that  which  assumes 
that  because  we  see  in  nature  an  impersonal  order, 
therefore  there  is  no  more  to  see,  and  that  which 
assumes  that  because  we  feel  within  us  a  living 
spirit,  the  universe,  too,  lives  around  us  and  breathes 
with  the  divine. 

"  If  thou  thy  secrets  grudge  me,  nor  assign 
So  high  a  lore  to  such  a  heart  as  mine, — 
Still,  Nature,  let  me  still  thy  beauty  know, 
Love  the  clear  streams  that  thro'  thy  valleys  flow, 

1  G.  ii.   490.     The  last  two  lines   of  the  version  here  given 
merely  summarise  a  passage  too  long  for  quotation. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  169 

To  many  a  forest  lawn  that  love  proclaim, 
Breathe  the  full  soul,  and  make  an  end  of  fame  ! 
Ah  me,  Spercheos  !  oh  to  watch  alway 
On  Taygeta  the  Spartan  girls  at  play  ! 
Or  cool  in  Hsemus'  gloom  to  feel  me  laid. 
Deep  in  his  branching  solitudes  of  shade  ! 

Happy  the  man  whose  steadfast  eye  surveys 
The  whole  world's  truth,  its  hidden  works  and  ways, — 
Happy,  who  thus  beneath  his  feet  has  thrown 
All  fears  and  fates,  and  Hell's  insatiate  moan  ! — 
Blest,  too,  were  he  the  sister  nymphs  who  knew, 
Pan,  and  Sylvanus,  and  the  sylvan  crew  ; — 
On  kings  and  crowds  his  careless  glance  he  flings, 
And  scorns  the  treacheries  of  crowds  and  kings ; 
Far  north  the  leaguered  hordes  are  hovering  dim ; 
Danube  and  Dacian  have  no  dread  for  him ; 
No  shock  of  laws  can  fright  liis  steadfast  home, 
Nor  realms  in  ruin  nor  all  the  fates  of  Rome. 
Round  him  no  glare  of  envied  wealth  is  shed, 
From  him  no  piteous  beggar  prays  for  bread  ; 
Earth,  Earth  herself  the  unstinted  gift  will  give, 
Her  trustful  children  need  but  reap  and  live ; 
She  hath  man's  peace  'mid  all  the  worldly  stir, 
One  with  himself  he  is,  if  one  with  her." 
And   henceforth   without    fanatical    blindness,   but 
with  a  slow  deliberate  fervour,  he  elects  to  act  upon 
the  latter  opinion ;  and  from  this  time  we  find  little 
trace  of  the  influence  of  Lucretius  in   his  poems, 
except  it  may  be  some  quickening  of  that  delight 
in  the   hidden  things  of  nature  which  makes  the 
world's  creation  lopas',^  as  it  was  SUenus'  ^  song ; 
>  A.  i.  743.  >  E.  vi  31 


170  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

some  deepening  of  that  mournful  wonder  with 
wliicli  he  regards  the  contrast  between  the  hopes 
and  fates  of  men. 

And  is  there,  then,  anything  in  Virgil's  creed 
more  definite  than  this  vague  spirituality  ?  Is  there 
any  moral  government  of  the  world  of  which  he  can 
speak  to  us  from  the  heart  ?  If  so,  it  is  not  in 
connection  with  the  old  gods  of  Rome,  for  they  have 
lost  their  individual  life.  They  are  no  longer  Like 
those  gods  of  Homer's,  who  "sat  on  the  brow  of 
Callicolone,"  awful  ia  their  mingling  of  aloofness 
and  reality,  of  terror  and  subduing  charm.  Jove's 
frowns,  Cytherea's  caresses,  in  the  ^neid  assiime 
alike  an  air  of  frigid  routine.  And  in  the  unfinished 
later  books  the  references  to  the  heavenly  council- 
board  are  of  so  curt  and  formal  a  character  that 
they  can  deceive  no  one.  It  is  as  if  the  poet  felt 
boimd  to  say,  "that  the  gods  had  taken  the  matter 
into  their  most  serious  consideration,"  *  "  that  it  was 
with  great  regret  that  the  gods  found  themselves 
imable  to  concede  a  longer  term  of  existence  to  the 
Daunian  hero,"*  while  all  the  time  he  was  well 
aware  that  the  gods  had  never  been  consulted  ia 
the  matter  at  all. 

And  even  that  more  real  and  comprehensive 
religion  of  Rome,  the  inspiring  beUef  in  the  destinies 
of  the  Eternal  City,  lacked  that  wliich  is  lacking  to 
aU  such  religions,  whether  their  object  be  one  city 

1  A.  xii.  843.  «  A.  .xii.  725. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  171 

only  or  the  whole  corporate  commonwealth  of  men. 
There  was  no  place  in  it  for  individual  recompense ; 
it  left  unanswered  the  imperious  demand  of  the 
moral  sense  that  not  one  sentient  soul  shall  be 
created  to  agony  that  others  may  be  blest.  Such 
faiths  may  inspire  ceremonial,  may  prompt  to  action, 
but  they  cannot  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man,  nor 
satisfy  or  control  the  heart. 

It  is  well  known  that  in  the  central  passage  of 
the  Mneii,  the  speech  of  the  shade  of  Anchises  to 
.(Eneas  in  Elysium,^  Virgil  has  abruptly  relinquished 
his  efforts  to  revive  or  harmonise  legendary  beliefs, 
and  has  propounded  an  answer  to  the  riddle  of  the 
universe  in  an  unexpectedly  definite  form.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  trace  the  elements  of  Stoic,  Platonic, 
Pythagorean  thought  which  combine  in  this  remark- 
able passage.  But  such  an  inquiry  would  be  beyond 
our  present  scope,  and  must  in  any  case  rest  largely 
upon  conjecture,  for  Virgil,  who  seems  to  have  been 
working  upon  this  exposition  tiU  the  last,^  and  who 
meant,~  as  we  know,  to  devote  to  philosophy  the  rest 
of  his  life  after  the  completion  of  the  ^neid,  has 
given  us  no  indication  of  the  process  by  which  he 
reached  these  results — results  singular  as  contrasting 
so  widely  with  the  official  religion  of  which  he  was 
in   some   sort   the   representative,   yet   which   may 

1  A.  vi.  724-755. 

2  See  A.  vi.  743-7,  as  indicating  tliat  the  arrangement  of  tliis 
passage  is  incomplete. 


172  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  -[n. 

surprise  us  less  when  we  consider  their  close  coinci- 
dence with  the  independent  conclusions  of  many 
thinkers  of  ancient  and  modern  times.  A  brief 
description  of  the  passage  referred  to  will  fitly  con- 
clude the  present  essay. 

^neas,  warned  of  Anchises  in  a  vision,  has 
penetrated  the  underworld  to  consult  his  father's 
shade.  He  finds  Anchises  surrounded  by  an  in- 
numerable multitude  of  souls,  who  congregate  on 
Lethe's  shore.  His  father  tells  him  that  these  souls 
are  drinking  the  waters  of  oblivion,  and  will  then  6 

return  to  live  again  on  earth,  .^ilneas  is  astonished 
at  this,  and  the  form  of  the  question  which  he 
asks^  is  in  itself  highly  significant.  Compared,  for 
example,  with  the  famous  contrast  which  the 
Homeric  Achilles  draws  between  even  the  poorest 
life  on  happy  earth  and  the  forlorn  kingship  of  the 
shades,  it  indicates  that  a  change  has  taken  place 
which  of  all  speculative  changes  is  perhaps  the  most 
important,  that  the  ideal  has  been  shifted  from  the 
visible  to  the  invisible,  from  the  material  to  the 
spiritual  world — 

"  0  father,  must  I  deem  that  souls  can  pray 
Hence  to  turn  backward  to  the  worldly  day  ? 
Change  for  that  weight  of  flesh  these  forms  more  fair, 
For  that  sun's  sheen  this  paradisal  air  1" 

The  speech  of  Anchises  in  answer  is  in  a  certain 
sense  the  most  Virgilian  passage  in  Virgil.     All  his 
1  A.  vi.  719. 


n,l  VIRGIL.  173 

characteristics  appear  in  it  in  their  highest  intensity; 
the  pregnant  allusiveness,  the  oracular  concentration, 
the  profound  complexity,  and  through  them  aU  that 
unearthly  march  of  song,  that  "  Elysian  beauty, 
melancholy  grace,"  which  made  him  the  one  fit 
master  for  that  other  soul  whom  he  "  mise  dentro  alle 
segrete  cose"  to  whom  in  face  of  purgatory's  fiercest 
fire^  he  promised  the  reward  of  constancy,  and 
spoke  of  the  redemptions  of  love. 

The  translator  may  well  hesitate  before  such  a 
passage  as  this.  But  as  a  knowledge  of  the  Theodicy 
here  unfolded  is  absolutely  necessary  to  the  English 
reader  who  would  imderstand  Virgil  aright,  some 
version  shall  be  given  here — 

"  One  Life  through  all  the  immense  creation  runs, 
One  Spirit  is  the  moon's,  the  sea's,  the  sun's ; 
All  forms  in  the  air  that  fly,  on  the  earth  that  creep, 
And  the  unknown  nameless  monsters  of  the  deep, — 
Each  breathing  thing  obeys  one  Mind's  control, 
And  in  all  substance  is  a  single  SouL 
First  to  each  seed  a  fiery  force  is  given ; 
And  every  creature  was  begot  in  heaven  ; 
Only  their  flight  must  hateful  flesh  delay 
And  gross  Umbs  moribund  and  cumbering  clay. 
So  from  that  hindering  prison  and  night  forlorn 
Thy  hopes  and  fears,  thy  joys  and  woes  are  bom, 
Who  only  seest,  till  death  dispart  thy  gloom. 
The  true  world  glow  through  crannies  of  a  tomb. 


»  Purg.  xxm.  20 


174  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

Nor  all  at  once  thine  ancient  ills  decay, 
Nor  quite  with  death  thy  plagues  are  purged  away  ; 
In  wondrous  wise  hath  the  iron  entered  in, 
And  through  and  through  thee  is  a  stain  of  sin ; 
Which  yet  again  in  wondrous  wise  must  be 
Cleansed  of  the  fire,  abolished  in  the  sea ; 
Ay,  thro'  and  thro'  that  soul  unclothed  must  go 
Such  spirit- winds  as  where  they  list  will  blow  ; — 
0  hovering  many  an  age  !  for  ages  bare, 
Void  in  the  void  and  impotent  in  air ! 

Then,  since  his  sins  unshriven  the  sinner  wait, 
And  to  each  soul  that  soul  herself  is  Fate, 
Few  to  heaven's  many  mansions  straight  are  sped 
(Past  without  blame  that  Judgment  of  the  dead). 
The  most  shall  mourn  till  tarrying  Time  hath  wrought 
The  extreme  deliverance  of  the  airy  thought, — 
Hath  left  unsoiled  by  fear  or  foul  desire 
The  spirit's  self,  the  elemental  fire. 

And  last  to  Lethe's  stream  on  the  ordered  day 
These  all  God  &ummoneth  in  great  array ; 
Who  from  that  draught  reborn,  no  more  shall  know 
Memory  of  past  or  dread  of  destined  woe. 
But  all  shall  there  the  ancient  pain  forgive, 
Forget  their  life,  and  will  again  to  live." 

The  shade  of  Anchises  is  silent  here.  But  let 
us  add  some  lines  from  the  Georgics,^  in  which 
Virgil  carries  these  souls  yet  farther,  and  to  the 
term  of  their  wondrous  way — 

"  Then  since  from  God  those  lesser  lives  began, 
And  the  eager  spirits  entered  into  man, 

'  Q.  iv.  223. 


n.]  VIRGIL.  176 

To  God  again  the  enfranchised  soul  must  tend, 
He  is  her  home,  her  Author  is  lier  End  ; 
No  death  is  hers  ;  when  earthly  eyes  grow  dim 
Starlike  she  soars  and  Godlike  melts  in  Him." 

But  why  must  we  recur  to  an  earlier  poem  for 
the  consummation  which  was  most  of  all  needed 
here  ?  and  why,  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  book,  has 
the  poet  struck  that  last  strange  note  of  doubt  and 
discord,  dismissing  .^Eneas  from  the  shades  by  the 
deluding  Ivory  Gate,  proclaiming,  as  it  were,  like 
Plato,  his  Theodicy  as  "  neither  false  nor  true,"  as 
a  dream  among  dreams  that  wander  and  "visions 
unbelievable  and  fair  ?"  We  turn,  like  Dante,  in 
hope  of  the  wise  guide's  reply.  But  he  has  left  us 
at  last  alone.^  He  has  led  us  to  the  region  "where 
of  himself  he  can  see  no  more;"^  we  must  expect 
from  him  no  longer  "  either  word  or  sign."  He 
parts  from  us  in  the  "  antelucan  splendour,"  and  at 
the  gate  of  heaven,  at  the  very  moment  when  a 
hundred  angels  sing  aloud  with  fuller  meaning  his 
own  words  of  solemn  welcome  and  unforgetful  love.' 
To  Daute  all  the  glory  of  paradise  could  not  avail  to 
keep  his  eyes  from  scorching  tears  at  his  "  sweetest 
father's"  sad  withdrawal  and  uncompleted  way: — 
we  too,  perhaps,  may  feel  mournfully  the  lot  of  man 
as  we  think  of  him  on  whose  yearning  spirit  all 
revelation  that  nature,  or  that  science,  or  that  faith 

'  Purg.  XXX.  49.  2  Purg.  xxrii.  129,  139. 

'  Purg.  XXX.  21. 


I 


176  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [n. 

could   show,  fell   only  as   day's  last  glory  on  the 
fading  vision  of  the  Carthaginian  queen  ^ — 

"  For  thrice  she  turned,  and  thrice  had  fain  dispread 
Her  dying  arms  to  hft  her  dying  head ; 
Thrice  in  high  heaven,  with  dimmed  eyes  wandering 

wide. 
She  sought  the  light,  and  found  the  light,  and  sighed." 

So  was  it  with  those  who  by  themselves  should 
not  be  made  perfect ;  they  differed  from  the  saints 
of  Christendom  not  so  much  in  the  emotion  which 
they  offered  as  in  the  emotion  with  which  they  were 
repaid ;  it  was  elevation  but  it  was  not  ecstasy ;  it 
came  to  them  not  as  hope  but  as  calm.  What 
touch  of  unattainable  holiness  was  lacking  for  their 
reception  into  Dante's  Paradisal  Eose  ?  what  ardour 
of  love  was  still  unknown  to  them  which  should 
have  been  their  foretaste  and  their  pledge  of  heaven  ? 
"Dark  night  enwraps  their  heads  with  hovering 
gloom,"  and  from  this  man,  their  solitary  rearguard, 
and  on  the  very  confines  of  the  day,  we  can  part 
only  in  words  of  such  sad  reverence  as  salute  in  his 
own  song  that  last  and  most  divinely  glorified  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  underworld  ^ — 

"  Give,  give  me  lilies ;  thick  the  flowers  be  laid 
To  greet  that  mighty,  melancholy  shade  ; 
With  such  poor  gifts  let  me  his  praise  maintain, 
And  mourn  with  useless  tears,  and  crown  in  vain." 

>  A.  17.  690.  '  A.  Ti.  883. 


MAECU3  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS. 

"A70U  5^  II,  u  ZeO,  Kal  avy  r)  Heirpu/xeyri, 
Sttol  TTod'v^lu  hfil  Stareray/jLcvos* 

itaxis  yey6/ievos  dvdif  ^ttov  (^OfMi. 

Cleanthes. 

Some  apology  may  seem  to  be  due  from  one  who 
ventures  to  treat  once  again  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
Antoninus.  Few  characters  in  history  have  been 
oftener  or  more  ably  discussed  during  the  present 
age,  an  age  whose  high  aims  and  uncertain  creed 
have  found  at  once  impulse  and  sympathy  in  the 
meditations  of  the  crowned  philosopher.  And, 
finally,  the  most  subtle  and  attractive  of  living 
historians  has  closed  his  strange  portrait-gallery 
with  this  majestic  figure,  accoxmting  that  the  sun  of 
Christianity  was  not  fully  risen  till  it  had  seen  the 
paling  of  the  old  world's  last  and  purest  star. 

The  subject  has  lost,  no  doubt,  its  literary  fresh- 
ness, but  its  moral  and  philosophical  significance  is 
stiU  unexhausted.  Even  an  increased  interest,  indeed, 
may   be   felt   at  the   present   time   in   considering 

N 


178  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [hl 

the  relations  which  the  philosophy  of  Marcus  bears 
either  to  ancient  or  to  modern  religious  thought. 
For  he  has  been  made,  as  it  were,  the  saint  and 
exemplar  of  Agnosticism,  the  type  of  all  such  vir- 
tue and  wisdom  as  modern  criticism  can  allow  to 
be  sound  or  permanent.  It  will  be  the  object  of 
the  following  essay  to  suggest  some  reflections  on 
the  position  thus  assigned  to  him,  dwelling  only 
incidentally,  and  as  briefly  as  may  be  consistent  with 
clearness,  on  the  more  familiar  aspects  of  his  opinions 
and  his  career. 

Character  and  circumstances,  rather  than  talent  or 
originality,  give  to  the  thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius 
their  especial  value  and  charm.  And  although  the 
scanty  notices  of  his  life  wliich  have  come  down 
to  us  have  now  been  often  repeated,  it  seems  neces- 
sary to  allude  to  some  of  the  more  characteristic  of 
them  if  we  would  understand  the  spiritual  outlook 
of  one  who  is  not  a  closet-philosopher  moralising  in 
vacuo,  but  the  son  of  Pius,  the  father  of  Commodus, 
the  master  of  a  declining  world. 

The  earliest  statue  which  we  know  of  Marcus 
represents  him  as  a  youth  ofiering  sacrifice.  The 
earliest  story  of  him,  before  his  adoption  into  the 
Imperial  family,  is  of  his  initiation,  at  eight  years 
old,  as  a  Salian  priest  of  Mars,  when  the  crowns 
flung  by  the  other  priests  fell  here  and  there  around 
the  recumbent  statue,  but  the  crown  which  young 
Marcus    threw  to  him  lit  and  rested  on  the  war- 


til.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  179 

god's  head.  The  boy-priest,  we  are  told,  covdd  soon 
conduct  all  the  ceremonies  of  the  Salian  cult  without 
the  usual  prompter,  for  he  served  in  all  its  offices, 
and  knew  all  its  hymns  by  heart.  And  it  well  be- 
came him  thus  to  begin  by  exhibiting  the  character- 
istic piety  of  a  child ; — who  passes  in  his  growing 
years  through  the  forms  of  worship,  as  of  thought, 
which  have  satisfied  his  remote  forefathers,  and 
ripens  himself  for  his  adult  philosophies  with  the 
consecrated  tradition  of  the  past. 

Our  next  glimpse  is  of  the  boy  growing  into 
manhood  in  the  household  of  his  adopted  father, 
Antoninus  Pius,  whom  he  is  already  destined  to 
succeed  on  the  Imperial  throne.  One  of  the  lessons 
for  which  Marcus  afterwards  revered  his  father's 
memory  was  the  lesson  of  simplicity  maintained  in 
the  palace  of  princes,  "  far  removed  from  the  habits 
of  the  rich."  Tlie  correspondence  between  the  Im- 
perial boy  and  his  tutor,  Fronto,  shows  us  how  pro- 
nounced this  simplicity  was,  and  casts  a  curious 
side-Hght  on  the  power  of  the  Eoman  Emperor,  who 
can  impress  his  own  individuality  with  so  uncom- 
promising a  hand  not  only  on  the  affairs  of  the 
empire,  but  on  the  personal  habits  of  his  court  and 
entourage.  In  the  modem  world  the  more  absolute 
a  monarch  is  in  one  way,  the  more  is  he  in  another 
way  fettered  and  constrained  ;  for  his  absolutism 
relies  on  an  artificial  prestige  which  can  dispense 
with  no  means  of  impressing  the  vulgar  mind.    And 


180  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iil 

in  freer  countries  there  is  always  a  set  of  necessary 
persons,  an  habitual  tone  of  manners,  which  the 
sovereign  cannot  afford  to  ignore.  A  George  III.  may 
lead  a  frugal  family  life,  but  he  is  forced  to  conciliate 
and  consort  with  social  leaders  of  habits  quite  opposite 
to  his  own.  A  William  IV.  who  fails  to  do  this 
adequately  is  pronounced  to  be  "  not  in  society." 
Antoninus  Pius  might  certainly  have  been  said  to  be 
"out  of  society,"  but  that  there  was  no  society  for  him 
to  be  in  except  his  own.  The  "  optimates,"  whose 
opinion  Cicero  treats  as  the  acknowledged  standard — 
a  group  of  notables  enjoying  social  as  well  as  official 
pre-eminence — ^had  practically  ceased  to  exist.  Even 
the  Senate,  whose  dignity  the  Antonines  so  sedu- 
lously cherished,  consisted  mainly  of  new  and  low- 
born men.  Everything  depended  on  the  individual 
tastes  of  the  ruler.  Play-actors  were  at  the  head  of 
society  under  Nero,  spies  under  Domitian,  philoso- 
phers under  the  Antonines. 

The  letters  of  the  young  Marcus  to  Fronto  are 
very  much  such  letters  as  might  he  written  at  the  pre- 
sent day  by  the  home-taught  son  of  an  English  squire 
to  a  private  tutor  to  whom  he  was  much  attached. 
They  are,  however,  more  effusive  than  an  English  style 
allows,  and  although  Marcus  in  his  youth  was  a  suc- 
cessful athlete,  they  seldom  refer  to  games  or  hunting. 
I  translate  one  of  them  as  a  specimen  of  the  rest : — 

"  I  slept  late  this  morning  on  account  of  my 
cold,  but  it  is  better.     From  five  in  the  morning  till 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  181 

nine  I  partly  read  Cato  on  Agriculture,  and  partly 
wrote,  not  quite  such  rubbish  as  yesterday.  Then  I 
greeted  my  father,  and  then  soothed  my  throat  with 
honey-water  without  absolutely  gargling.  Then  I 
attended  my  father  as  he  offered  sacrifice.  Then  to 
breakfast.  What  do  you  think  I  ate  1  only  a  little 
bread,  though  I  saw  the  others  devouring  beans,  onions, 
and  sardines  !  Then  we  went  out  to  the  vintage,  and  got 
hot  and  merry,  but  left  a  few  grapes  still  hanging,  as 
the  old  poet  says,  '  atop  on  the  topmost  bough.'  At 
noon  we  got  home  again  ;  I  worked  a  little,  but  it  was 
not  much  good.  Then  I  chatted  a  long  time  with  my 
mother  as  she  sat  on  her  bed.  My  conversation  con- 
sisted of,  '  What  do  you  suppose  my  Fronto  is  doing  at 
this  moment  V  to  which  she  answered,  '  And  my  Gratia, 
what  is  she  doing  V  and  then  I,  '  And  our  little  birdie, 
Gratia  the  less  1'  And  while  we  were  talking  and 
quarrelling  as  to  which  of  us  loved  all  of  you  the  best, 
the  gong  sounded,  which  meant  that  my  father  had  gone 
across  to  the  bath.  So  we  bathed  and  dined  in  the  oil- 
press  room.  I  don't  mean  that  we  bathed  in  the  press- 
room ;  but  we  bathed  and  then  dined,  and  amused 
ourselves  with  listening  to  the  peasants'  banter.  And 
now  that  I  am  in  my  own  room  again,  before  I  roll  over 
and  snore,  I  am  fulfilling  my  promise  and  giving  an 
account  of  my  day  to  my  dear  tutor  ;  and  if  I  could 
love  him  better  than  I  do  I  would  consent  to  miss  him 
even  more  than  I  miss  him  now.  Take  care  of  your- 
self, my  best  and  dearest  Fronto,  wherever  you  are. 
The  fact  is  that  I  love  you,  and  you  are  far  away." 

Among  the  few  hints  which  the  correspondence 
contains  of  the  pupil's  rank  is  one  curiously  charac- 


182  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m 

teiistic  of  his  times  and  his  destiny.  Tutor  and 
pupil,  it  seems,  were  ia  the  habit  of  sending  to  each 
other  "  hypotheses,"  or  imaginary  cases,  for  the  sake 
of  practice  ia  dealing  with  embaiTassing  circum- 
stances as  they  arose.  Marcus  puts  to  Fronto  the 
following  "  hard  case "  :  "A  Eoman  consul  at  the 
public  games  changes  his  consular  dress  for  a 
gladiator's,  and  kills  a  lion  in  the  amplutheatre 
before  the  assembled  people.  Wliat  is  to  be  done 
to  him  ? "  The  puzzled  Fronto  contents  himself 
with  replying  that  such  a  thing  could  not  possibly 
happen.  But  the  boy's  prevision  was  true.  A 
generation  later  this  very  thing  was  done  by  a  man 
who  was  not  only  a  Eoman  consul,  but  a  Eoman 
Emperor,  and  the  son  of  Marcus  himself. 

These  were  Marcus'  happiest  days.  The  com- 
panionship of  Pius  was  a  school  of  all  the  virtiies. 
His  domestic  life  with  Faustina,  if  we  are  to 
believe  contemporary  letters  rather  than  the  scandal 
of  the  next  century,  was,  at  first  at  any  rate,  a 
model  of  happiness  and  peace.  Marcus  was  already 
forty  years  old  when  Pius  died.  The  nineteen 
years  which  remained  to  him  were  mainly  occupied 
in  driving  back  Germanic  peoples  from  the  northern 
frontiers  of  the  empire.  This  labour  was  inter- 
rupted in  A.D.  175  by  the  revolt  of  Avidius  Cassius, 
an  event  which  Marcus  employed  as  a  great  occasion 
for  magnanimity.  The  story  is  one  which  some 
dramatist  might  well  seize  upon,  and  show,  with  a 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  183 

truer  groundwork  than  Corneille  in  China,  how  im- 
possible is  resentment  to  the  philosophic  soul.  But 
the  moment  in  these  latter  years  which  may  be 
selected  as  most  characteristic  was  perhaps  that  of 
the  departure  of  Marcus  to  Germany  in  a.d.  1 7  8  for 
his  last  and  sternest  war.  That  great  irruption  of 
the  Marcomanni  was  compared  by  subsequent  his- 
torians to  the  invasion  of  Hannibal.  It  was  in  fact, 
and  it  was  dimly  felt  to  be,  the  beginning  of  the 
end.  The  terriiied  Eomans  resorted  to  every  expedi- 
ent which  could  attract  the  favour  of  heaven  or 
fortify  the  spirit  of  man.  The  Emperor  threw  a 
blood-stained  spear  from  the  temple  of  Mars  towards 
the  unknown  North,  invoking  thus  for  the  last  time 
in  antique  fashion  the  tutelary  divinity  of  Eome. 
*  The  images  of  all  the  gods  were  laid  on  couches  in 
the  sight  of  men,  and  that  holy  banquet  was  set 
before  them  which  constituted  their  worshippers' 
most  solemn  appeal.  But  no  sacrifices  henceforth 
were  to  be  for  long  effectual,  nor  omens  favourable 
again ;  they  could  only  show  the  "  Eoman  peace  " 
no  longer  sacred,  the  "  Eoman  world  "  no  longer 
stretching  ''^ast  the  sun's  year-long  way,"  but 
Janus'  temple-doors  for  ever  open,  and  Terminus 
receding  upon  Eome.  Many  new  rites  were  also 
performed,  many  foreign  gods  were  approached  with 
strange  expiations.  But  the  strangest  feature  in 
this  religious  revival  lay  in  an  act  of  the  Emperor 
himself.     He  was  entreated,  says  Vulcatius,  to  give 


184  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iii. 

a  parting  address  to  his  subjects  before  he  set  out 
into  the  wilderness  of  the  north  ;  and  for  three 
days  he  expounded  his  philosophy  to  the  people  of 
Eome.  The  anecdote  is  a  strange  one,  but  hardly  in 
itself  improbable.  It  accords  so  well  with  Marcus' 
trust  in  the  power  of  reason,  his  belief  in  the  duty 
of  laying  the  truth  before  men  !  One  can  imagine 
the  sincere  gaze,  such  as  his  coins  show  to  us  ;  the 
hand,  as  in  the  great  equestrian  statue  of  the  Capi- 
tol, uplifted,  as  though  to  bless ;  the  countenance 
controlled,  as  his  biographers  tell  us,  to  exhibit 
neither  joy  nor  pain ;  the  voice  and  diction,  not 
loud  nor  striking,  but  grave  and  clear,  as  he  bade 
his  hearers  "  reverence  the  daemon  within  them," 
and  "  pass  from  one  unselfish  action  to  another, 
with  memory  of  God."  Like  the  fabled  Arthur, 
he  was,  as  it  were,  the  conscience  amid  the  warring 
passions  of  his  knights ;  like  Arthur,  he  was  him- 
self going  forth  to  meet  "  death,  or  he  knew  not 
what  mysterious  doom." 

For  indeed  his  last  years  are  lost  in  darkness. 
A  few  anecdotes  tell  of  his  failing  body  and  resolute 
wni ;  a  few  bas-reliefs  give  in  fragments  a  confused 
story  of  the  wilderness  and  of  war.  We  see  marshes 
and  forests,  bridges  and  battles,  captive  Sarmatians 
brought  to  judgment,  and  Marcus  still  with  his  hand 
uplifted  as  though  bestowing  pardon  or  grace. 

The  region  in  which  these  last  years  were  spent 
is  to  this  day  one  of  the  most  melancholy  in  Europa 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  185 

The  forces  of  nature  run  to  waste  without  use  or 
beauty.  The  great  Danube  spreads  himself  languidly 
between  uncertain  shores.  As  it  was  in  the  days  of 
Marcus  so  is  it  now ;  the  traveller  from  Vienna 
eastward  still  sees  the  white  mist  cling  to  the  deso- 
late river-terraces,  the  clouds  of  wild-fowl  swoop  and 
settle  among  the  reedy  islands,  and  along  the  bays 
and  promontories  of  the  brimming  stream. 

But  over  these  years  hung  a  shadow  darker  than 
could  be  cast  by  any  visible  foe.  Plague  had  be- 
come endemic  in  the  Roman  world.  The  pestilence 
brought  from  Asia  by  Verus  in  A.D.  166  had  not 
yet  abated ;  it  had  destroyed  already  (as  it  would 
seem)  half  the  population  of  the  Empire ;  it  was 
achieving  its  right  to  be  considered  by  careful  his- 
torians as  the  most  terrible  calamity  which  has  ever 
fallen  upon  men.  Destined,  as  it  were,  to  sever  race 
from  race  and  era  from  era,  the  plague  struck  its  last 
blow  against  the  Eoman  people  upon  the  person  of 
the  Emperor  himself.  He  died  in  the  camp,  alone. 
"  Why  weep  for  me,"  were  his  last  words  of  stern 
self-suppres&ion,  "  and  not  think  rather  of  the  pesti- 
lence, and  of  the  death  of  all  ?" 

When  the  news  of  his  death  reached  Rome  few 
tears,  we  are  told,  were  shed.  For  it  seemed  to  the 
people  that  Marcus,  like  Marcellus,  had  been  but 
lent  to  the  Eoman  race ;  it  was  natural  that  he 
should  pass  back  again  from  the  wUderness  to  his 
celestial  home.     Before  the  official  honours  had  been 


186  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

paid  to  him  the  Senate  and  people  by  acclamation 
at  his  funeral  saluted  him  as  "  The  Propitious  God." 
No  one,  says  the  chronicler,  thought  of  him  as 
Emperor  any  more ;  but  the  young  men  called  on 
"  Marcus,  my  father,"  the  men  of  middle  age  on 
"  Marcus,  my  brother,"  the  old  men  on  "  Marcus, 
my  son."  Homo  homini  deus  est,  si  suum  officium 
sciat — and  it  may  well  be  that  those  who  thus  hon- 
oured and  thus  lamented  him  had  never  known  a 
truer  son  or  brother,  father  or  god. 

It  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  essay  to 
enumerate  in  detail  the  measures  by  which  Marcus 
had  earned  the  gratitude  of  the  Empire.  But  it  is 
important  to  remember  that  neither  war  nor  philo- 
sophy had  impaired  his  activity  as  an  administrator. 
Politically  his  reign,  like  that  of  Pius,  was  remark- 
able for  his  respectful  treatment  of  the  senatorial 
order.  Instead  of  regarding  senators  as  the  natural 
objects  of  imperial  jealousy,  or  prey  of  imperial 
avarice,  he  endeavoured  by  all  means  to  raise  their 
dignity  and  consideration.  Some  of  them  he  em- 
ployed as  a  kind  of  privy  council,  others  as  governors 
of  cities.  When  at  Eome  he  attended  every  meeting 
of  the  Senate ;  and  even  when  absent  in  Campania 
he  would  travel  back  expressly  to  be  present  at  any 
important  debate ;  nor  did  he  ever  leave  the  council- 
hall  till  the  sitting  was  adjourned. 

While  Marcus  thus  attempted  to  revive  a  respon- 
sible upper  class,  he  was  far  from  neglecting  the 


ni.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  187 

interests  of  the  poor.  He  developed  the  scheme 
of  state  nurture  and  education  for  needy  free-born 
children  which  the  Flavian  emperors  had  begim. 
He  reformed  the  local  government  of  Italy,  and 
made  more  careful  provision  against  the  recurring 
danger  of  scarcity.  He  instituted  the  "  tutelary 
praitorship  "  which  was  to  watch  over  the  rights  of 
orphans  —  a  class  often  unjustly  treated  at  Eome. 
And  he  fostered  and  supervised  that  great  develop- 
ment of  civil  and  criminal  law  which,  under  the 
Antonines,  was  steadily  giving  protection  to  the 
minor,  justice  to  the  woman,  rights  to  the  slave,  and 
transforming  the  stern  maxims  of  Eoman  procedure 
into  a  fit  basis  for  the  jurisprudence  of  the  modem 
world. 

But  indeed  the  true  life  and  influence  of  Marcus 
had  scarcely  yet  begun.  In  his  case,  as  in  many 
others,  it  was  not  the  main  occupation,  the  osten- 
sible business  of  his  life,  which  proved  to  have  the 
most  enduring  value.  His  most  effective  hours  were 
not  those  spent  in  his  long  adjudications,  his  cease- 
less battles,  his  strenuous  ordering  of  the  concerns 
of  the  Eoman  world.  Eather  they  were  the  hours 
of  solitude  and  sadness,  when,  "  among  the  Quadi," 
"  on  the  Granua,"  "  at  Carnimtum,"  he  consoled  his 
lonely  spirit  by  jotting  down  in  fragmentary  sen- 
tences the  principles  which  were  his  guide  through 
life.  The  little  volume  was  preserved  by  some  for- 
timate  accident.  For  many  centuries  it  was  accounted 


188  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iiL 

as  a  kind  of  curiosity  of  literature — as  heading  the 
brief  list  of  the  writings  of  kings.  From  time  to 
time  some  earnest  spirit  discovered  that  the  help 
given  by  the  little  book  was  of  surer  quality  than 
he  could  find  in  many  a  volume  which  promised 
more.  One  and  another  student  was  moved  to 
translate  it — from  old  Gataker  of  Rotherhithe,  com- 
pleting the  work  in  his  seventy-eighth  year,  as  his 
best  preparation  for  death,  to  "  Cardinal  Francis 
Barberini  the  elder,  who  dedicated  the  translation 
to  his  soul,  in  order  to  make  it  redder  than  his 
purple  at  the  sight  of  the  virtues  of  this  Gentile." ' 
But  the  complete  success  of  the  book  was  reserved 
for  the  present  century.  I  will  quote  one  passage 
only  as  showing  the  position  which  it  has  taken 
among  some  schools  of  modern  thought — a  passage 
in  which  a  writer  celebrated  for  Iiis  nice  distinctions 
and  balanced  praise  has  spoken  of  the  Meditations 
in  terms  of  more  unmixed  eulogy  than  he  has  ever 
bestowed  elsewhere : — 

"Veritable  Evangile  6ternel,"  says  M.  Kenan,  "  le 
livre  des  Pensdes  ne  vieillira  jamais,  car  il  n'aflBrme 
aucun  dogma.  L'Evangile  a  vieilli  en  certaines  parties; 
la  science  ne  permet  plus  d'admettre  la  naive  concep- 
tion du  surnaturel  qui  en  fait  la  base.  Le  surnaturel 
n'est  dans  les  Pens^es  qu'une  petite  tache  insignifiante, 
qui  n'atteint  pas  la  merveilleuse  beauts  du  fond.     La 

'  See  the  preface  to  Mr.  Long's  admirable  translation.  The 
quotations  from  the  Meditations  in  this  essay  are  given  partly  in 
Mr.  Long's  words. 


ni.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  189 

science  pourrait  d6truire  Dieu  et  I'ame,  que  le  livre  des 
Pens6es  resterait  jeune  encore  de  vie  et  de  verity  La 
religion  de  Marc-Aurfele,  comme  le  f  ut  par  moments  cells 
de  Jesus,  est  la  religion  absolue,  celle  qui  results  du 
simple  fait  d'une  haute  conscience  morale  placee  en  face 
de  I'univers.  Elle  n'est  ni  d'une  race  ni  d'un  pays. 
Aucune  revolution,  aucun  progrfes,  aucune  d6couverte  ne 
pourront  la  changer." 

What  then,  we  may  ask,  and  how  attained  to, 
was  the  wisdom  which  is  thus  highly  praised  ? 
How  came  it  that  a  man  of  little  original  power, 
in  an  age  of  rhetoric  and  commonplace,  was  able 
to  rise  to  the  height  of  so  great  an  argument,  and 
to  make  of  his  most  secret  ponderings  the  religious 
manual  of  a  far-distant  world  ?  This  question  can 
scarcely  be  answered  without  a  few  preliminary  re- 
flections on  the  historical  development  of  religion  at 
Kome. 

Among  all  the  civilised  religions  of  antiquity 
the  Eoman  might  ^well  seem  the  least  congenial 
either  to  the  beliefs  or  to  the  emotions  of  modern 
times.  From  the  very  first  it  bears  all  the  marks 
of  a  political  origin.  When  the  antiquarian  Varro 
treats  first  of  the  state  and  then  of  the  gods,  "  be- 
cause in  order  that  gods  may  be  established  states 
must  first  exist,"  he  is  but  retracing  faithfully  the 
real  genesis  of  the  cult  of  Eome.  Composed  of 
elements  borrowed  from  various  quarters,  it  dealt 
with  all  in  a  legal,  external,  unimaginative  spirit. 


190  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m. 

The  divination  and  ghost- religion,  which  it  drew 
from  the  Etruscans  and  other  primitive  sources, 
survived  in  the  state-augury  and  in  the  domestic 
worship  of  the  Lares,  only  in  a  formal  and  half- 
hearted way.  The  nature-religion,  which  came  from 
the  Aryan  forefatliers  of  Eome,  grew  frigid  indeed 
when  it  was  imprisoned  in  the  Indigitamenta,  or 
Official  Handy -book  of  the  Gods.  It  is  not  to 
Eome,  though  it  may  often  be  to  Italy,  that  the 
anthropologist  must  look  for  instances  of  those 
quaint  rites  which  form  in  many  countries  the 
oldest  existing  links  between  civilised  and  primitive 
conceptions  of  the  operations  of  an  unseen  Power. 
It  is  not  from  Eome  that  the  poet  must  hope  for 
fresh  developments  of  those  exquisite  and  uncon- 
scious allegories,  which  even  in  their  most  hackneyed 
reproduction  stiU  breathe  on  us  the  glory  of  the 
early  world.  The  most  enthusiastic  of  pagans  or 
neo-pagans  could  scarcely  reverence  with  much 
emotion  the  botanical  accuracy  of  Nodotus,  the  god 
of  Nodes,  and  Volutina,  the  goddess  of  Petioles,  nor 
tremble  before  the  terrors  of  Spiniensis  and  Eobigus, 
the  austere  Powers  of  BUght  and  Brambles,  nor 
eagerly  implore  the  favour  of  Stercutius  and  Ster- 
quilinus,  the  beneficent  deities  of  Manure.^ 

This   shadowy   system   of  divinities   is   a  mere 

'  Of  some  of  these  Powers  it  is  hard-  to  say  whether  they  are  to 
be  considered  as  celestial  or  the  reverse.  Such  are  Carnea,  the 
Goddess  of  Embonpoint,  and  Genius  Portorii  Publici,  the  Angel  ol 
Indirect  Taxation. 


III.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  191 

elaboration  of  the  primitive  notion  that  religion 
consists  in  getting  whatever  can  be  got  from  the 
gods,  and  that  this  must  be  done  by  asking  the 
right  personages  in  the  proper  terms.  The  boast  of 
historian  or  poet  that  the  old  Eomans  were  "  most 
religious  mortals,"  or  that  they  "  surpassed  in  piety 
the  gods  themselves,"  refers  entirely  to  punctuality 
of  outward  observance,  considered  as  a  definite  quid 
pro  guo  for  the  good  things  desired.  It  is  not  hard 
to  be  "  more  pious  than  the  gods  "  if  piety  on  our 
part  consists  in  asking  decorously  for  what  we 
want,  and  piety  on  their  part  in  immediately  grant- 


ing it. 


It  is  plain  that  it  was  not  in  this  direction  that 
the  Romans  found  a  vent  for  the  reverence  and 
the  self-devotion  in  which  their  character  was 
assuredly  not  deficient.  Their  true  worship,  their 
true  piety,  were  reserved  for  a  more  concrete, 
though  still  a  vast  ideal.  As  has  been  often  said, 
the  religion  of  thu  Eomans  was  Eome.  Her  true 
saints  were  her  patriots,  Curtius  and  Scaevola, 
Horatius,  Regulus,  Cato.  Her  "heaven -descended 
maxim "  was  not  yvoi)6i  aeavTov,  but  Delenda  est 
Carthago.  But  a  concrete  idea  must  necessarily 
lose  in  fixedness  what  it  gains  in  actuality.  As 
Eome  became  the  Eoman  Empire  the  temper  of  her 
religion  must  needs  change  with  the  fortunes  of  its 
object.  While  the  fates  of  the  city  yet  hung  in 
the   balance   the   very    thought    of   her    had    been 


192  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

enough  to  make  Roman  for  all  ages  a  synonym  for 
heroic  virtue.  But  when  a  heterogeneous  world- 
wide empire  seemed  to  derive  its  unity  from  the 
Emperor's  personality  alone,  men  felt  that  the  object 
of  so  many  deeds  of  piety  had  disappeared  through 
their  very  success.  Devotion  to  Eome  was  trans- 
formed into  the  worship  of  Caesar,  and  the  one  strain 
of  vital  religion  which  had  run  through  the  Com- 
monwealth was  stiffened  like  all  the  rest  into  a 
dead  official  routine. 

Something  better  than  this  was  needed  for  culti- 
vated and  serious  men.  To  take  one  instance  only, 
what  was  the  Emperor  himself  to  worship  ?  It 
might  be  very  well  for  obsequious  provinces  to  erect 
statues  to  the  Indulgentia  Ccesaris.  But  Ca3sar 
himself  could  hardly  be  expected  to  adore  his 
own  Good-humour.  In  epochs  like  these,  when  a 
national  religion  has  lost  its  validity  in  thoughtful 
minds,  and  the  nation  is  pausing,  as  it  were,  for 
further  Hght,  there  is  a  fair  field  for  all  comers. 
There  is  an  opportunity  for  those  who  wish  either 
to  eliminate  the  religious  instinct,  or  to  distort  it, 
or  to  rationalise  it,  or  to  vivify ;  for  the  secularist 
and  the  charlatan,  for  the  philosopher  and  the  pro- 
phet. In  Eome  there  was  assuredly  no  lack  of 
negation  and  indifference,  of  superstition  and  its 
inseparable  fraud.  But  two  streams  of  higher 
tendency  rushed  into  the  spiritual  vacuum,  two 
currents  which  represented,  broadly  speaking,   the 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  193 

main  religious  and  the  main  ethical  tradition  of 
mankind.  Tlie  first  of  these,  which  we  must  pass 
by  for  the  present,  had  its  origin  in  the  legendary 
Pythagoras  and  the  remoter  East.  The  second 
took  the  form  of  a  generalised  and  simplified 
Stoicism. 

Stoicism,  of  course,  was  no  new  thing  in  Eome. 
It  had  come  in  with  Greek  culture  at  the  time  of 
the  Punic  wars  ;  it  had  commended  itself  by  its 
proud  precision  to  Eoman  habits  of  thought  and 
life ;  it  had  been  welcomed  as  a  support  for  the 
state  religion,  a  method  of  allegorising  Olympus 
which  yet  might  be  accounted  orthodox.  The 
names  of  Cato  and  Brutus  maintained  the  Stoic 
tradition  through  the  death-throes  of  the  Repub- 
lic. But  the  stern  independence  of  the  Porch  was 
not  invoked  to  aid  in  the  ceremonial  revival  with 
which  Augustus  would  fain  have  renewed  the  old 
Roman  virtue.  It  is  among  the  horrors  of  Nero's 
reign  that  we  find  "Stoicism  taking  its  place  as  a 
main  spiritual  support  of  men.  But  as  it  becomes 
more  efficacious  it  becomes  also  less  distinctive.  In 
Seneca,  in  Epictetus,  most  of  all  in  Marcus  himself, 
we  see  it  gradually  discarding  its  paradoxes,  its 
controversies,  its  character  as  a  specialised  philo- 
sophical sect.  We  hear  less  of  its  logic,  its  cos- 
mogony, its  portrait  of  the  ideal  Sage.  It  insists 
rather  on  what  may  be  termed  the  catholic  verities 
of  all  philosophers,  on  the  sole  importance  of  virtue, 

0 


194  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

the  spiritual  oueness  of  the  universe,  the  hrother- 
hood  of  men.  From  every  point  of  view  this  latter 
Stoicism  afforded  unusual  advantages  to  the  soul 
which  aimed  at  wisdom  and  virtue.  It  was  a  philo- 
sophy ;  but  by  dint  of  time  and  trial  it  had  run 
itself  clear  of  the  extravagance  and  unreality  of  the 
schools.  It  was  a  reform;  but  its  attitude  towards 
the  established  religion  was  at  once  friendly  and 
independent,  so  that  it  was  neither  cramped  by 
deference  nor  embittered  by  reaction.  Its  doctrines 
were  old  and  true ;  yet  it  had  about  it  a  certain 
freshness  as  being  in  fact  the  first  free  and  medi- 
tative outlook  on  the  universe  to  which  the  Roman 
people  had  attained.  And,  more  than  all,  it  had 
ready  to  its  hand  a  large  remainder  of  the  most 
famous  store  of  self-devotedness  that  the  world  has 
seen.  Stoicism  was  the  heir  of  the  old  Roman 
virtue ;  happy  is  the  philosophy  which  can  support 
its  own  larger  creed  on  the  instincts  of  duty  in- 
herited from  many  a  generation  of  narrow  upright- 
ness, of  unquestioned  law. 

But  the  opportunity  for  the  very  flower  of  Stoic 
excellence  was  due  to  the  caprice  of  a  great  amateur. 
Hadrian  admired  both  beauty  and  virtue ;  his  choice 
of  Antinous  and  of  Marcus  gave  to  the  future  world 
the  standard  of  the  sculptor  and  the  standard  of 
the  moralist ;  the  completest  types  of  physical  and 
moral  perfection  wliich  Roman  history  has  handed 
down.     And   yet   among   the  names   of   his  bene- 


m.]  MARCUS  AURKLIUS  ANTONINUS.  195 

factors  with  which  the  scrupulous  gratitude  of 
Marcus  has  opened  his  self-communings,  the  name 
Hadrianus  does  not  occur.  The  boy  thus  raised 
to  empire  has  passed  by  Hadrian,  who  gave  him 
all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and  the  glory  of 
them,  for  Severus,  who  taught  him  to  disdain  them 
alL 

Among  all  the  Meditations  none  is  at  once  more 
simple  and  more  original  than  this  exordium  of 
thanksgiving.  It  is  the  single-hearted  utterance  of 
a  soul  which  knows  neither  desire  nor  pride,  which 
considers  nothing  as  gain  in  her  life's  journey  ex- 
cept the  love  of  those  souls  who  have  loved  her, — 
the  memory  of  those  who  have  fortified  her  by  the 
spectacle  and  communication  of  virtue. 

The  thoughts  that  foUow  on  this  prelude  are  by 
no  means  of  an  exclusively  Stoic  type.  They  are 
both  more  emotional  and  more  agnostic  than  would 
have  satisfied  Chrysippus  or  Zeno.  They  are  not 
conceived  in  that;,  tone  of  certainty  and  conviction 
Ln  which  men  lecture  or  preach,  but  with  those  sad 
reserves,  those  varying  moods  of  hope  and  despond- 
ency, which  are  natural  to  a  man's  secret  ponderings 
on  the  riddle  of  the  world.  Even  the  fundamental 
Stoic  belief  in  God  and  Providence  is  not  beyond 
question  in  Marcus'  eyes.  The  passages  where  he 
repeats  the  alternative  "  either  gods  or  atoms  "  are 
too  strongly  expressed  to  allow  us  to  think  that  the 
antithesis  is  only  a  trick  of  style. 


196  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

"  Either  confusion  and  entanglement  and  scattering 
again :  or  unity,  order,  providence.  If  the  first  case 
be,  why  do  I  wish  to  live  amid  the  clashings  of  chance 
and  chaos  ?  or  care  for  aught  else  but  to  become  earth 
myself  at  last  ?  and  why  am  I  disturbed,  since  this  dis- 
persion will  come  whatever  I  do  ?  but  if  the  latter  case 
be  the  true  one,  I  reverence  and  stand  firm,  and  trust 
in  him  who  rules. 

"  Thus  wags  the  world,  up  and  down,  from  age  to 
age.  And  either  the  universal  mind  determines  each 
event ;  and  if  so,  accept  then  that  which  it  determines  ; 
or  it  has  ordered  once  for  all,  and  the  rest  follows  in 
sequence ;  or  indivisible  elements  are  the  origin  of  all 
things.  In  a  word,  if  there  be  a  god,  then  all  is  well ; 
if  all  things  go  at  random,  act  not  at  random  thou." 

And  along  with  this  speculative  openness,  so 
much  more  sympathetic  to  the  modern  reader  than 
the  rhetoric  of  Seneca  or  even  the  lofty  dogmatism 
of  Epictetus,  there  is  a  total  absence  of  the  Stoic 
pride.  His  self -reverence  is  of  that  truest  kind 
which  is  based  on  a  man's  conception  not  of  what 
he  is,  but  of  what  he  ought  to  be. 

"  Men  cannot  admire  the  sharpness  of  thy  wits.  Be 
it  so ;  but  many  other  things  there  are  of  which  thou 
canst  not  say,  I  was  not  formed  for  them.  Show  those 
things  which  are  whoUy  in  thy  power  to  show  :  sincerity, 
dignity,  laboriousness,  self-denial,  contentment,  frugality, 
kindliness,  frankness,  simplicity,  seriousness,  magnanim- 
ity. Seest  thou  not  how  many  things  there  are  in  which, 
with  no  excuse  of  natural  incapacity,  thou  voluntarily 
fallest  short  "i  or  art  thou  compelled  by  defect  of  nature 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  197 

to  murmur  and  be  stingy  and  flatter  and  complain  of 
thy  poor  body,  and  cajole  and  boast,  and  disquiet  thy- 
self in  vain  ?  No,  by  the  gods  !  but  of  all  these  things 
thou  mightest  have  been  rid  long  ago.  Nay,  if  indeed 
thou  be  somewhat  slow  and  dull  of  comprehension,  thou 
must  exert  thyself  about  this  too,  and  not  neglect  it  nor 
be  contented  with  thy  dulness." 

Words  like  these,  perhaps,  exalt  human  nature 
in  our  eyes  quite  as  highly  as  if  we  had  heard  Mar- 
cus insisting,  like  some  others  of  his  school,  that 
"  the  sage  is  as  useful  to  Zeus  as  Zeus  to  him,"  or 
that  "courage  is  more  creditable  to  sages  than  it  is 
to  gods,  since  gods  have  it  by  nature,  but  sages  by 
practice." 

And  having  thus  overheard  his  self-communings, 
with  what  a  sense  of  soundness  and  reality  do  we 
turn  to  the  steady  fervour  of  his  constantly  repeated 
ideal ! 

"  Let  the  god  within  thee  be  the  guardian  of  a  living 
being,  masculine,  adult,  political,  and  a  Roman,  and  a 
ruler  j  who  has  taken  up  his  post  in  life  as  one  that 
awaits  with  readiness  the  signal  that  shall  summon  him 
away.  .  .  .  And  such  a  man,  who  delays  no  longer  to 
strive  to  be  in  the  number  of  the  best,  is  as  a  priest  and 
servant  of  the  gods,  obeying  that  god  who  is  in  liimself 
enshrined,  who  renders  him  unsoiled  of  pleasure,  un- 
harmed by  any  pain,  untouched  by  msult,  feeling  no 
wrong,  a  wrestler  in  the  noblest  struggle,  which  is,  that 
by  no  passion  he  may  be  overthrown  ;  dyed  to  the  depth 
in  justice,  and  with  his  whole  heart  welcoming  whatso- 
ever cometh  to  him  and  is  ordained." 


198  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m. 

The  ideal  is  sketched  on  Stoic  liaes,  but  the 
writer's  temperament  is  not  cast  in  the  old  Stoic 
mould.  He  reminds  us  rather  of  modern  sensitive- 
ness, in  his  shrinking  from  the  presence  of  coarse 
and  selfish  persons,  and  in  his  desire,  obvious  enough 
but  constantly  checked,  for  the  sympathy  and  appro- 
bation of  those  with  whom  he  Hved.  The  self- 
sufficing  aspect  of  Stoicism  has  in  him  lost  all  its 
exclusiveness ;  it  is  represented  only  by  the  resolute 
recurrence  to  conscience  as  the  one  support  against 
the  buffets  of  the  world. 

"  I  do  my  duty ;  other  things  trouble  me  not ;  for 
either  they  are  things  without  life,  or  things  without 
reason,  or  things  that  have  wandered  and  know  not  the 
way." 

And  thus,  whUe  aU  the  dealings  of  Marcus  with 
his  fellow-men  are  summed  up  in  the  two  endeavours 
— to  imitate  their  virtues,  and  to  amend,  or  at  least 
patiently  to  endure,  their  defects — it  is  pretty  plain 
which  of  these  two  efforts  was  most  frequently 
needed.  His  fragmentary  thoughts  present  us  with 
a  long  series  of  struggles  to  rise  from  the  mood 
of  disgust  and  depression  into  the  mood  of  serene 
benevolence,  by  dwelling  strongly  on  a  few  "guiding 
lines  of  self-admonition. 

"  Begin  the  morning  by  saying  to  thyself :  I  shall 
meet  with  the  busybody,  the  ungrateful,  arrogant,  deceit- 
ful, envious,  unsocial.  All  these  things  happen  to  them 
by  reason  of  their  ignorance  of  what  is  good  and  evil. 
But  I  who  have  seen  the  nature  of  the  good  that  it  is 


ni.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  199 

beautiful,  and  of  the  bad  that  it  is  ugly,  and  the  nature 
of  him  who  sins,  that  it  is  akin  to  mine,  and  partici- 
pates in  the  same  divinity,  I  can  neither  be  injured  by 
any  of  them,  for  no  man  can  fix  a  foulness  on  me ; 
nor  can  I  be  angry  nor  hate  my  brother." 

There  is  reason,  indeed,  to  fear  that  Marcus  loved 
his  enemies  too  well ;  that  he  was  too  much  given 
to  blessing  those  that  cursed  him.  It  is  to  him, 
rather  than  to  any  Christian  potentate,  that  we  must 
look  for  an  example  of  the  dangers  of  applying  the 
gospel  maxims  too  unreservedly  to  the  business  of 
the  turbid  world.  For  indeed  the  practical  danger 
lies  not  in  the  overt  adoption  of  those  counsels  of 
an  ideal  mildness  and  mercy,  but  even  in  the  mere 
attainment  of  a  temper  so  calm  and  lofty  that  the 
promptings  of  vanity  or  anger  are  felt  no  more. 
The  task  of  curbing  and  punishing  other  men,  of 
humiliating  their  arrogance,  exposing  their  falsity, 
upbraiding  their  sloth,  is  in  itself  so  distasteful,  when 
there  is  no  persoaal  rivalry  or  resentment  to  prompt 
it,  that  it  is  sure  to  be  performed  too  geutly,  or 
neglected  for  more  congenial  duties.  Avidius  Cas- 
sius,  burning  his  disorderly  soldiers  alive  to  gain 
himself  a  reputation  for  vigour,  was  more  compre- 
hensible to  the  mass  of  men,  more  immediately  effi- 
cacious, than  Marcus  representing  to  the  selfish  and 
wayward  Commodus  "  that  even  bees  did  not  act  in 
such  a  manner,  nor  any  of  those  creatures  which  live 
in  troops." 


200  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

But  the  very  incongruity  between  the  duties 
which  Marcus  was  called  on  to  perform  and  the 
spirit  which  he  brought  to  their  performance,  the 
fate  which  made  him  by  nature  a  sage  and  a  saiat, 
by  profession  a  ruler  and  a  warrior,  all  this  gave  to 
his  character  a  dignity  and  a  completeness  which  it 
could  scarcely  otherwise  have  attained.  The  master 
of  the  world  more  than  other  men  might  feel  him- 
self bound  to  "  live  as  on  a  moimtaia  ; "  he  whose 
look  was  life  or  death  to  millions  might  best  set  the 
example  of  the  single-heartedness  wliich  need  hide 
the  thought  of  no  waking  moment  from  any  one's 
knowledge, — till  a  man's  eyes  should  reveal  all  that 
passed  within  him,  "  even  as  there  is  no  veil  upon  a 
star."  The  Stoic  philosophy  which  required  that  the 
sage  should  be  indifferent  to  worldly  goods  found  its 
crowning  exemplar  in  a  sage  who  possessed  them  alL 

And,  indeed,  in  the  case  of  Marcus  the  difficulty 
was  not  to  disdain  the  things  of  earth,  but  to  care 
for  them  enough.  The  touch  of  Cynic  crudity  with 
which  he  analyses  such  things  as  men  desire,  reminds 
us  sometimes  of  those  scornful  pictures  of  secular 
life  which  have  been  penned  in  the  cloister:  For 
that  indifference  to  transitory  things  which  has  often 
made  the  religious  fanatic  the  worst  of  citizens  is 
not  the  danger  of  the  fanatic  alone.  It  is  a  part 
also  of  the  melancholy  of  the  magnanimous ;  of  the 
mood  when  the  "  joy  and  gladness  "  which  the  Stoics 
promised  to  their  sage  die  down  in  the  midst  of 


III.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  201 

"  such  darkness  and  dirt,"  as  Marcus  calls  it,  "  that 
it  is  hard  to  imagine  what  there  is  which  is  worthy 
to  be  prized  highly,  or  seriously  pursued." 

Nay,  it  seems  to  him  that  even  if,  in  Plato's 
phrase,  he  could  become  "  the  spectator  of  all  time 
and  of  all  existence,"  there  would  be  nothing  in  the 
sight  to  stir  the  exultation,  to  change  the  solitude 
of  the  sage.  The  universe  is  full  of  living  creatures, 
but  there  is  none  of  them  whose  existence  is  so 
glorious  and  blessed  that  by  itself  it  can  justify  all 
other  Being ;  the  worlds  are  destroyed  and  re-created 
with  an  endless  renewal,  but  they  are  tending  to  no 
world  more  pure  than  themselves ;  they  are  not  even, 
as  in  Hindoo  myth,  ripening  in  a  secular  expectancy 
till  Buddha  come ;  they  are  but  repeating  the  same 
littlenesses  from  the  depth  to  the  height  of  heaven, 
and  reiterating  throughout  all  eternity  the  fears  and 
follies  of  a  day. 

"  If  thou  wert  lifted  on  high  and  didst  behold  the 
manifold  fates  of  men  ;  and  didst  discern  at  once  all 
creatures  that  dwell  round  about  him,  in  the  ether  and 
the  air ;  then  howso  oft  thou  thus  wert  raised  on  high, 
these  same  things  thou  shouldst  ever  see,  all  things  ahke, 
and  all  things  perishing.  And  where  is,  then,  the 
glory  ? " 

Men  who  look  out  on  the  world  with  a  gaze  thus 
disenchanted  are  apt  to  wrap  themselves  in  a  cynical 
indifference  or  in  a  pessimistic  despair.  But  char- 
acter is  stronger  than   creed ;  and  Marcus  carries 


202  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m 

into  the  midst  of  the  saddest  surroundings  his 
nature's  imperious  craving  to  reverence  and  to  love. 
He  feels,  indeed,  that  the  one  joy  which  could  have 
attached  him  to  the  world  is  wholly  wanting  to  him. 

"  This  is  the  only  thing,  if  anything  there  be,  which 
could  have  drawn  thee  backwards  and  held  thee  still  in 
Ufe,  if  it  had  been  granted  thee  to  live  with  men  of  like 
principles  with  thyself  But  now  thou  seest  how  great 
a  pain  there  is  in  the  discordance  of  thy  life  with  other 
men's,  so  that  thou  sayest :  Come  quick,  0  death  !  lest 
perchance  I  too  should  forget  myself" 

Nor  can  he  take  comfort  from  any  steadfast  hope 
of  future  fellowship  with  kindred  souls. 

"  How  can  it  be  that  the  gods,  having  ordered  all 
things  rightly  and  with  good-will  towards  men,  have 
overlooked  this  thing  alone :  that  some  men,  virtuous 
indeed,  who  have  as  it  were  made  many  a  covenant  with 
heaven,  and  through  holy  deeds  and  worship  have  had 
closest  communion  with  the  divine,  that  these  men,  when 
once  they  are  dead,  should  not  live  again,  but  be  extin- 
guished for  ever  ?  Yet  if  this  be  so,  be  sure  that  if  it 
ought  to  have  been  otherwise  the  gods  would  have  done 
it.  For  were  it  just,  it  would  also  be  possible  ;  were  it 
according  to  nature,  nature  would  have  had  it  so." 

For  thus  he  believes  without  proof  and  tvithout 
argument  that  all  is  for  the  best ;  that  everything 
which  happens  is  for  the  advantage  of  every  con- 
stituent life  in  nature,  since  everything  is  for  the 
advantage  of  the  whole.  He  wUl  not  entertain  the 
idea  that  the  Powers  above  him  may  be  not  all- 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  203 

powerful ;  or  the  Wisdom  which  rules  the  universe 
less  than  all-wise.  And  this  optimism  comes  from 
no  natural  buoyancy  of  temper.  There  is  scarcely 
a  trace  in  the  Meditations  of  any  mood  of  careless 
joy.  He  never  rises  beyond  the  august  contentment 
of  the  man  who  accepts  his  fate. 

"All  things  are  harmonious  to  me  which  are  har- 
monious to  thee,  0  Universe.  Nothing  for  me  is  too 
early  nor  too  late  which  is  in  due  time  for  thee.  All  is 
fruit  to  me  which  thy  seasons,  0  Nature,  bear.  From 
thee  are  all  things,  and  in  thee  all,  and  all  return  to 
thee.  The  poet  says,  '  Dear  city  of  Cecrops ; '  shall  I 
not  say,  'Dear  city  of  God?'" 

There  have  been  many  who,  with  no  more  belief 
than  Marcus  in  a  personal  immortality,  have  striven, 
like  him,  to  accept  wiUingly  the  world  in  which  they 
found  themselves  placed.  But  sometimes  they  have 
marred  the  dignity  of  their  position  by  attempting 
too  eagerly  to  find  a  reason  for  gladness  ;  they  have 
dwelt  with  exultation  upon  a  terrene  future  for  our 
race  from  which  Marcus  would  stUl  have  turned 
and  asked,  "  Where,  then,  is  the  glory  ? "  It  would 
have  seemed  to  him  that  a  triumphant  tone  like 
this  can  only  come  from  the  soilure  of  philosophy 
with  something  of  the  modern  spirit  of  industrial 
materialism  and  facile  enjoyment ;  he  would  have 
preferred  that  his  own  sereneness  should  be  less  near 
to  complacency  than  to  resignation ;  he  would  still 
have  chosen  the  temper  of  that  saintly  Stoic,  whose 


204  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iil 

rude,  strong  verses  break  in  with  so  stern  a  piety 
among  the  fragments  of  philosophic  Greece  : — 

"  Lead,  lead  Cleanthes,  Zeus  and  holy  Fate, 
Where'er  ye  place  my  post,  to  serve  or  wait : 
Willing  I  follow  ;  were  it  not  my  wUl, 
A  baffled  rebel  I  must  follow  stUl." 

These,  however,  are  differences  only  of  tone  and 
temper  overlying  what  forms  in  reality  a  vast  body 
of  practical  agreement.  For  the  scheme  of  thought 
and  belief  which  has  thus  been  briefly  sketched  is 
not  only  in  itself  a  noble  and  a  just  one.  It  is  a 
kind  of  common  creed  of  wise  men,  from  wMch  all 
other  views  may  well  seem  mere  deflections  on  the 
side  of  an  unwarranted  credulity  or  of  an  exaggerated 
despair.  Here,  it  may  be  not  unreasonably  urged, 
is  the  moral  backbone  of  all  universal  religions ;  and 
as  civilisation  has  advanced,  the  practical  creed  of 
all  parties,  whatever  their  specvdative  pretensions, 
has  approximated  ever  more  nearly  to  these  plain 
principles  and  uncertain  hopes. 

This  view  of  the  tendency  of  religious  progress 
is  undoubtedly  the  simplest  and  most  plausible  which 
liistory  presents  to  the  philosopher  who  is  not  him- 
self pledged  to  the  defence  of  any  one  form  of  what 
is  termed  supernatural  belief  But  it  has  to  contend 
with  grave  difficulties  of  historical  fact ;  and  among 
these  difficulties  the  age  of  the  Antonines  presents 
one  of  the  most  considerable.     Never  had  the  ground 


in.]  MAECUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  205 

been  cleared  on  so  large  a  scale  for  pure  philosophy ; 
never  was  there  so  little  external  pressure  exerted 
in  favour  of  any  traditional  faith.  The  persecutions 
of  the  Christians  were  undertaken  on  political  and 
moral,  rather  than  on  theological  grounds  ;  they 
were  the  expression  of  the  feeling  with  which  a 
modern  State  might  regard  a  set  of  men  who  were 
at  once  Mormons  and  Nihilists — refusing  the  legal 
tokens  of  respect  to  constituted  authorities,  whUe 
suspected  of  indulging  in  low  immorality  at  the 
bidding  of  an  ignorant  superstition.  And  yet  the 
result  of  this  age  of  tolerance  and  enlightenment 
was  the  gradual  recrudescence,  among  the  cultivated 
as  well  as  the  ignorant,  of  the  belief  in  a  perceptible 
interaction  of  the  seen  and  the  unseen  world,  cul- 
minating at  last  in  the  very  form  of  that  belief 
which  had  shown  itself  most  resolute,  most  thorough- 
going, and  most  intractable. 

For  the  triumph  of  Christianity  in  the  Roman 
Empire  must  not  he  looked  upon  as  an  anomalous 
or  an  isolated  phenomenon.  It  was  rather  the 
triumph  along  the  whole  Line,  though  (as  is  usual 
in  great  triumphs)  in  an  unlooked-for  fashion,  of  a 
current  of  tendency  which  had  coexisted  obscurely 
with  State-religion,  patriotism,  and  philosophy,  almost 
from  the  first  beginnings  of  the  city.  The  anomaly, 
if  there  were  one,  consisted  in  the  fact  that  the  hints 
and  elements  of  this  new  power,  which  was  destined 
to  be  the  second  life  of  Eome,  were  to  be  found,  not 


206  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iir. 

in  the  tiiue-honoured  ordinances  of  her  Senate,  or 
the  sober  wisdom  of  her  schools,  but  in  the  fanaticism 
of  ignorant  enthusiasts,  in  the  dreams  of  a  mystic 
poet,  in  the  alleged,  but  derided,  experiences  of  a 
few  eccentric  philosophers.  The  introduction  of 
Christianity  at  Eome  was  the  work  not  only  of 
Peter  and  Paul,  but  of  VirgU  and  Varro. 

For  amidst  the  various  creeds  and  philosophies, 
by  aid  of  which  men  have  ordered  their  life  on  earth, 
the  most  persistent  and  fundamental  line  of  division  is 
surely  this  : — The  question  whether  that  life  is  to  be 
ordered  by  rules  drawn  from  its  own  experience  alone, 
or  whether  there  are  indications  which  may  justly 
modify  our  conduct  or  expectations  by  some  influx 
of  inspiration,  or  some  phenomena  testifying  to  the 
existence  of  an  unseen  world,  or  to  our  continued 
life  after  the  body's  decay  ?  The  instincts  which 
prompt  to  this  latter  view  found,  as  has  been  already 
implied,  but  little  sustenance  in  the  established  cult 
of  Eome.  They  were  forced  to  satisfy  themselves 
in  a  fitful  and  irregiilar  fashion  by  Greek  and  Ori- 
ental modes  of  religious  excitement.  WTiat  sense 
of  elevation  or  reality  may  have  been  present  to  the 
partakers  in  these  alien  enthusiasms  we  are  not  now 
able  to  say.  The  worships  of  Bacchus  and  Cybele 
have  been  described  to  us  by  historians  of  the  same 
conservative  temper  as  those  who  afterwards  made 
"  an  execrable  superstition  "  of  the  worship  of  Christ. 
Some  scattered  indications  seem  to  imply  a  sub- 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  207 

stratum  of  religious  emotion,  or  of  theurgic  experi- 
ment, more  extensive  than  the  ordinary  authorities 
have  cared  to  record.  The  proud  and  gay  Catullus 
rises  to  his  masterpiece  in  the  description  of  that 
alternation  of  reckless  fanaticism  and  sick  recoil 
which  formed  throughout  the  so-called  Ages  of  Faith 
the  standing  tragedy  of  the  cloister.  More  startling 
still  is  the  story  which  shows  us  a  group  of  the 
greatest  personages  of  Eome  in  the  last  century 
before  Christ,  Nigidius  Figulus,  Appius  Claudius, 
Publius  Vatinius,  Marcus  Varro,  subjected  to  police 
supervision  on  account  of  their  alleged  practice  of 
summoning  into  visible  presence  the  spirits  of  the 
dead.  "  The  whole  system,"  says  Professor  Momm- 
sen,  "  obtained  its  consecration — political,  religious, 
and  national — from  the  name  of  Pythagoras,  the 
ultra -conservative  statesman,  whose  supreme  prin- 
ciple was  '  to  promote  order  and  to  check  disorder,' 
the  miracle-worker  and  necromancer,  the  primeval 
sage  who  was  a  najpive  of  Italy,  who  was  interwoven 
even  with  the  legendary  history  of  Eome,  and  whose 
statue  was  to  be  seen  in  the  Roman  Forum."  This 
story  might  seem  an  isolated  one  but  for  one  re- 
markable literary  parallel.  In  Virgil — perhaps  the 
only  Eoman  writer  who  possessed  what  would  now 
be  termed  religious  originality — we  observe  the  co- 
existence of  three  separate  lines  of  reUgious  thought. 
There  is  the  conservatism  wliich  loses  no  opportunity 
of  enforcing  the  traditional  worships  of  Eome,  in 


208  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [iii. 

accordance  at  once  with  the  poet's  own  temper  of 
mind,  and  with  the  plan  of  Augustus'  ethical  reforms. 
There  is  the  new  fusion  of  the  worship  of  Eome 
with  the  worship  of  the  Emperor — the  only  symbol 
of  spiritual  unity  between  remote  provincials  and 
the  imperial  city.  But  finally,  in  the  central  passage 
of  his  greatest  poem,  we  come  on  a  Pythagorean 
creed,  expressed,  indeed,  with  some  confusion  and 
hesitancy,  but  with  earnest  conviction  and  power, 
and  forming,  as  the  well-known  fragment  of  corre- 
spondence plainly  implies,  the  dominant  pre-occupa- 
tion  of  the  poet's  later  life. 

Such  a  scheme,  indeed,  as  the  Pythagorean,  with 
its  insistence  on  a  personal  immortality,  and  its 
moral  retribution  adjusted  by  means  of  successive 
existences  with  a  greater  nicety  than  has  been  em- 
ployed by  any  other  creed — such  a  scheme,  if  once 
established,  might  have  satisfied  the  spiritual  needs  of 
the  Eoman  world  more  profoundly  and  permanently 
than  either  the  worship  of  Jove  or  the  worship  of 
Caesar.  But  it  was  not  established.  The  reasoning, 
or  the  evidence,  which  had  impressed  VirgO,  or  the 
group  of  philosophers,  was  not  set  forth  before  the 
mass  of  men ;  those  instincts  which  we  shoiild  now 
term  specifically  religious  remained  unguided ;  and 
during  the  next  three  centuries  we  observe  the  love 
of  the  marvellous  and  the  supernatural  dissociating 
itself  more  and  more  from  any  ethical  dogma.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  remarkable  instances  in  these  centuries 


ni.J  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  209 

of  an  almost  modern  spirit  of  piety  associated  (as  for 
instance  in  Apuleius)  with  the  most  bizarre  religious 
vagaries.  But  on  the  whole  the  two  worships  which, 
until  the  triumph  of  Christianity,  seemed  most  likely 
to  overrun  the  civilised  world  were  the  worship  of 
Mithra  and  the  worship  of  Serapis.  Now  the  name 
of  Mithra  can  hardly  be  connected  with  moral  con- 
ceptions of  any  kind.  And  the  nearest  that  we  can 
get  to  the  character  of  Serapis  is  the  fact  that  he  was 
by  many  persons  considered  to  be  identical  either  with 
the  principle  of  good  or  with  the  principle  of  evil 

Among  these  confused  and  one-sided  faiths 
Christianity  had  an  unique  superiority.  It  was 
the  only  formulated  and  intelligible  creed  which 
united  the  two  elements  most  necessary  for  a  widely- 
received  religion,  namely,  a  lofty  moral  code,  and  the 
attestation  of  some  actual  intercourse  between  the 
visible  and  the  invisible  worlds. 

It  was  not  the  morality  of  the  Gospels  alone 
which  exercised  the  attractive  force.  Still  less  was 
it  the  speculations  of  Pauline  theology,  the  high  con- 
ceptions which  a  later  age  hardened  into  so  immut- 
able a  system.  It  was  the  fact  that  this  lofty  teach- 
ing was  based  on  beliefs  which  almost  all  men  held 
already ;  that  exhortations,  nobler  than  those  of 
Plutarch  or  Marcus,  were  supported  by  marvels 
better  attested  than  those  of  Alexander  of  Abono- 
teichos,  or  Apollonius  of  Tyana.  In  a  thousand 
ways,  and  by  a  thousand  channels,  the  old  faiths 

P 


210  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m. 

melted  into  the  new.  It  was  not  only  that  such 
apologists  as  Justin  and  Minucius  Felix  were  fond 
of  showing  that  Christianity  was,  as  it  were,  the 
crown  of  philosophy,  the  consummation  of  Platonic 
truth.  More  important  was  the  fact  that  the  rank 
and  file  of  Christian  converts  looked  on  the  universe 
with  the  same  eyes  as  the  heathens  around  them. 
All  that  they  asked  of  these  was  to  believe  that  the 
dimly-realised  deities,  whom  the  heathens  regarded 
rather  with  fear  than  love,  were  in  reality  powers  of 
evil;  while  above  the  Oriental  additions  so  often  made 
to  their  Pantheon  waa  to  be  superposed  one  ultimate 
divinity,  alone  beneficent,  and  alone  to  be  adored. 

The  hierarchy  of  an  unseen  universe  must  needs 
be  a  somewhat  shadowy  and  arbitrary  thing.  To 
those,  indeed,  whose  imagination  is  already  exercised 
on  such  matters  a  new  scheme  of  the  celestial  powers 
may  come  with  an  acceptable  sense  of  increasing 
insight  into  the  deep  things  of  God.  But  in  one 
who,  like  Marcus,  has  learnt  to  believe  that  in  such 
matters  the  truest  wisdom  is  to  recognise  that  we 
cannot  know,  in  him  a  scheme  like  the  Christian 
is  apt  to  inspire  incredulity  by  its  very  promise  of 
completeness, — suspicion  by  the  very  nature  of  the 
evidence  which  is  alleged  in  its  support. 

Neither  the  Stoic  school  in  general,  indeed,  nor 
Marcus  himself,  were  clear  of  all  superstitious  ten- 
dency. The  early  masters  of  the  sect  had  pushed 
their  doctrine  of  the  solidarity  of  all  things  to  the 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  211 

point  of  anticipating  that  the  liver  of  a  particular 
bullock,  itself  selected  from  among  its  fellows  by 
some  mysterious  fitness  of  things,  might  reasonably 
give  an  indication  of  the  result  of  an  impending 
battle.  When  it  was  urged  that  on  this  principle 
everything  might  be  expected  to  be  indicative  of 
everything  else,  the  Stoics  answered  that  so  it  was, 
but  that  only  when  such  indications  lay  in  the  liver 
could  we  understand  them  aright.  Wlien  asked 
how  we  came  to  understand  them  when  thus  located, 
the  Stoic  doctors  seem  to  have  made  no  sufiicient 
reply.  We  need  not  suppose  that  Marcus  partici- 
pated in  absurdities  like  these.  He  himself  makes 
no  assertion  of  this  hazardous  kind,  except  only 
that  remedies  for  his  ailments  "  have  been  shown  to 
him  in  dreams."  And  this  is  not  insisted  on  in 
detail ;  it  rather  forms  part  of  that  habitual  feeling 
or  impression  which,  if  indeed  it  be  superstitious,  is 
yet  a  superstition  from  which  no  devout  mind,  per- 
haps, was  ever  whqjly  free  ;  namely,  that  he  is  the 
object  of  a  special  care  and  benevolence  proceeding 
from  some  holy  power.  Such  a  feeling  implies  no 
belief  either  in  merit  or  in  privilege  beyond  that  of 
other  men ;  but  just  as  the  man  who  is  strongly 
willing,  though  it  be  proved  to  him  that  his  choice 
is  determined  by  his  antecedents,  must  yet  feel 
assured  that  he  can  deflect  its  issue  this  way  or  that, 
even  so  a  man,  the  habit  of  whose  soul  is  worship^ 
cannot  but  see  at  least  a  reflection  of  his  own  virtue 


212  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m. 

in  the  arch  of  heaven,  and  bathe  his  spirit  in  the 
mirage  projected  from  the  well-spring  of  its  own  love. 
For  such  an  instinct,  for  all  the  highest  instincts 
of  his  heart,  Marcus  would  no  doubt  have  found  in 
Christianity  a  new  and  full  satisfaction.  The  ques- 
tion, however,  whether  he  ought  to  have  become  a 
Christian  is  not  worth  serious  discussion.  In  the 
then  state  of  belief  in  the  Roman  world  it  would 
have  been  as  impossible  for  a  Roman  Emperor  to 
become  a  Christian  as  it  would  be  at  the  present  day 
for  a  Czar  of  Russia  to  become  a  Buddhist.  Some 
Christian  apologists  complain  that  Marcus  was  not 
converted  by  the  miracle  of  the  "  Thundering  Legion.' 
They  forget  that  though  some  obscure  persons  may 
have  ascribed  that  happy  occurrence  to  Christian 
prayers,  the  Emperor  was  assured  on  much  higher 
authority  that  he  had  performed  the  miracle  himself. 
Marcus,  indeed,  would  assuredly  not  have  insisted 
on  his  own  divinity.  He  would  not  have  been 
deterred  by  any  Stoic  exclusiveness  from  incorporat- 
ing in  his  scheme  of  belief,  already  infiltrated  with 
Platonic  thought,  such  elements  as  those  apologists 
who  start  from  St.  Paul's  speech  at  Athens  would 
have  urged  him  to  introduce.  But  an  acceptance 
of  the  new  faith  involved  much  more  than  this. 
It  involved  tenets  which  might  well  seem  to  be  a 
mere  reversion  to  the  world-old  superstitions  and 
sorceries  of  barbarous  tribes.  Such  alleged  pheno- 
mena as  those  of  possession,  inspiration,  healing  by 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  213 

imposition  of  hands,  luminous  appearances,  modifi- 
cation and  movement  of  material  objects,  formed, 
not,  as  some  later  apologists  would  have  it,  a  mere 
accidental  admixture,  but  an  essential  and  loudly- 
asserted  element  in  the  new  religion.  The  appari- 
tion of  its  Founder  after  death  was  its  very  raison 
d'Stre  and  triumphant  demonstration.  The  Christian 
advocate  may  say  indeed  with  reason,  that  phenomena 
such  as  these,  however  suspicious  the  associations 
which  they  might  invoke,  however  primitive  the 
stratum  of  belief  to  which  they  might  seem  at  first 
to  degrade  the  disciple,  should  nevertheless  have 
been  examined  afresh  on  their  own  evidence,  and 
would  have  been  found  to  be  supported  by  a  con- 
sensus of  testimony  which  has  since  then  overcome 
the  world.  Addressed  to  an  age  in  which  Eeason 
was  supreme,  such  arguments  might  have  carried 
convincing  weight.  But  mankind  had  certainly  not 
reached  a  point  in  the  age  of  the  Antoniues, — if 
indeed  we  have  rei^ihed  it  yet, — at  which  the  recol- 
lections of  barbarism  were  cast  into  so  remote  a 
background  that  the  leaders  of  civilised  thought 
could  Ughtly  reopen  questions  the  closing  of  which 
might  seem  to  have  marked  a  clear  advance  along 
the  path  of  enlightenment.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that 
the  path  of  enlightenment  is  not  a  royal  road  but  a 
labyrinth;  and  that  those  who  have  marched  too 
unhesitatingly  in  one  direction  have  generally  been 
obliged  to  retrace  their  steps,  to  unravel  some  for- 


214  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

gotten  clue,  to  explore  some  turning  which  they  had 
already  passed  by.  But  the  practical  rulers  of  men 
must  not  take  the  paths  which  seem  to  point  back- 
wards until  they  hear  in  front  of  them  the  call  of 
those  who  have  chosen  that  less  inviting  way. 

An  emperor  who  had  "  learnt  from  Diognetus  not 
to  give  credit  to  what  is  said  by  miracle-workers  and 
jugglers  about  incantations  and  the  driving  away  of 
demons  and  such  things,"  might  well  feel  that  so 
much  as  to  inquire  into  the  Gospel  stories  would  be 
a  blasphemy  against  his  philosophic  creed.  Even 
the  heroism  of  Christian  martyrdom  left  him  cold.  In 
words  which  have  become  proverbial  as  a  wise  man's 
mistake,  he  stigmatises  the  Christian  contempt  of 
death  as  "  sheer  party  spirit."  And  yet — it  is  an 
old  thought,  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  recur  to  it 
once  more — what  might  he  not  have  learnt  from 
these  despised  sectaries !  the  melancholy  Emperor 
from  Potheinus  and  Blandina,  smiling  on  the  rack  ! 

Of  the  Christian  virtues,  it  was  not  faith  which 
was  lacking  to  him.  His  faith  indeed  was  not  that 
bastard  faith  of  theologians,  which  is  notliing  more 
than  a  willingness  to  assent  to  historical  propositions 
on  insuQicient  evidence.  But  it  was  faith "  such  as 
Christ  demanded  of  His  disciples,  the  steadfastness 
of  the  soul  in  clinging,  spite  of  doubts,  of  diffi- 
culties, even  of  despair,  to  whatever  she  has  known 
of  best ;  the  resolution  to  stand  or  fall  by  the  noblest 
hypothesis.     To  Marcus  the  alternative  of  "  gods  or 


\ 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUa  215 

atoms  " — of  a  universe  ruled  either  by  blind  chance 
or  by  an  intelligent  Providence — was  ever  present 
and  ever  unsolved;  but  in  action  he  ignored  that 
dark  possibility,  and  lived  as  a  member  of  a  sacred 
cosmos,  and  co-operant  with  ordering  gods. 

Again,  it  might  seem  unjust  to  say  that  he  was 
wanting  in  love.  No  one  has  expressed  with  more 
conviction  the  interdependence  and  kinship  of  men. 

"  We  are  made  to  work  together,  like  feet,  like  hands, 
like  eyehds,  like  the  rows  of  the  upper  and  lower  teeth." 
"  It  is  peculiar  to  man  to  love  even  those  who  do  wrong ; 
and  thou  wilt  love  them  if,  when  they  err,  thou  bethink 
thee  that  they  are  to  thee  near  akin."  "  Men  exist  for 
the  sake  of  one  another  ;  teach  them  then,  or  bear  with 
them."  "  Wlien  men  blame  thee,  or  hate  thee,  or  revile 
thee,  pass  inward  to  their  souls  ;  see  what  they  are. 
Thou  wilt  see  that  thou  needst  not  trouble  thyself  as  to 
what  such  men  think  of  thee.  And  thou  must  be  kindly 
aflfectioned  to  them  ;  for  by  nature  they  are  friends  ; 
and  the  gods,  too,  help  and  answer  them  in  many  ways." 
"  Love  men,  and  love  them  from  the  heart."  "  '  Earth 
loves  the  shower,'  and  '  sacred  aetlier  loves  ;'  and  the 
whole  universe  loves  the  making  of  that  which  is  to  be. 
I  say  then  to  the  universe  :  Even  I,  too,  love  as  thou." 

And  yet  about  the  love  of  a  John,  a  Paul,  a 
Peter,  there  is  the  ring  of  a  note  which  is  missing 
here.  Stoic  love  is  but  an  iajunction  of  reason  and 
a  means  to  virtue ;  Christian  love  is  the  open  secret 
of  the  universe,  and  in  itself  the  end  of  all.  In  all 
that  wisdom  can  teach  herein,  Stoic  and  Christian 


216  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [in. 

are  at  one.  They  both  know  that  if  a  man  would 
save  his  life  he  must  lose  it ;  that  the  disappearance 
of  all  selfish  aims  or  pleasures  in  the  universal  life 
is  the  only  pathway  to  peace.  All  religions  that 
are  worth  the  name  have  felt  the  need  of  this  in- 
ward change ;  the  difference  lies  rather  in  the  light 
under  which  they  regard  it.  To  the  Stoic  in  the 
West,  as  to  the  Buddhist  in  the  East,  it  presented 
itself  as  a  renunciation  which  became  a  deliverance, 
a  tranquillity  which  passed  into  an  annihilation. 
The  Christian,  too,  recognised  in  the  renunciation  of 
the  world  a  deliverance  from  its  evil.  But  his  spirit 
in  those  early  days  was  occupied  less  with  what  he 
was  resigning  than  with  what  he  gained ;  the  love 
of  Christ  constrained  him ;  he  died  to  self  to  find, 
even  here  on  earth,  that  he  had  passed  not  into 
nothingness,  but  into  heaven.  In  his  eyes  the  Stoic 
doctrine  was  not  false,  but  partly  rudimentary  and 
partly  needless.  His  only  objection,  if  objection  it 
could  be  called,  to  the  Stoic  manner  of  facing  the 
reality  of  the  universe,  was  that  the  reality  of  the 
universe  was  so  infinitely  better  than  the  Stoic 
supposed. 

If,  then,  the  Stoic  love  beside  the  Christian  was 
"aa  moonlight  unto  sunlight,  and  as  water  unto 
wine,"  it  was  not  only  because  the  Stoic  philosophy 
prescribed  the  curbing  and  checking  of  those  natural 
emotions  wliicli  Christianity  at  once  guided  and  in- 
tensified by  her  new  ideal.     It  was  because  the  love 


oi.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  217 

of  Christ  which  the  Christian  felt  was  not  a  labori- 
ous duty,  but  a  self-renewing,  self-intensifying  force ; 
a  feeling  offered  as  to  one  who  for  ever  responded 
to  it,  as  to  one  whose  triumphant  immortality  had 
brought  his  disciples'  immortality  to  light. 

So  completely  had  the  appearance  of  Jesus  to 
the  faithful  after  his  apparent  death  altered  in 
their  eyes  the  aspect  of  the  world.  So  decisive 
was  the  settlement  of  the  old  alternative,  "  Either 
Providence  or  atoms,"  which  was  effected  by  the 
firm  conviction  of  a  single  spirit's  beneficent  return 
along  that  silent  and  shadowy  way.  So  powerful  a 
reinforcement  to  Faith  and  Love  was  afforded  by 
the  third  of  the  Christian  trinity  of  viitues — by  the 
grace  of  Hope. 

But  we  are  treading  here  on  controverted  ground. 
It  is  not  only  that  this  great  prospect  has  not  yet 
taken  its  place  among  admitted  certainties ;  that 
the  hope  and  resurrection  of  the  dead  are  still  called 
in  question.  Mucli  more  than  this ;  the  most  ad- 
vanced school  of  modem  moralists  tends  rather  to 
deny  that  "  a  sure  and  certain  hope  "  in  this  matter 
is  to  be  desired  at  all.  Virtue,  it  is  alleged,  must 
needs  lose  her  disinterestedness  if  the  solution  of 
the  great  problem  were  opened  to  her  gaze. 

"  Pour  nous,"  says  M.  Renan,  who  draws  this  moral 
especially  from  the  noble  disinterestedness  of  Marcus 
himself :  "  pour  nous,  on  nous  annoncerait  un  argument 
p6remptoLre  en  ce  genre,  que  nous  ferions  comme  Saint 


218  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [m. 

Louis,  quand  on  lui  parla  de  I'hostie  miraculeuse  ;  nous 
refuserions  d'aller  voir.  Qu'avons  nous  besoin  de  ces 
preuves  brutales,  qui  n'ont  d'application  que  dans  I'ordre 
grossier  des  faits,  et  qui  generaient  notre  liberty  1 " 

This  seems  a  strong  argument ;  and  if  it  be 
accepted  it  is  practically  decisive  of  the  question  at 
issue, — I  do  not  say  only  between  Stoicism  and 
Christianity,  but  between  all  those  systems  which 
do  not  seek,  and  those  which  do  seek,  a  spiritual 
communion  for  man  external  to  his  own  soul,  a 
spiritual  continuance  external  to  his  own  body.  If 
a  proof  of  a  beneficent  Providence  or  of  a  future 
life  be  a  thing  to  be  deprecated,  it  will  be  indis- 
creet, or  even  immoral,  to  inquire  whether  such 
proof  has  been,  or  can  be,  obtained.  The  world 
must  stand  with  Marcus ;  and  there  will  be  no  ex- 
travagance in  M.  Kenan's  estimate  of  the  Stoic 
morality  as  a  sounder  and  more  permanent  system 
than  that  of  Jesus  Himself. 

But  generalisations  like  this  demand  a  close  ex- 
amination. Is  the  antithesis  between  interested  and 
disinterested  virtue  a  clear  and  fundamental  one  for 
all  stages  of  spiritual  progress  ?  Or  may  we  not 
find  that  the  conditions  of  the  experiment -vary,  as 
it  were,  as  virtue  passes  through  different  tempera- 
tures ;  that  our  formula  gives  a  positive  result  at 
one  point,  a  negative  at  another,  and  becomes  alto- 
gether unmeaning  at  a  third  ? 

It  will  be  allowed,  in  the  first  place,  that  for  an 


m.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  219 

indefinite  time  to  come,  and  until  the  mass  of  man- 
kind has  advanced  much  higher  above  the  savage 
level  than  is  as  yet  the  case,  it  will  be  premature 
to  be  too  fastidious  as  to  the  beliefs  which  prompt 
them  to  virtue.  The  first  object  is  to  give  them 
habits  of  self-restraint  and  weU-doing,  and  we  may 
be  well  content  if  their  crude  notions  of  an  unseen 
Power  are  such  as  to  reinforce  the  somewhat  obscure 
indications  which  life  on  earth  at  present  affords 
that  honesty  and  truth  and  mercy  bring  a  real 
reward  to  men.  But  let  us  pass  on  to  the  extreme 
hypothesis  on  which  the  repudiation  of  any  spiritual 
help  for  man  outside  himself  must  ultimately  rest. 
Let  us  suppose  that  man's  impulses  have  become 
harmonised  with  his  environment ;  that  his  tendency 
to  anger  has  been  minimised  by  long-standing 
gentleness ;  his  tendency  to  covetousness  by  diffused 
well-being ;  his  tendency  to  sensuality  by  the  in- 
creased preponderance  of  his  intellectual  natvire. 
How  will  the  test,  of  his  disinterestedness  operate 
then  ?  Why,  it  will  be  no  more  possible  then  for 
a  sane  man  to  be  deliberately  wicked  than  it  is  pos- 
sible now  for  a  civilised  man  to  be  deliberately  filthy 
in  his  personal  habits.  We  do  not  wish  now  that 
it  were  uncertain  whether  filth  were  vmhealthy  in 
order  that  we  might  be  the  more  meritorious  in 
preferring  to  be  clean.  And  whether  our  remote 
descendants  have  become  convinced  of  the  reality 
of  a  future  life  or  no,  it  will  assuredly  never  occur 


220  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ni. 

to  them  that,  without  it,  there  might  be  a  question 
whether  virtue  was  a  remunerative  object  of  pur- 
suit. Lapses  from  virtue  there  may  still  be  in 
plenty ;  but  inherited  instinct  wUl  have  made  it 
inconceivable  that  a  man  should  voluntarily  be 
what  Marcus  calls  a  "  boil  or  imposthume  upon  the 
universe,"  an  island  of  selfishness  in  the  mid-sea 
of  sympathetic  joy. 

It  is  true,  indeed,  that  in  the  present  age,  and 
for  certain  individuals,  that  choice  of  which  M. 
Eenan  speaks  has  a  terrible,  a  priceless  reality. 
Many  a  living  memory  records  some  crisis  when 
one  who  had  rejected  as  unproved  the  traditional 
sanctions  was  forced  to  face  the  question  whether 
his  virtue  had  any  sanction  which  still  could  stand ; 
some  night  when  the  foundations  of  the  soul's  deep 
were  broken  up,  and  she  asked  herself  why  she  still 
should  cleave  to  the  law  of  other  men  rather  than 
to  some  kindlier  monition  of  her  own  : — 

"  Doch  alles  was  dazu  mich  trieb, 
Gott,  war  so  gut !  acli,  war  so  lieb  ! " 

To  be  the  conqueror  in  such  a  contest  is  the 
characteristic  privilege  of  a  time  of  transition  like 
our  own.  But  it  is  not  the  only,  nor  even  the  high- 
est conceivable,  form  of  virtue.  It  is  an  incident 
in  the  moral  life  of  the  individual ;  its  possibility 
may  be  but  an  incident  in  the  moral  life  of  the 
race.     It  is  but  driving  the  enemy  off  the  gi'ound 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  221 

on  which  we  wish  to  build  our  temple ;  there 
may  be  far  greater  trials  of  strength,  endurance, 
courage,  before  we  have  raised  its  dome  in  air. 

For  after  all  it  is  only  in  the  lower  stages  of 
ethical  progress  that  to  see  the  right  is  easy  and  to 
decide  on  doing  it  is  hard.  The  time  comes  when 
it  is  not  so  much  conviction  of  the  desirability  of 
virtue  that  is  needed,  as  enlightenment  to  perceive 
where  virtue's  upward  pathway  lies ;  not  so  much 
the  direction  of  the  wiU  which  needs  to  be  con- 
trolled, as  its  force  and  energy  which  need  to  be 
ever  vivified  and  renewed.  It  is  then  that  the 
moralist  must  needs  welcome  any  influence,  if  such 
there  be,  which  can  pour  into  man's  narrow  vessel 
some  overflowing  of  an  infinite  Power.  It  is  then, 
too,  that  he  will  learn  to  perceive  that  the  promise 
of  a  future  existence  might  well  be  a  source  of 
potent  stimulus  rather  than  of  enervating  peace. 
For  if  we  are  to  judge  of  the  reward  of  virtue 
hereafter  by  the  i;gwards  which  we  see  her  achiev- 
ing here,  it  is  manifest  that  the  only  reward  which 
always  attends  her  is  herself;  that  the  only  prize 
which  is  infallibly  gained  by  performing  one  duty 
well  is  the  power  of  performing  yet  another;  the 
only  recompense  for  an  exalted  self-forgetfulness  is 
that  a  man  forgets  himself  always  more.  Or  rather, 
the  only  other  reward  is  one  whose  sweetness  also 
is  scarcely  realisable  till  it  is  attained ;  it  is  the 
love   of  kindred   souls ;   but  a  love  which  recedes 


S22  CLASSICAL  ESSAYS.  [ni. 

ever  farther  from  the  flatteries  and  indulgences  which 
most  men  desire,  and  tends  rather  to  become  the 
intimate  comradeship  of  spirits  that  strive  towards 
the  same  goal. 

Why  then  should  those  who  would  imagine  an 
eternal  reward  for  virtue  imagine  her  as  eternally 
rewarded  in  any  other  way  ?  And  what  need  there 
be  in  a  spiritual  law  like  this  to  relax  any  soul's 
exertion,  to  encourage  any  low  content  ?  By  an 
unfailing  physical  law  we  know  that  the  athlete 
attains  through  painful  effort  that  alacrity  and 
soundness  which  are  the  health  of  the  body.  And 
if  there  were  an  unfailing  spiritual  law  by  which 
the  philosopher  might  attain,  and  ever  attain  in- 
creasingly, through  strenuous  virtue,  that  energy 
and  self-devotedness  which  are  tlie  health  of  the 
soul,  would  there  be  anything  in  the  one  law  or  in 
the  other  to  encourage  either  the  physical  or  the 
spiritual  voluptuary — the  self-indulgence  either  of 
the  banquet-hall  or  of  the  cloister  ?  There  would 
be  no  need  to  test  men  by  throwing  an  artificial 
uncertainty  roimd  the  operation  of  such  laws  as 
these  ;  it  would  be  enough  if  they  could  desire  what 
was  offered  to  them ;  the  ideal  would  become  the 
probation. 

To  some  minds  reflections  like  these,  rather  than 
like  M.  Kenan's,  will  be  suggested  by  the  story  of 
Marcus,  of  his  almost  unmiugled  sadness,  his  almost 
stainless  virtue.     All  will  join,  indeed,  in  admira- 


in.]  MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS.  223 

tion  for  a  life  so  free  from  every  unworthy,  every 
dubious  incitement  to  well-doing.  But  on  com- 
paring this  life  with  the  lives  of  men  for  whom  the 
great  French  critic's  sympathy  is  so  much  less — 
such  men,  for  instance,  as  St.  Paul — we  may  surely 
feel  that  if  the  universe  be  in  reality  so  much 
better  than  Marcus  supposed,  it  would  have  done 
him  good,  not  harm,  to  have  known  it ;  that  it 
would  have  kindled  his  wisdom  to  a  fervent  glow, 
such  as  the  world  can  hardly  hope  to  see,  till,  if 
ever  it  be  so,  the  dicta  of  science  and  the  promises  of 
religion  are  at  one ;  till  saints  are  necessarily  philo- 
sophers, and  philosophers  saints.  And  yet,  what- 
ever inspiring  secrets  the  future  may  hold,  the 
lover  of  humanity  can  never  regret  that  Marcus 
knew  but  what  he  knew.  Whatever  winds  of  the 
spirit  may  sweep  over  the  sea  of  souls,  the  life  of 
Marcus  will  remain  for  ever  as  the  _  normal  high- 
water  mark  of  the  unassisted  virtue  of  man.  No 
one  has  shown  more  simply  or  more  completely 
what  man  at  any  rate  must  do  and  be.  No  one 
has  ever  earned  the  right  to  say  to  himself  with 
a  more  tranquil  assurance — in  the  words  which 
close  the  Meditations  — "  Depart  thou  then  con- 
tented, for  he  that  releaseth  thee  is  content." 


MODERN  ESSAYS 


I 


GIUSEPPE   MAZZINI. 

"  Fuss'  io  pur  lui  I     C  a  tal  fortuna  nato 
Per  r  aspro  esilio  suo,  con  la  virtute, 
Dare'  del  mondo  il  pivi  felice  stato." 

Michael  Angelo. 

The  Eisorginiento,  or  Eesurrection  of  Italy,  one  of  the 
noblest  themes  which  our  century  has  offered,  still 
awaits  the  philosopliic  historian.  The  writings  of  the 
friends  or  disciples  of  one  or  other  of  the  three  leading 
characters  in  the  great  drama  introduce  the  reader  into 
a  world  of  contradictions  more  befitting  a  solar  myth 
than  a  serious  hist#ry.  Grave  biographies  have  been 
written  of  Cavoiir  as  the  regenerator  of  Italy,  in  which 
Mazzini  is  mentioned  only  with  an  incidental  sneer. 
Noble  poems  ^  have  been  dedicated  to  Mazzini  as  the 
regenerator  of  Italy,  in  which  Cavour  is  not  men- 
tioned at  all.  And  there  is  a  whole  Garibaldiau 
literature  in  which  Mazzini  stands  quite  in  the  back- 
ground, while  Cavour  plays  indeed  a  prominent  part, 
only  he  is  no  longer  the  hero  but  the  villain  of  the  tale. 

'  For  example,  Mr.  Swinburne's  magnificent  Song  of  Italy  and 
Super  Flumina  Babylonia,  and  the  pathetic  poems  called  The  Disciples, 
by  Mrs.  Hamilton  King. 


228  MODERN  ESSAYS,  [i. 

I  propose  to  attempt  a  less  one-sided  estimate  of 
the  least  conspicuous  but  not  the  least  interesting  of 
the  three — a  man  who  may  be  said  to  have  been  at 
once  more  known  and  more  unknown  than  almost  any 
man  in  Europe,  whose  designs  were  discussed  in  every 
Cabinet,  and  his  words  welcomed  in  every  "  upper 
room "  of  political  or  religious  reformers  on  the  Con- 
tinent, while  at  the  same  time  his  writings  and  him- 
self were  proscribed  in  every  country  except  our  own, 
and  he  lived  in  lodgings  of  which  not  a  dozen  persons 
knew  the  address. 

Giuseppe  Mazzini,  son  of  a  professor  of  anatomy, 
was  born  in  Genoa  in  1805,  and  died  at  Pisa  in  1872. 

The  years  in  which  he  grew  up  to  know  Italy  were 
among  the  most  perplexing  and  desperate  of  her  long 
decline.  The  year  1700  has  been  sometimes  fixed  as 
the  darkest  moment  of  her  second  night — the  night 
between  the  Renaissance  and  the  Eisorgimento — but 
such  revival  as  had  come  since  then  had  consisted 
rather  in  a  wakening  consciousness  of  her  shame  than 
in  any  effort  to  remove  it.  A  few  figures  appear  amid 
the  gloom — figures,  some  of  them,  which  we  may  take 
as  typical  of  the  three  aspects  of  ruined  Italy — her 
unabashed  sensualism,  her  rebellious  passion,  her 
vanishing  and  mournful  souL  We  see  Casanova,  the 
gaudy  flower  of  decay,  conciliating  by  the  intensity  of 
his  corruption  tyranny  itself,  and  flaunting  through 
Europe  his  triumphant  charlatanism  and  his  greedy 
amours.     We  see  Alfieri — his  republicanism  strangely 


J 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZIKI.  229 

complicated  by  an  intercurrent  passion  for  high-born 
dames — making  of  his  ■whole  strong  life  a  kind  of 
tragic  protest  and  declamation,  living  melodrama  and 
thinking  in  heroics.  And  we  see  Leopardi  wandering 
nnrestingly  among  "  the  arches  and  deserted  towers," 
appealing  for  a  visionary  sympathy  to  an  impalpable 
mistress,  for  a  visionary  honour  to  an  unassembled 
host  of  war,  till  "  not  the  last  Twpe  only  of  beloved 
illusions,  but  the  last  desire,  had  flown." 

The  "  last  illusion  "  in  the  sphere  of  politics  which 
Italy  underwent  was  the  French  invasion  of  1796. 
For  a  time  the  word  Francese  was  used  by  ardent 
Italians  as  synonymous  with  patriot.  But  unfortun- 
ately the  armies  of  the  French  Eevolution  were 
admirable  only  till  they  were  successful ;  and  it  has 
been  remarked  that  the  proclamation  in  which  Napoleon 
held  out  Italy  to  his  troops,  not  as  a  nation  to  deliver, 
but  as  a  prey  to  ^eize,  marked  the  first  step  in  the 
metamorphosis  of  the  soldiers  of  the  Eepublic  into  the 
soldiers  of  the  Empire.  The  French  yoke  was  thrown 
off  for  a  few  years,  but  Austria  was  an  equally  brutal 
master.  Napoleon's  second  rule,  after  Marengo,  with 
its  juster  codes,  its  sounder  finance,  its  pubUc  works 
and  education,  seemed  at  first  a  relief;  but  under 
Napoleon  good  government  itself  became  the  instru- 
ment of  tyranny,  and  his  equalising  institutions  served 
but  to  level  all  pre-existing  rights  beneath  a  single 
will.  And  he  was  not  content  with  exacting  money 
or  pictures — he  needed  men.     Thirty  thousand  Italians 


230  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

were  carried  off  to  Spain,  forty  thousand  to  Russia. 
Piedmont,  Genoa,  Tuscany,  Rome  itself,  were  annexed 
to  the  French  Empire.  Italy  was  not  even  the  subject 
of  France,  but  her  slave. 

Napoleon  fell ;  Austria  again  overran  Lombardy ; 
the  petty  princes  returned.  Murat  from  Naples  made 
a  vain  attempt  to  unite  Italy  under  himself ;  then  he 
too  fell,  and  Naples  was  restored  to  Bourbon  rule. 
The  Congress  of  Vienna,  ignoring  nationality  or  national 
wishes,  and  preoccupied  with  a  system  of  guarantees 
against  France,  coniirmed  Austria  in  the  possession 
of  Lombardy  and  Venice,  and  gave  her,  through  her 
archdukes,  a  preponderating  influence  in  Central  Italy. 
The  statesmanship  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna  belongs 
to  a  past  era,  both  of  politic?  and  of  humanity ;  but  it 
must  be  noted  that  no  counter-propositions  were  urged 
with  authority,  no  powerful  voice  from  Italy  protested 
against  the  restoration  of  these  foreign  masters,  and 
the  common  people,  who  still  were  strongly  Catholic, 
received  with  satisfaction  the  return  of  princes  and  pope. 

The  restored  rulers  brought  with  them  all  the 
errors  of  restorations  in  a  form  at  once  exaggerated 
and  paltry.  A  Bourbon  on  the  throne  of  France 
carries  with  him  a  historic  majesty  to  which  much 
that  is  not  royal  may  be  forgiven,  but  it  was  hard  for 
Modena  or  Parma  to  idealise  the  petty  poltrooneries  of 
a  grand  duke,  or  the  gallantries  of  a  dowager  empress. 
There  is  no  need  to  repeat  the  long  indictment  against 
the  rulers  of  Italy.     While  liberal  tongues  were  stiU 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  231 

being  torn  out  with  pincers  in  Eome, — while  innocent 
women  were  still  being  flogged  in  batches  through  the 
streets  of  Milan, — wliile,  in  the  dungeons  of  Naples, 
the  "  cap  of  silence "  was  still  being  pressed  on  the 
head  of  any  man  who  showed  himself  more  than  a 
slave, — no  words  were  too  strong  to  use  ;  but  as  things 
are  now,  we  may  be  content  with  noticing  how  surely 
from  each  of  these  powers  has  been  exacted  the  penalty 
of  a  false  position.  Austria,  once  the  favourite,  as  it 
were,  of  unjust  Fates,  the  "  felix  Austria  "  of  a  theory 
of  territorial  aggrandisement  which  ignored  aU  rights 
but  those  of  kings,  has  suffered  more  severely  than 
any  nation  in  Europe  from  the  crumbling  of  errors 
which  she  shared  with  them  all,  and  scarcely  knows 
even  yet  how  far  she  must  contract  her  imperial  struc- 
ture before  she  can  find  it  founded  on  the  rock.  The 
Papacy  itself  is  learning  to  regret  the  worldly  ambition 
which  confounded  the  things  of  God  and  Caesar  and 
added  a  perishable  coronet  to  the  triple  crown.  And 
in  Naples  the  irony  of  fate  has  been  yet  more  personal 
and  bitter.  Seldom  was  so  grotesque  a  sport  of  fortune 
as  that  which  gave  the  absolute  rule  over  millions  of 
lives  to  "  Bomba"  and  his  kin.  And  seldom,  as  Plato 
would  say,  have  the  souls  of  slaves  been  laid  bare  so 
shamefully  from  beneath  the  vesture  of  a  great  king. 

It  was  in  Naples,  in  1820,  that  the  long  series  of 
revolutions  began.  This  first  insurrection  founded  a 
type  which  became  common  to  many  NeapoHtan  in- 
surrections.    The  people  demanded  a  constitution  and 


S32  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i, 

marched  on  Naples.  The  king's  troops  ran  away. 
The  king  granted  a  constitution,  and  swore  on  the 
crucifix  that  he  would  be  true  to  it,  invoking  the 
instant  vengeance  of  God  if  he  had  a  lie  in  his  heart. 
The  Austrians  marched  on  Naples.  The  parliamentary 
troops  ran  away.  The  king  tore  up  the  constitution 
and  hung  whom  he  chose. 

This  revolution  aimed  at  internal  reform, — always 
the  most  urgent  preoccupation  of  Neapolitan  patriots. 
But  in  1821  an  insurrection  broke  out  in  Piedmont, 
having  for  its  object  not  merely  the  grant  of  a  consti- 
tution to  Piedmont,  but  the  liberation  of  Lombardy 
from  Austrian  rule.  Betrayed  by  Prince  Charles  Albert, 
this  rising  collapsed  for  want  of  leaders,  and  Austria 
was  harsher  than  before.  Ten  years  later  the  French 
revolution  of  1830  spread  excitement  through  Italy. 
Eisings  in  Bologna,  Parma,  and  Modena,  revealed  the 
same  lack  of  leaders  and  of  programme,  and  were 
repressed  by  Austrian  intervention.  These  failures 
made  the  cause  of  ItaUan  hberties  seem  more  hopeless 
than  ever.  It  was  plain  that  there  was  no  organising 
bond  of  union,  no  leader,  no  definite  plan  or  idea 
round  which  the  lovers  of  Italy  could  rally ;  while 
Austria  was  always  on  the  watch  to  resent  not  only 
overt  revolts  against  herself,  but  even  constitutional 
reforms  in  the  other  Italian  States.  Euling  by  right 
of  conquest,  she  chose  that  the  smaller  princes,  who 
were  in  effect  her  vassals,  should  keep  the  liberties  of 
their  subjects  down  to  the  same  level 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  233 

In  one  direction  only  was  there  any  sign  of  hope. 
The  educated  class  was  beginning  to  recover  from  the 
confusion  and  stupor  produced  by  the  French  invasions, 
and  to  interest  itself  in  patriotic  causes.  In  Tuscany 
especially  a  literary  movement  began — cautious  and 
tentative,  but  important  as  accustoming  men  to  speak, 
and  giving  them  some  reason  to  trust  and  respect 
each  other.  Science,  agriculture, — every  pursuit,  from 
astronomy  to  whist,  which  can  unite  mankind — was 
soon  used  for  the  same  end,  and  professors  or  land- 
owners meeting  from  different  parts  of  Italy  learned 
to  feel  that  they  had  a  common  country.  In  their 
various  discussions  the  question  really  at  issue  was 
never  mentioned,  but  never  forgotten. 

But  means  like  these  could  scarcely  reach  the  mass 
of  the  people.  A  more  outspoken  influence,  a  new 
moral  force,  was  needed,  and  when  Charles  Albert 
succeeded  to  the  throne  of  Piedmont  in  1831,  a 
Letter  to  the  King,  hy  an  Italian,  showed  that  the  new 
force  was  there.  "  The  people,"  said  this  stirring 
appeal,  "  are  no  longer  to  be  quieted  by  a  few  conces- 
sions. They  seek  the  recognition  of  those  rights  of 
humanity  which  have  been  withheld  from  them  for 
ages.  They  demand  laws  and  liberty,  independence 
and  union.  Divided,  dismembered,  and  oppressed, 
they  have  neither  name  nor  country.  They  have  heard 
themselves  stigmatised  by  the  foreigner  as  a  helot 
nation.  They  have  seen  free  men  visit  their  country 
and   declare    it    the    land   of    the  dead.     They  have 


234  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

drained  the  cup  of  slavery  to  the  dregs,  but  they  have 
sworn  never  to  fill  it  again." 

The  letter  pointed  out  to  the  king  how,  by  appeal- 
ing to  the  whole  of  Italy,  he  might  unite  her  people 
in  the  struggle  for  independence.  "  There  is  a  crown 
brighter  and  nobler  than  that  of  Piedmont — a  crown 
that  only  awaits  a  man  bold  enough  to  conceive  the 
idea  of  wearing  it,  resolute  and  determined  enough  to 
consecrate  himself  wholly  to  the  realisation  of  that 
idea,  and  virtuous  enough  not  to  dim  its  splendour 
with  ignoble  tyranny."  This  letter,  written  at  the  age 
of  twenty -six,  was  the  first  manifesto  of  principles 
which  Mazztni  afterwards  more  fully  expressed,  but 
which  he  retained  unchanged  through  life.  The  pro- 
blem with  which  he  had  to  deal  was  a  complex  one. 
How  were  moral  and  political  unity  and  strength  to 
be  won  for  Italy,  partitioned  as  she  was  between 
Austria  and  semi-Austrian  princes,  and  morally  divided 
into  the  ultramontane  and  materialist  camps  ?  A  brief 
statement  of  his  political  creed,  elicited  from  his  various 
writings,  will  show  to  what  extent  he  was  at  first  alone 
in  the  views  which  he  held,  and  to  what  extent  he 
was  in  unison  with  other  patriots.  His  programme, 
then,  reduced  to  its  simplest  expression,  maybe  stated 
as  follows : — 

(1)  First  of  all  the  Austrians  must  be  driven  out 
of  Italy. 

(2)  This  must  be  attempted  at  once,  and  constantly, 

(3)  All  Italy  must  unite  into  one  nation. 


L]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  235 

(4)  The  form  of  her  government  must  then  be 
submitted  to  her  deliberate  choice. 

(5)  A  republican  government  must  be  recommended 
to  her  by  fair  argument. 

(6)  It  is  useless  to  expect  help  from  Catholicism 
in  regenerating  Italy. 

(7)  A  purer  religion  must  be  preached  from  Rome; 
and  Eome  must  once  more  assume  the  moral  leader- 
ship of  the  world. 

(1)  The  first  of  these  propositions  waa  controverted 
by  some  of  the  best  men  in  Italy — for  instance,  by 
Eomagnosi,  Ricasoli,  and  Mayer.  They  held  that  in- 
ternal reforms  should  first  be  achieved,  and  that  then 
Austria,  whom  it  was  impossible  to  dislodge,  would 
soften  her  rule  as  well.  Had  Austria  taken  advan- 
tage of  this  suggestion  she  might  possibly  have  kept 
Lombardy  and  Venice  to  this  day,  or  at  least  have 
sold  them  to  Italy  without  war.  If  Francis  II.  had 
not  flogged  so  many  innocent  women  through  Milan 
and  Verona,  if  he  had  not  chained  so  many  innocent 
men  to  the  walls  of  the  Spielberg,  and  fed  them  on 
bread  and  tallow,  Europe  might  long  have  looked  coldly 
on  Italian  claims  to  independence.  But  he  showed 
plainly  that  he  preferred  to  rule  Lombardy  as  a  con- 
quered country,  and,  moreover,  that  he  would  allow  no 
changes  in  the  neighbouring  Italian  States.  Men  who 
saw  Radetzky  making  it  the  regular  business  of  his 
life  to  put  down  revolutions  could  not  long  deny  that 


236  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

the  expulsion  of  the  Austrians  was  the  prerequisite  of 
all  other  reform. 

(2)  The  second  point  was  much  more  controvertible. 
The  great  mass  of  patriotic  Italians,  not  only  the 
Moderates  but  the  Carbonari,  believed  that  Italy  ought 
to  wait  for  the  chapter  of  accidents,  that  the  expulsion 
of  the  Austrians  was  more  than  she  could  manage 
alone.  They  pointed  to  the  failures  of  1821  and 
1831,  afterwards  to  the  failure  of  Mazzini's  expedition 
into  Savoy  in  1834,  and  said  that  it  was  cruel  to  lead 
men  on  to  perish  when  there  was  no  hope.  Among 
the  many  men  who  bitterly  blamed  Mazzini  on  this 
ground  one  name  only  need  be  mentioned,  that  of 
Cavour.  But  in  the  way  in  which  Cavour  treated  this 
accusation  may  be  found  the  key  to  its  true  meaning. 
Cavour 's  object,  though  perfectly  patriotic,  was  patri- 
otic in  a  different  sense  from  Mazzini's.  He  wished  to 
liberate  Lombardy  and  Venetia,  and  to  add  them,  and 
the  small  States  of  the  North  of  Italy,  to  the  Sardinian 
kingdom.  He  did  not  wish  to  touch  Eome  or  Naples, 
nor  to  see  Lombardo-Venetia  liberated  to  the  profit  of 
a  republic.  He  was,  in  short,  a  Piedmontese  patriot 
before  he  was  an  Italian  patriot.  His  first  object, 
therefore,  was  to  acquire  for  Piedmont  such  "a  reputa- 
tion that  all  that  was  gained  from  Austria  might  fall 
into  her  grasp.  He  wished  to  make  her  known  as  a 
model  constitutional  monarchy,  equally  aloof  from 
Austrian  despotism  and  from  republican  anarchy.  In 
this   plan   he   completely   succeeded.      He   added   its 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINL  237 

finishing  touch  by  despatching  Piedmontese  troops  to 
the  Crimea,  where  his  was  not  the  only  government 
which  sought  and  found  a  needed  advertisement.  And 
when  he  met  the  representatives  of  the  Great  Powers 
on  equal  terms  at  the  Congress  of  Paris  it  was  felt 
that  his,  tone  on  Italian  matters  was  greatly  changed. 
Till  then  he  had  always  spoken  with  horror  and  con- 
tempt of  the  isolated  outbreaks  of  the  revolutionary 
spirit,  and  had  begged  that  Piedmont  might  not  on 
their  accoimt  forfeit  the  sympathy  of  the  Powers. 
But  now,  ia  that  famous  note  to  which  the  Austrian 
plenipotentiary  refused  to  reply,  he  vehemently  alleged 
those  constant  and  irrepressible  uprisings  as  a  praof  of 
the  intolerable  character  of  Austrian,  Papal,  and  Nea- 
politan rule.  It  was  then  that  the  opinion  of  Europe — 
Count  Walewski  speaking  for  France,  and  Lord  Claren- 
don for  England — ranged  itself  definitely  on  the  side 
of  Italian  freedom ;  the  Austrian  occupation  was  ad- 
mitted to  be  an  abnormal,  therefore  a  transitory  thing, 
and  the  Pope  and  the  King  of  Naples  received  hints 
to  set  their  houses  in  order,  which  it  was  their  own 
fault  if  they  ignored.  It  was  seen  by  aU,  as  it  had, 
no  doubt,  been  seen  by  Cavour  all  along,  that  the  con- 
duct which  gains  sympathy  for  oppressed  peoples  is 
neither  tame  endurance  nor  empty  declamation,  but 
heroic,  even  if  unavailing,  courage.  For  the  success  of 
Cavour's  projects  it  was  as  necessary  that  the  people  of 
Lombardy,  Parma,  Modena,  should  show  this  courage, 
as  that  Piedmont  should  show  herself  fitted  by  consti- 


238  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

tutionalism  and  good  order  to  reap  the  harvest  of  which 
the  blood  of  "  Young  Italy  "  had  been  the  seed. 

We  cannot  doubt,  then,  that  these  recurrent  revolu- 
tions were  of  service  to  Italy,  even  if  her  independence 
was  to  be  ultimately  attained  on  Cavour's  plan — by 
awaiting  a  series  of  happy  conjunctures  and  alliances 
with  other  Powers.  But  to  defend  Mazzini's  policy 
thus  would  be  to  shirk  his  main  issue ;  for  he  did  rwt 
wish  to  call  in  the  help  of  other  nations — he  did  not 
intend  his  risings  simply  as  demonstrations,  but  as  a 
mode  of  warfare  which,  if  persisted  in,  would  gradually 
make  the  Austrian  position  untenable.  No  one  can 
say  with  certainty  how  this  plan  would  have  worked 
if  it  had  not  been  superseded  by  Cavour's.  But  what 
is  doubtful  is  not  so  much  the  feasibility  of  the  plan  in 
itself,  if  the  Italians  acted  up  to  it,  as  the  possibility 
of  eliciting  from  them  as  much  heroism  and  patience 
as  the  plan  required.  If  all  Italy  had  made  common 
cause  with  Lombardy  and  Venetia,  if  each  of  her  cities 
had  fought  like  the  Eomans  under  Mazzini,  or  the 
Venetians  under  Manin,  if  there  had  been  twenty  such 
guerrilla  bands  as  that  "  thousand  "  with  which  Gari- 
baldi conquered  a  kingdom,  Austria  could  not  have 
held  her  ground  for  long.  The  disparity  between  her 
strength  and  that  of  Italy  was  after  all  by  no  means 
overwhelming,  and  to  occupy  a  moimtainous  and  bitterly 
hostile  country  needs  overwhelming  force.  The  inter- 
vention of  foreign  powers  might  have  complicated  the 
problem,  but  if,  as  Mazzini  wished,  the  war  had  been 


I]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  239 

conducted  with  strict  respect  for  Catholicism,  and  the 
question  of  form  of  government  deferred  for  the  con- 
sideration of  United  Italy,  foreign  powers,  in  the  grow- 
ing coldness  with  which  the  treaties  of  Vienna  were 
regarded,  would  have  had  no  adequate  reason  to  inter- 
fere. Still,  they  might  have  interfered;  the  spirit  of 
Italy  might  have  given  way,  and  her  freedom  might 
have  been  deferred  for  generations.  On  Mazzini's,  as 
on  Cavour's  plan,  there  was  a  chance  of  failure ;  and 
Mazzini's  plan  was  sure  to  cost  more  blood,  though  it 
might  gain  more  Italian  territory  than  Cavour's.  Our 
preference  for  one  or  the  other  plan  wUl,  in  fact,  depend 
upon  the  objects  for  which  we  desire  the  existence  of 
Italy  as  a  nation.  If  we  care  mainly  for  her  material 
prosperity  and  peace,  for  the  "  white  flocks  of  Clitum- 
nus,"  for  the  "  heavy-hanging  harvests  and  Bacchus  in 
his  Massic  flow,"  we  may  feel  that  Cavour  led  Italy 
along  her  surest  way.  But  if  we  desire  first  of  aU  that 
the  "  Saturnian  land  "  should  once  again  be  the  mighty 
mother  not  only  of  fruits  but  of  heroes,  if  self-respect 
and  constancy  seem  to  us  things  worth  purchase  at  the 
cost  of  any  pain,  then  we  may  feel  that  it  had  been 
better  for  her  if  "  fire-breathing  bulls  had  ploughed  the 
son  and  dragon's  teeth  been  sown,  and  helm  and  javelin 
had  bristled  in  a  crop  of  men." 

"  Italy  will  never  live,"  said  Emilio  Bandiera,  "  tUl 
Italians  have  learnt  to  die."  No  word  need  be  uttered 
in  disparagement  of  a  people  to  which  the  whole  world 
wishes  well,  which  men  of  so  many  nations  have  loved 


240  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

the  next  to  their  own.  But  are  not  the  best  Italians 
themselves  the  first  to  say  that  their  redemption  has 
been  too  often  received  as  a  gift  from  others  instead  of 
being  worked  out  by  themselves  ?  that  there  might  be 
something  more  of  nobility,  distinction,  power,  in  Italy's 
bearing  among  the  nations  now,  if  she  had  felt  within 
her  more  of  the  spirit  of  that  other  people  of  the  past, 
who  (in  Thucydides'  words)  "  dared  beyond  their 
strength,  and  hazarded  against  their  judgment,  and 
in  extremities  were  of  an  excellent  hope  "  ? 

(3)  "  All  Italy  must  unite  into  one  nation."  Now 
that  all  Italian  soil  (except  Nice,  Corsica,  and  the 
Trentino)  is,  in  fact,  united  under  one  government,  this 
proposition  needs  no  defence.  It  is  plain  that  there 
was  no  reason  for  leaving  out  any  part  of  Italy,  and 
that  her  independence  and  progress  depend  in  even  an 
exceptional  degree  on  her  status  as  a  great  power. 
She  has  a  danger  which  other  powers  have  not;  she 
has  to  face  the  Ultramontanism  of  the  world. 

And,  in  fact,  no  exclusion  of  any  integral  part  of 
Italy,  of  Rome  or  Naples,  could  have  been  long  main- 
tained. The  history  of  the  struggle  shows  that  the 
resolution  to  achieve  Italian  unity  was  the  one  strong 
popular  feeling  on  "which  either  republicans- or  mon- 
archists could  .count.  This  was  a  surprise  to  both 
parties ;  for  the  lesson  of  combination  and  self-restraint 
was  one  which  it  had  seemed  that  no  suffering  could 
teach  to  Italy.  When,  after  the  internecine  struggles 
of  her  republics,  she  sank  into  her  second  night,  she 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZmi.  241 

was  still  passionately  attached  to  smaU  civic  units  and 
to  the  very  extravagance  of  self-government.  But 
when  her  new  day  dawned  she  was  found  to  be  bent 
above  aU  things  on  national  unity,  and  so  indifferent 
to  her  form  of  government,  that  this  was  decided  almost 
wholly  by  Cavour's  genius  and  by  the  accident  of 
Garibaldi's  admiration  for  the  personal  courage  of 
Victor  Emmanuel.  Garibaldi  was  a  more  typical 
national  hero  than  either  Mazziui  or  Cavour,  and  liis 
eagerness  to  seize  on  Naples  for  Italy,  with  his  gro- 
tesque perplexity  as  to  what  to  do  with  it  when  he 
had  got  it,  represents  well  enough  the  national  ardour 
for  union,  and  the  national  irresolution  as  to  anything 
beyond. 

But,  however  necessary  the  union  of  the  whole  of 
Italy  may  seem  to  us  now,  Mazzini  at  first  was  almost 
alone  in  preaching  it.  In  1831,  and  for  long  after, 
alliances  between  the  princes,  the  fonuation  of  three 
Italian  States,  or  an  Amphictyonic  council  under  the 
presidency  of  the  Pope,  were  the  alternatives  most 
often  urged.  It  was  an  alliance  of  constitutional  States 
that  was  desired  by  Cesare  Balbo,  Romagnosi,  Massimo 
d'AzegHo.  It  was  an  alliance  of  aristocratical  States 
that  was  the  ideal  of  Alfieri,  Gioberti,  Botta.  And 
even  so  late  as  1859  it  was  the  extension  of  the  Sar- 
dinian kingdom  over  North  Italy  which  was  the  limit 
of  the  aspirations  of  Cavour. 

But  in  this  case  also  Mazzini's  programme  was 
based  not  only  on  political  foresight,  but  on  what  was 

R 


242  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

to  him  a  religious  principle.  The  principle  of  nation- 
aKties  was  one  which  he  deduced  directly  from  his 
conception  of  the  moral  universe.  The  nation,  he  said, 
is  within  humanity  what  the  family  is  within  the  nation 
— a  divinely -constituted  group  with  a  special  mis- 
sion of  its  own,  to  be  pursued  independently,  though 
in  association  with  the  groups  around  it.  To  break  up 
a  nationality — a  group  set  apart  by  race  and  tongue — 
was  to  deny  to  it  the  only  right  which  an  individual  or 
a  society  can  possess,  the  right  of  developing  itself  freely 
along  its  appointed  path.  And  much  of  his  energy 
was  spent  in  insisting  on  this  view ;  not  in  the  case  of 
Italy  alone,  but  on  behalf  of  the  Greeks,  the  Belgians, 
the  Slavs,  the  Eoumanians,  the  Magyars.  The  principle, 
as  these  names  suggest  to  us,  is  a  hard  one  to  apply. 
It  is  subject,  perhaps,  to  more  limitations  than  Mazzini 
supposed.  But  no  one  can  deny  him  the  credit  of 
having  been  its  first  systematic,  persistent,  and  influ- 
ential supporter.  And  it  is  a  commonplace  to  remark 
that  in  the  history  of  the  last  half  century  in  Europe 
the  principle  of  nationalities  has  been  superseding  the 
old  system  of  territorial  compensations  and  dynastic 
claims  as  irresistibly  as  the  Natural  system  of  botany 
has  superseded  that  of  Linnaeus. 

(4)  Tlie  next  point  in  Mazzini's  programme — that 
united  Italy  should  be  left  to  choose  her  own  govern- 
ment— seems  plainly  just.  In  his  view  each  party 
and  province  ought  to  help  every  other  in  the  attain- 
ment of  the  common  end,  but  without  pledging  any 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  243 

ally  to  the  acceptance  of  its  own  scheme  of  rule.  Od 
two  occasions  Mazzini  was  strongly  urged,  from  oppo- 
site quarters,  to  give  way  on  this  point.  In  1848 
Charles  Albert,  fighting  against  Austria  in  aUiance 
with  revolted  Lombardy,  wished  to  enrol  aU  Lom- 
bard and  other  volunteers  in  his  own  army.  His  ob- 
vious preference  of  Piedmontese  to  Italian  interests 
had  in  other  ways  much  injured  the  movement,  and 
this  proposal  had  the  effect  of  greatly  checking  the 
influx  of  soldiers.  Mazzini  stood  out,  and  the  Lom- 
bard volunteers  were  incorporated  in  regiments  of 
their  own,  though  officered  by  Piedmontese.  He  thus 
protested,  not  against  the  union  of  Italy  under  a  king, 
but  against  a  king's  assumption  of  a  right  to  rule  over 
Italy,  made  in  a  manner  which  lessened  the  chances  of 
Italian  union. 

The  other  occasion  when  his  firmness  in  this  matter 
was  tested  was  when  he  spoke  to  Italy  in  the  name  of 
the  Republic  of  Eome.  Men  whose  hopes,  Kke  his  own, 
were  fixed  on  a  EepubUc  of  Italy  urged  him  to  use 
the  unique  opportunity  to  foimd  at  least  in  title  the 
unique  ideal.  But  he  refused  to  prejudge  in  any  way 
the  decision  of  the  rest  of  the  country,  and  in  his  brief 
hour  of  triumph  he  did  not  derogate  from  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  long  defeat. 

(5)  The  next  article  of  his  belief  is  far  more  open 
to  debate.  The  question  whether  a  monarchy  or  a 
republic  is  indicated  by  history  as  the  government 
best  fitted  for  a  united  Italy,  may  be  plausibly  argued 


244  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

on  both  sides.  If  we  consider  Italy  simply  as  one  of 
the  provinces  of  the  dismembered  Roman  empire, 
analogy  is  in  favour  of  monarchy.  Speaking  generally, 
each  of  the  principal  provinces  of  that  empire  associ- 
ated its  fortunes  sooner  or  later  with  some  family  of 
Germanic  princes,  and  the  hereditary  succession  of 
these  princes  served  as  a  nucleus  for  the  newly-formed 
State.  The  prince's  power  was  from  the  first  limited 
by  the  rights  of  minor  chieftaias  and  heads  of  families, 
and  from  these  limitations  the  civil  liberties  of  Europe 
sprang.  Italy  alone  rejected  consolidation  under  a 
northern  prince ;  she  refused  the  hereditary  dominion 
of  a  Gothic  or  Lombard  family ;  she  preferred  an 
anarchic  liberty  modified  by  external  Powers,  whose 
indefinite  pretensions  she  vaguely  admitted,  and  whose 
incursions  her  factions  or  her  patriotism  alternately 
invited  and  repelled.  This  system  of  municipal  seK- 
government  broke  down,  and  Italy  was  parcelled  out 
under  foreign  rulers,  identified  not  with  her  interests, 
but  with  the  interest  of  the  reigning  families  of  other 
countries.  It  might  seem,  therefore,  that  the  surest 
way  of  guaranteeing  the  continued  existence  of  a 
united  Italy  would  be  simply  to  replace  her  in  the 
road  which  she  should  never  have  quitted — to  identify 
her  with  the  fortunes  of  some  family  of  northern 
origin,  and  to  trust  that  the  stability  and  progressive 
constitutionalism  which  had  on  the  whole  followed 
on  such  a  course  in  France,  Austria,  England,  Spain, 
and  Portugal,  might  result  in  Italy  as  well.     In  the 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  245 

latest  instance  of  the  revival  of  a  nation  of  Southern 
Europe  this  plan  was  tried  :  Greece  was  placed  under  a 
northern  family ;  and,  if  the  experiment  has  not  been 
fully  successful,  there  has  at  least  been  no  sign  that 
a  repubhc,  or  a  federation  of  republics,  would  have 
answered  even  as  well. 

The  house  of  Savoy  fulfilled  the  necessary  condi- 
tions; and  there  was  a  kind  of  historic  propriety  in 
giving  the  leadership  of  Italy  to  Piedmont,  the  pro- 
vince of  Italy  as  yet  least  distinguished  in  history. 
Even  so  had  each  plain  and  promontory  of  Greece  in 
turn  held  the  hearthfire  of  her  national  existence ;  in 
each  in  turn  that  fire  burnt  low ;  and  her  last  renewal 
came  to  her  from  the  unexhausted  byways  of  her 
people,  from  villages  unnoticed  by  Thucydides,  and 
goat-pasturing  islets  almost  unnamed  amid  the  sea. 
These,  in  one  view,  are  the  analogies  of  history,  and 
these  analogies  history  has  confirmed.  Italy  has  been 
remade  into  a  nation  in  the  easiest  way. 

Few  historical  problems,  however,  are  so  simple  as 
to  admit  of  only  one  solution  by  analogy,  and  the 
same  broad  facts  of  Italian  history  may  be  read  into  a 
very  different  meaning.  We  miss,  it  may  be  said,  the 
very  lesson  which  the  exceptional  character  of  Italy's 
history  should  teach  us  if  we  attempt  to  force  her 
destinies  into  the  vulgar  mould.  At  a  time  when 
monarchy  was  essential  to  the  very  existence  of  other 
States  she  refused  monarchy — refused  it  on  account  of 
her  excess,  not  her  defect,  of  national  life ; — because 


246  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

the  patriotism  of  her  sons  lies  in  devotion  to  a  country 
and  not  to  a  king ;  because  each  group  of  Italian  men 
and  women,  each  sacred  shrine  and  hill,  was  enough 
to  give  scope  to  all  human  faculties,  to  form  a  centre 
of  heroism,  art,  and  love.  Meantime  other  nations 
grew  strong  by  their  very  subjection,  by  the  want  of 
individuality  in  their  units,  by  the  joyless  discipline 
which  made  the  State  a  machine  of  war.  Then  came 
the  time  when  small  States  could  exist  no  longer, 
and  the  Italian  communities  were  delivered  over  to 
northern  tyrants.  But  now  that  Italy  was  to  rise 
again,  she  ought  surely  to  retain  her  old  strength 
while  avoiding  her  old  weakness.  Her  strength  was 
in  her  democracy,  in  the  vivid  sense  of  participation 
in  the  national  life  which  animated  the  least  of  her 
citizens.  Eepresentative  government, — unknown  to  the 
ancient  or  the  medieval  world, — makes  possible  the 
existence  of  large  republics  with  all  the  institutions 
of  local  freedom,  and  without  the  perils  of  federation. 
It  is  in  this  direction  that  the  civilised  world  tends. 
Even  the  old  monarcliical  States  of  Europe  are  being 
republicanised  now.  The  only  great  new  State  which 
the  modem  age  has  produced  is  the  republic  of  North 
America.  If  Italy  is  to  head  the  world  she  must 
range  herself  on  the  winning  side. 

Balanced  in  this  way,  the  argument  leaves  much 
to  the  bias  of  individual  minds.  And  it  was  not  in 
reality  from  a  comparison  of  historical  analogies  that 
Mazzini  was  a  republican.     It  was  because  "  to  the 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  247 

unhappy  he  felt  himself  near  of  kin,"  because  his 
sympathies  moved  most  readily  with  the  hopes  of  the 
masses,  and  the  upward  struggles  of  toiling  men. 

In  men  who  have  risen  to  wide-reaching  power  we 
generally  observe  an  early  preponderance  of  one  of 
two  instincts — the  instinct  of  rule  and  order,  or  the 
instinct  of  sympathy.  The  one  instinct  may  degener- 
ate into  bureaucracy,  the  other  into  sentimentalism. 
Rightly  ordered,  they  make  the  master  or  the  leader 
of  men. 

The  earliest  anecdotes  told  of  Cavour  and  Mazzini 
will  illustrate  my  meaning.  When  Cavour  was  about 
six  years  old  he  was  taken  on  a  posting  journey.  On 
one  stage  of  this  journey  the  horses  were  unusually 
bad.  The  little  boy  asked  who  was  responsible  for 
the  horses.  He  was  told  it  was  the  postmaster.  He 
asked  who  appointed  the  postmaster.  He  was  told  it 
was  the  syndic.  He  demanded  to  be  taken  at  once 
to  the  syndic  to  get  the  postmaster  dismissed. 

Mazzini  as  a  child  was  very  delicate.  When  he 
was  about  six  years  old  he  was  taken  for  his  first 
walk.  For  the  first  time  he  saw  a  beggar,  a  venerable 
old  man.  He  stood  transfixed,  then  broke  from  his 
mother,  threw  his  arms  roimd  the  beggar's  neck  and 
kissed  him,  crying,  "  Give  him  something,  mother,  give 
him  something."  "  Love  him  well,  lady,"  said  the  aged 
man ;  "  he  is  one  who  will  love  the  people." 

The  tendency  of  recent  thought  has  been  to  dwell 
rather  upon  the    hierarchy  than  upon  the  unity   of 


248  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

mankind.  And  as  the  race  develops,  the  difference 
between  man  and  man,  already  vast,  may  perhaps 
grow  not  less,  but  greater.  We  can  place  no  limit  to 
the  ascendency  which  may  be  exercised  by  the  mere 
intellect  of  some  epoch-making  man.  But  we  may 
safely  prophesy  that  no  one  will  ever  uplift  his  feUow- 
men  from  witliin,  or  leave  a  name  which  draws  tears 
of  reverence  from  generations  yet  unborn,  who  has  not 
himself,  as  it  were,  wept  over  Jerusalem,  and  felt  a 
stirring  kinship  with  even  the  outcast  of  mankind. 

"  God  and  the  People,"  Mazzini's  watchword,  was 
no  mere  phrase  to  him.  It  represented  the  two 
streams  of  adoring  and  of  compassionate  sympathy 
which  make  a  double  current  in  the  generous  heart, 
unless  fate  sends  an  object  around  which  both  can 
flow,  and  mingles  either  effluence  in  a  single  love. 

There  is,  indeed,  no  reason  whatever  why  God's 
worship  or  the  people's  welfare  should  be  bound  up 
with  a  republican  form  of  government.  The  danger 
of  modern  societies  comes  from  plutocracies  rather 
than  from  kings  or  nobles ;  and  against  the  power  of 
money  republics  offer  no  safeguard  of  their  own. 
Mazzini,  perhaps,  hardly  realised  this.  Or  rather, 
what  he  desired  was  hardly  what  we  call  democracy ; 
for  he  defines  democracy  as  "  the  progress  of  all 
through  all,  under  the  leadership  of  the  best  and 
wisest."  And  what  he  desired  was,  in  truth,  the 
common  weal,  was  Public  Virtue,  and  it  was  because 
the    monarchies   around   him   gave   him   no   sufficing 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  249 

image  of  her  rule  that  he  pictured  her  re-arisen  in 
her  ancient  vesture  and  called  by  her  Eoman  name. 

(G)  "  No  help  in  the  deliverance  of  Italy  is  to  be 
looked  for  from  the  Catholic  Church."  This  principle 
also  has  been  proved  to  be  sound  by  the  march  of 
events.  But  it  was  opposed  to  some  of  the  strongest 
currents  of  popular  feeling  in  Italy,  and  to  the  aspira- 
tions of  some  of  her  noblest  minds.  The  political 
programme  '  of  the  "  new  Guelph  movement "  may 
seem  to  us  plainly  futile ;  its  political  leaders,  — 
Gioberti  or  Eossi, — may  be  little  to  our  taste."  But 
behind  them  there  was  a  force  which  was  even  tragic 
in  its  intensity,  —  the  passionate  reluctance  of  men 
who  have  entrusted  their  souls  to  a  spiritual  guide  to 
admit  to  themselves  that  that  guide  betrays,  —  the 
determination  at  any  cost  to  reconcile  Catholicism 
with  patriotism,  the  creed  of  the  fathers  with  the  duty 
of  the  sons. 

The  real  knot  of  the  situation  was  in  the  temporal 
power,  which  throughout  this  century,  at  least,  has 
been  a  very  miUstone  round  the  neck  of  the  Papacy. 
The  recent  Popes,  in  fact,  have  been  in  a  false  position, 
in  which  their  predecessors  were  seldom  placed.  In 
the  days  of  the  great  Popes  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
temporal  power  was  an  almost  nominal  or  at  least  a 
slightly-regarded  thing.  The  policy  of  a  Gregory  or 
an  Innocent  was  CathoKc,  not  Italian.  After  the 
retmn  of  the  Popes  from  Avignon  the  character  of 
their  aspirations  changed :  they  sank  into  petty  in- 


250  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

triguing  princes  like  the  princes  around  them.  The 
policy  of  an  Alexander  or  a  Leo  was  Italian,  and  not 
Catholic.  But  the  time  came  when  each  of  these 
terms  might  be  interpreted  in  two  ways.  An  Italian 
policy  might  mean  a  policy  by  which  the  Pope  aimed 
first  of  all  at  preserving  his  position  as  an  Italian 
prince,  or  a  policy  by  which  he  placed  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  national  aspirations  of  Italy.  A  Catholic 
policy  might  mean  a  policy  by  which  he  conciliated 
the  despotic  governments  of  Austria  and  Naples  in 
return  for  material  support,  or  a  policy  which  kept 
him  the  spiritual  leader  of  that  great  religious  move- 
ment which  is  proceeding,  quite  independently  of 
forms  of  civil  government,  in  the  old  and  the  new 
world.  Attachment  to  the  temporal  power  has  led 
the  recent  Popes  in  each  case  to  choose  the  narrower 
alternative.  How  much  the  Catholic  Church  has  lost 
through  the  endless  series  of  compromises  and  con- 
cordats which  the  interests  of  the  temporal  power  have 
necessitated,  it  is  hard  to  say.  In  such  traffic  the 
rate  of  exchange  rises  all  too  rapidly  against  the 
vendor  of  impalpable  wares.  And  now  that  the 
struggle  is  over  and  the  temporal  power  gone,  it  is 
felt  by  the  wisest  Catholics  themselves  th'at  a  new 
independence  is  breathed  into  the  Vatican  counsels. 
If,  then,  it  has  been  well  for  the  Popes  even  to  be 
forcibly  deprived  of  the  temporal  power,  what  might 
they  not  have  gained  by  its  voluntary  reform ; — nay, 
even  by  its  dignified  and  timely  surrender !     No  party 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  251 

in  Italy  deserves  a  deeper  sympathy  than  the  men, 
Catholics  at  once  and  patriots,  who  watched  with 
powerless  regret  the  loss  of  this  unique  opportunity. 
What  chivalry  in  d'AzegUo,  unable  to  the  last  to 
conceive  of  a  severance  between  religion  and  honour  ! 
what  pathos  in  Tosti,  as  he  called  to  the  marching 
patriots  from  the  sanctuary  of  his  Benedictine  hill, 
"  Sitting  among  the  ruins  of  a  day  that  is  gone,  I 
follow  you  with  my  love  from  far ! " 

This  great  problem  of  the  relation  of  regenerate 
Italy  to  Catholicism  was  at  once  a  personal  and  a 
public  one  to  every  Italian.  Cavour  and  Mazzini 
solved  it  in  their  different  ways.  For  his  own  part, 
Cavour  especially  retained  a  devoted  priest  to  absolve 
his  last  hour,  and  made  his  way  into  heaven  itself  by 
a  stroke  of  diplomacy.  And  his  solution  of  the 
general  question  was  of  a  similarly  diplomatic  kind. 
The  Free  Church  in  a  Free  State  is  a  political  and 
not  a  moral  remedy  for  the  deep  division  of  the 
Italian  people ;  it  is  all  that  statesmanship  can  offer, 
but  it  is  no  more  than  a  modus  vivendi  between  two 
halves  of  a  nation. 

To  Mazzini,  on  the  other  hand,  the  spiritual  unity 
of  Italy  seemed  far  more  necessary,  though  far  harder 
to  achieve,  than  the  political.  He  could  more  easily 
endure  that  Italian  labour  should  enrich  foreign  rulers, 
than  that  in  Italian  hearts  there  should  be  any  impulse 
of  truth  or  virtue  which  did  not  imite  in  that  full 
current    of    spiritual  influence   which  it   was    Italy's 


252  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

mission  to  pour  upon  the  world.  And  yet  how  was 
this  unity  to  be  attained  ?  A  moral  force  can  be 
absorbed  or  modified  only  by  a  stronger  force  of  the 
same  kind.  And  he  who  would  offer  to  Catholics  an  ideal 
higher  than  the  Catholic  Church  must  needs  resemble 
that  Indian  hermit  of  whom  M.  Eenan  tells  us,  who, 
expelled  from  the  heaven  of  Indra,  created,  by  the  force 
of  his  meditation  and  the  intensity  of  his  merits, 
another  Indra  and  a  new  heaven. 

(7)  And  this  brings  us  to  the  last  article  of 
Mazzini's  programme :  "  Rome  must  give  Europe  a 
new  religion — must  a  third  time  head  and  regenerate 
the  world." 

It  is  enough  for  the  present  to  say  that  this  haa 
not  been  done.  When  we  discuss  Mazzini's  own 
springs  of  action  we  shall  be  better  able  to  estimate 
the  value  and  the  future  of  his  religious  ideas.  But 
in  the  world  of  public  action  these  hopes  have  failed. 
And  here,  at  last,  we  come  upon  a  point  which  seems 
to  justify  the  common  view  of  Mazzini  as  a  visionary 
and  a  Utopian. 

In  using  these  words,  however,  we  must  beware  of 
confusion  of  thought.  In  dealing  with  men  there  are 
two  distinct  questions- — How  can  we  improve  their 
condition  now  ?  and,  How  far  may  that  condition  be 
improved  ultimately  ?  If  a  man  through  holding  en- 
thusiastic views  as  to  the  future  of  the  race  mistakes  or 
neglects  the  measures  which  they  need  now,  it  is  just 
to   censure   him  as  a  fanatic.     But  it  is  possible  to 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  263 

combine  glowing  hopes  for  the  future  with  cautious 
sagacity  in  the  present.  The  founders  of  the  United 
States  believed  that  their  republic  would  be  a  moral 
pattern  to  mankind ;  but  this  did  not  prevent  them 
from  constructing  a  business  country  on  business 
principles.  Hardly  Plato  himself  was  in  the  world 
of  theory  more  visionary  than  Bacon ;  and  yet  Bacon 
was  the  Apostle  of  Experiment,  and  in  liis  conduct  of 
the  Court  of  Chancery  was  found  to  err  even  from 
excess  of  practicality.  If  we  are  to  call  men  like 
Washington  and  Bacon  Utopians  the  word  has  lost 
its  sting. 

And,  like  these  men,  Mazzini  had  two  aspirations, 
the  one  practical  and  the  other  visionary.  The  first 
was  the  imity  of  Italy ;  the  second  the  establishment 
therein  of  a  religion  and  a  republic.  But  the  line 
which  he  took  with  reference  to  these  two  objects  was 
essentially  different.  As  to  the  first  he  accepted  no 
compromise.  He  forgave  no  dereliction  of  this  end, 
no  halt  on  the  road  to  its  attainment.  But  his  second 
object,  though  he  held  it  the  higher  one,  was  never 
suffered  to  interfere  with  the  first.  Although  nothing 
was  done  for  Italy  in  the  way  that  he  would  have 
chosen,  there  was  nothing  done  for  Italy  that  he  did 
not  support.  For  proof  of  this  assertion  there  is  no 
need  to  appeal  to  any  controverted  matter.  His  public 
manifestoes,  which  extend  over  his  whole  career  and 
determined  the  action  of  his  party,  are  evidence 
enough.     This  surely  is  all  that  we  have  a  right  to 


254,  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

demand  of  a  reformer,  that  he  shall  set  before  him 
some  actually  attainable  ideal,  and  secure  it  at  what- 
ever cost  of  self-suppression  or  compromise.  If  be 
does  this,  we  need  not  blame  him  if  he  would  have 
liked  to  do  more.  We  need  not  blame  him  if  in  his 
desire  for  the  happiness  and  virtue  of  others  he  refuses 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  attainment  of  any  given  step 
upon  an  upward  progress  whose  limit  is  unknown;  if 
in  reviewing  his  own  work  he  will  call  nothing  good 
which  might  have  been  better. 

These,  then,  were  the  leading  principles  which 
Mazzini  upheld  through  life  by  every  line  of  thought, 
every  form  of  action,  which  circumstances  allowed. 
At  fiist  his  influence  was  mainly  through  the  press 
and  correspondence.  In  literary  and  critical  essays  he 
gave  to  his  views  on  life  and  duty  a  clear  and  digni- 
fied expression.  By  the  association  of  "  Young  Italy  " 
— so  called  from  no  fantastic  preference  for  youth,  but 
because  hardly  any  grown  men  remained  to  Italy  who 
stni  dared  to  hope  —  he  spread  these  views  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  Another  associa- 
tion, "Young  Europe,"  brought  the  revolutionary 
element  in  other  nations  into  sympathy  with  Italian 
freedom.  And  in  a  host  of  articles  and  pamphlets  he 
afforded  the  impulse  necessary  to  evoke  the  spark  of 
patriotism  in  many  a  hesitating  company  of  men,  to 
"  beat  the  twUight  into  flakes  of  fire." 

It  is  of  course  impossible  to  define  with  exactness 
the  amount  of  influence  thus  exerted ;  but  it  is  notice- 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  255 

able  that  we  seldom  find  an  Italian  patriot  ascribing 
his  first  ardour  of  public  spirit  to  any  other  source ; 
nor  does  any  other  source  seem  to  have  existed  from 
which  the  rising  people  of  Italy  could  draw  their 
necessary  and  sustained  inspiration.  Giusti  gave 
them  trenchant  satire.  Guerrazzi  gave  them  a  mass 
of  vigorous  polemic.  Gioberti  offered  such  incitement 
to  greatness  as  can  be  drawn  from  volumes  of 
panegyric  of  a  type  which  we  are  more  accustomed 
to  see  addressed  to  the  people  of  Paris.  But  Mazzini 
almost  alone  gave  them  what  they  needed  most,  a 
strain  of  manly  virtue.  "  I  love  you  too  well,"  he 
wrote  in  the  preface  to  his  treatise  on  The  Duties  of 
Man,  "  either  to  flatter  your  passions  or  caress  the 
golden  dreams  by  which  others  seek  to  gain  your 
favour.  My  voice  may  sound  too  harsh,  and  I  may 
too  severely  insist  on  proclaiming  the  necessity  of 
virtue  and  sacrifice,  but  I  know,  and  you  will  soon 
know  also,  that  the  sole  origin  of  every  right  is  in  a 
duty  fulfilled." 

The  short  treatise  to  which  these  words  are  prefixed 
should  be  read  by  those  who  have  been  accustomed  to 
think  of  Mazzini  as  a  violent  revolutionary.  Their 
first  impression  will  probably  be  one  of  surprise  at  the 
subordination  of  political  to  religious  dogma.  The 
author  has  plainly  more  in  common  with  Huss  or 
Savonarola  than  with  Eobespierre  or  Mirabeau. 

It  will  then  be  observed  that,  if  we  except  his  pre- 
ference for  a  republic  as  the  logical  form  of  govern- 


256  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

ment  by  the  people,  there  is  little  in  his  opinions 
wliich  would  have  disqualified  him  (for  instance)  from 
forming  a  member  of  an  ordinary  English  liberal 
ministry.  Even  on  questions  of  political  economy — 
the  great  crux  of  the  reformer — it  may  surprise  us  to 
find  him  both  sound  and  inventive.  Co-operation  is 
his  leading  economical  doctrine,  and  some  of  the 
practical  measures  by  which  he  would  encourage  this 
are  already  at  work  in  some  towns  of  Italy,  and  are 
likely  enough  to  spread  farther.  On  one  point  alone 
economists  wiU  agree  in  pronouncing  him  mistaken ; — 
in  his  wish  to  raise  the  public  revenue  almost  whoUy 
by  an  income-tax.  This  is  an  extreme  view,  but  it  is 
stiU  far  enough  from  socialism  or  anarchy. 

His  literary  work  was  much  broken  by  the  active 
business  of  insurrections.  He  took  a  personal  part  in 
all  the  movements  which  he  originated,  as  weU  as  in 
many  which  he  disapproved  as  immature,  but  was 
unable  to  arrest.^  He  was  remarkable  for  his  cool 
courage  in  the  presence  of  danger,  and  Colonel  Medici 
has  described  his  conduct  as  a  private  in  the  disastrous 
campaign  of  Garibaldi's  Volunteers  near  Milan  in 
1848  in  terms  which  recall  the  well-known  story  of 
the  constancy  of  Socrates  in  the  retreat  from-Potidsea. 
His  skill  as  a  tactician  was  thought  highly  of  by  his 
party.  We  know  too  little  of  the  chances  which  were 
seized  or  missed  to  enable  us  to  form  an  independent 
opinion,  but  it  is  plain  that  he  applied  to  the  art  of 
1  See  Joseph  Mazzini,  a  Memoir,  by  E.  A.  V. 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINL  257 

war  the  same  humble  and  painstaking  spirit  which  led 
him  to  shrink  from  no  duty  as  paltry  or  uncongenial 
if  it  could  serve  Italy.  We  read  liis  Catechism  of 
G-iierilla  War/are,  and  iind  the  delicate  student  who 
began  life  with  an  Essay  on  a  European  Literature 
applying  his  mind  to  the  right  rules  for  lighting  delu- 
sive camp  fires  and  firing  at  the  enemy's  legs.  And 
then  in  the  intervals  of  these  adventures  we  find  the 
dangerous  outlaw  spending  almost  every  evening  for 
seven  years  (1841-48)  in  teaching  a  night-school  of 
Italian  organ-boys  in  his  shabby  lodgings  in  Hattou 
Garden. 

Work  such  as  this  may  seem  a  waste  of  time  in  a 
political  leader.  But  the  potency  of  Mazzini's  sym- 
pathies was  much  increased  by  his  coming  thus  to 
Italy  as  one  that  ministered  —  by  his  being,  like 
Dominic,  the  amoroso  driulo  of  a  lofty  and  absorbing 
faith.  And  time  was  preparing  for  him  a  culminant 
opportunity  when  no  fragment  of  knowledge,  influence, 
reverence,  which  he  had  won,  should  be  forgotten  or  in 
vain.  The  things  which  he  had  done  in  secret  were 
to  be  proclaimed  openly,  and  the  banner  of  "  God  and 
the  People  "  was  to  fly  from  the  capitol  of  Eome. 

XL 

The  first  years  of  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.  can  be 
remembered  with  satisfaction  by  no  party.  Seldom  has 
history  shown  a  more  curious  complication  of  false  posi- 

s 


258  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

tions  and  inextricable  dilemmas.  The  main  points  oi 
the  situation  are  well  known.  The  new  Pope  took 
from  the  first  a  lofty  view  of  his  spiritual  prerogative, 
but  began  his  reign  without  a  definite  temporal  policy. 
He  was  kindly  and  simple-minded,  but  accessible  to 
flattery  and  wanting  in  wisdom,  and  rather  obstinate 
than  strong.  The  liberal  party  took  advantage  of  an 
amnesty  which  he  issued  on  his  accession — in  itself  a 
very  ordinary  act — to  credit  him  with  liberal  tendencies, 
and  to  exalt  him  as  the  heaven-sent  patron  of  Itahan 
unity  and  freedom.  He  promised  reforms,  and  was 
rewarded  by  calculated  acclamations.  There  was 
something  contemptible  in  this  mode  of  cajoling  a 
ruler,  and  there  was  something  undignified  in  the  way 
in  which  the  flatteries  were  swallowed  and  the  reforms 
postponed.  The  war  of  Piedmont  with  Austria  in 
1848  put  an  end  to  this  child's  play.  At  first,  indeed, 
the  demagogues  pretended  that  the  Pope  had  gone  to 
war  with  Austria,  and  there  was  much  debate  as  to 
whether  he  had  or  had  not  blessed  the  banners  of  the 
volunteers,  and,  if  he  had,  whether  liis  blessing  would 
still  be  valid  if  they  crossed  the  Po.  But  on  April 
29,  1848,  the  Pope  published  an  allocution  in  which 
he  definitely  took  the  Austrian  side.  From  that 
moment  his  popularity  was  gone.  Alarmed  at  its  loss 
he  temporised  again. 

In  the  autumn  of  1848  he  placed  Eossi  at  the 
head  of  affairs.  Eossi  tried  to  steer  a  middle  course. 
The   task   was   impossible ;    liis    own    harshness   and 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  259 

pedantry  embittered  the  enmities  on  both  sides  which 
his  policy  evoked,  and  he  succeeded  in  uniting  the 
contending  factions  only  in  the  single  object  of  assassi- 
nating himself.  On  November  15  he  was  stabbed  at 
the  door  of  the  parliament.  The  cowardly  Assembly 
held  its  session  without  aUuding  to  the  fact  that  the 
prime  minister  had  been  killed  on  the  stairs.  Both 
parties  welcomed  this  crime.  The  liberal  papers  spoke 
of  it  without  reprobation  ;  the  ultra-papal  commandant 
of  gendarmes  refused  to  make  any  attempt  to  punish 
the  assassins.  The  terrified  Pope  fled  to  Gaeta  in 
disguise,  and  surrendered  himself  to  the  influence  of 
Antonelli,  who  had  pretended  to  join  in  the  constitu- 
tional movement,  but  now  showed  his  true  coloiirs,  and 
kept  his  power  tUl  he  died.  It  was  now  Antonelli's 
object  that  Eome  should  fall  into  anarchy.  Com- 
missioners were  appointed  to  govern  in  the  Pope's 
name,  who  refused  to  do  anything  except  protest 
against  the  assumption  of  power  by  any  one  else. 
The  deadlock  was  complete.  Gradually  a  demand 
arose  that  Mazzini  and  Garibaldi  should  be  sent  for. 
Both  accepted  the  call,  Mazzini  writing  sternly  of  what 
had  passed,  and  advising  the  convocation  of  a  constit- 
uent assembly  and  the  proclamation  of  a  republic. 
This  advice  was  followed,  and  on  March  20,  1849, 
Mazzini  and  two  Eomans  were  chosen  triumvirs. 

In  the  deliberate  absence  of  any  ruler  the  Eomans 
had  no  choice  but  to  create  a  republic,  but  it  was  clear 
from  the  first  that  the  fortunes  of  that  republic  were 


260  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

almost  desperate.  Three  of  the  four  Catholic  powers, 
Austria,  Naj)les,  and  Spain,  were  certain  to  attack  it. 
From  two  quarters  only  was  help  possible,  from  the 
rest  of  Italy  or  from  France,  the  fourth  Catholic  power, 
but  a  power  which  was  at  that  time  republican  also. 
As  regarded  help  from  the  rest  of  Italy,  the  moment 
for  seeking  it  had  gone  by.  A  year  before  Eome 
would  have  found  all  Italy,  almost  all  Europe,  in  revolu- 
tion, but  now  the  flame  was  dying  out.  The  defeat 
of  No  vara,  on  March  23,  put  an  end  to  hope  from 
Piedmont.  An  earnest  attempt,  made  by  Mazzini 
before  his  arrival  in  Eome,  to  secure  co-operation 
from  Tuscany  failed,  and  the  ill-conducted  Tuscan  con- 
stitutional movement  expired  with  the  return  of  the 
grandduke  on  April  13.  Venice  remained  in  arms; 
her  heroic  defence  against  Austria  was  adding  the 
last  glory  to  her  famous  name.  But  she  could  spare 
no  help  to  Eome.  From  France  Mazzini  never  hoped 
much,  though  neither  he  nor  the  French  nation  were 
prepared  for  what  actually  took  place.  France  was 
undergoing  a  reaction  from  the  exaggerated  enthusiasms 
of  1848,  in  a  dark  hour  of  apathy  and  fears  in  which 
more  than  one  sinister  ambition  was  finding  a  con- 
genial air. 

M.  Thiers  ^  has  related  with  cynical  frankness  the 

secret  history  of  the  despatch  of  the  French  expedition  to 

Eome.     Without  his  express  authority  we  might  have 

suspected,  but  should  hardly  have  allowed  ourselves  to 

'  ConTeraations  with  Mr.  Senior,  Fortnightly  Review,  October  ]877. 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINL  26] 

assert,  that  the  expedition  was  from  beginning  to  end 
a  deliberate  fraud  upon  both  the  French  and  Italian 
peoples ;  that  almost  every  word  uttered  by  the  French 
ministers  in  the  Assembly  and  the  French  general  in 
Italy  was  a  conscious  falsehood ;  that,  as  M.  Thiers 
says,  "  It  was  not  for  the  sake  of  the  Roman  people,  it 
was  not  for  the  sake  of  Catholicism,  that  we  went  to 
Eome,  it  was  for  the  sake  of  France ; "  and  for  the  sake 
of  France  in  what  way  ?  In  the  first  place  to  gain  for 
the  Prince-President  the  support  of  the  clerical  party, 
and  in  the  second  place  to  assert  the  influence  of 
France  in  Italy  in  opposition  to  that  of  Austria,  since, 
said  M.  Thiers,  "  rather  than  see  the  Austrian  eagle  on 
the  flagstaff  that  rises  above  the  Tiber,  I  would  destroy 
a  hundred  constitutions  and  a  hundred  religions." 
This  seems  a  needless  energy  of  resolve,  but  M.  Thiers 
tells  us  that  we  "can  hardly  conceive  the  interest 
wliich  France  takes  in  Eome,"  not  only  on  vulgaT 
grounds  which  all  may  share,  as  the  centre  of  Catholi- 
cism, art,  and  history,  but  "  as  having  long  been  the 
second  city  of  the  French  Empire." 

From  any  less  exalted  point  of  view  it  was  certainly 
hard  to  find  a  reason  why  France  should  interfere  ui 
Eome  in  1849.  As  a  Catholic  country  she  could  not 
be  expected  to  help  the  Eoman  republic  agaiust  the 
Pope.  Still  less  did  it  befit  her,  as  a  republic,  to  stifle 
a  sister  republic  which  had  in  many  ways  a  stronger 
right  to  existence  than  herself.  But  although  France 
was  a  republic,  her   ministers  were  not  republicans  ; 


262  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

they  were  paving  the  way,  as  fast  as  they  dared,  for  an 
ultramontane  empire;  they  were  resolved  to  crush  the 
Eoman  republic,  and  to  help  them  to  deceive  the 
Assembly  which  they  led  they  counted  upon  their 
countrymen's  vanity,  on  their  desire  to  pose  as  heroes 
on  every  stage  which  the  world's  history  offers.  M. 
OdUon  Barrot  rested  his  proposal  for  the  despatch  of 
troops  to  Italy  on  "  the  expediency  of  maintaining  the 
French  influence  in  Italy,  and  the  wish  to  be  instru- 
mental in  securing  to  the  Eoman  people  a  good  govern- 
ment, founded  on  liberal  institutions."  The  Assembly 
consented,  and  a  body  of  troops  under  General  Oudinot 
was  sent  to  Civita  Vecchia.  Before  them  went  an 
aide-de-camp  to  announce  "  that  the  wish  of  the 
majority  would  be  respected,  and  no  form  of  govern- 
ment imposed  which  the  Eoman  people  had  not  chosen." 
Won  by  fair  words,  the  municipality  of  Civita  Vecchia 
allowed  the  French  to  land.  The  triumvirs  remon- 
strated, but  it  was  too  late.  They  then  sent  to  Oudinot 
a  dignified  protest,  stating  that  this  invasion  was  a 
violation  of  the  law  of  nations,  and  declaring  their 
intention  to  resist.  Oudinot  replied  with  a  proclama- 
tion, written  by  M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys,  which  repeated 
that  the  French  "  had  no  wish  to  exercise  an  oppressive 
influence,  or  to  impose  a  government  contrary  to  the 
wish  of  the  Eomans."  He  then  declared  Civita  Vecchia 
in  a  state  of  siege,  disarmed  the  garrison,  and  forbade 
the  municipality  to  meet.  The  prefect  protested,  and 
Oudinot  put  him  in  prison. 


L]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  263 

The  French  Assembly  had  authorised  Oudinot  to 
enter  Eome  "  if  he  were  likely  to  meet  with  no  serious 
resistance,  or  were  invited  thither  by  the  wish  of  the 
population."  The  triumvirs  repeatedly  told  him  that 
any  attack  on  Rome  would  be  strenuously  resisted. 
He  did,  however,  attack  Eome  on  April  30,  and  was 
driven  off  by  Garibaldi,  leaving  many  wounded  and 
prisoners.  The  wounded  were  carefully  tended  by  a 
band  of  Roman  ladies,  who  were  afterwards  described 
in  the  French  Assembly  as  courtesans.  The  prisoners 
were  released  by  the  triumvirs,  who  refused  to  keep 
captive  republicans  who  had  been  deluded  into  a 
fratricidal  war.  They  thus  expressed  their  belief  in 
the  brotherhood  of  all  free  men,  just  as  Callicratidas, 
by  releasing  Greek  prisoners,  expressed  his  belief  in 
the  brotherhood  of  all  Hellenes. 

The  news  of  this  attack  on  Rome  caused  great 
discontent  in  France.  M.  Barrot  disavowed  Oudinot's 
action,  but  sent  him  reinforcements  instead  of  recalling 
him.  The  general  displeasure,  however,  compelled  the 
ministers  to  send  some  man  of  high  reputation  as 
diplomatic  agent,  "  to  devote  himself  to  negotiations 
and  the  relations  to  be  estabhshed  between  the  Roman 
authorities  and  the  Roman  people."  M.  de  Lesseps,  then 
one  of  the  first  of  diplomatists,  as  he  is  now  the  first  of 
engineers,  was  despatched  with  full  powers.  The  mas- 
terly State-paper  in  which  he  afterwards  defended  his 
mission,  supplemented  as  it  is  by  the  original  documents, 
remains  the  unanswered  history  of  tliese  transactions. 


264  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

Reaching  Rome  on  May  10,  M.  de  Lesseps  found 
that  the  French  position  was  an  entirely  false  one,  that 
the  Romans  were  by  no  means  in  a  state  of  anarchy, 
but  resolute,  united,  and  in  no  need  of  French  arbitra- 
tion. The  most  alarming  element  in  the  situation 
was  the  wounded  vanity  of  the  French  officers,  who 
wished  to  wipe  out  the  memory  of  their  defeat  before 
Rome  by  a  second  assault  upon  that  friendly  city. 
While  M.  de  Lesseps  negotiated  they  prepared  their 
attack.  In  spite  of  the  armistice  they  threw  a  bridge 
of  boats  across  the  Tiber,  and  cut  the  communication 
between  Rome  and  the  sea ;  they  seized  the  church  of 
St.  Paul-without-the-walls  ;  they  occupied  Monte  Mario 
— a  most  important  position.  There  was  a  peculiar 
periidy  in  this  last  act,  since  M.  de  Lesseps  himself 
was  deceived  into  informing  the  Roman  government 
that  this  occupation  was  a  mere  "  misunderstanding,' 
and  intended  to  guard  Rome  against  the  advance  of 
foreign  foes.  The  triumvirs,  justly  impressed  with  M. 
de  Lesseps'  honour,  took  pains  to  quiet  the  natural 
anger  of  the  Roman  people,  who  thus  saw  one  point 
after  another  seized  by  the  French  troops.  Meantime 
M.  de  Lesseps  and  the  triumvirs  concluded  a  conven- 
tion as  follows : — The  Romans,  welcoming  the  French 
as  friends,  allowed  them  to  take  up  such  positions  out- 
side Rome  as  health  and  the  defence  of  the  country 
required.  This  arrangement  was  in  no  case  to  be  put 
an  end  to,  except  at  a  fortnight's  notice. 

M.  de  Lesseps  signed  this  conveution,  as  he  was 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZIKI.  265 

fully  empowered  to  do.  But  General  Oudinot  refused 
to  be  bound  by  it.  He  went  farther;  he  broke  a 
promise  of  his  own,  given  in  writing  to  General  Roselli, 
that  he  would  defer  the  attack  on  Eome  at  any  rate 
till  June  4,  and  began  the  attack  on  June  2.  Almost 
at  the  same  moment — on  May  29 — M.  de  Lesseps  was 
recalled.  The  fact  was  that  on  that  very  day  the  Con- 
stituent had  given  place  to  the  Legislative  Assembly, 
there  was  a  shifting  of  power  at  Paris,  and  M.  Barrot 
and  those  behind  him  could  do  as  they  pleased. 

We  may  pause  here  to  consider  the  internal  con- 
dition of  Eome.  At  the  time  when  the  Eepublic  was 
proclaimed  there  was  much  to  justify  the  contempt 
which  was  widely  felt  in  Europe  for  the  new  govern- 
ment. The  Eomans  seemed  to  be  acting  only  be- 
cause they  could  not  help  it ;  and  the  debates  in  the 
Assembly  showed  little  except  aimlessness  and  terror. 
Suddenly  this  temper  changed.  A  mass  of  men  in 
imminent  danger  may  be  sobered  by  it  or  maddened, 
according  to  the  impulse  given,  and  the  Eomans  were 
like  the  crew  of  a  sinking  shii^  whose  captain  comes  on 
deck  and  takes  the  command.  A  diplomatic  despatch  ^ 
has  preserved  for  us  an  account  of  Mazzini's  arrival  in 
the  Assembly,  and  the  transformation  of  a  scene  of 
confused  recrimination  into  a  scene  of  enthusiasm  and 
vigorous  action.  His  influence  on  the  troops  was  of 
the  same  kind.  On  his  election  as  triumvir  the  officers 
of  the  National  Guard  told  him  that  most  of  the  guard 
'  Biauchi's  Diplomazui  Ev/rapea,  vol.  vi.  p.  452. 


266  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

would  refuse  to  defend  the  city.  "  It  seemed  to  me," 
he  says,  "  that  I  understood  the  Eoman  people  far 
better  than  they,  and  I  therefore  gave  orders  that  all 
the  battalions  should  defile  in  front  of  the  Palace  of  the 
Assembly,  that  the  question  might  be  put  to  the  troops. 
The  universal  shout  of  war  that  arose  from  the  ranks 
drowned  in  an  instant  the  timid  doubts  of  the  leaders." 

It  is,  however,  to  Garibaldi  that  tlie  credit  of  the 
heroic  military  defence  of  Eome  must  be  mainly 
ascribed.  We  must  look  to  the  internal  management 
of  the  city,  its  finances,  order,  religion,  for  definite  traces 
of  Mazzini's  government.  And  here  M.  de  Lesseps 
must  first  be  heard.  After  speaking  of  a  suspicion  which 
he  at  first  entertained  that  Mazzini  was  influenced 
against  France  by  Protestant  missionaries,  he  adds : — 

"  I  have  the  less  hesitation  in  making  known  the 
opinion  which  I  then  held  of  Mazzini,  with  whom  I 
was  in  open  conflict,  inasmuch  as  throughout  our  sub- 
sequent negotiations  I  have  nothing  but  praise  for  the 
loyalty  and  moderation  of  his  character,  which  have 
won  my  entire  esteem.  Now  that  he  has  fallen  from 
power,  and  is  doubtless  seeking  a  refuge  in  some  foreign 
country,  I  owe  an  expression  of  homage  to  the  noliility 
of  his  feelings,  the  sincerity  of  his  convictions,  his  high 
capacity,  his  integrity,  and  his  courage." 

When  the  triumvirs  assumed  power  the  state  of 
the  public  finances  was  such  that  their  first  act  was  to 
debate  whether  government  could  be  carried  on  at  all. 
Under  the  papal  rule  the  treasury  had  been  entrusted 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  267 

to  a  dignified  person  who  could  not  be  called  upon  to 
show  accounts,  and  was  only  removable  by  bemg  made 
a  cardinaL  During  the  three  perilous  months  of  the 
triumvirate  the  finances  were  thoroughly  put  in  order, 
and  a  large  reserve  of  money  collected,  which  was 
duly  appropriated  by  the  papal  functionary  on  his 
return.  The  republican  leaders  left  office  poorer  than 
when  they  accepted  it.  Mazzini,  as  triumvir,  dined 
for  two  francs  a  day ;  Garibaldi,  less  provident  than 
when,  in  1860,  after  conquering  a  kingdom,  he  found 
that  he  had  still  nearly  thirty  pounds,  left  Eome  in 
absolute  penury.  More  surprising  was  the  unwonted 
honesty  of  the  lowest  of  the  people.  Some  families 
whose  houses  were  endangered  by  the  French  bom- 
bardment were  quartered  in  the  empty  palaces  of  Roman 
nobles  who  had  fled  to  Gaeta,  leaving  money  and  jewel- 
lery lying  about  their  rooms.  Not  so  much  as  a  brooch 
was  stolen.  Crime,  in  fact,  was  for  the  time  almost 
unknown.  Some  assassinations  were  committed  at 
Ancona,  which  Mazzini  instantly  punished  with  terrible 
severity,  threatening  to  send  half  the  forces  of  the 
republic  to  Ancona  if  such  crimes  were  repeated.  If 
order,  honesty,  courage,  are  tests  of  civic  Hfe,  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  Eome  had  never  been  so  Eoman 
since  the  Punic  Wars.  This  spirit  found  a  fit  expres- 
sion in  Mazzini's  State-papers,  which  show  the  charac- 
teristic Eoman  dignity,  the  absence  of  flattery  or 
exaggeration,  the  stem  assumption  that  the  aim  of 
every  Eoman  is  to  live  and  die  for  Rome. 


268  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

The  accusations  brought  against  Mazzini's  govern- 
ment elude  for  the  most  part  precise  examination.  To 
call  him  a  communist,  a  bandit,  a  "  modern  Nero,"  was 
merely  to  use  conventional  language  in  describing  a 
republican  chief.  There  was  more  force  in  the  com- 
plaints of  some  of  his  own  party  that  by  his  Quixotic 
regard  for  the  property  and  life  of  enemies,  he  threw 
away  advantages  which  Eome  coidd  ill  spare, — as  when 
he  exempted  the  rich  men  who  had  fled  to  Gaeta  from 
taxation  because  they  had  not  consented  to  be  taxed, — 
or  forbade  Garibaldi  to  follow  up  the  flying  French 
army  on  April  30  because  the  Eomans  could  not 
believe  themselves  to  be  at  war  with  a  friendly  republic, 
except  when  they  caught  the  French  in  the  act  of  try- 
ing to  enter  Eome. 

On  a  more  serious  matter  Mazzini's  government 
provoked  fears  in  many  quarters.  It  was  suspected 
that  he  meant  to  disestablish  Catholicism  in  favour  of 
Protestantism,  or  of  some  other  schismatic  communion. 
It  is  worth  while  to  consider  what  position  he  actually 
took  up.  He  seems  to  have  interfered  with  nothing 
which  he  did  not  think  absolutely  immoral,  but  rather 
to  have  laid  stress  on  those  acts  of  common  worship 
or  reverence  which  have  the  same  force  for  aU;  Thus, 
on  the  one  hand,  he  turned  the  Inquisition  into  a 
lodging-house  for  poor  families,  and  protected  monks 
and  nuns  who  wished  to  re-enter  the  world.  But  when 
the  people  took  some  confessionals  to  strengthen  barri- 
cades he  ordered'  them  to  be  instantly  replaced,  and 


L]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  269 

warned  the  Eomans  to  shun  even  the  appearance  of  an 
outrage  against  the  religion  of  their  fathers. 

Easter,  which  fell  in  the  time  of  the  triumvirate, 
was  celebrated  with  the  accustomed  solemnity.  It  is 
not  the  Pope  whom  Christians  worship,  and  his  absence 
need  not  stop  a  Cliristian  feast.  A  priest  blessed  the 
people  from  the  balcony  of  St.  Peter's,  and  Mazzini,  as 
representative  of  the  republic,  consented  to  stand  there 
too, — a  prophetic  figure  intercalated  among  so  many 
pontiffs  more  strangely  than  Cromwell  among  the 
English  kings. 

Eome  was  defended  long  and  bravely,  but  on  June 
30  the  French  were  masters  of  the  bastions  and  all 
the  heights,  and  it  was  plain  that  the  end  was  near. 
Mazzini  then  proposed  a  scheme  which  recalls  "  the 
oath  of  the  Phocseans,"  and  one  of  Horace's  noblest 
odes.  He  proposed  that  the  triumvirs,  the  Assembly, 
the  army,  and  such  of  the  people  as  chose,  should 
leave  Eome,  and  create  in  the  Campagna  a  centre  of 
desperate  resistance  to  Austria  and  France.  But  the 
Assembly  refused.  "  The  singular  calmness,"  adds 
Mazzini  with  some  na'ivetS,  "  which  they  had  shown 
until  that  moment  had  induced  me  to  believe  that 
they  would  have  hailed  the  proposition  with  applause." 
This  voluntary  exile  of  the  whole  State — this  carry- 
ing, as  it  were,  into  the  desert  of  the  fortune  and  the 
fame  of  Eome — would  doubtless  have  created  a  pro- 
found impression  throughout  Italy  and  Europe.  The 
men  who  made  that  expedition  would  probably  all 


270  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

have  been  killed — as  almost  all  the  men  who  did 
actually  go  out  with  Garibaldi  were  killed — but  if 
they  had  maintained  themselves  even  for  a  few  months, 
it  is  still  conceivable  that  Italy  might  have  risen. 
The  Assembly  were  not  ready  to  do  this ;  but  what 
they  did  has  won  them  the  praise  of  heroism  from 
judges  less  stern  than  the  triumvir.  Through  all  the 
perils  of  the  siege  they  sat  unmovedly — such  of  them 
as  were  not  needed  on  the  walls — perfecting  the  new 
constitution ;  and  when  the  French  were  in  the  city, 
when  once  again — 

"  Galli  per  dumos  aderant,  arcemque  tenebant, 
Defensi  tenebris  et  dono  noctis  opacae," — 

on  that  last  morning  the  Assembly — destined,  every 
man  of  them,  to  exile,  imprisonment,  or  death — pro- 
claimed upon  the  Capitol  the  Statutes  of  EepubUcan 
Eome.  Like  the  Roman  who  bought  the  field  on 
which  Hannibal  was  encamped,  they  testified  to  their 
belief  that  the  enemies  of  the  Eternal  City  should 
perish  and  that  she  should  endure. 

The  French  entered  Eome.  Garibaldi  marched  out 
with  a  handful  of  brave  men,  meaning  to  fight  his  way 
to  Venice,  which  was  still  in  arras.  Mazzini  reinained 
in  Eome  to  watch  for  any  chance  of  renewing  the 
struggle ;  but  he  knew  in  his  heart  that  no  such  chance 
would  come. 

It  is  hard  to  lose  the  dream  of  a  life ;  and  when 
that  dream  has  drawn  all  its  lustre  from  virtue,  when 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  271 

joy  has  been  conceived  only  in  the  loving  service  of 
the  noblest  being,  the  highest  ideal  we  know,  then  if  a 
man  sees  his  ideal  crushed  before  his  eyes,  and  feels 
that  honour  itself  has  turned  against  him,  and  that 
because  he  has  disdained  base  things  he  has  lost  all — 
then  shall  it  be  known  whether  liis  virtue  is  a  deriva- 
tive and  conquerable  thing,  or  has  in  it  an  inbred 
energy  that  is  incapable  of  despair.  If  he  can  raise 
his  head  to  fight  anew,  he  will  find  all  fighting  easy 
now.  The  worst  has  come  to  the  worst ;  henceforth 
can  no  man  trouble  him ;  he  bears  in  his  spirit  the 
tidemark  of  its  highest  woe. 

Through  such  an  hour  Mazzini  passed,  sitting 
among  the  ruins  of  his  Eome.  He  waited  for  friends 
to  rally  round  him,  but  none  dared  to  rally — for  foes 
to  slay  him,  but  no  man  dared  to  slay.  At  last  he 
passed  through  the  midst  of  them  and  went  his  way, 
and  as  for  the  last  time  he  saw  the  sun  set  on  Rome, 
he  might  surely  have  said  with  more  truth  than  any 
Cato  of  tragedy, 

"  Son  Roma  i  fidi  miei,  Roma  son  io." 

And  here,  if  it  were  cast  into  a  drama,  the  tale  of 
Mazzini's  life  would  close ;  for  there  are  careers  which 
culminate  in  defeat,  as  others  in  victory,  and  the 
labours  of  another  score  of  years  gave  no  second 
chance  to  face  unshaken  such  a  crash  and  ruin  of  a 
world.  The  year  1849,  in  spite  of  its  crushing  de- 
fe9.ts,  was  in  fact  a  turning-point  in  Italian  fortunea 


272  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

Men  had  measured  themselves  with  the  enemy ;  they 
had  learnt  to  dare ;  and  the  movement  throughout 
Italy  was  never  wholly  checked  again.  In  each  on- 
ward step  Mazzini  aided.  His  words,  his  writings, 
gaining  fresh  authority  as  advancing  years  confirmed 
their  wisdom  in  the  past,  were  the  fountain-head  of 
that  clear  and  continuous  manifestation  of  the  national 
wdl  which  impelled  and  enabled  the  Piedmontese 
government  to  take  advantage  of  each  opportunity 
that  offered  for  the  unification  of  Italy.  Of  the  way 
in  which  this  was  done,  however,  he  often  disapproved. 
Nothing,  for  instance,  could  be  more  distasteful  to  him 
than  the  French  alliance  on  which  Piedmont  depended 
in  1859.  He  foretold,  and  truly,  that  it  would  be 
bought  at  an  extravagant  price.  And  had  it  been 
granted  without  sinister  end,  he  yet  could  not  endure 
that  Lombards  or  Venetians,  the  descendants  of  Livy 
and  Dandolo,  should  owe  their  liberty  to  a  foreign 
despot's  grace,  should  accept  from  an  unclean  hand 

"  A  gift  of  that  which  is  not  to  be  given 
By  all  the  blended  powers  of  earth  and  heaven." 

After  the  peace  of  Villafranca  he  used  all  his  influence 
to  induce  the  small  States  of  Central  Italy  to  annex 
themselves  to  the  Piedmontese  monarchy — unity,  as 
ever,  being  his  first  aim.  It  was  he  again  who  pre- 
pared, and  urged  Garibaldi  to  undertake,  the  revolu- 
tion in  Sicily  and  Naples,  promising  that  if  it  succeeded 
he  would  claim  nothing  of  the  glory,  and  that  if  it 


'd 


t]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  273 

failed  it  should  be  accounted  a  "Mazzinian  dream." 
After  Garibaldi's  splendid  success  in  Naples  in  1860 
Maz2ani's  eyes  were  turned  to  Venice  and  Eome.  The 
liberation  of  Venice  was  marred  by  the  same  interven- 
tion which  had  marred  the  liberation  of  Lombardy. 
The  deliverance  of  Eome  was  long,  and,  as  IMazzini 
thought,  needlessly  delayed;  and  when  it  came  in  1870 
it  came  only  to  show  him  that  the  Eome  of  his  aspira- 
tion, the  religious  republican  Eome,  which  was  a  third 
time  to  head  the  world,  was  not  to  be  built  in  a  day. 

He  felt,  too,  a  sorrow  which  came  not  from  Italy 
alone — the  sorrow  of  seeing  the  cause  of  liberty  and 
progress  in  Europe  defiled  by  anarchy  and  divorced 
from  religion — tyranny  and  bigotry  opposed  not  by 
free  co-operation  and  deeper  faith,  but  by  communistic 
outrages  and  materialistic  unbelief.  And  of  aU  this 
his  religious  isolation  weighed  on  him  the  most.  "The 
religious  question,"  he  wrote  in  1865,  "pursues  me 
like  a  remorse ;  it  is  the  only  one  of  any  real  import- 
ance." And  although  to  the  last,  and  through  the 
long  decay  of  a  terrible  disease,  he  continued  his  active 
work  of  aU  kinds,  and  died  by  inches  in  harness,  toil- 
ing without  haste  or  rest,  yet  his  increasing  preoccu- 
pation with  religious  ideas  becomes  plainly  evident. 
This  is  accompanied  by  a  melancholy  wonder  that 
others  cannot  see  as  he  sees,  by  a  painful  yearning  for 
the  progress  of  kindred  souls.  Yet  with  this  there  is 
that  serenity  which  often  comes  to  those  to  whom 
youth  has  been  a  generoiis  struggle,  and  manhood  a 

T 


274  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

disciplining  pain.  There  is  a  disengagement  as  of  a 
spirit  which  has  already  borne  all ;  and  which,  like 
one  who  awaits  a  solemn  ceremony,  is  making  ready 
for  the  Sacrament  of  Death. 

And  surely,  when  Mazzini's  story  shall  have  passed 
into  Italian  legend  and  song,  men  wUl  say,  in  old 
Greek  fashion,  that  it  was  "  not  without  the  will  of 
heaven  "  that  it  was  appointed  to  this  man  to  die  not 
in  Genoa,  turbulent  nurse  of  heroes,  where  in  dark 
days  he  had  been  born ;  not  in  Eome,  where  he  had 
ruled  in  manhood,  more  royal  than  a  king  ;  but  ih  that 
stni  city  upon  Arno's  stream,  to  which,  after  all  her 
tumults,  it  has  been  given  to  become  the  very  sanctuary 
and  image  of  peace, — 

"  To  body  forth  the  ghostliness  of  things 
In  silence  visible  and  perpetual  calm." 

Even  so,  will  their  poets  answer,  Apollo  sought  the 
body  of  Sarpedon,  "  best-beloved  of  men,"  and  carried 
him  far  from  the  battle,  and  washed  him  in  Scaman- 
der's  wave,  and  gave  him  to  two  mighty  ministers  to 
bear  him  home, — 

"Yirvif  Kal  6ava.Ti^  SiSitfidocriv,  o'l  pd  fxiv  SyKa 
III. 

In  discussing  a  public  life  we  naturally  consider  it 
first  as  the  public  saw  it — its  struggles  or  weaknesses 
concealed  beneath  at  any  rate  an  external  strength 


^ 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  275 

and  consistency.  But  when  the  character  is  so  ex- 
ceptional as  Mazzini's,  we  desire  also  to  know  some- 
thing of  its  springs  of  action,  of  the  natural  instincts 
which  transformed  themselves  into  so  unusual  a  vigour 
of  public  virtue.  And  Mazzini  has  himself  told  the 
story  of  the  chief  inward  crisis  of  his  life,  after  the 
failure  of  his  first  insurrection  and  the  death  of  many 
of  his  friends.  A  few  quotations  will  indicate  the 
sources  alike  of  his  weakness  and  of  his  strength  : — 


"  Were  I  to  live  for  a  century  I  could  never  forget  the 
close  of  that  year  (1836),  nor  the  moral  tempest  that 
passed  over  me,  and  amid  the  vortex  of  which  my  spirit 
was  so  nearly  overwhelmed.  I  speak  of  it  now  with  re- 
luctance, and  solely  for  the  sake  of  those  who  may  be 
doomed  to  suffer  what  I  then  suffered,  and  to  whom  the 
voice  of  a  brother  who  has  escaped  from  that  tempest — 
storm-beaten  and  bleeding  indeed,  but  with  re-tempered 
soul — may,  perhaps,  indicate  the  path  of  salvation. 

"  It  was  the  tempest  of  doubt,  which  I  believe  all  who 
devote  their  hves  to  a  great  enterprise,  yet  have  not  dried 
and  withered  up  the  soul,  like  Eobespierre,  beneath  some 
barren  intellectual  formula,  but  have  retained  a  loving 
heart,  are  doomed,  once  at  least,  to  battle  through.  My 
heart  was  overflowing  with  and  greedy  of  affection ;  as 
fresh  and  eager  to  unfold  to  joy  as  in  the  days  when  sus- 
tained by  my  mother's  smile ;  as  full  of  fervid  hope,  for 
others  at  least,  if  not  for  myself.  But  during  those  fatal 
months  there  darkened  around  me  such  a  hurricane  of 
sorrow,  disillusion,  and  deception,  as  to  bring  before  my 
eyes,  in  all  its  ghastly  nakedness,  a  foreshadowing  of  the 


276  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

old  age  of  my  soul,  solitary,  in  a  desert  world,  wherein  no 
comfort  in  the  struggle  was  vouchsafed  to  me. 

"  It  was  not  only  the  overthrow,  for  an  indefinite 
period,  of  every  Italian  hope ;  the  dispersion  of  the  best  of 
our  party ;  the  series  of  persecutions  which  had  undone 
the  work  we  had  done  in  Switzerland  and  driven  us  away 
from  the  spot  nearest  Italy ;  the  exhaustion  of  our  means, 
and  the  accumulation  of  almost  insurmountable  material 
obstacles  between  me  and  the  task  I  had  set  myself  to  do  ; 
— it  was  the  falling  to  pieces  of  that  moral  edifice  of  faith 
and  love,  from  which  alone  I  had  derived  strength  for  the 
combat ;  the  scepticism  I  saw  rising  around  me  on  every 
side ;  the  failure  of  faith  in  those  who  had  solemnly  bound 
themselves  with  me  to  pursue  unshaken  the  path  we  had 
known  at  the  outset  to  be  choked  with  sorrows ;  the  dis- 
trust I  detected  in  those  most  dear  to  me  as  to  the  motives 
and  intentions  which  sustained  and  urged  me  onward  in 
the  evidently  unequal  struggle.  Even  at  that  time  the 
adverse  opinion  of  the  majority  was  a  matter  of  little 
moment  to  me  ;  but  to  see  myself  suspected  of  ambition  or 
any  other  than  noble  motives  by  the  one  or  two  beings 
upon  whom  I  had  concentrated  my  whole  power  of  attach- 
ment, prostrated  my  spirit  in  deep  despair.  And  these 
things  were  revealed  to  me  at  the  very  time  when,  assailed 
as  I  was  on  every  side,  I  felt  most  intensely  the  need  of 
comforting  and  re-tempering  my  spirit  in  communion  with 
the  fraternal  souls  I  had  deemed  capable  of  comprehend- 
ing even  my  silence,  of  divining  all  that  I  suffered  in  deli- 
berately renouncing  every  earthly  joy,  and  of  smiling  in 
suflFering  with  me.  It  was  precisely  in  this  hour  of  need 
that  these  fraternal  souls  withdrew  from  me. 

"When  I  felt  that  I  wasindeed  alone  in  theworld — alone, 
but  for  my  poor  mother,  far  away  and  unhappy  also  for  my 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  277 

sake — I  drew  back  in  terror  at  the  void  before  me.  Then, 
in  that  moral  desert,  doubt  came  upon  me.  Perhaps  I 
was  wrong  and  the  world  right  1  Perhaps  my  idea  was 
indeed  a  dream  1  Perhaps  I  had  been  led  on  not  by  an 
idea  but  by  my  idea ;  by  the  pride  of  my  own  conception, 
an  intellectual  egotism  withering  the  spontaneous  impulses 
of  my  heart,  which  would  have  led  me  to  the  modest 
virtues  of  a  limited  sphere,  and  to  duties  near  at  hand  and 
easy  of  fulfilment 

"  I  will  not  dwell  upon  the  effect  of  these  doubts  on  my 
spirit  I  will  simply  say  that  I  suffered  so  much  as  to  be 
driven  to  the  confines  of  madness.  At  times  I  started 
from  my  sleep  at  night  and  ran  to  the  window,  in  delirium, 
believing  that  I  heard  the  voice  of  Jacopo  Rufiini  calling 
to  me.  The  slightest  incident,  a  word,  a  tone,  moved  me 
to  tears.  Whilst  I  was  struggling  and  sinking  beneath  my 
cross  I  heard  a  friend,  whose  room  was  a  few  doors  dis- 
tant from  mine,  answer  a  young  girl — who,  having  some 
suspicion  of  my  unhappy  condition  was  urging  him  to 
break  in  upon  my  solitude — by  saying,  '  Leave  him  alone  ; 
he  is  in  his  element — conspiring  and  happy.' " 

He  goes  on  to  narrate  how  the  conviction  came  to 
liim  that  his  sufferings  were  the  temptations  of  egotism, 
and  arose  from  a  misconception  of  life,  from  some 
remaining  influence  exercised  on  him  by  the  theory 
which  proposes  to  each  man  the  search  after  happi- 
ness as  the  aim  of  his  existence  here. 

"  I  had  combated  the  evil  in  others,  but  not  sufficiently 
in  myself.  In  my  own  case,  and  as  if  the  better  to  seduce 
me,  that  false  definition  of  life  had  thrown  off  every  baser 
stamp  of  material  desires,  and  had  centred  itself  in  the 


278  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

affections,  as  in  an  inviolable  sanctuary.  I  ought  to  have 
regarded  them  as  a  blessing  of  God,  to  be  accepted  with 
gratitude  whenever  it  descended  to  irradiate  or  cheer  my 
existence,  not  demanded  them  either  as  a  right  or  as  a 
reward.  I  had  unconsciously  made  of  them  the  condition 
of  the  fulfilment  of  my  duties.  I  had  been  unable  to 
realise  the  true  ideal  of  love — love  without  earthly  hope — 
and  had  unknowingly  worshipped,  not  love  itself,  but  the 
joys  of  love.  When  these  vanished  I  had  despaired  of 
all  things ;  as  if  the  joys  or  sorrows  I  encountered  on  the 
path  of  life  could  alter  the  aim  I  had  aspired  to  reach ;  as 
if  the  darkness  or  serenity  of  heaven  could  change  the  pur- 
pose or  necessity  of  the  journey.   .  .  . 

"  I  came  to  my  better  self  alone ;  without  aid  from  others, 
through  the  help  of  a  religious  conception,  which  I  verified 
by  history.  From  the  idea  of  God  I  descended  to  the 
conception  of  progress  ;  from  the  conception  of  progress,  to 
a  true  conception  of  life ;  to  faith  in  a  mission  and  its 
logical  consequence — duty,  the  supreme  rule  of  life ;  and 
having  reached  that  faith  I  swore  to  myself  that  nothing 
in  this  world  should  again  make  me  doubt  or  forsake  it. 
...  I  dug  with  my  own  hands  the  grave,  not  of  my 
affections — God  is  my  witness  that  now,  grayheaded,  I  feel 
them  yet  as  in  the  days  of  my  earliest  youth — but  of  all 
the  desires,  exigencies,  and  ineffable  comforts  of  affection  ; 
and  I  covered  the  earth  over  that  grave,  so  that  none  might 
ever  know  the  Ego  buried  beneath.  From  reasons — some 
of  them  apparent,  some  of  them  unknown — my  life  was,  is, 
and  were  it  not  near  the  end,  would  remain  unhappy ;  but 
never  since  that  time  have  I  for  an  instant  allowed  myself 
to  think  that  my  own  unhappiness  could  in  any  way  in- 
fluence my  actions.  Whether  the  sun  shine  with  the 
serene  splendour  of  an  Italian  morn,  or  the  leaden  corpse- 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  279 

like  hue  of  tlie  northern  mist  be  above  us,  I  cannot  see 
that  it  changes  our  duty.  God  dwells  above  the  earthly 
heaven,  and  the  holy  stars  of  faith  and  the  future  still 
shine  within  our  own  souls,  even  though  their  light  con- 
sume itself  unreflected  as  the  sepulchral  lamp." 

Is  not  this  what  the  poet  means  when  he  speaks  of 
Virtue  like  a  Iwusehold  god  promising  empire  ? — tliis 
return  upon  itself  of  the  resolute  spirit,  beginning,  as 
it  were,  an  inward  epoch  with  a  Hegira  from  all 
earthly  joy,  and  proclaiming  an  unknown  triumph  in 
the  very  extremity  of  disaster  and  defeat  ?  I  have 
quoted  this  passage  because  of  all  his  writings  it  best 
explains  the  man ;  because  it  shows  that  the  passion 
of  love  in  its  loftiest  meaning  was  the  guiding  energy 
of  his  whole  career,  so  that  if  Garibaldi  is  "  one  of 
Plutarch's  men,"  Mazzini  is  one  of  Plato's ;  he  is  the 
epcoTiKo<;  fiera  ^t.\ocro(f>la<;,  the  man  who  has  carried 
down  with  him  the  instincts  of  love  and  of  philo- 
sophy from  the  heaven  where  he  has  looked  on  truth; 
he  mounts  from  step  to  step  that  chain  of  high 
affections  along  which  Plato  teaches  that  a  soul  can 
rise  from  the  love  of  its  human  counterpart  to  the 
love  of  God.  The  intermediate  passion  between  these 
two  is  the  love  of  country— the  love,  as  Plato  has 
it,  of  institutions  and  of  laws — the  devotion  to  great 
ideas  which  widely  influence  the  welfare  of  mankind. 
For  the  patriot  too  is  enamoured ;  he  is  enamoured  of 
his  conception  of  a  great  multitude  of  kindred  souls, 
leading   the   life   which   he   deems   noblest   after  the 


280  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

fashion  which  he  can  picture  best,  happy  amid   the 
scenes  inwoven  with  liis  earliest  and  his  inmost  joy. 

This  parallel  between  the  lover,  the  patriot,  the 
saint,  might  be  carried  far.  It  wiU  be  enough  here  to 
notice  some  analogies  between  Mazzini's  love  for  Italy 
and  that  love  which  the  world  has  agreed  to  take  as 
the  loftiest  type  of  individual  passion,  the  love  of 
Dante  for  Beatrice.  Both  loves  were  whoUy  free  from 
self-assertion  and  jealousy,  both  were  intensified  and 
exalted  by  sorrow. 

Mazzini's  whole  public  career  was  a  series  of  self- 
abnegations.  He  sowed  the  harvest  which  another 
statesman  reaped ;  the  people  for  whom  he  had  toiled 
the  first  and  the  hardest  made  its  idol  of  another  hero. 
But  for  this  there  is  not  in  his  most  intimate  corre- 
spondence the  shadow  of  a  regret.  The  only  solicitude 
which  he  shows  is  for  the  memory  of  some  of  his  ear- 
liest friends — the  Eufiini,  the  Bandiera — whom  he 
thinks  in  danger  of  missing  the  reverence  which  is 
their  due.  To  his  own  acts  he  rarely  alludes ;  and 
but  for  the  pressure  which  induced  him  to  write  some 
autobiographical  notes  towards  the  close  of  liis  life, 
there  would  already  be  great  difficulty  in  retracing  his 
career.  It  is  owing  to  the  care  of  others  that  his 
writings  have  not  been  dispersed  and  lost.  What  need 
was  there  for  him  to  put  on  record  his  love  for  Italy  ? 
What  could  other  men's  knowledge  or  ignorance  of  it 
add  to  it  or  take  away  ?  That  Italy,  as  he  conceived 
her,  should  exist,  would  have  been  enough  for  him. 


t]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  281 

Another  form  of  jealousy  leads  the  lover  to  dis- 
parage all  loves  except  his  own,  from  his  uneasy  fear 
lest  she  may  not  in  truth  be  so  unique  as  he  wishes 
to  believe  her.  From  this  also  the  truest  lovers,  the 
truest  patriots,  are  free.  Like  Dante,  they  desire  that 
Monna  Vanna  should  walk  with  Monna  Bice  on  the 
flowery  way,  that  Lucia  should  stand  beside  Beatrice 
in  the  height  of  heaven,  that  all  fair  women  should 
grow  to  their  best  and  fairest,  and  keep  thereby  the 
sweeter  company  with  her  whom  they  never  can  excel ; 
or  their  patriotism  is  like  Mazzini's,  who  desired  that 
all  other  nations  also  should  be  free  and  grow,  that 
each  should  express  to  the  full  the  divine  idea  which 
is  the  centre  of  her  strength,  being  assured  that  the 
place  of  Italy  co\ild  none  other  take,  nor  city  in  either 
hemisphere  diminish  the  name  of  Eome. 

Consider  again  the  influence,  on  lover  or  patriot,  of 
exile,  severance,  sorrow.  There  are  some,  indeed,  who 
have  called  human  love  an  importunate  and  perishable 
thing,  which  must  be  fed  with  such  food  as  earth  can 
give  it,  lest  it  pine  and  die;  but  a  love  like  Dante's 
is  not  so,  but  grows  more  pervading  through  self-control, 
and  more  passionate  through  the  austerity  of  honour, 
and  only  draws  a  stronger  aliment  from  separation, 
anguish,  and  death.  And  similarly  the  intensification 
of  Mazzini's  love  for  Italy,  through  her  sorrows  and 
his  own,  is  manifest  in  all  his  works.  Loving  Italy 
in  every  phase  of  her  existence,  he  "less  loves  her 
crowned  than  chained ; "  his  passion  is  the  passion  of 


282  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

a  chivalry  which  at  once  compassionates  and  adores. 
And  we  see  it  strengthen  in  his  own  yearning  solitude ; 
we  feel  it  in  many  a  mournful  sentence,  whose  im- 
mediate impulse  we  can  now  no  more  retrace  than  the 
anatomist  can  retrace  the  pang  which  has  given  birth 
to  a  tear. 

Few  natures  could  have  derived  more  suffering  than 
Mazzini's  from  a  life  of  conspiracy  and  exile.  Com- 
pare him,  for  instance,  with  his  fellow-townsman  Bixio, 
the  true  type  of  the  Genoese  revolutionary.  Bixio 
needed  for  his  happiness  nothing  but  adventure  and 
storm.  When  the  last  despot  in  Italy  was  overthrown, 
"  the  second  of  the  thousand "  of  Garibaldi's  heroes 
could  find  no  peace  till  he  went  out  to  struggle  with 
the  elements  and  an  unsailed  sea.  Men  like  Bixio, 
like  Garibaldi,  are  at  ease  in  revolutions.  Mazzini 
was  differently  wrought.  The  beautiful  melancholy 
countenance,  the  delicate  frame,  the  candid  and  yearn- 
ing heart, — all  these  indicated  a  nature  born  for 
thought  and  affection,  not  meant  for  suspicions  and 
controversies  and  the  bitterness  of  a  life-long  war. 
Courage,  indeed,  was  easy,  conspiracy  was  endurable, 
but  exile  broke  his  heart.  Dante  was  exiled,  but 
Dante  could  still  look  on  Italian  faces  and  bean  Italian 
speech,  and  know  that  the  city  of  his  love  and  hatred 
lay  beneath  the  same  arch  of  heaven.  With  this  other 
exile  it  was  not  so.  It  was  in  London  —  the  visible 
type  of  a  univei-se  hastening  confusedly  to  unknown 
ends  and   careless   of  individual  pain — that  Mazzini 


L]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  283 

must  regret  that  land  whose  name,  even  to  men  born 
far  off,  seems  to  make  a  part  of  all  soft  desire,— the 
land  whose  very  air  and  memory  invite  to  unworldly 
emotion  and  to  passionate  repose. 

And  in  that  inward  exile  of  the  heart  it  was  easy 
ill  comparison  for  Dante  to  sustain  long  life  upon  the 
brief  possession  of  what  no  soul  can  forget.  Mazzini's 
was  a  harder  lot.  No  eyes  were  to  promise  him  his 
peace, — nm,  darem  pace  a  voi  diletto ;  he  must  imagine 
for  himself  the  unknown  delight ;  Tie  must  recognise, 
as  he  said,  those  for  whom  he  cared  most  deeply  rather 
by  the  pain  they  could  give  him  than  the  joy.  Even 
as  for  the  sake  of  Italy  he  must  endure  to  be  exiled 
from  Italy,  so  for  love's  sake  he  must  renounce  love ; 
his  affections  must  be  the  more  ardent  because  imper- 
sonal ;  he  must  foster  them  only  to  forego. 

It  does  not  seem,  however,  that  Mazzini  considered 
himself  as  entitled  to  any  special  pity.  Had  he  chosen 
his  own  lot  on  earth  it  is  likely  that  he  would  have 
desired  that  some  great  cause  should  absorb  his  ener- 
gies and  teach  him  to  make  life  one  effort  of  virtue, 
and  to  adventure  his  all  unreservedly  upon  the  instinct 
of  duty  which  he  carried  in  his  heart.  It  is  likely 
that  he  would  have  purchased  this  temper  at  the  cost 
of  life-long  pain,  if  he  could  make  of  unselfish  sorrow 
his  initiation  into  the  mystery  of  human  fellowship, 
his  needed  impulse  to  an  impersonal  hope.  For  indeed 
tenderness  is  as  necessary  as  courage  if  a  life  of  sorrow 
is    to  be  made  wholly  heroic.      The   very  unselfish- 


284  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

ness  of  such  a  man's  work  for  others  is  in  danger  of 
bringing  with  it  something  of  isolation  as  well  as  of 
sympathy.  Against  his  will  a  certain  sternness  and 
aridity  wUl  infuse  itself  into  his  manner  and  his  style ; 
by  sUence  rather  than  by  speech  his  self-suppression 
\\t11  be  too  plainly  seen. 

It  is  against  such  an  impression  of  Mazzini  as  this 
that  his  friends  are  at  most  pains  to  guard.  They 
wish  us  to  imagine  him  as  a  man  kept  in  deep  peace 
by  aspiration  onl/,  and  by  such  simple  pleasures  as 
are  inseparable  from  the  child-like  heart.  They  tell 
us  of  his  playful  humour,  of  the  mUd  brightness  of  his 
friendly  eyes,  of  his  delight  in  birds,  in  flowers,  in  child- 
ren— of  moments  when  the  yearning  exile  was  over- 
heard singing  softly  to  himself  at  dead  of  night;  while 
his  guitar  "  spake  low  to  him  of  sweet  companionships." 
They  would  have  us  believe  that  "  there  is  nothing 
which  a  spirit  of  such  magnitude  cannot  overcome  or 
undergo  " — that  the  storms  which  beat  on  such  a  head 
can  only  give  a  new  depth  to  tenderness,  a  new  dignity 
to  the  appealing  look,  che  par  sorriso  ed  i  dolore. 

And  what  then,  we  may  ask,  were  the  beliefs  from 
which  this  constancy  was  born  ?  On  what  conception 
of  the  universe  did  he  sustain  this  impregnable  calm  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question,  which  has  already 
been  given  in  effect  in  Mazzini's  own  words,  is  some- 
what singular.  Without  appeal  to  revelation,  with 
only  the  afterthought  of  an  appeal  to  history,  he  as  it 
were  discovered  and  lived  by  a  theology  of  his  own. 


I]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINl.  285 

He  became  the  apostle  and  martyr  of  a  view  of  the 
sum  of  things  which  simply  occurred  to  liim,  of  dogmas 
which  no  one  taught  him,  and  which,  though  he  con- 
stantly preached  them,  he  scarcely  attempted  to  prove. 
Before  we  consider  the  dogmas  themselves,  we  may 
pause  to  inquire  whether  there  can  be  any  justification 
for  this  prophetic  attitude  in  an  age  which  may  be  sup- 
posed to  have  learnt  to  attain  truth  by  organised 
methods,  and  independently  of  individual  enthusiasms. 
In  this  age  of  profound  modification  of  received 
beliefs  it  would  seem  that  a  man's  duty  with  regard  to 
religion  may  be  of  three  kinds.  There  are  some  who, 
though  almost  hopeless  of  arriving  at  any  convictions 
as  to  an  unseen  world,  seem  strong  enough  to  dispense 
with  hope ;  who  can  labour  for  their  own  progress, 
though  they  believe  it  ended  in  the  tomb, — for  the  pro- 
gress of  tlie  race,  though  they  doubt  whether  man  will 
ever  raise  into  any  greatness  or  worthiness  his  "  transi- 
tory and  perilous  "  being.  The  duty  of  these  is  clear. 
They  are  the  champions  of  a  forlorn  adventure ;  their 
mission  is  to  show  by  their  lives  that  Virtue  can  never 
be  a  paradox ;  that  she  can  approve  herself  by  the 
mere  fact  of  her  existence  even  in  a  world  where  the 
truth  is  bad.  But  these,  above  all  men,  must  be  strong. 
Cato  and  Brutus  were  men  of  iron ;  but  these  men 
must  be  made  of  sterner  stuff  than  Brutus  or  Cato. 
They  must  be  able  to  meet  unflinchingly  the  most  ini- 
quitous ruin,  the  last  defeat;  and  not  despair,  like 
Cato,  of  the  Republic ;  nor  fall,  like  Brutus,  exclaiming 


286  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i. 

in  death's  disillusionment,  "  Ah,  wretched  Virtue  !  thou 
wert  then  nothing  but  a  name." 

Tliere  are  others,  again,  who,  while  they  do  not  assert 
that  religious  tradition  suffices  to  meet  the  wider  view 
and  keener  scrutiny  of  the  advancing  time,  consider, 
nevertheless,  that  there  is  something  premature,  some- 
thing almost  impatient,  in  already  abandoning,  as  in- 
soluble, problems  of  such  import  to  mankind.  So 
variously  may  history  be  read  that,  while  to  some  minds 
we  may  seem  the  empty-handed  heirs  of  all  the  ages, 
who  have  asked  every  question  and  found  every  answer 
vain,  to  others  it  appears  that  those  ages  have  been 
but  the  infancy  of  man ;  that  he  has  hardly  as  yet 
formulated  the  question  which  he  would  ask  of  the 
Unseen ;  that  as  yet  he  can  neither  estimate  the  value 
of  such  answers  as  have  been  given  nor  anticipate  those 
which  are  to  come.  For  Socrates,  too,  prided  himseK 
on  having  brought  philosophy  down  from  heaven  to 
earth,  from  unprovable  speculations  about  the  firma- 
ment to  debates  upon  the  nature  of  man,  while  in 
reality  the  speculations  of  Thales  and  Anaxagoras, 
though  premature,  were  not  useless ;  and  meantime 
Euclid  was  writing,  as  it  were,  upon  the  dust  the  first 
letters  of  that  learning  which  should  weigh  and  analyse 
the  very  stars  of  heaven.  Men  who  take  this  view, 
also,  have  their  duty  clear.  If  they  surmise  that  it 
may  not  be  impossible  to  know  something  of  the  des- 
tinies of  man,  they  must  pursue  that  search,  though  it 
be  by  means  which  bear  as  humble  a  relation  to  the 


l]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  287 

moral  universe  as  the  diagrams  of  Euclid  bore  to  the 
sidereal  heaven. 

There  are  others,  again,  to  whom  a  certain  view  of 
the  universe  appears  axiomatic ;  who  seem  to  them- 
selves to  be  speaking  that  which  they  do  know,  testi- 
fying that  which  they  have  seen,  when  they  describe 
the  character  and  counsels  of  the  Eternal.  Such  men 
the  world  tests  by  a  rough  standard  of  its  own ;  if  it 
holds  them  for  prophets  it  suffers  itself  to  be  swayed 
by  them,  even  if  they  produce  no  evidence  of  what 
they  affirm. 

Such  was  Mazziai's  case.  He  appealed,  indeed,  to 
history ;  but  who  has  not  appealed  to  that  echo  of  our 
own  voices  from  the  past  ?  In  reality  he  rested  his 
doctrine  upon  the  convictions  of  his  own  heart.  Nor 
need  this  defect  of  evidence  make  us  refuse  to  consider 
his  creed.  For  we  know  that  even  in  ages  when  proof 
was  very  readily  admitted,  religious  feeling  rested  far 
less  upon  proof  than  upon  intuition.  Some  religions 
scarcely  appeal  to  proof  at  all ;  in  almost  all  religions 
the  religious  instinct  is  presupposed  and  the  alleged 
proofs  do  but  direct  its  manifestation.  And  as  the 
world  advances,  this  subjectivity  of  religion  becomes 
increasingly  apparent.  For  the  mass  of  religious  feel- 
ing increases  while  at  the  same  time  alleged  proofs  are 
more  vigorously  tested  and  more  freely  overthrown. 
The  result  is  that  the  old  revelations,  while  they  remain 
sacred,  tend  gradually  to  affect  mankind  in  a  new  way 
— less  as  an  external  evidence   of   an  imseen  world 


288  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 

than  as  a  venerable  confirmation  of  what  is  felt  within. 
It  may,  indeed,  be  urged  that  if  in  an  exact  age  we 
are  to  attain  to  any  conclusive  knowledge  of  an  unseen 
world  we  must  attain  it  by  an  increased  power  of 
accurately  apprehending  unseen  forces — by  experiment 
rather  than  by  tradition,  by  scientific  rather  than 
historical  inquiry.  This  is  not  the  prophet's  business; 
and  he  may  fairly  assume  that  in  the  meantime  reli- 
gious conviction  must  be  held  instinctively  if  it  is  to 
be  held  at  all,  and  that  nothing  would  be  gained  by 
invoking  defective  evidence  to  supplement  imperfect 
intuition. 

This  absolute  and  prophetic  tone,  commending 
itself  irresistibly  to  many  minds  as  the  vehicle  of 
lofty  truth,  was  the  source  of  much  of  Mazzini's  influ- 
ence in  the  political  as  well  as  in  the  religious  sphere. 
And  hence  the  effect  which  he  produced  was  within 
its  own  limits  more  intense  and  pervading  than  the 
effect — powerful  though  this  was- — produced  by  Gari- 
baldi or  Cavour.  A  physical  analogy  will  serve  to 
illustrate  my  meaning. 

We  are  apt  to  pass  through  somewhat  similar 
stages  in  our  contemplation  of  Nature  and  of  Man. 
The  child  or  savage  takes  the  common  course  of 
things  for  granted,  and  is  impressed  only  by  the 
abnormal  and  prodigious  ;  he  reverences  the  tempests 
and  not  the  tides,  the  thunderbolt  rather  than  the 
dew.  With  the  birth  of  Science  our  view  changes. 
We  learn  to  see  in  Order  the  highest  Force,  to  recog- 


lJ  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  289 

nise  the  highest  "Will  in  adherence  to  unchanging 
Law.  The  sense  of  power  which  this  conception 
gives  is  such  that  the  mind  seems  capable  of  coping 
with  the  sum  of  things ;  we  are  tempted  to  believe 
that  there  is  no  room  in  the  universe  for  phenomena 
that  transcend  our  analysis. 

But  in  the  face  of  certain  problems  the  inquirer  is 
forced  to  change  his  tone  once  more.  For  he  finds 
that  the  laws  and  operations  which  can  be  known 
have  no  finality ;  that  they  afford  him  a  subtle,  almost 
a  visionary,  perception  of  operations  beyond  his  ken, 
of  laws  of  which  our  highest  generaUsations  may  be 
but  the  specialised  case  or  the  incidental  aspect. 
Standing  on  the  shore  of  the  sea  of  tmth,  he  divines 
a  universe  alive  and  restless  as  the  sea — the  storm  of 
inconceivable  energies,  and  the  stress  of  an  unknown 
control. 

And  thus  it  is  with  our  judgment  of  the  lives  of 
men.  Our  first  admiration  is  for  heroic  impulse : 
great  cities  surge  around  the  progress  of  a  deliverer, 
whose  deeds  have  overpassed  the  common  measure  of 
humanity,  and  confronted  him  with  death  and  fame. 
Later  comes  our  reverence  for  statesmanship  and 
wisdom  —  the  reign  of  Law  without,  the  reign  of 
Reason  within  ;  it  seems  clear  that  all  other  ideals 
can  be  but  distortions  or  mutilations  of  this.  Nor 
does  the  great  statesman  ignore  the  faiths  and  im- 
pulses which  most  men  dimly  feel :  he  accepts  their 
validity  up  to  a  certain  point,  and  the  fact  that  lie 

0 


290  MODERN   ESSAYS.  [i. 

goes  no  farther  seems  to  prove  that  there  is  no  farther 
to  go.  In  our  sense  that  such  a  man  is  a  microcosm, 
we  half  forget  that  even  our  cosmos  is  an  island  in  an 
infinite  sea. 

It  may  well  be  that  nothing  leads  us  to  change  our 
ideal  again.  Men  have  few  aims  which  cannot  be  com- 
passed by  a  Garibaldi  or  a  Cavour. 

But  a  sterner  stress  may  come.  For  ourselves,  or 
for  a  whole  people,  we  may  need  a  courage  which  no 
chivalrous  eagerness  can  sustain,  nor  wisdom  of  this 
world  justify,  which  shall  be  at  once  persistent  as 
deliberate  habit,  and  unhesitating  as  the  impulse  of 
one  crowning  day.  Then  we  learn  that  the  lever 
which  moves  the  earth  has  its  fulcrum  in  the  imseen, 
that  the  maximum  of  human  energy  can  only  be 
evoked  by  one  whom  we  may  call  as  we  please  entliu- 
siast  or  prophet. 

The  indications  of  a  Higher  Law  to  which  a 
preacher  like  Mazzini  appeals  may  always  seem  to  us 
inconclusive,  may  sometimes  seem  illusory:  but  whether 
the  cause  of  his  faith  and  hope  be  real  or  unreal  there 
is  reality  in  then-  effects ;  the  very  aspect  and  rumour 
of  lofty  conviction  carries  a  sovereignty  among  men, 
and  to  those  who  have  had  close  cognisance  of'  such  a 
soul  it  will  seem  to  have  been  raised  up  like  a  god's 
statue  facing  eastward  in  the  market-place,  wt  claros 
spectaret  in  ortus — to  look  towards  the  dawn  of  day — 
to  make  "  a  precursory  entrance  into  the  most  holy 
place,  by  a  divine  transportation." 


t]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  291 

Such,  at  least,  was  the  impression  which  Mazzini 
produced  upon  minds  attuned  to  his  message — upon 
men  who  died,  like  Quadrio,  affirming  their  belief  in 
"  God,  Mazzini,  and  Duty.''  And  what  Mazzini 
preached  was  God  and  Duty  —  God,  indwelling,  just, 
and  good ;  Duty  that  prompts  to  endless  eff"ort, 
rewarded  by  endless  progress,  while  the  soul  mounts 
through  ascending  existences  to  an  inconceivable  one- 
ness with  the  Divine.  There  is  nothing  new  in  such 
a  conception  of  man's  destinies  as  this.  It  descended 
in  a  mystery  from  the  East,  and  before  it  was  preached 
by  Plato  and  Virgil,  the  prophets  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  world,  it  had  been  through  infinite  sorrows  the 
consolation  of  imnumbered  men.  Nay,  more — Mazzini 
believed  that  Christ  Himself,  looking  with  an  unique 
foreknowledge  beyond  the  horizon  of  His  earthly  age, 
had  foretold  the  progressive  revelation  of  a  faith  whose 
teaching  should  embrace  His  own ;  He  had  said  that 
it  was  expedient  that  He  should  depart  from  lis  that 
the  Paraclete  might  come ;  He  had  promised  us  the 
Spirit  of  Truth,  who  should  guide  us  into  all  truth, 
who  should  show  us  the  things  to  come,  who  should 
abide  with  us  for  ever.  And  Mazzini  —  continuing 
that  controversy  between  prophet  and  priest  which  is 
as  old  as  the  Jewish  Theocracy — believed  that  religion 
is  not  a  tradition  maintained  by  rites,  but  an  inspira- 
tion renewed  by  the  Spirit ;  and  that  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  with  us  now ;  and  that  chosen  souls  express  the 
message,  as  the  whole  world  works  out  the  thoughts  of 


•292  MODERN   ESSAYS  [i. 

God.  Each  quickening  of  the  higher  life,  each  pure 
strain  of  reverence  for  God,  for  Nature,  for  Humanity, 
which  science  or  art,  or  solitary  musing,  or  the  collec- 
tive action  of  nations  could  teach,  lie  held  as  a  gift 
from  the  same  hand  which  had  already  given  our  aU. 
And  it  was  his  passionate  impulse  to  "incarnate  in 
humanity,"  as  he  said,  "  that  portion  of  eternal  truth 
which  it  is  granted  to  us  to  perceive — to  convert  into  an 
earthly  reality  so  much  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  the 
Divine  conception  permeating  life,  as  it  is  given  us  to 
comprehend,"  which  "  haunted  him  like  a  remorse,' 
which  controlled  him  as  a  mission,  which  bade  him 
speak  as  one  having  authority,  and  confront  the 
Oicumenical  Council  with  a  theology  more  august  than 
their  own. 

"  The  arch  of  the  Christian  heaven,"  he  said  to  them,' 
"  is  too  narrow  to  embrace  the  earth.  Beyond  that  heaven, 
across  the  fields  of  the  infinite,  we  discern  a  vaster  sky, 
illumined  by  the  dawn  of  a  new  dogma ;  and  on  the  rising 
of  its  sun  your  own  heaven  will  disappear.  We  are  but 
the  precursors  of  that  dogma — few  as  yet,  but  earnestly 
believing  ;  fortified  by  the  collective  instincts  of  the  peoples, 
and  sufficiently  numerous  to  convince  you — had  you  sense 
to  comprehend  it — that  when  the  tide  of  materialism  shall 
recede,  you  will  find  yourselves  confronted  by  a  far  other 
foe.  God,  the  Father  and  Educator — the  law  prefixed  by 
Him  to  life — the  capacity,  inborn  in  all  men,  to  fulfil  it — 
free-will,  the  condition  of  merit — progress  upon  the  ascent 

'  Letter  to  tlie  CEcumeuical  Council.  Fortnightly  Review,  June  1, 
1871. 


\ 


I.]  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  293 

leading  to  God,  the  result  of  right  choice — these  arc  the 
cardinal  points  of  our  faith. 

"  You  believe — thus  depriving  yourselves  of  every  basis 
of  intellectual  certainty  and  criterion  of  truth — in  miracles; 
in  the  supernatural  ;  in  the  possible  violation  of  the  l:iws 
regulating  the  universe. 

"  We  believe  in  the  Unknown,  in  the  Mysterious — to  be 
one  day  solved — which  now  encompasses  us  on  every  side  ; 
in  the  secrets  of  an  intuition  inaccessible  to  analysis  ;  in  the 
truth  of  our  strange  presentiment  of  an  Ideal,  which  is  the 
primitive  fatherland  of  the  soul  ;  in  an  unforeseen  power 
of  action  granted  to  man  in  certain  rare  moments  of  faith, 
love,  and  supreme  concentration  of  all  the  faculties  towards 
a  determinate  and  virtuous  aim  ;  but  we  believe  all  these 
things  the  preordained  consequence  of  laws  hitherto  with- 
held from  our  knowledge. 

"  You  believe  in  a  heaven  extrinsic  to  the  universe  ;  in 
a  determinate  portion  of  creation,  on  ascending  to  which 
we  shall  forget  the  past,  forget  the  ideas  and  all'ections 
which  caused  our  hearts  to  beat  on  earth. 

"  We  believe  in  One  Ueaven  in  which  we  live,  and  move, 
and  love ;  which  embraces — as  an  ocean  embraces  the  islands 
that  stud  its  surface — the  whole  indefinite  series  of  exist- 
ences through  which  we  pass.  We  believe  in  the  continuity 
of  life  ;  in  a  connecting  link  uniting  all  the  various  periods 
through  which  it  is  transformed  and  developed;  in  the 
eternity  of  all  noble  affections  ;  in  the  progressive  sanctifi- 
cation  of  every  germ  of  good  gathered  by  the  pilgrim  soul 
in  its  journey  upon  earth  and  otherwhere. 

"We  reject  the  possibility  of  irrevocable  perdition  as  a 
blasphemy  against  God,  who  cannot  commit  self-destruction 
in  the  person  of  the  creature  issued  from  himself — as  a 
negation  of  the  law  prefixed  to  life,  and  as  a  violation  of 


294  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [l 

the  idea  of  love  which  is  identical  with  God.  We  believe 
that  God  called  us,  by  creating  us ;  and  the  call  of  God 
can  neither  be  impotent  nor  false.  Grace,  as  we  understand 
it,  is  the  tendency  or  faculty  given  to  us  all  gradually  to 
incarnate  the  Ideal ;  it  is  the  law  of  progress  which  is  His 
ineffaceable  baptism  upon  our  souls." 

It  is  plain  that  he  who  believes  these  things  has 
nothing  left  to  desire.  Wliat  can  we  ask  of  the  sum 
of  things  but  an  eternity  of  love,  an  eternity  of  virtue, 
—  to  mount  upwards  to  the  utmost  limits  of  the  con- 
ceivable, and  still  be  at  the  beginning  of  our  hope  ? 
And  yet  we  need  not  wonder  that  Mazzini  was  mourn- 
ful. High  thoughts  bring  a  deep  serenity  ;  but  while 
his  brother  men  were  so  suffering  and  so  imperfect  the 
yearning  for  their  progress  was  to  liim  an  ever-present 
pain.  His  mind  had  taken  so  strong  a  bent  that  he 
conceived  the  future  always  for  himself  as  duty,  and 
only  for  others  as  joy.  Such  an  one  must  "  see  of  the 
travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied ;"  it  must  be  enough 
for  him — 

"  That  to  him  too  the  high  fates  gave 
Grace  to  be  sacrificed  and  save." 

And  is  there  any  life  which  on  reflection  seems  to 
us  more  desirable  than  tliis  ?  Is  there  not  something 
within  us  which  even  exults  at  the  thought  that 
Mazzini's  years  were  passed  in  imprisonment  and  exile, 
in  solitude  and  disappointment,  in  poverty  and  pain  ? 
Are  we  not  tempted  to  feel  a  proud  triumph  in  the 
contrast  between  such  a  man's  outer  and  his  inward 


lJ  GIUSEPPE  MAZZINI.  295 

fortunes,  in  the  obloquy  or  indifference  which  sur- 
rounded so  high  a  soul  ?  And  this  feeling,  though 
exaggerated,  has  in  it  a  germ  of  truth.  For  we  may 
rejoice  for  any  one  that  for  him  life  has  been  stripped 
of  its  tinsel,  that  things  have  been  shown  him  aa  they 
are,  that  there  has  been  nothing  to  disguise  or  darken 
the  chief  concerns  of  man.  And  as  in  the  case  of 
some  private  heroism,  dear  to  our  hearts,  we  may  be 
well  content  that  it  has  run  its  fair  course  unnoted, 
and  in  silence  passed  away,  so  we  may  be  glad,  even 
for  a  public  and  national  hero,  that  he  has  missed  the 
applause  of  the  unworthy  and  all  that  is  vulgarising  in 
a  wide  renown.  Yet  all  are  bound,  so  far  as  they 
may,  to  use  the  memory  of  a  good  man's  life  as  he 
used  the  life  itself,  as  an  example  to  whom  it  may 
concern  ;  and  for  tliis  reason,  perhaps,  those  who  can 
speak  of  Mazzini  with  better  right  than  I,  may  pardon 
this  imperfect  picture  of  one  whom  we  would  not 
willingly  that  base  men  should  so  much  as  praise  : 

dySpoi,  ov  ouS*  alvtiv  Totai  kokoIcti  ^c/nis. 


GEORGE  SAND. 

(55e  yap  Kparei 
yivdiKb^  dvdpo^ovXop  i\-7rl^ov  K^ap. 

A  GREAT  spirit  has  passed  from  among  us ;  and  many, 
no  doubt,  have  of  late  been  endeavouring  to  realise 
distinctly  what  kind  of  pleasure  they  have  drawn,  what 
lessons  they  have  learut,  from  the  multitudinous  writ- 
ings of  the  most  noteworthy  woman,  with  perhaps  one 
exception,  who  has  appeared  in  literature  since  Sappho. 

To  estimate  the  general  result  and  outcome  of  a 
series  of  romances  like  George  Sand's  is  no  easy  task. 
For  while  on  the  one  hand  they  contain  implicitly 
what  amounts  to  a  kind  of  system  of  philosophy  and 
theology,  yet  on  the  other  hand  the  exposition  of  this 
system  is  so  fluctuating  and  fitful,  so  modified  by  the 
dramatic  necessities  of  varied  plots,  that  it  is  hard  to 
disentangle  the  operative  and  permanent  from  the  inert 
and  accidental  matter. 

Yet  it  is  distinctly  as  a  force,  an  influence,  a  pro- 
mulgation of  real  or  supposed  truths,  rather  than  as  a 
repertory  of  graceful  amusement,  tliat  these  books  claim 
consideration.     We  know  that  the  moral  leadership  of 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND.  297 

the  mass  of  the  reading  world  has  passed  to  a  great 
extent  into  the  hands  of  romance-writers.  Voltaire, 
Eousseau,  Bernardin  de  St.  Pierre,  Chateaubriand,  are 
some  of  the  names  which  at  once  occur  of  Frenchmen 
who  have  found  in  prose  fiction  a  powerful  means  of 
influencing  the  ideals  and  the  conduct  of  their  con- 
temporaries. George  Sand  and  Victor  Hugo  have 
succeeded  to  this  power,  and  these  two  have,  for  nearly 
two  generations,  been  the  most  popular  authors  iu 
France.  Long  ago  Sainte-Beuve  placed  George  Sand 
and  Lamennais  at  the  head  of  living  French  writers ; 
but  the  fame  of  Hugo  has  waxed  ;  the  fame  of  Lamen- 
nais has  waned  ;  George  Sand's  continues  to  shine  with 
a  steady  lustre. 

Inferior,  perhaps,  to  Balzac  in  the  power  of  accurately 
reproducing  the  society  around  her,  George  Sand  chooses 
by  preference  subjects  which  she  can  approach,  not  so 
much  from  without  as  from  within ;  her  works  are  the 
outcome  of  a  meditative  nature  which  lives  in  imagina- 
tion through  many  Hves,  and  applies  to  all  the  same 
guiding  conceptions  of  man's  duty  and  his  fate. 

It  is  somewhat  strange,  therefore,  though  the  anomaly 
might  be  paralleled  in  the  case  of  some  more  formal 
teachers, — that  wliile  every  one  agrees  that  George 
Sand's  stories  are  pre-eminently  novels  with  a  purpose 
— "  Tendenz-Novellen  " — -yet  there  is  by  no  means  the 
same  concurrence  as  to  what  that  purpose  is,  down 
what  stream  of  tendency  they  do  actually  flow. 

Her  name  was  for  many  years  "  a  word  of  fear  "  in 


298  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n, 

British  households,  where  she  was  known  chiefly  from 
secondhand  accovmts  of  Indiana,  and  was  pictured  as 
the  semi-masculine  assaOant  of  marriage  and  Christian- 
ity. Some  German  critics,  on  the  other  hand,  less 
keenly  interested  in  the  maintenance  of  propriety  aU 
over  the  world,  have  preferred  to  view  in  her  "the 
exponent  of  the  ideas  of  1830,"  the  representative  of 
that  shadowy  alliance  between  aristocracy,  intellect, 
and  the  working  man,  as  opposed  to  the  bourgeoisie  and 
the  juste  milieu,  which  ended  in  1848-51  with  the 
temporary  triumph  of  the  working  man  and  the  ulti- 
mate downfall  of  everybody.  And  there  is  some  truth 
in  both  of  these  views.  From  Indiana  (1831)  till 
Mauprat  (1836),  in  what  may  be  called  the  Eomances 
of  Search,  there  is  a  tone  of  indignant  protest  against 
the  structure  of  French  society  which  amounts  at  times 
to  revolt  and  bitterness.  And  from  Simon  (1836)  till 
Le  PicM  de  M.  Antoine  (1845),  there  are  frequent 
traces  of  the  political  influence  exercised  over  her  by 
Michel  de  Bourges,  Barbes,  Louis  Blanc,  and  Pierre 
Leroux.  These  strains  of  feeling  correspond  to  well- 
aiarked  but  passing  epochs  of  her  life — the  first  to 
her  maiTied  wretchedness,  the  second  to  her  absorp- 
tion, under  ilichel's  ascendency,  in  the  constitutional 
struggles  of  a  few  hopeful  but  troubled  years.  But  an 
attentive  study  of  her  works,  or  of  her  autobiography, 
reveals  a  life -long  preoccupation  of  a  very  different 
land.  "  Elle  a  toujours  iU  tourmentie  des  choses  divines." 
.  Such  are  the  words  in  which  she  sums  up  the  true,  the 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND.  299 

inner  history  of  lier  life  —  words  well  expressing  the 
unrest  of  a  ceaseless  searcli,  and  the  pain  of  a  never- 
satisfied  desire.  "  Ceci  est  I'histoire  de  ma  vie,"  she  says  ; 
"  ma  veritable  histoire." 

The  passages  in  her  books  which  indicate  this  per- 
petual preoccupation  are  in  a  certain  sense  so  obvious 
as  to  escape  notice.  That  is  to  say,  they  are  so  numer- 
ous and  so  long  that  the  general  reader  has  for  the 
most  part  acquired  the  habit  of  skipping  them.  He 
shares  the  feelings  of  the  able  editor  of  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes :  "  Pour  Dieu,  m'ecrivait  souvent  Buloz, 
pas  tant  de  mysticisme  !"  It  is  George  Sand's  gravest 
artistic  fault  that  she  overloads  her  stories  with  such 
a  mass  of  religious  reverie.  "  C'est  bien  possible,"  she 
replies,  "  mais  je  ne  vois  pas  trop  comment  j'eusse  pu 
faire  pour  ne  pas  ecrire  avec  le  propre  sang  de  mon 
cceur  et  la  propre  flamme  de  ma  pens^e." 

The  defect  in  art  is  obvious :  it  goes  so  far  as  to 
make  some  of  her  books  almost  unreadable,  except  to 
religious  inquirers  (e.g.  Spiridion,  Mile,  la  Quintinie) ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  heartfelt  sincerity  of  her 
sermons  is  equally  undeniable. 

In  the  earlier  romances,  the  Eomances  of  Search, 
we  hear  her  appealing  with  passionate  earnestness  for 
light  and  revelation  to  an  irresponsive  heaven.  And 
in  the  Eomances  of  Kx  position,  which  constitute  the 
great  bulk  of  her  works,  we  have  the  scheme  of  the 
universe,  at  which  she  ultimately  arrived,  enforced 
upon  us  ill  a  hundred  different  ways.     This  scheme  is 


300  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

nothing  new ;  it  has  even  come  by  this  time  to  possess 
a  kind  of  orthodoxy  of  its  own ;  but  forty  years  ago  it 
was  less  widely  held,  and  its  adoption  by  one  who  had 
passed  through  the  extreme  phase  of  Catholicism  indi- 
cated, in  the  then  state  of  religious  parties,  no  little 
breadth  and  moderation  of  mind.  Briefly  stated,  it  is 
much  as  follows : — There  is  a  God,  inconceivable  and 
unknown,  but  approachable  by  prayer  under  the  aspect 
of  a  Father  in  Heaven ;  there  is  a  Holy  Spirit,  or 
ceaseless  influx  of  grace  and  light,  receivable  by  sincere 
and  ardent  souls :  and  among  the  beings  who  have 
been  filled  fullest  with  this  divine  inspiration  the  first 
place  belongs  to  Jesus  Christ,  whose  life  is  the  highest 
model  wliich  humanity  has  known.  Progress  is  the 
law  of  the  universe;  the  soul's  progress,  begun  on 
earth,  is  continued  through  an  infinite  series  of  exist- 
ences ;  nor  is  there  any  soul  which  may  not  ultimately 
rise  to  purity  and  happiness.  Unselfish  love  is  the 
best  and  most  lasting  of  earthly  experiences,  for  a  love 
begun  on  earth  may  endure  for  ever.  Marriage  affords 
the  best  and  the  normal  setting  for  such  love  ;  but 
under  exceptional  circumstances  it  may  exist  outside 
the  married  state.  Eeligious  aspiration  and  unselfish 
love  should  form,  as  it  were,  the  spirit  of  life ;  its 
substance  is  best  filled  out  by  practical  devotion  to 
some  impersonal  ideal,  —  the  scientific  or  meditative 
observation  of  Nature,  the  improvement  of  the  condi- 
tion of  the  people,  or  the  realisation  of  our  visionary 
conceptions  in  a  sincere  and  noble  art 


tL]  GEORGE  SAND.  301 

Tliere  is  nothing  original  in  this  :  "  Ce  que  je  suis," 
says  George  Sand,  "  tout  le  monde  pent  I'etre  :  ce  que 
je  vois,  tout  le  monde  peut  le  voir :  ce  que  j'espere, 
tout  le  monde  peut  y  arriver.  II  ne  s'agit  que  d'aimer 
la  v^ritd,  et  je  crois  que  tout  le  monde  sent  le  besoin 
de  la  trouver." 

Perhaps  the  reader  will  best  be  able  to  test  the 
accuracy  of  this  synopsis  of  George  Sand's  teaching  if 
we  consider  in  detail,  and  with  as  many  extracts  as  space 
will  allow,  her  relation  to  each  of  these  fundamental 
topics,  the  People,  the  Sexes,  Art,  Nature,  EeUgion. 

This  mode  of  dividing  a  complex  subject  will  admit 
of  tlie  introduction  of  a  few  reflections  upon  the  events 
of  Mme.  Dudevant's  life,  considered  as  originating  »r 
modifying  her  ojiinions ;  and  in  the  course  of  our 
analysis  we  shall  perhaps  arrive  almost  insensibly  at 
some  more  general  estimate  of  her  magnitude  as  an 
author. 

I.  To  begin,  then,  with  her  relation  to  "  the  people," 
under  which  vague  word  we  mean  to  include  the  whole 
mass  of  social  and  political  phenomena  which  have  in 
her  time  overloaded  the  French  calendar  with  so  many 
mysterious  allusions  :  the  Hundred  Days,  the  revolu- 
tion of  February,  the  state  trials  of  April,  the  days  of 
June,  the  revolution  of  July,  the  events  of  December — 
landmarks  emerging,  as  it  were,  from  the  mingled  and 
tirrbid  under-cuiTent  of  Legitimism,  Orleanism,  Bona- 
partism,  Saint-Simonism,  and  the  terrible  "  doctrine  of 
Babeuf." 


302  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  her  strangely-mixed 
ancestry  seems  to  have  fitted  her  in  an  especial  manner 
for  compreheadiug  the  most  widely-separated  classes 
of  society.  On  one  side  she  was  descended  from 
Augustus  the  Strong,  King  of  Poland,  whose  gigantic 
and  almost  mythical  figure  towers  above  a  weltering 
chaos  of  lust  and  war ;  and  the  blood  of  the  great 
Maurice  de  Saxe  ran  with  indelible  nobility  through 
the  veins  of  her  father,  a  gallant  of&cer  in  Napoleon's 
army.  Her  mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  bird-catcher, 
and  a  true  specimen  of  the  grisette  of  Paris  in  all  her 
ignorance,  her  excitability,  her  frailty,  and  her  charm. 
Her  father  died  early,  and  the  care  of  her  childhood 
v»as  divided  between  her  father's  mother,  a  refined  and 
stately  lady  of  the  old  rirjime,  and  her  own  mother, 
who  could  not  live  away  from  the  bustle  of  the  Boule- 
vards and  the  petty  quarrels  and  trifling  pleasures  of 
a  woman  of  the  people.  The  mutual  antagonism 
between  these  two  guardians  taught  the  girl  many  a 
lesson  on  the  relation  of  class  to  class ;  and  the  affec- 
tion which  she  felt  for  both  combatants  helped  to  give 
to  the  works  of  her  later  life  that  catholicity  of  view 
which  enabled  her  to  enter  with  equal  ease  into  the 
essential  feeUngs  of  every  rank  of  life,  to  compose  both 
Le.  Marquis  de  Villemer  and  Francis  le  Champi. 

And  it  is  a  noteworthy  result  of  this  origin  and 
this  education  that  although  George.  Sand  is  sometimes 
coarse  and  often  fantastic  in  her  descriptions  of  what 
is  called  "  high  life,"  she  is  never  vulgar  in  the  way  in 


n,]  GEORGE  SAND.  303 

which  so  many  French  authors,  since  the  First  Empire, 
have  been  viilgar, — with  the  \iilgarity  of  a  hterary 
class  revelluig  in  the  luxury  and  fasliion  into  which 
intellectual  power  has  raised  them.  Th^ophile  Gautier, 
for  instance,  with  all  his  wealth  of  imagination  and 
grace  of  style,  obviously  does  not  possess  what  we  in 
England  call  "  the  instincts  of  a  gentleman."  Now 
George  Sand  always  has  "  the  instincts  of  a  gentleman," 
though  she  may  not  always  have  those  very  different 
instincts  which  we  call  "  the  instincts  of  a  lady." 

Through  aU  her  deahngs  with  the  ordinary  literary 
and  political  world  around  her,  this  difference  between 
her  and  them  is  discernible.  She  is  free  from  their 
effusive  self-assertion,  their  uneasy  vanity ;  she  is 
indifferent  to  luxury  and  to  fame  ;  there  is  about  her 
a  tranquillity  like  that  of  the  Sphinx,  to  wliich  her 
baffled  admirers  so  often  compared  her  —  something 
steadfast,  disdainful,  and  serene.  The  very  length 
and  vigour  of  her  life  seemed  to  attest  the  potency  of 
her  race.  She  had,  as  it  were,  the  power  of  living 
down  everybody  and  everything — enemies,  partisan- 
ships, scandals,  loves — whole  schools  of  thought  and 
whole  generations  of  men.  These  pass  away  and 
leave  her  in  great  old  age  sitting  beneath  the  roof 
that  sheltered  her  earliest  years,  and  writing  for  her 
grandcliildren  stories  in  which  her  own  childhood 
hves  anew. 

Let  us  consider,  then,  in  what  way  this  largeness 
and    serenity   of    view   which    we    claim   for    George 


304  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n. 

Sand's  mature  works  manifests  itself  in  her  dealings 
with  public  questions.  It  will  be  found,  we  tbink, 
that  while  inspired  by  a  strong  and  steady  love  of 
liberty  and  progress,  she  was  free  from  the  obvious 
faults  of  ordinary  French  reformers  :  their  violent  party 
spirit,  their  extravagant  doctrines,  and  their  tendency 
to  expect  the  salvation  of  society  from  without  rather 
than  from  within ;  to  imagine  that  a  rearrangement 
of  institutions  can  actually  raise  a  man,  whereas  it 
can  do  no  more  than  give  liim  a  better  chance  of 
raising  himself.  Now  George  Sand,  as  her  fellow- 
liberals  often  complained,  had  no  party  spirit,  none  of 
that  "  fi^vre  d'espoir  et  d'augoisse "  which  a  generous 
but  one-sided  man  feels  in  the  crash  of  revolutions. 
French  revolutions  are  short  cuts  which  are  apt  to 
take  the  lover  of  liberty  a  long  way  round ;  and  in  the 
preface  to  her  Petite  Fadette,  a  story  wi'itten  in  1848, 
George  Sand  expresses  the  profound  and  hopeless  pity 
which  led  her  at  such  moments  to  take  refuge  in  the 
stiUness  and  sanctity  of  Nature  from  the  confusion  of 
raving  tongues. 

"  Dans  les  temps  oil  le  mal  vient  de  ce  que  les  hommes 
se  m^connaissent  et  se  d6testent,  la  mission  de  I'artiste  est 
de  c6l6brer  la  douceur,  la  confiance,  I'amiti^,  et  de-rappeler 
ainsi  aux  hommes  endurcis  ou  d6courag(5s,  que  les  moeurs 
pures,  les  sentiments  tendres,  et  I'^quit^  primitive  sont  ou 
peuvent  Itre  encore  de  ce  monde. 

"Precher  ruiiion  quand  on  s'^gorge  c'est  crier  dans  le 
desert  II  est  des  temps  oh  les  ames  sont  si  agit6es 
qu'elles  sont  sourdes  h,  toute  exhortation  directe.     Pepuis 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND  305 

ces  joum6es  de  juin  dont  les  "5v6nements  actuels  sont 
I'in^vitable  consequence,  I'auteur  du  conte  qu'on  va  lire 
s'est  impost  la  tache  d'etre  aimable,  dflt-il  en  mourir  de 
chagrin.  II  a  laiss6  railler  ses  bergeries,  comme  il  avail 
laiss6  railler  tout  le  reste,  sans  s'inqui(5ter  des  arrets  de 
certaine  critique.  II  sait  qu'il  a  fait  plaisir  a  ceux  qui 
aiment  cette  note -la,  et  que  faire  plaisir  k  ceux  qui 
souffrent  du  merae  mal  que  lui,  a  savoir  I'hoiTeur  de  la 
liaine  et  des  vengeances,  c'est  leur  faire  tout  le  bien  qu'ils 
peuvent  accepter :  bien  fugitif,  soulagement  passager,  U  est 
vrai,  mais  plus  reel  qu'une  declamation  passionn6e,  et  plus 
saisissant  qu'une  demonstration  classique." 

Again,  George  Sand  keeps  wonderfully  clear  of 
extravagant  doctrines.  Horace,  a  book  which  pro- 
cured for  her,  she  tells  us,  "  ime  douzaine  d'ennemis 
bien  couditionn^s,"  contains  a  scathing  exposure  of  the 
egoism,  folly,  and  conceit  which  inflate  the  legitimate 
aspirations  of  poor  but  clever  young  Frenchmen  into 
so  bombastic  an  unreality.  Horace,  was  for  a  certain 
class  in  France  what  The,  Book  of  Snobs  was  for  a 
certain  class  in  England,  a  castigation  after  which  the 
same  meannesses  could  hardly  be  repeated  in  the 
same  way. 

Le  PicM  de  M.  Antoine  is  the  book  in  which  she 
deals  most  freely  with  the  question  of  property.  But 
her  ideal  remedy  for  the  inequalities  of  its  distribu- 
tion turns  out  to  be  not  communism,  but  co-operation, 
"  communaut4  par  association  " — an  idea  which  it  was 
well  worth  while  to  preach  in  France,  and  which  may 
yet  have  a  great  future  before  it  if  the  existing  re- 


30G  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

lations  between  Capital  and  Labour  should  ultimately 
break  down. 

Again,  we  remark  that  the  characteristic  moral  of 
George  Sand's  books  —  the  doctrine  that  every  eleva- 
tion, whether  of  a  class  or  of  an  individual,  must  be 
effected  primarily  from  within — is  as  strongly  insisted 
on  in  the  case  of  the  working  classes  as  in  the  some- 
what similar  case  of  tlie  female  sex.  "  Dans  cette 
longue  s^rie,"  she  says,  "  plusieurs  ouvrages  (je  puis 
dire  le  plus  grand  nombre)  ont  ^t^  inspires  par  le  d^sir 
d'dclairer  le  peuple  sur  ses  devoirs  autant  que  sur  ses 
droits."  And,  in  fact,  few  of  her  books  are  without 
some  example  of  a  working  man  (or  woman)  whose 
seK- reverence  and  self-control  end  by  placing  him  on 
an  acknowledged  equality  with  those  whose  original 
station  was  far  above  his  own.  And,  like  the  author 
of  Felix  Holt,  George  Sand  is  always  anxious  to  show 
that  a  true  rise  in  life  does  not  necessarily  consist  in 
a  man's  quitting  the  class  in  which  he  was  born,  but 
rather  in  his  rendering  the  appropriate  work  of  that 
class  worthy  of  any  class  by  thoroughness,  honesty, 
artistic  or  scientific  skill.  One  book,  Le  Compagnon 
du  Tour  de  Fraiwe,  avowedly  draws  an  ideal  portrait, 
—  suggested  by  the  character  of  Agricol  Perdiguier, 
"  cabinetmaker  and  representative  of  the  people," — 
of  what  the  working  man  may  be,  and  although  we 
may  think  that  this  ideal  artisan  has  somewhat  the 
air  of  having  been  bathed  in  rose-water,  we  must 
acknowledge  that  the  soundest  method  of  benefiting 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND.  307 

any  class  is  to  try  to  raise  their  own  conceptions  of 
what  they  ought  eventually  to  become.  "  Pourquoi," 
she  asks  in  her  preface  to  the  book  in  question — 

"  Pourquoi,  en  supposant  que  men  type  fdt  trop  id6alis6, 
n'aurais-je  pas  eu  le  droit  de  faire  pour  les  hommes  du 
peuple  ce  qu'on  ra'avait  pemiis  de  faire  pour  ceux  des 
autres  classes  1  Pourquoi  n'aurais-je  pas  trac6  un  portrait, 
le  plus  agr6able  et  le  plus  s6neux  possible,  pour  que  tons 
les  ouvriers  intelligents  et  bons  eussent  le  d^sir  de  lui 
ressembler  1  Depuis  quand  le  roman  est-il  forc6ment  la 
peinture  de  ce  qui  est,  la  dure  et  froide  r6alit6  des  hommes 
et  des  choses  contemporaines  t  II  en  peut  etre  ainsi,  je  le 
sais,  et  Balzac,  un  maitre  devant  le  talent  duquel  je  me 
suis  toujours  incline,  a  fait  la  CoinMie  humaine.  Mais,  tout 
en  6tant  116  d'amiti6  avec  cet  homme  Ulustre,  je  voyais  les 
choses  humaines  sous  un  tout  autre  aspect,  et  je  me 
souviens  de  lui  avoir  dit,  k  peu  pr^s  k  I'lSpoque  oil  j'6crivais 
le  Compiignon  du  Tour  de  France :  '  Vous  faites  la  Comidie 
humaine.  Ce  titre  est  modeste ;  vous  pourriez  aussi  bien 
dire  le  drame,  la  tragidie  humaine.  Oui,  me  r6pondit-il ;  et 
vous,  vous  faites  I'^pop^e  humaine.  Cette  fois,  repris-je, 
le  titre  serait  trop  relev6.  Mais  je  voudrais  faire  I'iglogue 
humaine,  le  pohne,  le  roman  humain.  En  somme,  vous 
voulez  et  savez  peindre  I'homme  tel  qu'U  est  sous  vos  yeux, 
soit!  Moi,  je  me  sens  port6  k  le  peindre  tel  que  je 
souhaite  qu'U  soit,  tel  que  je  crois  qu'il  doit  etre.' " 

This  unconscious  repetition  of  the  well-known 
criticism  of  Aristotle  upon  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
illustrates  not  only  the  relation  of  George  Sand  to 
Balzac,   but   the    manner    in    which    she    consciously 


308  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

modified  or  selected  from  the  realities  around  her 
under  the  influence  of  a  meditative  idealism  and  an 
ethical  purpose. 

II.  Passing  on  to  the  cognate  topic  of  George 
Sand's  treatment  of  the  duties  and  position  of  women, 
we  find  that  the  distinction  between  the  two  periods 
of  her  writings,  between  what  we  have  called  the 
Eomances  of  Search  and  the  Romances  of  Exposition, 
is  very  marked.  Her  first  few  books  were  written 
when  the  world  seemed  crumbling  around  her,  when 
distressing  doubt  had  succeeded  to  Christian  ecstasy, 
and  a  most  unsuitable  and  painful  marriage  to  the 
tranquil  affections  of  her  convent  and  her  country 
home.  These  books,  of  which  Lilia  is  the  type, 
are  the  cry  of  a  bewildered  child  for  the  light ; 
they  are  the  dizzy  and  Byronic  phase  of  a  nature 
essentially  just  and  serene.  Their  style  gave  them 
a  popularity  which  their  author  did  not  anticipate, 
and  which  she  hardly  desired.  But  it  is  not  from 
these  immature  and  dreamy  productions  that  she 
ought  to  be  judged. 

In  the  Romances  of  Exposition,  of  which  Consuelo 
is  one  of  the  earliest,  and  one  of  the  best,  examples, 
we  find  the  question  of  Women's  Rights  treated  in  an 
eminently  sound  spirit ;  that  is,  we  find  a  series  of  im- 
pressive but  temperate  protests  against  such  injustices 
towards  women  as  are  sanctioned  in  France  by  society 
and  law,  but  coupled  herewitli  a  continual  encourage- 
ment to  women  to  begin  by  developing  and  respecting 


XL]  GEORGE  SAND.  309 

themselves — to  deserve  at  any  rate  tlie  respect  of  men, 
and  to  be  confident  that  the  state  of  any  class  of 
human  beings  will  ultimately  conform  itself  to  their 
intrinsic  deserts.  This  is  the  chief  lesson  of  Consuelo's 
history ;  the  child  of  an  unknown  father  and  of  a 
gipsy  tramp  —  the  struggling  singer  at  the  opera  of 
licentious  towns — she  rises  by  the  sheer  force  of  her 
own  modest  self-respect  to  a  position  of  acknowledged 
moral  greatness  which  attracts  the  affection  and  rever- 
ence of  all  classes  of  men. 

In  a  series  of  works,  one  of  whose  main  themes  is 
the  power  which  women  possess  of  elevating  theii 
character,  and  rectifying  the  injustices  of  their  position 
by  the  exercise  of  "  self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self- 
control,"  it  is  painful  to  observe  the  frequent  recur- 
rence of  the  pervading  fault  of  French  literature — 
even  of  much  of  that  literature  which  is  meant  to 
have,  and  has,  a  direct  moral  tendency — namely,  a 
want  of  reticence  and  delicacy  in  matters  connected 
with  the  relation  between  the  sexes.  Probably  this 
disagreeable  characteristic  of  so  many  of  the  best 
French  books  should  in  great  measure  be  considered 
simply  as  a  branch  of  that  general  want  of  dignity 
and  reserve  to  which  the  French  character  is  so  un- 
fortunately prone.  That  character  is,  of  course,  as 
capable  of  purity  and  refinement  as  the  English,  but 
a  Frenchman  who  lacks  these  qualities  is  more  likely 
to  show  it  than  an  Englishman ;  because  he  degener- 
ates ia  the  direction,  not  of  sullen  stolidity,  but  of 


310  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

complacent  effusiveness — a  "  Trunkenheit  ohne  Wein  " 
which  leads  liim  to  interlard  his  life  and  literature 
with  uninteresting  tears,  needless  embraces,  and  re- 
marks in  the  worst  taste. 

George  Sand  is  capable  of  maintaining  a  level  of 
lofty  and  militant  purity ;  many  of  her  books  are 
wholly  free  from  any  kind  of  taint ;  but  in  others  we 
feel  the  need  of  that  instinctive  incapacity  to  dwell 
on  anything  gross  or  morbid  which  is  the  glory  of  the 
best  English  literature,  and  of  that  literature  almost 
alone.  It  should  be  observed,  however,  that  one 
accusation,  which  has  been  brought  against  George 
Sand's  novels,  that  they  tend  to  bring  the  institution 
of  marriage  into  contempt,  can  certainly  not  be  main- 
tained. Few  authors  have  more  convincingly  insisted 
on  the  paramount  excellence  of  a  single,  a  permanent, 
a  wedded  affection.  Few  have  more  unshrinkingly 
exposed  the  misery  which  follows  on  the  caprices  of 
selfish,  and  transitory  passion.  There  are,  indeed, 
passages  in  her  works,  where  certain  incidents  of 
marriage  which  French  opinion  tolerates,  and  especi- 
ally the  infidelity  of  the  husband  to  the  wife,  too 
lightly  regarded  in  that  country,  are  assailed  with 
indignant  eloquence.  But  shall  we  in  England  be 
concerned  to  defend  a  social  state  in  which  the  old 
conception  of  the  sanctity  of  marriage  is  retained  just 
so  far  as  to  render  indissoluble  a  union  contracted 
without  love,  and  maintained  without  fidelity  ?  does 
not   an   institution   like   this   need    some   purification 


Il]  GEORGE  SAND.  311 

before  it  can  be  justifiably  acquiesced  in  as  unalterable 
or  preached  as  divine  ? 

George  Sand's  own  life  forms  a  curious  commentary 
on  many  social  questions.  To  put  the  kernel  of  the 
position  in  a  few  words,  she  was  greatly  superior  to 
almost  all  the  Frenchmen  of  her  time  both  in  char- 
acter and  intellect,  while  at  the  same  time  she  was 
subject  to  many  weaknesses  characteristic  of  the 
feminine  mind.  The  result  is,  that  when  we  con- 
sider any  controversy,  speculative  or  emotional,  be- 
tween her  and  the  men  about  her,  we  are  for  the 
most  part  constrained  to  take  her  view,  whQe  yet  we 
feel  this  view  to  be  in  some  way  unfamiliar  to  us,  and 
in  itself  incomplete.  The  lioness  has  succeeded  in 
imposing  upon  us  her  picture  of  the  subjugated  man ; 
we  cannot  deny  its  vraisemblance ;  we  can  only  say 
that  we  are  not  accustomed  to  see  the  group  drawn  in 
that  position.  And  perhaps  there  is  some  poetical 
justice  in  the  fact  that  the  French,  with  their  per- 
petual talk  about  women,  and  pursuit  of  them,  should 
at  last,  as  it  were,  have  fallen  in  with  a  woman  so 
very  much  too  strong  for  each  and  all  of  them. 

I  believe  that  one  single  characteristic  of  George 
Sand's,  as  admitted  by  herself,  is  enough  to  explain 
the  painful  series  of  collisions  between  her  and  some 
of  her  once  dearest  friends.  The  fact  is  that  she  was 
apt  to  idealise  people  for  a  time,  and  then  to  cease  to 
idealise  them.  It  is  obvious  that  nothing  is  more  dis- 
agreeable   than    this.       We    can    endure    a   want    of 


312  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

appreciation — reflecting  that  it  is  not  given  to  all  to  be 
able  to  appreciate  us — but  that  a  woman  who  has  taken 
an  enthusiastic  and  emotional  view  of  our  character 
and  abilities  should  suddenly  begin  to  judge  us  in  a 
calm  manner,  and  indicate  obvious  defects,  this  is, 
iadeed,  enough  to  lash  our  self-love  into  fury.  And 
if  anything  could  make  it  worse,  it  would  be  to  see 
the  woman  in  question,  whose  intellectual  superiority 
to  us  seems  already  a  breach  of  tlie  implied  contract 
between  the  sexes,  move  on  tranquilly  occupied  with 
the  accomplishment  of  her  destiny,  reserving  merely 
the  right  of  describing  us  fictively  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes.  A  feminine  Goethe  is  more  than  man- 
kind can  endure,  and  there  is  much  that  is  Like 
Goethe  in  the  emotional  history  of  George  Sand. 

AVhen,  however,  we  consider  in  a  more  general 
way  the  treatment  of  love  in  her  romances,  we  do  not 
find  any  parti  pris,  or  one-sidedness  of  view,  interfer- 
ing with  her  power  of  developing  the  history  of  that 
passion  under  the  most  diverse  forms.  In  this  respect, 
indeed,  she  seems  to  me  unsurpassed.  It  so  happens 
that  most  of  our  great  EngHsh  novelists— Miss  Austen, 
Scott,  Dickens,  Thackeray — have  had  but  a  thin  vein 
of  experience  or  imagination  in  this  direction. '  Char- 
lotte Bronte  in  the  past,  George  Meredith,  and  the 
greatest  name  of  all,  George  EHot,  in  the  present, 
afford  better  examples  of  the  light  in  which  love 
presents  itself  to  an  English  artist.  But  English 
dignity  and  reticence  form  an  ever-present  and  impas- 


II.]  GEORGE  SAND.  313 

sable  limit  to  their  descriptive  skill.  In  George  Eliot, 
for  instance,  with  all  her  profound  knowledge  of  the 
heart,  there  is  always  a  certain  austerity  and  reserve, 
a  subordination  of  amatory  to  etldcal  situations ;  there 
are  no  dihor dements,  no  cris  d! amour  et  d'angoisse ;  nay, 
the  only  love  letter  which  I  can  recall  in  her  works 
was  written  by  Mr.  Casaubon.  I  believe  that  this 
spirit  of  dignity  in  literature  makes  the  highest  and 
best  literature  now  existing  in  the  world ;  but  in  this, 
as  in  other  ways,  noblesse  oblige,  and  it  is  plain  that  a 
French  author  has  a  much  wider  iield  to  work  in. 

The  names  of  Eousseau,  Benjamin  Constant,  Mme. 
de  Stael,  Balzac,  Victor  Hugo,  occur  at  once  as  those 
of  authors  who  have  not  merely  described  love  in  its 
commoner  forms,  but  have  done  something  to  extend 
our  conception  of  its  variety  and  power.  But  George 
Sand  seems  to  me  to  take  a  wider  range  than  any  one 
of  these.  The  Nouvelle  Hilolse  is  scarcely  fuller  of 
mournful  and  philosophic  sentiment  than  the  Lettres 
dJun  Voyageur  or  the  Lettres  d,  Marcie.  Adolphe  is 
not  more  intense  or  hopeless  than  Le  Dernier  Amour. 
Corinne  and  Delphine,  with  aU  the  eloquence  and 
enthusiasm  of  their  passion,  are  not  more  eloquent  or 
more  enthusiastic  than  La  Daniella.  La  Cousine  Bctte 
is  not  more  true  or  more  terrible  than  Leone  Leoni. 
Nor  can  any  of  Victor  Hugo's  contrasts  between  stain- 
less inmocence  and  environing  evU  outdo  the  simplicity 
and  dignity  of  Consuelo. 

We  might  extend  this  list  much   fai'ther ;  but  wo 


314  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n, 

are  here  only  concerned  to  show  that  George  Sand  is 
before  all  tilings  catholic  in  her  conception  of  human 
passion ;  that  her  romances  are  not  mere  illustrations 
of  some  favourite  theory  or  special  pleadings  in  defence 
of  some  personal  cause. 

There  is  no  doubt  one  form  of  love  which  occurs 
oftenest  in  her  books,  especially  where  a  woman  is 
telling  her  own  story  —  namely,  the  protective  and 
admiring  compassion  which  a  woman  of  strong  nature 
may  feel  for  a  gifted  but  weak  or  faulty  man.  This 
form  of  affection  was  abundantly  illustrated  by  George 
Sand's  own  history ;  and  seems  to  be  allied  to  that 
eager  maternal  instinct  which  was  the  dominant 
emotion  of  her  life ;  yet  we  may  perceive  in  her  also 
a  capacity,  which  her  career  on  earth  was  not  per- 
mitted to  develop,  of  feeling  love  in  its  more  normal 
and  satisfactory  form,  in  wliich  the  instinct  of  the 
woman  is  to  absorb  herself  in  a  reverent  devotion  to 
the  man,  while  his  corresponding  instinct  is  to  rever- 
ence this  very  devotion  in  her,  as  a  token  of  her 
worthiness  rather  than  of  his  own. 

The  conclusion  of  Mademoiselle  Merquem,  a  novel 
whose  heroine  much  resembles  George  Sand  herself, 
illustrates  what  I  mean.  Mile.  Merquem,'  won  at 
length  after  a  long  and  respectful  courtship,  is  address- 
ing the  husband  of  her  choice,  who  here  repeats  her 
words  and  adds  his  comment  thereupon. 

"  'N'oubliez  pas,'  she  says,  'que  j'ai  dt6  longtemps  une 
personue  raisounable,  et  souvenez-vous  que  la  raison  com- 


il]  GEORGE  SAND.  315 

mande  d'etre  absolument  d6vou6  et  soumis  k  ce  que  Ton 
airae  par-dessus  tout.  J'ai  accepts  I'amour,  non  comme 
un  dgarement  et  une  faiblesse,  mais  comme  une  sagesse  et 
une  force  dont,  aprfes  quelque  doute  de  moi-meme,  j'ai  6t6 
fifere  de  me  sentir  capable.  Chaque  jour  qui  s'est  6coule 
depuis  ce  premier  jour  de  confiance  et  de  joie  m'a  rendue  plus 
sdre  de  moi-meme,  plus  fi^re  de  mon  choix,  plus  recounaiss- 
ante  envers  vous.  A  present,  commandez-moi  ce  que  vous 
voudrez,  puisqne  je  ne  connais  plus  qu'un  plaisir  en  ce 
monde  ;  celui  de  vous  ob6ir.' 

"  Je  dus  accepter  cat  abandon  absolu,  continuel,  irrevoc- 
able de  sa  volont6.  Le  refuser  eflt  6t6  le  m6connaltre.  Je 
lui  ai  jur6  et  je  me  suis  jur6  k  moi-meme  que  je  me  ser- 
virais  de  cette  possession  de  son  ame  pour  faire  d'elle  la 
plus  respect6e  et  la  plus  heureuse  des  femmes.  Je  me 
mdpriserais  profond6ment  le  jour  oti  je  croirais  y  avoir  le 
moindre  m6rite.  Avec  une  telle  compagne  la  vie  est  un 
rSve  du  ciel.  Jamais  pareille  6galit6  d'ame  ne  fut  le 
partage  d'une  creature  humaine.  J'ai  trouv6  en  elle  un 
ami  s6rieux,  solide  dans  toutes  le  ^preuves,  spontan6ment 
g6n6reux  et  prudent,  comme  si  son  doux  et  profond  regard 
embrassait  k  la  fois  les  deux  faces  du  vrai  dans  l'appr6cia- 
tion  de  toutes  les  chose?  de  la  vie.  .  .  .  Peut-etre  ne  sait- 
on  pas  k  quel  degr6  de  charme  et  de  m6rite  pourrait  s'6lever 
la  femme  bien  dou6e,  si  on  la  laissait  mflrir,  et  si  elle-meme 
avait  la  patience  d'attendre  son  d6veloppement  complet  pour 
entrer  dans  la  vie  complete.  On  les  marie  trop  jeunes, 
elles  sont  mferes  avant  d'avoir  cess6  d'etre  des  enfants, 
on  les  616ve,  d'ailleurs,  de  manifere  a  prolonger  cette  en- 
fance  toute  la  vie ;  aussi  ont-elles  perdu  toute  puissance 
r6elle  et  toute  action  legitime  dans  la  soci6t6." 

Nor  is  George  Sand  unable  to  rise  to  that  highest 


316  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

form  of  earthly  passion  in  which  its  personal  elements 
seem  to  fade  and  disappear,  and  it  becomes  not  so  much 
a  desire  as  a  revelation,  an  inlet  into  some  supernal 
world,  approachable  only  through  the  annihilation  of 
self. 

In  the  Gomtesse  de  Rudolstadt, — an  iU-constructed 
but  a  noble  story, — there  is  a  passage  where  Consuelo 
is  called  upon  to  choose,  as  she  supposes;  between  love 
and  duty.  She  has  been  led  by  the  priests  of  a  secret 
society  through  subterranean  halls  filled  with  the 
implements  and  memorials  of  all  tortures  and  tyran- 
nies that  have  been  practised  upon  men  ;  the  misery  of 
the  world  has  been  manifested  to  her  with  one  appall- 
ing shock,  and  she  has  resolved  to  renounce  all  personal 
nappiness  for  a  life-long  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the 
wretched  and  oppressed.  After  a  noble  appeal  to  her 
lover  not  to  hinder  but  to  strengthen  her  in  her 
high  resolve,  the  fusion  between  earthly  emotion  and 
religious  aspiration  effects  itself  in  a  burst  of  song, 
and  the  long  story  of  her  fortunes  leaves  her  with  the 
same  words  upon  her  lips  which  first  revealed  to  her- 
self and  to  the  world  of  music  that  music  was  the 
passion  of  her  soul. 

"  L'enthousiasme  de  Consuelo  6tait  port6  aucomble;  les 
paroles  ne  lui  suffisaient  plus  pour  I'exprimer.  Une  sorte 
de  vertige  s'empara  d'elle,  et,  ainsi  qu'il  arrivait  aux 
pythonisses,  dans  le  paroxysme  de  leurs  crises  divines,  de 
se  livrer  k  des  cris  et  h,  d'(5tranges  fureurs,  elle  fut  entraln6e 
k  manifester  r^motion  qui  la  d6bordait  par  rexpressiou  qui 


II.]  GEORGE  SAND.  317 

lui  6tait  la  plus  naturelle.  Elle  se  mit  k  chanter  J'une 
voix  6clatante  et  dans  un  transport  au  moins  6gal  k  celui 
qu'elle  avait  6prouv6  en  cliantant  ce  meme  air  k  Yenise,  en 
public  pour  la  premiere  fois  de  sa  vie,  et  en  presence  de 
Marcello  et  de  Porpora  : 

**  *  I  cieli  iramensi  Tinirano 
Del  grande  Iddio  la  gloria  ! ' 

"  Le  chant  lui  vint  sur  les  levres,  parce  qu'il  est  peut-etre 
I'expression  la  plus  naive  et  la  plus  saisissante  que  la 
musique  ait  jamais  donn6e  k  I'enthousiasme  religieux.  Mais 
Cons\ielo  n'avait  pas  le  calme  n6cessaire  pour  contenir  et 
diriger  sa  voix ;  aprfes  ces  deux  vers,  I'intonation  devint  un 
sanglot  dans  sa  poitrine,  elle  fondit  en  pleurs  et  tomba  sur 
ses  genoux." 

III.  The  mention  of  Cormielo  may  serve  as  our 
point  of  transition  from  George  Sand's  treatment  of 
Love  to  her  treatment  of  Art.  For  the  aesthetic  his- 
tory of  Consuelo,  as  contrasted  with  that  of  Gorilla 
and  Anzoleto,  is  perhaps  the  best  example  of  the 
lesson  which  in  these  romances  is  so  often  repeated, 
that  Art,  like  everything  else  which  is  worth  having 
or  worth  doing,  is  the  result  and  outcome  of  a  certain 
inward  and  spiritual  state  ;  that  to  good  Art  moral 
qualities  are  as  necessary  as  intellectual;  that  those  who 
fail  in  Art  fail  oftenest  through  egoism  and  ambition, 
through  license  and  vanity ;  while  those  who  succeed 
succeed  through  delight  in  their  work  and  devotion  to 
an  impersonal  and  lofty  aim. 

To  take  instances  almost  at  random ;  the  art  of 
acting  is  treated  much  in  this  way  in  the  Chdteau  des 


318  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

Bisertes,  and  (incidentally)  in  Narcisse ;  authorship  in 
Horace ;  mosaic-work  in  Lcs  Maltres  Mosaistes ;  por- 
trait-painting in  Le  Chdteau  de  Pictordu ;  landscape- 
painting  in  La  Daniella  and  Mile.  Merquem ;  and,  to 
end  with  a  characteristic  example  from  one  of  her 
latest  books,  the  art  of  Mrd-stuffing,  iu  that  capital 
child's  story  Les  Ailes  de  Co%orage.  George  Sand,  in 
fact,  insists  as  constantly  as  Mr.  Euskin  on  the  great 
maxim  which  lies  at  the  root  of  art ;  that  in  order  to 
represent  anything  well  we  must  lo\'e  to  look  at  it,  iu 
order  to  do  anything  well  we  must  love  to  do  it,  quite 
apart  from  all  thought  of  rivalry,  or  profit,  or  fame. 

Her  own  artistic  history  was  as  consistent  witli  her 
convictions  as  the  tyranny  of  circumstances  would 
allow.  That  is  to  say,  she  was  indifferent  to  favie, — 
greatly  disliking  its  concrete  form,  general  recognition 
and  notoriety, — and  she  at  no  time  shaped  or  modified 
her  published  opinions  with  a  view  to  profit.  But 
she  was  forced  to  write  much  faster  thau  she  liked 
that  she  might  earn  money — not  in  order  to  enjoy 
wealth  or  luxury,  for  which  she  felt  a  singidar  indiffer- 
ence— but  in  order  to  secure  her  own  independence 
and  the  education  of  her  children.  She  had  also  a 
feminine  bias  towards  almsgiving,  which  went  so  far 
that  in  later  life  she  denied  herself  the  pleasui-e  and 
instruction  of  travel  that  she  might  have  more  to  give 
away. 

The  results  of  this  excessive  haste  are  most  marked 
iu  her  earlier  writings.     She  has  not  had  time  to  make 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND.  319 

them  short.  The  grace  of  her  language  never  fails, 
hut  she  is  often  tedious  and  full  jf  repetitions,  and 
before  she  has  gained  experience  of  life  she  tends  to 
be  fantastic  and  unreal.  Much  of  Lilia,  though  the 
book  created  so  great  a  sensation,  seems  now  unread- 
ably  dull.  As  time  goes  on  her  style  improves ;  its 
dignity  and  melody  remain ;  its  longueurs  gradually 
disappear.  From  Consuelo  onwards  she  seems  able  to 
say  whatever  she  wishes  in  admirable  form.  Her 
tendency  to  religious  disquisition  continues  often  to 
interfere  with  the  march  of  her  romances,  but  in  the 
diction  itself  there  is  little  which  either  Frenchman  or 
foreigner  has  censured.  With  maturity  she  gained 
simplicity;  her  pastoral  romances  are  models  of  pas- 
toral speech ;  and  her  latest  works,  Flamarande,  La 
Tour  de  Percemont,  etc.,  are  almost  as  concise  and  clear 
as  Voltaire  himself. 

But  certain  characteristics  remain  unchanged  through 
the  five-and-forty  years  of  her  literary  life.  In  almost 
all  the  books  there  is  the  same  air  of  unlaboured  spon- 
taneity and  irresistible  inspiration ;  in  almost  all  there 
is  the  same  subordination  of  the  verisimilitude  of  minor 
events  to  the  development  of  one  central  character,  one 
dominant  idea,  one  absorbing  passion.  And  the  defects 
of  a  class  of  romances  which  aim  so  high  are  almost 
inseparable  from  their  merits.  Some  novelists,  like 
some  painters,  have  preferred  to  confine  themselves  to 
effects  of  twilight  or  candlelight,  that  so  their  colour 
within  these  limits  may  be  wholly  natural  and  true ; 


320  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

a  wider  range  of  light  and  shade  brings  added  difficul- 
ties of  harmonious  representation  ;  and  those  who  would 
"  set  the  blazing  sun  in  heaven  "  must  be  content  to 
sacrifice  much  truth  of  local  colouring  if  they  would 
maintain,  with  the  imperfect  means  at  their  disposal, 
some  likeness  of  the  irreproducible  gradations  between 
Nature's  blackness  and  her  glow. 

IV.  I  have  been  endeavouring  so  to  arrange  these 
remarks  as  to  proceed  as  it  were  from  without  inwards 
in  our  review  of  George  Sand's  life  and  work.  From 
considering  her  relation  to  the  political  world  about 
her,  to  the  other  sex,  and  to  the  small  confraternity  of 
art,  we  pass  now  to  the  subjects  on  which  her  reverie 
habitually  dwelt — nature  first,  and  then  all  which  lies 
beneath  nature  for  a  reverent  and  meditative  mind. 
She  approached  nature  from  many  sides.  As  the 
owner  of  a  country  property,  which  for  many  years 
she  managed  herself,  she  was  able  to  give  to  her  rustic 
pictiires  a  vivid  reality,  which  a  Parisian  like  Balzac 
could  not  by  any  study  achieve.  All  the  world  knows 
La  Petite,  Fadette,  and  the  rest  of  that  series  of  gentle 
idylls,  of  which  La  Mare  au  Diable  and  JVanon  are, 
perhaps,  the  most  touching.  They  form  the  nearest 
French  parallel  to  Wordsworth's  Waiji/oner  and  Peter 
Bell.  George  Sand  has  also  what  Wordsworth  had 
not — a  subtle  feeling  for  the  charm  which  lies  in  the 
transformation  of  meditative  observation  into  definite 
science :  the  moment  when  one,  who  has  long  pored 
over  some  fragment  of  nature  for  his  delight,  discovers 


u.]  GEORGE  SAND.  321 

that  lie  has  learnt  something  which  few  or  none  have 
learnt  before  him.  I  know  no  French  novel  in  which 
science  is  treated  with  a  profounder  sympathy  than  in 
Valvddre, — a  work  which  supplies  a  corrective  to  all 
of  morbid  that  Valentine  and  Indiana  contain, — so  fuU 
is  it  of  matter  and  wisdom,  so  natural  and  complete  is 
the  triumph  which  science,  simplicity,  and  virtue  gain 
over  immoral  and  egoistic  languor.  And,  to  pass  over 
a  host  of  similar  instances,  one  of  the  last  and  simplest 
of  her  stories,  Marianne,  culminates  in  a  moment  at 
which  the  girl's  gentle  and  joyous  observation  of  nature 
is  found  to  have  laid  for  her  the  basis  of  a  more  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  the  plants  which  she  loves.  This 
last  sketch  is  so  slight  that  I  feel  half  ashamed  to  dwell 
on  it ;  and  yet  it  has  a  peculiar  charm ;  a  picture 
drawn  in  great  old  age  by  the  world-famous  writer,  of 
a  girl  riding  about  the  country  as  she  herself  had  done 
in  youth,  and  entering,  in  the  same  simple  and  pro- 
found fashiou,  into  the  teaching  of  nature  and  her  joy. 
There  is  something  touching  in  this  "  link  of  natural 
piety,"  which  connects  the  youth  and  age  of  one,  whose 
ardent  genius  had  impelled  her  in  the  meantime  into 
forms  of  life  so  remote  from  quiet  Berry  and  the  shades 
of  the  Vall6e  Noire,  and  who  yet  returned  to  that  still 
home,  and  spent  life's  long  declension  among  the  gar- 
dens where  she  had  played  as  a  child.  More,  perhaps, 
than  any  author  of  our  century,  save  Wordsworth  him- 
self, she  deserves  Glaudian's  praises  of  that  ancient  and 
home-keeping  man — 


322  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

"  Ingentem  meminit  parvo  qui  genuine  quercum, 
Aequaevumque  videt  consenuisse  nemus." 

And  her  books,  in  many  places,  show  how  deeply  this 
life-long  refuge  of  Nohant  had  tranqnillised  her  soul 
— how  often  the  cares  and  loves  of  life  fell  from  her 
in  the  presence  of  Nature's  slow  consolations,  and  her 
abiding  calm. 

V.  It  was,  then,  in  a  life  which,  though  often  pro- 
foimdly  agitated,  had  yet  a  certain  unity  and  back- 
ground of  peace,  that  George  Sand  experienced  that 
series  of  religious  changes  and  awakenings  which,  as 
she  herself  has  told  us,  constitute  her  essential  history 
and  her  true  career. 

The  first  stage  was  an  unusual  one.  She  was 
brought  up  by  a  grandmother  and  a  tutor  who  held 
Voltairian  views,  but  did  not  wish  to  impress  them 
upon  a  child.  Consequently  they  left  her  with  no 
religious  teaching  at  aU.  Some  stories,  impartially 
told  her,  about  Christ  and  Jupiter,  were  all  the  theo- 
logy that  was  impressed  on  the  blank  paper  of  her 
mind.  Thereupon  she  did  what  a  philosopher  might 
have  expected  her  to  do.  Not  being  told  that  there 
was  a  God,  she  found  it  necessary  to  invent  one.  Few 
passages  in  literature  are  more  touching  than  the  pages 
where  she  describes  how  she  felt,  at  the  age  of  ten,  the 
need  of  some  Divine  Being  to  love  and  worship ;  and 
how,  in  her  uncertainty  between  Christ  and  the  gods 
of  Greece,  she  feared  that  all  were  alike  unreal ;  and 
how,  in  some  half-waking  vision,  her  inner  need  clothed 


i 


n.]  GEORGE  SAND.  323 

itself  in  a  deity  whom  she  imagined  for  herself,  to 
worship  him ;  and  CoramM — neither  male  nor  female, 
neither  human  nor  quite  divine  —  hovered  between 
heaven  and  earth  in  her  day-long  dream,  willingly  in- 
carnating himself  sometimes  to  assuage  some  misery 
of  men,  or  sometimes  punished  at  the  hands  of  a 
supreme  power  by  an  enforced  sojourn  among  the 
unhappy  mortals  to  whom  he  had  shown  too  much 
mercy. 

To  him,  upon  a  secret  and  woodland  shrine,  she 
sacrificed  not  by  slaying  but  by  setting  free  ;  and  when 
a  bird  released  upon  his  altar  lingered  for  a  moment 
among  the  branches  of  the  shadowing  maple-tree,  she 
took  the  sign  as  a  token  of  Coramb^'s  acceptance  of 
the  benign  and  bloodless  offering  : — and  those  who  like 
may  fancy  that  some  Power  was  there  to  welcome  the 
luablemished  gift,  and  to  fill  with  gladness  that  inno- 
cent sanctuary  in  the  heart  of  a  child. 

But  the  little  Aurore  gi-ew  older,  and  was  sent  to 
the  convent  of  the  Anglaises  at  Paris,  where  Catholi- 
cism was  presented  in  its  most  winning  form  by  the 
religious  English  ladies,  to  whom  the  education  of  some 
of  the  best-born  girls  in  France  and  in  our  own  islands 
was  at  that  time  entrusted.  For  a  long  time  Aurore 
withstood  their  influence ;  she  became  the  ringleader 
of  all  such  wild  and  innocent  mischief  as  the  convent 
knew  ;  she  was  enrolled  among  the  diables ;  she  seemed 
as  far  as  possible  from  becoming  sage. 


324  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [il 

But  her  hour  cauie — the  hour  which  in  some  form 
or  other  probably  comes  to  every  ardent  and  reverent 
soul — the  hour  of  the  dedication  of  self  to  a  new-felt 
and  absorbing  power. 

In  a  fit  of  weariness,  after  some  long  frolic,  she  had 
strayed  into  the  convent  chapel.  She  sat  through  the 
evening  service  in  a  state  of  strange  abstraction  and 
serenity.  What  followed  shall  be  described  in  her  own 
words : — 

"  L'heure  s'avangait,  la  pri^re  ^tait  sonn^e,  on  allait 
fermer  I'^glise.  J'avais  tout  oubli6.  Je  ne  sais  ce  qui  se 
passait  en  moi.  Je  respirais  une  atmosphere  d'une  suavity 
indicible,  et  je  la  respirais  par  I'ame  plus  encore  que  par  les 
sens.  Tout  k  coup  je  ne  sais  quel  6branlement  se  produisit 
dans  tout  mon  etre,  un  vertige  passe  devant  mes  yeux 
comme  une  lueur  blanche  dont  je  me  sens  envelopp6e.  Je 
crois  entendre  une  voix  murmurer  k  mon  oreille :  Telle, 
lege.  Je  me  retourne,  croyant  que  c'est  Marie  Alicia  qui 
me  parle.     J'6tais  seule. 

"Je  ne  me  fis  pas  d'orgueilleuse  illusion,  je  necrus  point 
.'i  un  miracle.  Je  me  rendis  fort  bien  compte  de  I'espfece 
d'hallucination  oil  j'6tais  tomb(5e.  Je  n'en  fus  ni  enivr6e 
ni  efl'ray6e.  Je  ne  clierchais  ni  k,  I'augmenter  ni  k  m'y 
soustraire.  Seulement,  je  sentis  que  la  foi  s'emparait  de 
moi,  comme  je  I'avais  souhaite,  par  le  cceur.  J'en  fus  si 
reconnaissante,  si  ravie,  qu'un  torrent  de  larmes  inonda 
mon  visage.  Je  sentis  encore  que  j'aimais  Dieu,  que  ma 
pens6e  embrassait  et  acceptait  pleinement  cet  id6al  de  jus- 
tice, de  tendresse  et  de  saintet6  que  je  n'avais  jamais  r6voqu6 
en  donte,  mais  avec  lequel  je  ne  m'6tais  jamais  trouv^e  en 
communicatiou  directe ;  je  sentis  enfin  cette  communication 


11.]  GEORGE  SAND.  325 

6'6tablir  soudainement,  comme  si  un  obstacle  invincible  se 
fflt  ablm6  entre  le  foyer  d'ardeur  infinie  et  le  feu  assoupi 
dans  mon  ame.  Je  voyais  un  chemin  vaste,  immense,  sans 
bomes,  s'ouvrir  devant  moi ;  je  briilais  de  m'y  61ancer. 
Je  n'etais  plus  retenue  par  aucun  doute,  par  aucune  froi- 
deur.  La  crainte  d'avoir  k  me  reprendre,  h,  railler  en  moi- 
meme  au  lendemain  la  fougue  de  cet  entrainement  ne  me 
vint  pas  seulement  k  la  peiis^e.  JYtais  de  ceux  qui  vont 
sans  regarder  derri^re  eux,  qui  h^sitent  longtemps  devant 
un  certain  Rubicon  4  passer,  mais  qui,  en  toucbant  la  rive, 
ne  voient  d6ji  plus  celle  qu'ils  viennent  de  quitter." 

Her  conversion  was  complete.  It  was  followed  by 
months  of  ecstatic  happiness  and  self-denial,  and  only 
the  wise  reluctance  of  the  nuns  in  charge  prevented 
the  enthusiastic  girl  from  insisting  on  taking  the  veil. 
At  last  her  grandmother  removed  her  from  the  con- 
vent. But  her  faith  and  her  wish  to  become  a  nun 
persisted  long.  Her  first  shock  arose  from  the  perusal 
of  Chateaubriand's  G^nie  du  Christianisme,  a  book 
recommended  to  her  by  her  confessor,  but  wliich  she 
found  to  be  in  so  direct  au  opposition  to  the  Imitatio 
Christi,  on  which  her  devotion  had  long  been  fed,  that 
she  was  led  to  doubt  the  truth  and  unity  of  a  system 
which  could  thus  be  authoritatively  expounded  in  two 
such  different  senses.  But  she  seemed  to  be  gliding 
gently  into  a  tranquil  Theism,  when  all  at  once  her 
troubles  came.  Her  grandmother  died.  Her  home  at 
Nohant  was  broken  up.  Her  father's  family  were 
alienated  by  her  mother's  temper.  Her  mother  was 
worse  than  no  guardian  to  the  sensitive  and  iuexperi- 


326  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ii. 

enced  girl.  In  her  distress  and  loneliness  she  allowed 
a  M.  Dudevant  to  persuade  her  that  he  would  be  a 
solid  and  lasting  friend.  She  married  him,  and  thus 
committed  the  greatest  blunder  of  her  life,  not  through 
excess,  but  through  defect  of  emotional  sensibility. 
For  she  should  never  have  married  M.  Dudevant. 
She  never  loved  him,  and  he  never  loved  anybody. 
He  drank  ;  he  kept  low  company  ;  he  was  openly  un- 
faithful to  his  wife.  After  years  of  miserable  union, 
and  years  of  informal  separation,  the  wife  procured  a 
judicial  separation,  and  the  custody  of  the  children 
was  left  in  her  hands.  But  during  the  wretched  years, 
from  1826  to  1836, — years  during  which  other  sins 
besides  those  of  M.  Dudevant  disturbed  her  inward 
peace,  and,  enlightened  by  her  own  sorrows,  her  eyes 
opened  upon  the  sorrows  of  the  world, — her  faith  was 
deeply  shaken ;  she  lost  her  trust  in  the  moral  govern- 
ment of  the  universe ;  her  spiritual  life  became  a  mere 
voice  of  protest  and  cry  for  light  to  a  sealed  and  un- 
answering  heaven. 

Slowly  the  answer  came. 

"  By-and-by  [says  Mazzini]  her  thoughts  elevate  and 
clear  themselves  :  her  looks  turn  oftener  to  the  future  ;  the 
religious  sentiment,  so  prominent  in  George  Sand,,  becomes 
more  and  more  developed  and  intense.  The  turbid  stream 
purifies  itself  in  mounting  towards  heaven,  and  falls  again 
in  dew.  Calm  succeeds  to  storm  ;  the  very  shadow  of 
scepticism  has  disappeared  before  faith  ;  faith,  sad  and  with- 
out the  spring  of  youth,  for  its  torch  does  not  shine  on 
this  side  of  the  tomb ;  but  strong,  and  unshakeable  as  all 


n-1 


GEORGE  SAND.  327 


religious  conviction.  Our  eartlily  life  is  not  the  JtigM  to 
happiness,  it  is  the  Duty  of  development ;  sorrow  is  not 
Evil,  since  it  stimulates  and  purifies :  virtue  is  constancy 
in  devotion ;  all  error  passes  away  ;  truth  is  eternal,  and 
must,  by  a  law  of  Providence,  triumph  sooner  or  later  in 
the  individual  as  in  humanity.  George  Sand  has  learnt 
these  things,  and  repeats  them  to  us  with  the  sweet  and 
impressive  voice  of  a  sister.  There  is  still,  as  in  the  sound 
of  the  JEoWsiW  harp,  an  echo  of  a  past  agony  ;  but  the  voice 
of  the  angel  preponderates." 

Mazzini  here  has  merely  stated  the  change  which 
took  place,  without  attempting  to  assign  its  reason. 
Perhaps  this  silence  is  wise.  In  a  universe  which  is 
of  so  mixed  a  character  that  optimism  and  pessimism 
are  both  of  them  plausible  views,  it  seems  almost  futile 
to  try  to  determine  what  thought  or  fact  it  is  which 
makes  for  each  man  the  transition  from  despair  to 
faith.  There  are  plenty  of  phenomena  to  lead  any- 
body to  any  conclusion. 

It  is  enough  to  give  her  own  account  of  the  means 
by  which  this  change  was  effected ;  which  means  she 
believed  to  be  divine  grace,  sent  in  answer  to  pro- 
longed and  earnest  prayer : — 

"  Je  crois  encore  k  ce  que  les  chr^tiens  appellent  la  grdce. 
Qu'on  nomme  comme  on  voudra  les  transformations  qui 
s'opferent  en  nous  quand  nous  appelons  6nergiquement  le 
principe  divin  de  I'infini  au  secours  de  notre  faiblesse  ;  que 
ce  bienfait  s'appelle  secours  ou  assimilation ;  que  notre 
aspiration  s'appelle  priere  ou  exaltation  d'esprit,  il  est  cer- 
tain que  rilme  se  retrempe  dans  les  61ans  religieux.     Je  I'ai 


328  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n. 

toujours  6prouv6  d'une  maniere  si  6vidente  pour  moi,  que 
j'aurais  niauvaise  grace  k  en  mat6rialiser  I'expression  sous 
ma  plume.  Prier  comme  certains  divots  pour  demander 
au  ciel  la  pluie  ou  le  soleil,  d'est-^-dire  des  pommes  do  terre 
et  des  dcus,  pour  conjurer  la  grele  ou  la  foudre,  la  maladie 
ou  la  mort,  c'est  de  I'idolatrie  pure ;  mais  lui  demander  le 
courage,  la  sagesse,  I'amour,  c'est  ne  pas  intervertir  I'ordre 
de  ses  lois  immuables,  c'est  piiiser  k  un  foyer  qui  ne  nous 
attirerait  pas  sans  cesse  si,  par  sa  nature,  il  n'6tait  pas 
capable  de  nous  r^cliauffer." 

Through  whatever  agency,  the  change  took  place. 
For  the  rest  of  her  long  life  George  Sand  was  not 
strictly  a  Christian,  but  one  of  those  who  must  be 
ranged  along  with  Christians  in  any  reckoning  of  the 
spiritual  forces  of  the  world.  For  we  know  that  the 
true  controversy  is  no  longer  between  those  within  and 
those  without  the  walls  of  any  given  church,  but  on  a 
wider  scale  and  involving  profounder  issues.  It  is  a 
controversy  between  Spiritualism  and  Materialism,  be- 
tween those  who  base  their  life  upon  God  and  immor- 
tality, and  those  who  deny  or  are  indifferent  to  both. 
And  the  spiritual  cause  has  the  more  need  of  cham- 
pions now  that  a  distinct  moral  superiority  can  no 
longer  be  claimed  on  either  side.  Perhaps  the  loftiest 
and  most  impressive  strain  of  ethical  teaching  which 
is  to  be  heard  in  England  now  comes  from  one  who 
invokes  no  celestial  assistance,  and  offers  to  virtue  no 
ultimate  recompense  of  reward.^     The  Stoics  are  again 

»  This  Essay  appeared  in  George  Eliot's  lifetime. 


II.]  GEORGE  SAND.  329 

among  us ;  the  stern  disinterestedness  of  their  "  coun- 
sels of  perfection  "  is  enchaining  some  of  our  noblest 
souls.  But  the  moral  elevation  of  any  portion  of  man- 
kind tends  to  the  elevation  of  all.  And  although  to 
those  who  rest  tranquil  in  their  belief  in  immortality 
this  stoical  view  will  appear  extreme,  one-sided,  hope- 
less, impossible  to  man,  it  will  yet  teach  them  no 
longer  to  speak  as  if  virtue  were  to  be  repaid  with 
pleasures  which  it  needs  no  virtue  to  enjoy.  They 
will  rather  claim  that  a  spirit  of  ceaseless  aspiration 
shall  be  satisfied  with  a  ceaseless  progress  ;  that  virtue 
shall  be  rewarded  by  her  own  continuance,  "  the  wages 
of  going  on,  and  not  to  die." 

Few  writers  have  dwelt  on  this  prospect  with  a 
more  sustained  and  humble  aspiration  than  George 
Sand.      I  quote  one  of  numberless  passages : — 

"  Saintes  promesses  des  cieux  oil  I'on  se  retrouve  et  ou 
Ton  se  reconnait,  vous  n'etes  pas  un  vain  reve.  Si  nous  ne 
devons  pas  aspirer  k  la  beatitude  des  purs  esprits  du  pays 
des  chimeras,  si  nous  devons  entrevoir  toujours  au-deli  de 
cette  vie  un  travail,  un  devoir,  des  epreuves  et  une  organ- 
isation limit^e  dans  ses  facult6s  vis-4-vis  de  I'infini,  du 
moins  il  nous  est  permis  par  la  raisou,  et  il  nous  est  com- 
mands par  le  cceur  de  compter  sur  uue  suite  d'existences 
progressives  en  raison  de  nos  bons  dfeirs.  Les  saints  de 
toutes  les  religions  qui  nous  crient  du  fond  de  I'antiquitS 
de  nous  d6gager  de  la  matifere  pour  nous  clever  dans  la 
hi6rarchie  celeste  des  esprits  ne  nous  out  pas  tromp6s  quant 
au  fond  de  la  croyauce  admissible  k  la  raison  moderne. 
Nous  pensons  aujourd'hui  que,  si  nous  sommes  immortels, 


330  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n. 

c'est  a  la  condition  de  revetir  sans  cesse  des  organes  nou- 
veaux  pour  completer  notre  etre,  qui  n'a  probablement  pas 
le  droit  de  devenir  un  pur  esprit ;  mais  nous  pouvons 
regarder  cette  terre  comme  un  lieu  de  passage  et  compter 
sur  un  r6veil  plus  doux  dans  le  berceau  qui  nous  attend 
ailleurs.  De  mondes  en  mondes,  nous  pouvons,  en  nous 
d6gageant  de  I'animalit^  qui  combat  ici-bas  notre  spiritual- 
isme,  nous  rendre  propres  k  revetir  un  corps  plus  pur,  plus 
appropri6  aux  besoins  de  I'ame,  moins  combattu  et  moins 
entrav6  par  les  infirmit6s  de  la  vie  humaiue  telle  que  nous 
la  subissons  ici-bas." 

With  some  such  thoughts  as  these  we  should  close 
our  contemplation  of  the  earthly  career  of  a  strong,  a 
militant,  an  eager  soul.  To  one  who  traces  the  vic- 
tories of  such  a  soul,  in  this  dimness  of  her  captivity, 
that  which  she  hath  done  will  seem  "  but  earnest  of 
the  things  that  she  shall  do  ;"  we  imagine  her  delivered 
from  the  bewildering  senses,  the  importunate  passions 
of  the  flesh,  no  longer  "  tormented,"  but  satisfied,  with 
the  things  of  God  ;  glad  in  those  spiritual  kinships 
and  that  inward  calm  towards  which  "her  continual 
longing  has  been  her  continual  voice." 


VICTOR  HUGO. 

'Dans  le  domaine  po^tique,"  says  the  sternest  of 
French  critics,  "  I'autorit^  de  I'Angleterre  ne  vaut  pas 
moins  que  I'autorit^  de  la  Grtjce  dans  le  domaine  de 
la  sculpture."  And  we  may  fairly  accept  this  dictum 
of  Gustave  Planche's  as  just,  and  maintain  that  in  no 
country  of  modern  Europe  has  so  much  good  poetry 
or  good  criticism  on  poetry  been  produced  as  in  Eng- 
land. The  more  important,  then,  is  the  fact  that  an 
Englishman  who,  like  Mi-.  Swinburne,  stands  in  the 
very  foremost  rank  both  of  our  poets  and  of  our  critics, 
should  have  proclaimed  with  all  his  eloquence  that 
M.  Hugo  is  the  greatest  of  living  poets — nay,  more, 
"  the  name  that  is  above  every  name  in  lyric  song  " — 
a  Master  after  whom  our  age  will  be  called,  as  Shake- 
speare's age  is  called  after  Shakespeare.  And  Mr. 
Swinburne,  though  he  may  write  extravagantly,  never 
writes  at  random.  We  feel  that  in  his  wildest  flights 
he  has  yet  a  grasp  upon  the  very  spirit  of  poetry,  a 
wide,  exact,  and  penetrating  knowledge  of  the  greatest 


332 


MODERN  ESSAYS. 


[lIL 


achievements  of  the  human  imagination,  which  may 
well  make  us  pause  where  we  cannot  follow  him,  and 
believe  that  he  sees  more  than  we.  His  judgment  of 
M.  Hugo  has  prompted  me  to  a  long  and  careful  study 
of  that  author's  works,  in  the  course  of  which  I  have 
seemed  to  understand  how  Mr.  Swinburne's  abounding 
poetical  power  runs  over,  as  it  were,  upon  the  poets  whom 
he  criticises,  and  glorifies  them  with  his  own  glow.  Such 
criticism  is  generous,  eloquent,  suggestive ;  yet  it  leaves 
room  for  a  soberer  estimate,  which  shall  refer  the  works 
in  question  as  much  to  a  moral  as  to  an  artistic  standard. 
I  think,  then, — to  begin  by  a  broad  expression  of 
views  which  I  hope  to  develop  in  some  detail, — that 
M.  Hugo's  central  distinction  lies  in  his  unique  power 
over  the  French  language,  greatly  resembling  Mr. 
Swinburne's  power  over  the  English  language,  and 
manifesting  itself  chiefly  in  beauty  and  inventiveness 
of  poetical  form  and  melody.  In  prose  the  same 
power  supplies  an  endless  fertility  of  rhetoric,  and  a 
countless  store  of  epigrams  which  evince  the  faculty 
of  manipulating  rather  than  of  originating  thought. 
Moreover,  a  singular  vividness  and  intensity  of  im- 
agination, with  a  command  over  the  striking  incidents 
of  life  and  the  broad  outlines  of  character,  somewhat 
akin  to  the  generalship  with  which  he  marshals  his 
stately  words  and  plirases,  render  M.  Hugo  a  great 
master  of  scenic  effect — of  that  shock  and  collision  of 
pathos,  horror,  and  surprise,  to  which  in  plays  and 
romances  we  give  the  name  of  melodrama. 


III.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  333 

In  his  moral  nature  we  shall  find  much  that  is 
strong,  elevated,  and  tender ;  a  true  passion  for  France, 
a  true  sympathy  for  the  poor  and  the  oppressed,  a 
true  fondness  for  children.  Farther  than  tliis  it  will 
be  hard  to  go ;  so  plain  wiU  it  be  that  the  egoism 
which  penetrates  M.  Hugo's  character  is  a  bar  to 
all  higher  sublimity,  and  has  exercised  a  disastrous 
effect  on  his  intellectual  as  well  as  on  his  moral 
career. 

In  calling  M.  Hugo  egoistic  I  am  far  from  accusing 
him  of  vulgar  self-seeking  —  of  an  undue  regard  for 
any  tangible  form  of  personal  advantage.  What  I 
mean  is  that  he  seems  never  to  forget  himself;  that 
whatever  truth  he  is  pursuing,  whatever  scene  he 
describes,  his  own  attitude  in  regard  to  it  is  never 
absent  from  his  mind.  Aud  hence  it  results  that  all 
other  objects  are  unconsciously  made  secondary  to  the 
great  object  of  making  an  impression  of  the  kind  de- 
sired. From  the  smallest  details  of  style  up  to  the 
most  serious  steps  in  political  conduct  this  preoccupa- 
tion is  visible.  It  was  the  same  spirit  which  prompted 
the  poet  to  begin  one  of  his  most  solemn  elegiac  poems 
with  the  repeated  assertion  "  that  it  should  never  be 
said  that  he  kept  silence,  that  he  did  not  send  a  sombre 
strophe  to  sit  before  his  children's  tomb  " — and  which 
prompted  the  politician  to  resign  in  a  moment  the 
trust  which  Paris  had  committed  to  him  because  the 
Assembly  would  not  listen  to  him  with  the  respect 
which  he  thought  his  due. 


334  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ra. 

The  sources  of  this  self-absorption — this  "auto- 
theism,"  as  a  P'rench  critic  has  called  it — are  to  some 
extent  obvious,  and  M.  Hugo  has  but  yielded  more 
openly  than  some  others  to  a  temptation  which  has 
come  to  him  with  unusual  force. 

Among  the  dangers  of  advancing  culture  lies  a  fact 
which  at  first  sight  appears  wholly  an  advantage — 
namely,  the  increased  respect  and  attention  paid  to 
intellect — to  artists,  men  of  science,  and  men  of  letters. 
In  England  the  importance  of  this  class  has  of  late 
grown  rapidly,  owing  not  only  to  the  increase  in  the 
number  of  persons  able  to  appreciate  them,  but  to  the 
tranquillity  of  the  country,  which  has  afforded  few 
impressive  careers  to  the  warrior  or  tlie  statesman. 
In  France  the  man  of  letters  has  long  held  a  position 
of  unnatural  prominence.  For  the  artificial  equality 
which  the  Revolution  produced  has  left  so  few  leaders 
to  whom  the  people  can  naturally  look,  that  the  liter- 
ary guild  has  in  some  sense  replaced  both  priesthood 
and  aristocracy,  and  in  times  of  stress  and  tumult 
poets  and  pamphleteers  have  more  than  once  been 
called  to  the  helm  of  the  State.  A  career  like 
Lamartine's  may  well  justify  Comte's  insistence  on  a 
separation  between  the  functions  of  the  man  of  thought 
and  the  man  of  action.  But  the  danger  which  here 
concerns  us  is  of  a  more  general  kind.  It  consists  in 
the  fact  that  the  artist  and  poet  are  much  more  easily 
injured  by  deference  than  by  neglect.  The  more  in- 
ward and  intimate  is  the  merit  for  which  we  praise  a 


III.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  335 

man,  tlie  harder  is  it  for  us  to  praise  him  with  good 
taste,  or  for  him  to  receive  the  praise  with  dignity. 
We  can  applaud  the  great  actions  of  a  general  without 
injuring  his  capacity  for  war ;  but  if  we  dwell  too 
much  on  the  delicate  thoughts  of  a  poet — of  a  man 
whose  claim  to  represent  his  fellow-men  is  mainly 
that  his  sensibilities  are  more  exquisite  than  theirs, 
his  ideal  higher,  his  moral  sense  more  true — there  is 
much  fear  lest  we  injure  in  him  what  we  admire,  lest 
his  emotions  no  longer  seem  to  flow  spontaneously 
iato  music,  and  to  be  overheard,  but  rather  to  be 
adjusted  to  the  expectations  of  his  admiring  public. 
Other  intellectual  fields  have  cognate  dangers.  In  the 
domain  of  music  we  are  the  grieved  spectators  of  the 
enormous  self-applause  of  the  most  conspicuous  com- 
poser of  our  time.  And  science  herself — once  the 
type  of  lofty  and  impersonal  labour — has  learnt  some- 
times to  speak  with  brazen  lips,  and  to  defame  all 
sanctities  but  her  own.  On  living  examples  of  the 
contrary  temper  it  would  be  indecorous  to  dwell.  It 
is  enough  to  recognise  that  the  evil  of  which  I  have 
spoken  is  not  universal ;  that  England  has  not  lost 
her  tradition  which  couples  modesty  with  greatness; 
that  in  this  age  of  desecrating  publicity  it  is  stiU 
possible  for  a  man,  with  ears  open  to  the  world's  iu- 
finite  voices,  to  be  ignorant  only  of  the  praises  which 
salute  his  name.^ 

1  The  allusion  to  Mr.  Darwin  amy  be  made  explicit  now  that  he  is 
no  longer  among  us. 


336  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iiL 

How  confidently,  on  the  other  hand,  M.  Hugo  has 
arranged  all  voices  of  heaven  and  earth  in  a  cantata 
to  his  own  glory  may  be  seen  from  the  following 
passage  on  the  duties  of  the  poet : — 

"  Dans  ses  poemes  il  mettrait  les  conseils  au  temps  pre- 
sent, les  esquisses  reveuses  de  I'avenir ;  le  reflet,  tant6t 
6blouissaut,  tantdt  sinistra,  des  6v6nements  contemporains  ; 
les  pantheons,  les  tombeaux,  les  ruines,  les  souvenirs ;  la 
charit6  pour  les  pauvres,  la  tendresse  pour  les  mis^rables ; 
les  saisons,  le  soleil,  les  champs,  le  mm;  les  montagnes  ; 
les  coups  d'cfiil  furtifs  dans  le  sanctuaire  de  I'ame  oil  Ton 
aper9oit  sur  un  autel  myst6rieux,  comme  par  la  porte 
entr'ouverte  d'liue  chapelle,  toutes  ces  belles  urnes  d'or : 
la  foi,  I'esp^rance,  la  po6sie,  I'amour ;  enfin  il  y  mettrait 
cette  profonde  peinture  du  moi,  qui  est  peut-etre  I'oeuvre 
la  plus  large,  la  plus  g6n6rale  et  la  plus  universelle  qu'un 
penseur  puisse  faire." 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  these  last  words  may 
be  true.  A  man  like  Wordsworth,  on  whom  unique 
sensibilities  have  bestowed  as  it  were  a  new  revela- 
tion, may  perceive  that  his  life's  object  must  be  to 
explain  to  others  what  he  sees  and  feels ;  he  may  justi- 
fiably be  wrapped  up  in  this ;  he  may  without  rebuke 
even  exaggerate  the  importance  of  the  boon  which 
he  has  to  bestow.  For  it  is  not  on  hunself  that  his 
heart  is  set,  but  on  that  of  which  he  is  the  interpreter. 
But  M.  Hugo's  first  thought  is  almost  always  of  his 
own  greatness ;  his  first  care  for  his  own  glory.  Hia 
teaching  shifts  from  pole  to  pole  ;  the  only  lodestar  to 
which  it  always  turns  is  the  poet  hunself.     I  do  not 


rii.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  337 

care  to  accumulate  proofs  of  this.  I  will  not  quote 
from  William  Shakespeare,  with  its  almost  insane  pas- 
sages of  inflated  self-esteem,  where  the  poet  seems  to 
intimate  that  the  fourteen  men  whom  he  deigns  to 
honour  in  former  ages  have  been  previous  incarnations 
of  himself.  I  will  take  a  poem,  in  metrical  form 
among  our  author's  best,  where  the  poet  is  expressing 
himself  as  plainly  as  the  sublimity  of  his  theme 
allows. 

The  Ode  d,  Olympic  (a  barbarous  name  intended  to 
imply  M.  Hugo's  analogy  to  Jupiter)  is  obviously,  and 
one  may  say  avowedly,  an  address  by  the  poet  to  him- 
self The  address  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  nameless 
friend,  and  is  thus  introduced  : — 

"  Un  jour  I'ami  qui  reste  k  ton  coeur  qu'on  d6chire 
Contemplait  tes  malheurs, 
Et  tandis  qu'il  parlait  ton  sublime  sourire 
Se  melait  h,  ses  pleurs." 

One  hardly  knows  which  to  admire  most,  the  servile 
tears  of  the  man  of  straw,  or  the  poet's  description 
of  his  own  sublime  smile.  "  Te  voil^,"  says  the 
friend — 

"  Te  voili  sous  les  pieds  dcs  envieux  sans  iiombre 
Et  des  passaiits  rieurs, 
Toi  dont  le  front  superbe  accoutumail  k  I'ombre 
Les  fronts  infirieurs  !  " 

After  further  allusions  to  "  ton  front  calme  et  tonnant," 
"  ton  nom  rayonnant,"  etc.,  the  friend  continues — 

z 


338  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

"  Tous  ceux  qui  de  tes  jours  orageux  et  sublimes 
S'approchent  sans  eflfroi, 
Reviennent  en  disant  qu'ils  ont  vu  des  ablmes 
En  se  penchant  sur  toi ! 

"  Mais  peut4tre,  k  travers  I'eau  de  ce  gouffre  immense 
Et  de  ce  coeur  profond, 
On  verrait  cette  perle  qu'on  appelle  innocence, 
En  regardant  au  fond  ! 

"  On  s'arrete  aux  brouillards  dont  ton  ame  est  voil6e ; 
Mais  moi,  juge  et  t6moin, 
Je  sais  qu'on  trouverait  une  voUte  6toil6e 
Si  Ton  allait  plus  loin  ! " 

The  critics  naturally  come  in  for  a  mild  rejoinder. 

"  lis  auront  bien  toujours  pour  toi  toute  la  haine 
Des  demons  pour  le  dieu, 
Mais  un  souflBe  6teindra  leur  bouche  impure,  pleine 
De  paroles  de  feu. 

"  lis  s'6vanouiront,  et  la  foule  ravie 
Verra,  d'un  oeil  pieux, 
Sortir  de  ce  tas  d'ombre  amass6  par  I'cnvie 
Ton  front  majestueux !  " 

After  this  we  find  it  difficult  to  be  much  interested 
in  the  universal  benevolence  of  the  poet's  abstract  views. 
Critics  have  admired  a  prophetic  passage  in  which,  in 
the  general  rehabilitation  of  everybody,  Belial  grows 
so  angelic  that  the  Almighty  is  puzzled  to  distinguish 
him  from  Christ.  But  universality  of  appreciativeness 
is,  in  this   nineteenth   century,  no  longer  surprising. 


III.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  339 

Many  of  us  will  feel  that  our  sympathies  have  expanded 
so  widely  that  we  can  enter  into  the  point  of  view  of 
the  very  devil, — so  long  as  he  says  nothing  unpleasant 
about  ourselves. 

And  surely  never  was  amour  propre  more  watchful 
than  M.  Hugo's.  To  keep  silence  about  him  is  almost 
as  dangerous  as  to  criticise  him.  Any  suspicion  of 
lukewarmness  is  met  with  the  vigorous  expression  of 
a  pain  about  which  poets  have  perhaps  said  enough — 
the  pain  which  they  derive  from  the  stupidity  and 
jealousy  of  mankind.  There  is  no  doubt  much  truth 
in  such  complaints.  A  man  of  any  emotional  force 
and  originality  will  be  often  misunderstood.  Over- 
valued, perhaps,  by  some,  he  will  be  undervalued  by 
others.  The  many  forces  that  iight  on  the  side  of 
commonplace  will  unite  to  exaggerate  his  faults  and 
to  explain  his  virtues  away.  All  this  is  a  matter  of 
course.  Everything  that  is  exceptional  has  its  incon- 
veniences. But  troubles  like  these  should  be  borne 
in  silence  ;  to  dwell  on  them  before  the  world  is  both 
unmanly  and  arrogant.  He  who  sings  of  grief  should 
sing  of  griefs  which  others  also  feel,  and  to  which  his 
song  can  bring  consolation.  There  are,  indeed,  some 
cases,  like  Byron's  or  Shelley's,  in  which  the  poet's  lot 
lias  been  made  so  tragic  by  causes  closely  connected 
with  his  genius  that  we  cannot  wish  him  to  keep 
silence.  But  M.  Hugo's  literary  troubles  have  never 
been  of  this  kind.  They  have  rather  been  such  as 
are    naturally    provoked    by   the    assumption    of   the 


340  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m. 

leadership  of  a  militant  school  in  literature.  A  man 
who  claims  to  rule  by  right  of  conquest  must  expect 
that  the  conquered  persons  will  call  him  an  usurper. 
We  wiU  not  dwell  on  the  petty  histories  of  cabals  and 
jealousies,  alliances  and  discipleships,  which  have  oc- 
cupied too  often  the  literary  world  of  France.  But 
we  may  well  question  whether  either  French  literature 
or  French  society  has  really  gained  by  the  abolition  of 
the  old  pre-eminence  accorded  to  the  accident  of  birth. 
Have  wealth  and  talents  shown  themselves  to  be 
worthier  objects  of  deference  ?  Are  they  found  to  be 
more  frequently  united  with  that  moral  elevation  to 
which  we  all  desire  to  pay  our  chief  respect  ?  A 
plutocracy  we  may  take  to  be  an  admitted  evil,  em- 
bodying the  self-indulgence  which  is  the  weakness  of 
an  aristocracy  without  the  sense  of  responsibiKty  which 
ought  to  be  its  strength.  And  surely  we  are  intro- 
ducing a  still  worse  element  into  our  reconstructed 
society  if  we  erect  poets  or  dramatists  into  the  heads 
of  factions,  each  with  his  band  of  janissaries,  who 
salute  him  in  newspaper  or  theatre  with  preconcerted 
applause.  There  is  no  surer  way  of  ruining  a  man 
than  to  thrust  upon  him  a  counterfeit  greatness,  and 
he  who  would  play  the  part  of  Napoleon  in '  the  re- 
public of  letters  can  suffer  no  evil  so  disastrous  as  his 
own  success. 

In  what  terms  an  offended  potentate  can  resent  im- 
partial opinion  may  be  judged  from  the  following  lines, 
among  the  most    forcible  which  M.   Hugo   has   ever 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  341 

written,  and  whose  application  is  fixed,  by  an  in- 
genuity of  insult,  upon  one  of  the  most  just  and 
scrupulous  critics  whom  France  has  known ; — 

"  Jeune  homme,  ce  m6chant  fait  une  lache  guerre. 
Ton  indignation  ne  I'^pouvaiite  gu^re. 
Crois-moi  done,  laisse  en  paix,  jeune  homme  au  noble 

coeur, 
Co  Zoile  a  I'oeil  faux,  ce  malheureux  moqueur. 
Ton  mdpris  ?  mais  c'est  I'air  qii'il  respire.     Ta  haine  ] 
La  haine  est  son  odeur,  sa  sueur,  son  haleine. 
II  sait  qu'il  peut  souUler  sans  peur  les  noms  fameux, 
Et  que  pour  qu'on  le  touche  il  est  trop  venimeux. 
II  ne  craint  rien:  pareil  au  champignon  difforme 
Pouss6  dans  une  nuit  au  pied  d'un  chene  enorine, 
Qui  laisse  les  chevreaux  autour  de  lui  paissant 
Essayer  leur  dent  foUe  a  I'arbuste  innocent ; 
Sachant  qu'il  porte  en  lui  des  vengeances  trop  sflres, 
Tout  gonfl6  de  poison  il  attend  les  morsures." 

Literature  has  few  expressions  of  rage  and  hatred 
more  concentrated  than  this.  But  worse  remains.  Self 
is  an  idol  to  which  a  man  must  sacrifice  not  only  his 
critics  but  his  deities,  and  not  only  the  present  but  the 
past.  Retrospective  jealousy  knows  no  limitations. 
As  M.  Hugo  has  advanced  in  his  self-worship  the 
objects  of  his  reverence  have  become  fewer  and  fewer, 
and  those  noble  admirations  which  make  the  very  sub- 
stance of  our  spiritual  being  have  dropped  one, by  one 
from  his  soul.  In  most  cases  his  judgments  are  worth 
noticing  only  as  illustrating  his  own  moral  decline. 
That  M.  Hugo,  after  admiring  Virgil,  should  postpone 


342  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m. 

Virgil  to  Juvenal  (because  he  can  more  easily  pretend 
that  he  was  once  Juvenal  himself),  matters  little  to 
any  one  except  M.  Hugo.  But  wheu  his  faint  praise 
falls  upon  authors  who,  though  superior,  are  com- 
parable to  himself — when  Racine  and  CorneiUe,  for 
instance,  are  indicated  as  the  mere  forerunners  of  the 
author  of  Cromwell  and  Ruy  Bias — a  more  serious  pro- 
test is  needed.  I  am  no  blind  admirer  of  the  great 
French  tragedians.  No  English  critic  is  likely  to 
overlook  their  obvious  faults  and  limitations.  But  I 
surely  still  have  the  best  French  judgments  with  me 
in  believing  that  the  moral  world  in  which  those 
classical  poets  have  their  being  is  one  of  such  refine- 
ment and  loftiness  as  M.  Hugo  has  never  known. 
How  crude,  how  strained,  in  a  word  how  melodramatic, 
are  the  ethical  struggles  and  triumphs  of  his  Marion, 
his  Tisbe,  his  Hernani,  compared  with  Eacine's  gentle 
magnanimities,  and  pure  compassions,  and  cadences  of 
delicate  distress  !  We  might  as  well  compare  a  picture 
by  Dore  or  Wiertz  to  a  picture  by  Andrea  del  Sarto. 
And  Corneille's  strain  is  in  a  still  higher  mood.  No 
other  French  dramatist  has  written  a  play  "  beau 
comme  le  Cid,"  because  no  other  French  dramatist 
has  had  a  nature  like  Corneille's — a  nature  grave,  re- 
served, and  solitary,  but  cherishing  as  it  were  a  hidden 
fervency  and  a  secret  habit  of  honour,  and  finding  at 
last  its  longed-for  outlet  in  that  ringing  tale  of  chivalry 
and  war,  of  the  ecstasies  of  heroic  passion  and  the 
counterchange  of  love  and  death. 


HI.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  343 

The  society  in  which  these  men's  genius  was 
fostered  may  have  been  artificial,  transitory,  unjust. 
It  may  have  been  based  upon  the  slavery  of  the  Com- 
mons of  France.  But  it  contained  within  it  certain 
ideals  which  France  has  lost  and  hardly  has  regained. 
A  truer  religion,  a  sounder  polity,  than  Catholicism  and 
Divine  Eight,  may  yet  enlighten  the  eyes  of  French 
singers  with  a  wider  vision  than  of  old.  But  M.  Hugo 
is  "singing  before  sunrise,"  and  his  horizon  is  lit 
rather  with  some  shifting  radiance  of  the  northern 
lights  than  with  a  steady  promise  of  the  day. 

Let  us  attempt  to  give  distinctness  to  our  mingled 
judgment  of  M.  Hugo's  character  and  powers,  first  by 
a  short  examination  of  the  literary  form  of  his  poems, 
dmmas,  and  romances  ;  and  then  by  considering  his 
poHtical  career,  his  personal  emotions  as  revealed  to 
us  in  his  works  ;  and,  lastly,  his  position  with  regard 
to  the  profoundest  problems  which  affect  mankind. 


II. 

The  literary  form  in  which  M.  Hugo's  work,  and 
especially  his  poetry,  has  been  cast,  presents  much  of 
interest.  For  we  may  take  him  as  the  leading  represent- 
ative of  the  romantic  school  so  conspicuous  in  France 
during  the  first  half  of  this  century.  And  this  school, 
beginning  with  wide  pretensions,  has  ended,  like  some 
other  revolutions  in  cognate  arts,  in  little  more  than 
an    improvement  in  teclmical  procedure.      Those    re- 


344  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ni. 

forms  alone  are  permanent  which  are  based  on  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  matter  in  hand,  and  it  was 
to  French  versification  that  the  Eomanticists  gave 
their  most  serious  attention.  Their  professed  study  of 
the  history  and  literature  of  other  countries  was  seldom 
much  more  than  a  search  for  sensational  incidents  or 
novel  themes  for  declamation.  But  their  mastery  of 
old  French  poetry  led  to  a  real  re-discovery  of  disused 
metrical  effects,  and  a  real  invention  of  new  ones. 
And  it  is  in  these  matters  that  M.  Hugo  was  most 
truly  the  heir  of  this  literary  revolution;  his  naturally 
fine  ear  was  taught  and  stimulated  by  the  technical 
discussions  which  surrounded  his  early  years. 

It  is  worth  while  to  dwell  in  some  detail  upon  the 
improvements  in  versification  which  M.  Hugo  has  suc- 
cessfully adopted,  and  of  which  he  is  in  some  degree 
himself  the  author.  These  improvements  consist 
mainly  in  an  increased  richness  of  rhyme  and  an  in- 
creased variety  of  rhythm} 

First  as  to  rhyme.  Frenchmen,  as  we  know, 
designate  as  poor  rhymes  most  of  such  rhymes  as 
English  verse  allows — namely,  collocations  of  similar 
syllables  beginning  with  different  consonants,  as  page 
and  rage,  nuit  and  iiistruit.  They  give  the  name  of 
rich  rhymes  to  collocations  of  similar  syllables  beginning 
with  the  same  consonant,  as  iperdument  and  firmament, 
vile  and  ville,  which  in  English  would  not  count  as 
rhymes  at  all.  This  difterence  of  taste  seems  partly 
to  depend  on  the  more  intimate  liaison  existing  in 
>  See  Note  A,  p.  335. 


rii.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  345 

French  pronunciation  between  the  consonant  and  the 
syllable  which  follows  it — which  syllable  will  often 
consist  of  a  vowel  sound  very  rapidly  pronounced,  like 
the  terminations  in  the  accented  4,  or  very  indeter- 
viinately  pronounced,  like  the  nasal  terminations  in  m 
and  n.  If  the  consonant,  which  gives  the  whole  char- 
acter to  terminations  like  these,  differs  in  the  two 
rhyming  lines,  there  seems  to  be  hardly  enough  sub- 
stance left  in  the  rhyme  to  satisfy  the  ear's  desire  for 
a  recurring  sound.  This  view  is  illustrated  by  such 
English  rhymes  as  alone  and  flown,  where  an  additional 
richness  seems  sometimes  gained  from  the  presence  of 
the  I  in  both  the  rhyming  syllables.  Mr.  Swinburne 
affords  a  brilliant  instance  of  this  wealth  of  assonance 
in  the  following  lines  : — 

"  As  scornful  Day  represses 
Night's  void  and  vain  caresses, 
And  from  her  duskier  tresses 
Unwinds  the  gold  of  his  ; " 

where  the  persistence  of  the  r  sound  gives  to  the 
stanza  a  cumulative  force  which  could  hardly  liave 
been  otherwise  attained.  This  so-called  richness  of 
rhymes  is  found  in  M.  Hugo's  poems  in  wonderful 
profusion.  In  a  page  of  his  taken  at  random  I  find 
eleven  rich  rhymes  to  three  poor  ones ;  in  a  page  of 
Racine  taken  at  random,  seven  rich  rhymes  and  seven 
poor  ones.  A  difference  like  this  implies  a  wonderful 
command  over  language.    But  tliis  is  not  all.    A  rhyme, 


346  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m 

to  give  the  greatest  pleasure,  should  seem  fortiiaately 
accidental ;  it  must  not  depend  too  visibly  upon  a 
similarity  of  grammatical  termination.  Thus  in 
English  the  words  me  and  sea  make  a  more  satisfac- 
tory rhyme  than  me  and  tfiee,  because  we  feel  that  me 
and  thee  are  words  formed  in  the  same  way,  and  that 
the  poet  is  taking  advantage  of  a  coincidence  which 
contains  no  element  of  surprise.  Airow  and  narrow 
make  a  better  rhyme  than  salvation  and  condemnation, 
because  in  the  latter  pair  of  words  we  feel  that  a  Latin 
termination  supplies  a  consonance  ready-made,  and 
dwelling,  so  to  speak,  not  in  the  essence  of  the  wortls, 
but  in  their  uninteresting  accretion  of  final  syllables 
These  considerations  are  still  more  important  in 
French,  where  many  large  classes  of  words  exist  which 
have  the  same  final  syllables.  I  have  not  space  foi 
examples,  but  the  most  cursory  comparison  of  M.  Hugo 
with  (for  instance)  Racine  will  show  the  admirable  in- 
genuity of  the  romantic  poet  in  this  respect.  It  is 
strange  indeed  that,  after  the  way  in  which  the  French 
and  English  tongues  have  been  ransacked  for  centuries 
past,  M.  Hugo  and  Mr.  Swinburne  should  have  been 
able  to  introduce  new  rhymes  by  dozens,  and  not 
merely  grotesque  rhymes,  which  are  easy  to  'multiply, 
but  rhymes  wliich  can  be  used  in  lofty  poetry.  M. 
Hugo's  prodigious  wealth  of  vocabulary,  manifest 
throughout  his  works  in  many  ways,  is  in  nothing 
more  manifest  than  in  this. 

The  question  of  metre  is  a  much  more  complex  one. 


nij  VICTOR  HUGO.  347 

Some  attempt  at  explanation  must  be  made,  though 
the  subject  can  only  be  treated  here  in  the  broadest 
and  most  elementary  manner.  Speaking  generally, 
then,  we  know  that  among  the  Greeks  and  Eomans 
accent  and  quantity  both  existed,  but  the  structure  of 
classical  Greek  and  Latin  poetry  was  determined  almost 
entirely  by  quantity,  a  certain  number  of  long  and 
short  syllables,  in  one  of  certain  arrangements,  being 
needed  to  make  up  a  verse.  The  poetry  of  modern 
Europe  is  for  the  most  part  formed  on  this  model,  with 
the  substitution  of  accent  for  quantity ;  that  is  to  say, 
the  definite  arrangement  of  feet  is  retained,  but  accented 
syllables  fill  the  places  formerly  occupied  by  long  ones. 
In  modern  English  poetry  there  is  always  a  definite 
skeleton  of  metre,  containing  a  definite  number  of 
accents,  from  which  the  lines  may  somewhat  vary,  but 
to  which  they  always  tend  to  recur.  We  can  never 
be  in  doubt,  for  instance,  as  to  whether  an  English 
poem  is  written  in  iambic  or  anapaestic  rhythm,  that  is 
to  say,  whether  the  accent  normally  falls  on  every 
second  or  on  every  third  syllable.  A  definite  metrical 
structure,  however,  is  not  absolutely  necessary  to 
poetry.  Its  absence  has  been  supplied,  for  example, 
by  antithesis  among  the  Hebrews,  by  alliteration  among 
the  early  English.  And  the  trouvdres  of  northern 
France,  from  whom,  rather  than  from  the  more 
Latinised  troubadours  of  the  south,  French  poetry 
mainly  descends,  seem  to  have  gradually  acquiesced  in 
a  still  simpler  scheme  of  poetical  requirements.      Many 


348  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [hl 

of  them  thought  it  enoxigh  to  divide  their  words  into 
rhyming  lines  containing  an  equal  number  of  syllables, 
though  not  necessarily  an  equal  number  of  accents. 
Perhaps  this  course  was  suggested  to  them  by  an 
unusual  difficulty  which  French  accentuation  presents 
to  the  poet.  The  tendency,  common  to  all  the 
Eomance  languages,  to  drop  the  syllables  which  suc- 
ceed the  accented  syllable  has  been  carried  to  its 
extreme  in  France.  For  in  the  French  tongue  the 
accent  always  falls  on  the  last  syllable  of  a  word 
except  when  that  syllable  has  a  mute  c  for  its  only 
vowel,  when  the  accent  falls  on  the  syllable  before  it. 
This  imiformity  of  accentuation  makes  any  regular 
metre  more  difficult  to  manage,  as  (neglecting  the  mute 
e)  a  word  must  end  wherever  an  accent  is  wanted.  It 
is  perhaps  mainly  from  this  cause  that  it  has  come  to 
pass  that  in  a  line  of  French  poetry  (unless  specially 
written  for  music)  the  thing  which  in  English  poetry  is 
fixed — namely,  the  number  of  accents — is  variable, 
and  the  thing  which  in  English  is  variable  — 
namely,  the  number  of  syllables — is  fixed.  There 
is  no  normal  arrangement  of  feet  to  which  a  French 
alexandrine  tends  to  recur.  All  that  is  necessary  is 
that  there  should  be  an  accent  (and  consequently 
the  end  of  a  word)  in  the  sixth  place,  and  again  in  the 
twelfth  place,  at  the  end  of  the  line.  It  is  therefore  a 
mistake  to  try  to  read  French  alexandrines  as  if  they 
were  to  be  referred  to  an  iambic  type.  The  number  of 
accented  syllables  in  a  French  alexandrine  varies,  and 


ni.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  349 

tlieir  position  varies  also.  Sometimes  the  line  has  no 
marked  accents  except  in  the  sixth  and  twelfth  places; 
sometimes  it  has  a  marked  iambic  character,  sometimes 
an  anapaestic  character.  Oftenest,  perhaps,  it  is  a  loose 
arrangement  of  anapaests  interspersed  with  iambL 
Take  this  couplet  as  an  example — 

"  Sacha'nt  qu'il  po'rte  en  lui'  des  vengea'nces  trop  sfl'res, 
Tout  gonfl^'  de  poiso'n  11  atten'd  les  morsu'res." 

The  first  of  these  lines  begins  in  an  iambic  rhythm,  and 
ends  in  an  anapaestic  rhythm.  The  second  line  is 
anapaestic  throughout. 

It  would  take  too  much  space  to  develop  this 
theme.  The  important  point  to  notice  is  the  latitude 
which  is  thus  given  to  the  poet.  The  structure  of  the 
verse  neither  much  confines  nor  much  assists  him ; 
whatever  metrical  charm  it  is  to  have  he  must  himself 
supply.  And  it  is  the  great  glory  of  M.  Hugo  that  he 
has  supplied  this  charm  in  such  variety — has  so  far  sur- 
passed the  elder  poets  in  the  number  and  complexity  of 
his  metrical  effects  both  in  lyric,  epic,  and  dramatic  verse. 

There  is  indeed  one  point  for  which  he  is  often 
praised,  but  in  which  his  success  is  less  complete  than 
at  first  sight  appears.  He  has  taken  great  pains  to 
avoid  the  chevilles,  or  otiose  adjectives,  etc.,  introduced 
by  the  tragedians  at  the  ends  of  lines  in  order  to  secure 
a  rhyme.  But  the  exigencies  of  rhyme  have  forced 
him  often  to  introduce  half  a  line  or  a  whole  line 
which  looks  as  if  it  had  a  meaning  of  its  own,  but 


350  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ni. 

proves  on  examination  to  be  no  better  than  a  preten- 
tious cheville.  Let  us  take  as  an  example  the  well- 
known  couplet — 

"  Ce  si^cle  avail  deux  ans  ;  Rome  rempla^ait  Sparte, 
D^jk  Napoleon  per^ait  sous  Bonaparte." 

Here  the  words  "  Eome  remplaqait  Sparte "  have  a 
faux  air  of  epigram.  But  when  we  discover  that  all 
they  mean  is  that  the  extremely  slight  resemblance  ot 
Paris  to  Sparta  in  1793  was  succeeded  by  its  still 
sUghter  resemblance  to  Rome  in  1802,  and  that  the 
word  "  Sparte  "  has  been  dragged  in  at  any  cost  for  the 
rhyme's  sake,  we  feel  that  a  cheville,  like  some  other 
concessions  to  the  intractable  nature  of  things,  is  least 
offensive  when  it  asks  for  no  admiration. 

On  the  other  hand,  M.  Hugo's  use  of  enjamhement 
— the  interlacing  of  one  line  with  the  next — which 
the  tragedians  avoid,  and  his  habitual  use  of  the  mot 
p}-oprc,  or  really  descriptive  word,  instead  of  the  insipid 
paraphrases  once  in  fashion,  are  conspicuous  instances 
of  the  skill  with  which  he  has  extended  the  conven- 
tional limits  of  versification.  And  this  extension  was 
much  needed  in  France.  Tew  nations  have  had  to 
contend  with  a  language  less  poetically  flexible,  a 
syntax  more  infertile,  a  vocabulary  more  confined. 
And  few  nations  have  laid  upon  themselves  laws  of 
poetical  dignity  so  rigorous  and  arbitrary — laws  im- 
posed not  by  rhythmical  instinct,  but  by  a  tyrannical 
spirit  of  symmetry  and  pomp ;  laws  whose  fulfilment 


ni.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  35] 

could  briug  little  pleasure,  while  their  infraction  was 
punished  with  a  bitterness  of  censure  such  as  in  most 
countries  is  kept  for  moral  faults  alone. 

The  changes  adopted  by  M.  Hugo,  therefore,  have 
been  almost  wholly  advantageous.  Where  it  was  well 
to  make  the  old  rules  more  stringent,  as  in  the  case  of 
rhymes,  he  has  done  so ;  where  it  was  well  to  relax 
them,  as  in  the  case  of  the  cnjamhement,  he  has  relaxed 
them ;  where  a  wholly  new  life  and  variety  were 
needed — namely,  in  the  rhythmical  structure  of  the 
three  main  classes  of  poetry — he  has  infused  that  life. 
He  has  revived  what  was  good  in  early  French  poetry, 
and  has  added  new  artifices  of  his  own.  And  he  has 
outlived  the  opposition  to  his  innovations,  and  is  now 
himself  an  accepted  model  of  French  versification. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  M.  Hugo  is  the  only 
modern  French  poet  who  has  achieved  results  of  this 
kind.  The  works  of  Lamartine  and  De  Musset,  for 
instance,  contain  examples  of  metrical  charm  which  it 
would  be  hard  to  surpass.  But  M.  Hugo  covers  more 
ground  than  they.  His  works  form  an  unfailing 
repertory  both  of  metrical  and  of  rhetorical  artifices;  and 
it  is  not  extravagant  to  say  that  he  has  shown  a  more 
complete  command  over  the  resources  of  the  French 
language  than  any  previous  author. 

If  we  are  asked  to  what  rank  among  French  poets 
M.  Hugo  is  entitled  by  his  possession  of  this  unique 
power  over  the  vehicle  of  poetry,  we  find  it  hard  to 
reply.     The  analogy  of  Mr.  Swinburne  at  once  occurs. 


352  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ra 

Most  persons  who  take  this  kind  of  virtuoso  interest  in 
language  and  metre  will  probably  consider  that  Mr. 
Swinburne  has  shown  a  power  of  handling  the  English 
tongue  which  no  other  poet  has  ever  surpassed.  And, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  M.  Hugo,  as  well  as  in  the 
English  poet,  there  is  something  of  that  imreaUty 
which,  as  it  has  been  well  said,  often  makes  it 
necessary  for  the  reader  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  most 
impassioned  poems  to  contribute  the  sincerity  of 
feeling  himself.  And  if  in  M.  Hugo  there  is  some- 
times a  greater  weight  and  force — if  Zcs  Chdtiments  is 
on  the  whole  a  stronger  book  than  Songs  before  Sun- 
rise, yet  there  is  surely  nothing  in  M.  Hugo  to  equal 
Mr.  Swinburne's  highest  flights — no  elevation  like  that 
of  the  lines  Super  Flumina  Babylonis,  wlaich  show  us 
once  more  with  what  a  glory  of  inspiration  a  great 
poet  can  praise  a  great  hero.  The  poetical  superiority 
of  the  English  language  to  the  French  teUs  both  ways 
in  this  comparison.  On  the  one  hand,  the  lack  of 
richness,  majesty,  and  glamour  in  the  French  tongue 
will  sometimes  seem  to  leave  M.  Hugo's  best  poetical 
artifices  naked,  as  it  were,  before  our  eyes — will  make 
us  think  in  half-disgust  that  this,  after  all,  is  what 
poetry  as  poetry  comes  to.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
very  jejuneness  of  the  language  fits  it  for  the  produc- 
tion of  a  peculiar  class  of  effects — effects  of  crystalline 
clearness  and  triumphant  simplicity,  which  give  us 
perhaps  a  more  magical  sense  of  art  which  has  con- 
cealed its  art  than  any  English  versification  can  offer. 


in.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  353 

But  I  must  content  myself  with  indicating  this  parallel, 
without  attempting  to  adjudge  a  poetic  rank  which 
must  depend  so  largely  upon  what  it  is  with  which  the 
reader  desires  that  poetry  should  supply  him. 

That  potency  of  imagination  in  M.  Hugo  to  which 
I  have  already  referred — his  power  of  projecting  him- 
self, as  it  were,  into  some  strange  and  strong  situation 
with  all  his  ordinary  intellectual  resources  still  about 
him — is  of  course  visible  not  only  in  his  poems,  but  in 
his  plays  and  romances.  These,  however,  are  so 
familiar  to  English  readers,  and  have  received  such 
ample  appreciation,  that  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss 
them  at  length,  especially  since  they  seem  to  me  to 
constitute  rather  the  outworks  than  the  central  citadel 
of  their  author's  fame.  For  the  imaginative  realisation 
which  is  so  admirable  in  certain  crowning  moments  of 
these  stories  has  hardly  been  extended  to  their  general 
conduct  or  their  inner  consistency.  And  an  historical 
novel  can  hardly  be  quite  satisfactory  unless  it  be,  like 
Scott's,  the  outcome  of  a  life  which  has  identified  itself 
from  childhood  with  the  scene,  and  almost  with  the 
age,  described.  At  the  least  it  ought,  like  JRomola,  to 
be  the  flower  which  blossoms  from  a  study  as  accurate 
and  profound  as  would  be  needed  for  an  independent 
history.  In  the  picture  in  Zes  insurables  of  Paris  early 
in  this  century,  M.  Hugo's  art  fulfils  these  conditions. 
But  when  he  describes  scenes  or  places  more  remote, 
he  rapidly  loses  verisimilitude,  till  L' Homme  qui  rii, 
the  scene  of  which  professes  to  be  laid  in  Queen  Anne's 

2a 


354  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m. 

England,  would  have  won  more  credence  if  it  had  been 
given  out  as  an  episode  occurring  in  the  island  of 
Barataria. 

The  interest,  therefore,  of  these  romances  is  in  great 
measure  independent  of  their  historical  framework.  It 
is  the  interest  wliich  we  feel  in  seeing  life  treated  by  a 
man  who  can  deal  with  emotion  in  large  masses  and 
move  freely  among  great  ideas.  The  literary  artifices 
employed  may  be  sometimes  unworthy  of  high  art. 
We  may  be  often  reminded  of  the  crude  touches  by 
which  Dickens,  or  certain  authors  much  inferior  to 
Dickens,  produce  their  powerful  general  effects.  But 
at  any  rate  the  effect  is  produced,  and  Esmeralda, 
Bishop  Myriel,  Fantine,  Valjean,  GDliatt,  Gavroche, 
have  entered  definitively  into  that  gallery  of  strongly- 
realised  characters  whose  substantive  existence  seems 
almost  to  be  demonstrated  by  the  "  permanent  possibili- 
ties of  sensation"  which  their  names  evoke  in  our  hearts. 

M.  Hugo's  dramas,  again,  exhibit  liis  strong  and  his 
weak  points  in  a  concentrated  form.  His  mastery 
over  rhythm  and  rhyme,  his  wealth  of  declamation 
and  epigram,  are  seen  at  their  best  in  Hernani  and  Lc 
Roi  s'amuse ;  and  his  instinct  for  all  that  is  stirring, 
grandiose,  and  emphatic  in  human  affairs,  aids'  him  iu 
the  presentation  of  scenic  effects  and  the  conduct  of 
rapid  action.  The  more  must  we  regret  to  find  that 
these  striking  dramas  contain,  one  may  almost  say,  no 
truth  whatever ;  neither  truth  to  history  nor  truth  to 
nature.     It  is  not  worth  while  to  analyse  the  plot  of 


III.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  355 

each  play.  A  glance  at  Cromwell  or  Marie  Tudor  will 
be  enough  to  show  an  English  reader  that  M.  Hugo 
can  hardly  have  made  any  serious  attempt  to  maintain 
historical  probability.  But  the  unreality  of  the  per- 
sonages in  themselves  is  stiU  more  disappointing,  as 
being  in  such  direct  opposition  to  the  precepts  of  M. 
Hugo's  own  school  Eacine  and  CorneiUe  create,  for 
the  most  part,  characters  which  are  typical  rather  than 
individual.  A  few  leading  qualities  are  given,  and  the 
action  of  circumstances  is  made  to  illustrate  these 
qualities  in  a  simple  and  massive  manner,  with  no 
attempt  to  place  before  us,  as  Shakespeare  does,  a 
living  personage  conceived  from  within,  and  presenting 
a  personality  in  itself  indefinable,  but  capable  of  holding 
together  a  complex  web  of  mental  and  moral  charac- 
teristics. But  the  Eomanticists  professed  to  imitate 
Shakespeare  rather  than  Eacine  in  this  respect ;  and 
the  modern  school  of  French  drama  has  produced  many 
realistic  and  many  delicate  sketches.  M.  Hugo  claims 
more  loudly  than  any  one  that  it  is  thus  that  he 
imderstands  drama ;  but  the  very  words  in  which  he 
describes  his  way  of  going  to  work  are  enough  to 
explain  its  comparative  failure. 

"  Eh  bien !  qu'est-ce  que  c'est  que  Lucrezia  Borgia  ? 
Prenez  la  difForinit6  morale  la  plus  hideuse,  la  plus  repous- 
sante,  la  plus  complete ;  .  .  .  et  maintenant  melez  k  toute 
cette  diiformit6  morale  un  sentiment  pur,  le  plus  pur  que 
la  femme  puisse  6prouver,  le  sentiment  matemel  ;  dans 
votre  monstre  mettez  una  m6re  ;  et  le  monstre  interessera  , 


356  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

et  le  monstre  fera  pleurer,  et  cette  creature  qui  faisait  peur 
fera  piti6,  et  cette  ame  difForme  devieudra  presque  belle 
k  vos  yeux.  Ainsi,  la  paternity  sanctifiant  la  difformit6 
physique,  voila  Le  Bui  s' amuse ;  la  niaternit6  purifiant  la 
difformit6  morale,  voil^  Lucrhce  Borgia." 

This  system  of  predetermined  paradox,  of  embodied 
antithesis,  is  surely  not  likely  to  produce  figures  which 
will  seem  to  live  before  us.  Imagination  is  thrown 
away  when  it  devotes  itself  to  imagining  what  is  so 
grotesquely  impossible.  How  differently  does  a  real 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart  clothe  itself  in  fiction ! 
Take,  for  instance,  the  way  in  which  the  fraternal 
affection  between  Tom  and  Maggie  TuUiver  is  treated 
in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss;  its  half-animal  growth,  its 
dumb  persistence,  its  misunderstandings  and  repulsions, 
and  then  its  momentary  self-revelation  in  the  ecstasy 
of  death.  These  primary  emotions  are  not  simply  spells 
to  conjure  by,  magical  ingredients  which  we  can  throw 
into  the  cauldron  of  human  passions  and  change  it 
in  a  moment  from  blood-red  to  sky-blue.  They  are 
the  simple  impulses  of  complex  action ;  they  are  life- 
long forces  which  modify  the  character  as  a  partial 
access  to  light  modifies  the  growth  of  a  tree. 

No  doubt  it  is  difficult  to  imply  all  this  within  the 
narrow  limits  and  amid  the  thronging  incidents  of 
a  play ;  difficult  to  paint  an  emotional  history  which 
shall  be  catastrophic  without  being  discontinuous.  M. 
Hugo's  catastrophes  are  too  apt  to  snap  the  thread  of 
his  story.     Triboulet  as  a  spiteful  court  fool  is  despi- 


ni.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  367 

cable ;  Triboulet  as  an  injured  father  is  almost  sublime ; 
but  there  is  little  more  connection  between  his  speeches 
in  the  two  characters  than  is  involved  in  the  appear- 
ance of  the  same  name  at  their  head.  The  want  of 
any  real  conception  of  the  interaction  of  human  beings 
upon  each  other  is  felt  throughout.  The  most  potent 
genius  cannot  create  other  personalities  wholly  out  of 
its  own :  the  greatest  like  the  least  of  us,  if  he  would 
understand  his  fellows,  needs  laborious  observation, 
patient  analysis,  and,  above  all,  that  power  of  sym- 
pathy which  steals  like  daylight  into  the  heart's  hidden 
chambers  in  whose  lock  no  key  will  turn. 

It  is  the  want  of  knowledge,  the  want  of  truth, 
which  has  left  M.  Hugo  no  "reincarnation  of  Shake- 
speare," but  only  the  most  magnificent  of  melo- 
dramatists. 

The  want  of  truth  !  It  is  hardly  credible  how  this 
moral  defect,  this  reckless  indifference  to  accuracy  of 
assertion,  has  infected  M.  Hugo's  works.  We  could 
forgive  an  absence  both  of  the  historical  and  the 
scientific  instinct,  if  our  author  at  least  took  care  to  be 
correct  in  details.  We  could  forgive  carelessness  in 
details  if  a  true  instinct  for  history  or  for  science 
determined  the  general  effect.  But  too  often  all  is 
wrong  together,  and,  worse  still,  this  quagmire  of 
falsity  is  surrounded  with  placards  emphatically 
announcing  that  every  inch  of  the  ground  is  firm. 

I  have  neither  the  knowledge  nor  the  space  to  go 
through  the  hundredth  part  of  M.  Hixgo's  blunders. 


358  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iii. 

Nihil  tetigit  quod  non  confuderit.  Engineers  and 
physicists  will  explain  the  absurdity  of  the  engineering 
and  the  physics  which  make  up  so  large  a  part  of  Les 
Travailleurs  de  la  Mer.  Men  familiar  with  the 
languages  of  Brittany  and  of  Guernsey  have  shown 
how  M.  Hugo  has  transferred  dozens  of  words  from  a 
Guernsey  dictionary  to  put  into  the  mouths  of  Breton 
peasants.  Men  who  know  the  slang  and  the  ruffians 
of  Paris  will  bear  witness  to  the  gratuitous  arrogance 
of  his  pretentions  to  this  unsavoury  lore,  in  which  he 
is,  as  compared  with  Gaboriau  or  Zola,  as  a  child  to  a 
professor.  We  can  all  judge  of  his  etymology  of  the 
name  of  that  famous  Scotch  "  headland,"  "  The  First  of 
the  Fourth."  We  can  all  estimate  the  verisimilitude  of 
the  tale  of  the  fortunes  of  that  great  peer,  Lord  Lin- 
naeus Clancharlie,  a  voluntary  exile  from  his  truly 
British  country-seats  of  Hell-kerters,  Homble,  and 
Gumdraitk  Yet,  if  we  are  to  take  M.  Hugo's  word  for 
it,  he  knows  more  about  every  country  in  Europe  than 
the  natives  themselves.  "  D  est  bien  entendu,"  he  says 
in  a  note  to  Buy  Bias,  on  which  M.  Planche's  sarcasm 
has  fixed,  "  il  est  lien  entendu  que  dans  Ruy  Bias, 
comme  dans  tons  les  ouvrages  pr^c^dents  de  I'auteur, 
tous  les  details  d'drudition  sont  scrupuleusement 
exacts."  Methinks  M.  Hugo  doth  protest  too  much. 
For  in  support  of  his  assertion  that  he  is  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  language,  literature,  and  secret 
history  of  Spain,  he  deigns  only  to  furnish  us  with  an 
explanation  of  the  word  Almojarijazgo.     Almojarifazgo ! 


in.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  359 

One  is  tempted  to  embark  upon  a  "  key  to  all  mytho- 
logies "  on  the  strength  of  a  sound  acquaintance  with 
the  etymology  of  Abracadabra. 

There  is  one  subject— his  own  Notre-Dame  —  on 
which  we  might  have  trusted  that  M.  Hugo  would  have 
been  safe  from  attack.  But  when  we  come  on  a  de- 
scription of  this  sanctuary  as  consisting  of  "  deux 
tours  de  granit  faites  par  Charlemagne  "  our  confidence 
vanishes  with  great  suddenness.  For  it  is  certain  that 
there  is  not  an  ounce  of  granite  in  the  towers  of  Notre- 
Dame,  and  that  Cliarlemagne  had  just  as  much  to  do 
with  building  them  as  Caligula. 

It  is  of  course  on  the  moral  side  that  these  inac- 
curacies are  most  important.  There  is  no  question 
as  to  M.  Hugo's  powers  of  acquisition,  comprehension, 
memory.  He  might  easily  have  become  a  real  savant, 
a  real  historian,  if  he  had  given  to  other  subjects  the 
same  kind  of  attention  which  he  has  given  to  versifica- 
tion and  grammar,  if  he  had  cared  as  much  for  what 
he  said  as  for  the  style  in  which  he  said  it.  But  here 
once  more  his  self- adoration  has  interfered.  It  has 
taught  him  that  he  is  sup7-a  scienfiam,  that  neither 
Nature  nor  History  can  possibly  have  any  secrets 
hidden  from  him,  that  a  royal  road  has  taken  him  to 
the  very  source  and  fount  of  things.  And  when  he 
asserts  that  some  preposterous  misdescription  of  nature, 
some  staring  historical  blunder,  is  absolutely  correct, 
we  must  not  think  that  he  is  wilfully  trying  to  deceive 
us.      We  must  remember  how  easy  a  man  finds  it  to 


360  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

forget  that  external  facts  have  any  existence  independ- 
ent of  his  own  mind ;  how  soon  the  philosopher's  ipse 
dixit  becomes  convincing  to  the  philosopher  himself. 

From  the  literary  let  us  turn  to  the  political  side 
of  M.  Hugo's  career.  And  here  especially  we  shall 
find  him  "  French  of  the  French,"  summing  up  in  one 
life  the  conflicting  tendencies  of  his  time. 

The  Frenchmen  whose  youth  fell  early  in  this  cen- 
tury were  born  into  a  moral  chaos.  They  awoke,  as 
it  were,  in  a  desecrated  temple,  with  a  shattered  Dagon 
stretched  across  its  floor.  It  was  plain  that  Napoleon 
had  ruined  France,  and  yet  there  was  no  idol  to  set 
up  in  his  stead.  The  Bourbons,  brought  back  by 
strangers,  seemed  to  symbolise  only  the  humiliation  of 
France — the  loss  even  of  that  military  glory  which 
she  had  accepted  as  a  substitute  for  the  freedom  and 
virtue  which  the  Eevolution  had  proclaimed  so  often, 
but  had  never  enthroned.  Aspiring  youths  were  hard 
put  to  it  to  create  an  ideal.  It  was  almost  a  chance 
whether  tliey  became  Ultramontane  and  Eoyalist,  or 
dreamt  of  a  far-off  republic,  too  often  discounted  at  the 
barricades.  But  the  mass  of  men  throughout  the  first 
half  of  the  century  were  slowly  falling  back  into  the 
Napoleonic  illusion ;  they  had  not  virtue  enough  to 
save  them  from  admiring  what  was  without  virtue,  and 
thus  from  ultimately  expiating  their  worsliip  of  ignoble 
glory  by  fellowship  in  ignoble  ruin.  Victor  Hugo's 
political  attitude  was  determined  mainly  by  personal 
sympathies.     He  was  brought  up  by  a  Eoyalist  mother 


ni.j  VICTOR  HUGO. 


381 


and  spent  his  early  youth  with  tlie  young  Eomanticists, 
who  were,  for  the  most  part,  Eoyalist  and  Catholic. 
The  Odes  et  Ballades  and  some  later  poems  express  tliis 
phase  of  his  life. 

The  death  of  his  brother  Eugine  recalled  his  father 
from  a  kind  of  voluntary  exile.  The  Comte  Hugo  had 
been  a  Bonapartist  general,  always  in  semi-disgrace  for 
his  republican  opinions — the  Baron  de  Pontmercy  of 
Les  MisiraUes,  where  Marius  represents  the  author 
himself.  From  his  father  the  young  poet  learnt  Eepub- 
licanism,  and  added  of  his  own  motion  a  worship  of 
the  great  conqueror  whose  character  in  some  points 
resembled  his  own — "  Napoldon,  soleil  dont  je  suis  le 
Memnon." 

We  need  not  condemn  this  change  of  front.  Young 
men  will  often  veer  round  rather  abruptly  on  their  first 
contact  with  actual  life.  For  each  set  of  views  has  a 
poetry  of  its  own,  which  may  attract  the  imagination 
of  youth,  but  which  is  apt  to  appear  unreal  when  con- 
fronted with  this  mixed  world.  And  a  reaction  from 
ideals  which  we  can  no  longer  idealise  is  responsible 
for  no  small  share  of  our  working  principles. 

It  is  more  important  to  notice  how  superficial  has 
been  M.  Hugo's  grasp,  whether  of  the  monarchical  or 
of  the  republican  conception  of  society.  Charles  the 
Tenth  may  not  have  been  an  inspiring  person.  But 
the  relation  between  France  and  her  kings,  one  of  the 
most  imposing  themes  in  history,  might  have  suggested 
something  better  than  the  hanalitis  of  the  "  Funeral 


862  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iii. 

Ode  "  in  the  Voix  InUrieures.  And  if  the  shallowness 
here  be  ascribed  to  immaturity,  it  must  be  replied  that 
we  find  the  same  vague  and  empty  rhetoric  in  M. 
Hugo's  praises  of  the  Eepublic.  And  yet  there  is  no 
subject  on  which  a  political  preacher  in  France  needs 
to  be  more  explicit.  For  under  the  name  of  Eepublic 
are  included  two  forms  of  government  as  dissimilar  as 
forms  of  government  can  be.  A  republic  may  be  con- 
structed, like  the  American  Republic,  on  individualistic 
principles,  reducing  the  action  of  government  to  a 
minimum,  and  leaving  every  one  undisturbed  in  the 
pursuit  of  private  well-being.  Or  it  may  be  con- 
structed on  socialistic  principles,  such  as  those  which 
Fourier  or  Saint-Simon  laid  down,  involving  a  profound 
reconstruction  of  society  and  a  levelling  of  ranks  and 
fortunes.  A  republic  of  the  first  type  may  yet  be 
permanently  established  in  France.  But  its  danger 
lies  in  its  failure  to  satisfy  the  enthusiasts  of  any  party. 
For  it  is  the  second  type  of  Republic  towards  which 
the  eager  spiiits  of  the  great  French  towns  seem  in 
reality  to  tend.  But  this  socialistic  democracy  has 
never  yet  been  able  to  manifest  itself  in  a  practicable 
form,  or  to  avoid  even  such  obvious  roads  to  .ruin  as 
political  economy  can  point  out.  Surely  the  preacher 
of  the  Republic  in  France  should  say  which  of  these 
types  or  what  modification  of  them  he  desires — should 
explain  how  far  the  United  States  answer  to  his  ideal, 
or  to  what  extent  and  with  what  safeguards  he  thinks 
his  country  prepared  to  accept  a  communistic  scheme. 


tn.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  363 

No  real  instruction  on  these  points  can  be  got  from  M. 
Hugo's  writings  or  speeches.  Poets  are  not  bound  to 
be  politicians.  But  when  a  poet  claims  also  to  be  a 
statesman  and  a  prophet,  he  ought  to  give  a  reason  for 
the  faith  that  is  in  him ;  he  ought  to  show  some  sign 
of  having  loosened  tlie  political  knots  by  reflection 
before  he  cuts  them  by  epigram  and  imagery.  If  he 
merely  boxes  the  rhetorical  compass  —  if  he  merely 
gives  us  a  series  of  declamations  on  the  glories  of  the 
Bourbons,  of  Napoleon,  of  the  Republic  which  is  to 
be  —  we  cannot  attach  much  value  to  his  professed 
inspiration. 

It  may  be  said  that  there  is  at  least  one  social 
reform  on  which  M.  Hugo  has  dwelt  consistently 
through  all  his  phases — the  abohtion  of  the  punish- 
ment of  death.  Like  those  branches  of  mathematics 
which  involve  infinite  quantities,  any  question  con- 
cerned with  human  life  and  death  is  a  favourite  lurk- 
ing-place of  fallacies.  We  will  speak  here  only  of  M. 
Hugo's  ground  of  objection,  which  lies  in  the  cruelty  of 
the  punishment.  So  far  as  the  cruelty  consists  in  the 
pain  of  anticipation,  that  pain  is  divisible  into  two 
factors — regret  at  leaving  a  family  unprovided  for,  and 
actual  terror.  The  first  factor,  if  felt  at  all,  is  felt 
equally  by  the  convict  who  is  going  to  the  galleys  for 
life.  And  the  second  factor  we  may  surely  neglect. 
If  a  man  has  left  his  neighbour's  family  mourning,  we 
need  not  be  tender  over  a  few  days  of  selfish  terror 
for  himself.     Then  comes,  according  to  M.  Hugo,  the 


364  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i 


m. 


crowning  cruelty  of  removing  him  from  this  world. 
We  may  reply  that  if  we  remove  him  from  his  home 
to  a  prison  for  life  we  are  pretty  sure  that  we  are  doing 
him  an  injury.  But  if,  instead  of  this,  we  remove 
him  from  the  earth  altogether,  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing  whether  we  are  doing  him  an  injury  or  not. 
Surely  there  are  plenty  of  other  benevolent  causes  to 
be  taken  up  which,  if  less  susceptible  of  pathetic  advo- 
cacy, are  also  less  dependent  on  a  turn  of  metaphysics. 
But  in  fact,  during  the  years  preceding  the  coup 
d'6tat,  M.  Hugo  was  increasingly  in  want  of  something 
to  say.  His  style  continued  to  improve ;  his  mastery 
over  rhythm  and  rhyme  grew  more  magical  than  ever. 
But  each  succeeding  volume  of  verse — Les  Voix  InU- 
rieures,  Les  Rayons  et  les  Ombres  —  was  weaker  than 
the  last.  It  was  supposed  that  he  had  written  him- 
self out.  The  Ee volution  of  1848  did  not  bring  him 
to  the  front.  But  in  July  1851  he  delivered  in 
the  Assembly  an  impassioned  speech  against  Louis - 
Napoleon,  who,  till  his  treasonable  designs  on  the  Ee- 
public  became  manifest,  had  been  the  poet's  intimate 
friend.  After  the  coup  d'etat  and  a  few  days  of  futile 
counterplotting,  which  all  the  literary  artifices  of  the 
Histoire  d'un  Crime  can  hardly  make  impressive,  M. 
Hugo  made  his  escape  from  France.  From  Jersey  and 
Guernsey  he  despatched  that  marvellous  series  of  songs 
and  satires  which  were  passed  secretly  from  hand  to 
hand  in  Paris,  and  read  with  tears  and  cries  of  rage 
during    that   national    paralysis   which   ended  in  the 


in.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  365 

Second  Empire.  Les  Chdtiments  is  perhaps  M.  Hugo's 
best  work.  Sarcasm,  declamation,  song,  all  his  powers 
culminate  and  are  concentrated  there.  Can  anything 
be  more  melodious,  simpler,  more  touching,  than  these 
last  words  of  a  dying  exile  ? — 

"  Un  proscrit,  lass6  de  souffrir, 
Mourait ;  calme,  il  fermait  son  livre  ; 
Et  je  lui  dis  :   '  Pourquoi  mourir  1 ' 
II  me  r^pondit :  '  Pourquoi  vivre  ? ' 
Puis  il  reprit :  '  Je  me  d61ivre. 
Adieu  !  je  meurs.      N6ron-Scapin 
Met  aux  fers  la  France  fl^trie.'  .  .  . 
— On  ne  peut  pas  vivre  sans  pain ; 
Oa  ne  peut  pas  non  plus  vivre  sans  la  patrie. — 

"  •  •  •  '  Je  meurs  de  ne  plus  voir  les  champs 
Oil  je  regardais  I'aube  naitre, 
De  ne  plus  entendre  les  chants 
Que  j'entendais  de  ma  fenetre. 
Men  ame  est  oil  je  ne  puis  Stre. 
Sous  quatre  planches  de  sapin, 
Eaterrez-moi  dans  la  prairie.' 
— On  ne  peut  pas  vivre  sans  pain ; 
On  ne  peut  pas  non  plus  vivre  sans  la  patrie. — " 

Has  sarcasm  ever  barbed  itself  with  bitterer  em- 
phasis than  in  the  following  song  ? — 

"  Sa  grandeur  6blouit  I'histoire. 
Quinze  ans,  il  fut 
Le  dieu  qui  trainait  la  victoiro 
Sur  un  affat ; 


366  MODEBN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

LXarope  sous  sa  loi  gnerriere 

Se  debattit. — 
Toi,  son  EiBge,  marche  derriere. 

Petit,  petit. 

"Ns^leon  dans  la  'bataille, 

Grave  et  serein, 
Gnidait  a  travere  la  mitraflle 

L'aigle  d'arrain. 
H  entra  ear  le  fwnt  d' Areola, 

H  en  sortit — 
Void  de  I'or,  viens,  piUe  et  vole, 

Petit,  petit 

"  Berlin,  Yienne,  ^taient  ses  mai treses  ; 

H  les  forcait, 
Leste,  et  prenant  les  forteresses 

Par  le  corset ; 
n  triompha  de  cent  bastUIes 

Qa'D  investit — 
Voici  pour  toi,  void  des  fiUes, 

Petit,  petit 

"  II  passait  les  monts  et  les  plainea, 
Tenant  en  main 
La  palme,  la  foudre  et  les  rSnes 

Du  genre  humain ; 
II  etait  ivre  de  sa  gloire 

Qui  retentit — 
Voici  du  sang,  accoors,  viens  boire. 
Petit,  petit 

"  Qnand  U  tomba,  lachant  le  monde, 
L'unmense  mer 


m.}  VICTOR  HUGa  S87 

OuTiit  a  sa  chute  profonde 

Le  gouffre  amer : 
D  J  plongea,  sinistre  archange, 

Et  s'engloutit, — 
Toi,  ra  te  noirsis  dans  la  fange. 

Petit,  petit." 

Finally  I  mast  quote  the  song  which  seems  to  me 
the  best  of  all,  expressing  as  it  does  with  a  sound  so 
ringing,  with  so  passionate  an  intensity,  that  strange 
antithesis  in  the  "  twy-natured  "  French  —  their  capa- 
city at  once  for  base  materialism  and  for  ecstatic 
ideality — the  way  in  which  the  whole  nation  will 
seem  suddenly  to  cast  its  slough  as  a  serpent  does, 
and  to  leap  to  life  at  a  word. 

"  II  est  des  jours  abjects  oi,  seduits  par  la  joie 
Sans  honneur, 
Les  peuples  au  succes  se  livrent.,  triste  proie 
Du  Kinheur. 

'■  Alors  des  nations  que  berce  uc  fatal  songe 
Dans  leur  lit> 
La  vertu  coule  et  tombe  aiasi  que  d"une  eponge 
L'eau  jaillit. 

"  Alors  derant  le  mal,  le  vice,  la  folie, 
Les  vivants 
Imitent  les  saluts  du  vil  roseau  qui  plie 
Sous  les  vents. 

"  Alors  festins  et  jeux  ;  rien  de  ce  que  dit  Time 
Xe  s'entend  ; 
On  boit,  on  mange,  on  chante,  on  danse,  on  ^t  inflme 
£t  content. 


368  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iii 

"  Le  crime  heureux,  servi  par  d'immondes  ministres, 
Sous  les  cieux 
Kit,  et  vous  frissonnez,  grands  ossements  sinistres 
Des  aieux. 

"  On  vit  honteux,  les  yeux  troubles,  le  pas  oblique, 
H6bet6  ; 
Tout-4-coup  un  clairon  jette  aux  vents  :   E(5publique  ! 
Liberte  ! 

"  Et  le  monde,  6veille  par  cette  apre  fanfare, 
Est  pareil 
Aux  ivrognes  de  nuit  qu'en  se  levant  effare 
Le  soleil." 

A  volume  could  not  paiiat  more  vividly  than  these 
magnificent  lines  that  characteristic  shock  and  awaken- 
ing— that  divine  and  unreasonable  fire — which  seems 
to  run  through  Paris  in  time  of  revolution  like 
Rumour  through  the  Hellenic  host  in  the  crisis  of 
victory.  But  where  the  song  ends  the  story  has  too 
often  ended.  How  often  has  some  noble  protest, 
some  just  and  armed  appeal,  sounded  along  the  streets 
and  Boulevards  like  the  angel's  trump,  and  has  been 
followed  by  no  Great  Assize,  no  new  and  heavenly 
order,  but  by  uncertain  voices,  angry  eyes,  confusion 
worse  confounded,  and  the  old  round  of  fraud  and 
tyranny  begun  anew ! 

It  is  guidance,  not  awakening,  which  France  needs ; 
wisdom,  not  impulse ;  a  sincere  self-condemnation  for 
the  sins  of  the  past  before  she  builds  her  castles  in 
the  future  air. 


ni.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  369 

Few  persons  will  now  be  concerned  to  defend 
Napoleon  the  Third,  that  most  inglorious  representa- 
tive of  glory.  Thus  far  it  is  easy  to  sympathise  with 
Les  Chdtiments  and  Na-poUon  le  Petit.  But  we  in 
England  cannot  consent  to  throw,  as  M.  Hugo  too 
often  throws,  the  blame  of  the  establishment  of  this 
base  empire  wholly  on  those  who  profited  thereby. 
We  must  hold  that  every  town,  every  village,  every 
adult  in  France  were  sharers  to  some  degree  in  tlie 
shame  of  such  an  overthrow  at  the  hands  of  such  men. 
Least  of  all  can  those  be  absolved  who  made  the 
ignoble  crimes  of  the  Second  Empire  possible  by  their 
adoration  of  the  splendid  crimes  of  the  First.  When 
"  the  Memnon  of  Napoleon  "  complained  that 

"  Ce  voleur  de  nuit  alhima  sa  lanteme 
Au  soleil  d'Austerlitz," 

he  should  have  asked  himself  whether  he  had  done 
well  in  helping  to  keep  the  sun  of  Austerlitz  ahght. 

This  and  much  other  fault  might  be  found  with 
the  temper  of  M.  Hugo's  exile.  We  miss  the  high 
self-forgetfulness,  the  resolute  justice,  of  Mazzini 
banished  and  defamed.  But  the  great  fact  remains. 
M.  Hugo,  in  scorn  of  amnesties  and  invitations,  lived 
out  nineteen  years  of  exUe ;  liis  voice  did  not  fail  nor 
his  heart  falter ;  he  stood  on  his  rock  in  the  free 
British  seas  like  Elijah  on  Carmel,  spokesman  and 
champion  of  all  those  who  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to 
BaaL     It  is  this  exUe   that  has  given  dignity  to  his 

2n 


370  MODERN  ESSAYS.      .  [iii. 

life ;  it  is  banishment  from  France  that  has  made  him 
one  of  her  heroes.      Perierat,  nisi  periisset. 

And  when  at  last  that  evil  empire  set  in  blood  the 
exile's  triumph  came.  From  Brussels,  on  the  eve  of 
re-entering  Paris,  he  wrote  some  of  his  most  splendid 
verses— verses  in  which  all  that  there  is  of  ardent  in 
his  spirit,  of  majestic  in  his  personality,  seems  to  lift 
and  carry  us  along  with  him  as  in  a  chariot  of  fire. 

"  Alors  qu'on  entendait  ta  fanfare  de  fete 
Retentir, 
0  Paris,  je  t'ai  fui  comme  le  noir  prophfete 
Fuyait  Tyr. 

"  Quand  I'empire  en  Gomorrhe  avait  change  Lutfece, 
Morne,  amer, 
Je  me  suis  envol6  dans  la  grande  tristesse 
De  la  mer. 

"  Lk,  tragique  ;  6coutant  ta  chanson,  ton  d^lire, 
Bruits  confus, 
J'opposais  k  ton  luxe,  i  ton  reve,  k  ton  rire, 
Un  refus. 

"  Mais  aujourd'hui  qu'arrive  avec  sa  sombre  foule 
Attila, 
Aujourd'hui  que  le  monde  autour  de  toi  s'6croule, 
Me  voila. 

"  France,  etre  sur  ta  claie  i  I'heure  od  I'on  te  tratne 
Aux  cheveux, 
0  ma  m6re,  et  porter  men  anneau  de  ta  chalne, 
Je  le  veux ! 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  371 

"  J'accours,  puisque  sur  toi  la  bombe  et  la  mitraille 
Ont  crache. 
Tu  me  regarderas  debout  sur  ta  muraille, 
Ou  couch6. 

"  Et  peut-ltre,  en  ta  terra  oil  brille  I'espSrance, 
Pur  flambeau, 
Pour  prix  de  mon  exil,  tu  m'accorderas,  France, 
Un  tombeau." 

M.  Hugo's  career  since  his  return  to  Paris  need  be 
but  briefly  recounted.  He  remained  in  Paris  during 
the  siege,  and  his  poems  served  as  a  rallying-point  of 
patriotism,  hatred  of  the  Prussians,  and  hope  of  re- 
venge. L' Annie  TerriUe,  it  is  true,  gives  a  most  crude 
and  violent  expression  to  the  heated  feelings  of  the 
time.  Its  contrast  with  M.  Eenan's  writings  of  the 
same  date  shows  all  the  difference  between  the  patriot 
who  is  before  all  things  a  philosopher  and  the  patriot 
who  is  before  all  things  a  rhetorician.  Where  the  one 
seeks  to  prove  how  contrary  to  the  true  interests  and 
instincts  of  Germany  as  a  whole  is  the  Prussian  spirit 
of  military  conquest,  the  other  out-herods  Herod  in 
his  comparisons  of  the  German  Emperor  to  every 
pickpocket  and  cut -throat  in  history.  Of  course 
M.  Hugo's  method  of  treatment  was  the  more  popular 
of  the  two.  At  the  close  of  the  siege  the  Parisians 
elected  him  second  only  to  M.  Louis  Blanc  on  the 
long  list  of  members  for  the  Department  of  the  Seine, 
February  8,  1871.  He  resigned  his  seat  at  Bordeaux 
on  the  8  th  of  March  because  the  Assembly  would  not 


372  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

listen  to  a  speech  from  him  in  honour  of  Garibaldi. 
The  sudden  death  of  his  son  on  the  13th  of  March 
sent  him  on  family  business  to  Brussels,  where  he 
remained  during  the  Commune.  While  he  was  in 
Brussels  the  Belgian  Government  announced  that  it 
woidd  not  receive  escaped  Communists  as  political  exiles. 
M.  Hugo  wrote  to  a  newspaper  to  say  that  he  would 
receive  them  in  liis  house  at  Brussels.  On  this  his 
windows  were  broken  by  a  mob  of  young  Belgians 
"  flown  with  insolence  and  wine,"  who  raised  the 
singular  cry  of  "  A  has  Lord  Clancharlie  !  "  but  were 
unable  to  beat  in  the  door,  which  the  nursery-maid 
had  wisely  bolted.  Expelled  from  Belgium,  M.  Hugo 
returned  to  Paris.  He  was  made  a  Senator,  and  has 
spoken  repeatedly  in  the  Senate  and  elsewhere. 

Most  of  the  measures  which  M.  Hugo  has  during 
these  years  recommended — the  rejection  of  the  treaty 
of  peace,  the  retention  in  the  Assembly  of  the  members 
for  the  ceded  provinces,  the  recognition  of  the  "  right 
to  labour,"  with  its  accompanying  "  State  workshops," 
and  the  issue  of  bank-notes  bearing  interest,  hillets  de 
hanque  d  refvenu  —  have  been  such  as  to  inspire  in 
English  politicians  little  confidence  in  his  judgment. 
But,  in  truth,  his  work  during  this  critical  period  has 
lain  less  in  the  advocacy  of  any  particular  measures 
than  in  the  delivery  of  stirring  and  highly-wrought 
discourses  on  the  text  that  Paris  is  supreme;  Paris 
is  holy ;  Paris  is  the  capital  of  the  world,  and  includes 
within  herself   the  progress   and  the  hopes   of   man. 


m.\  VICTOR  HUGO.  373 

Outside  France  we  need  hardly  discuss  the  truth  of 
these  propositions ;  a  more  practical  question  is  whether 
in  France's  deep  depression  it  might  possibly  have 
been  wise  to  proclaim  them — whether,  in  Plato's 
words,  it  can  ever  be  weU  for  a  pubUc  man  to  play 
the  part  of  the  confectioner  rather  than  of  the  physician. 
On  this  delicate  point  a  French  and  an  English  critic 
will  be  apt  to  differ ;  but  both  must  admire  the  extra- 
ordinary vigour  of  style  and  thought,  the  contagious 
enthusiasm  and  ardour  of  spirit,  which  enable  this 
"  old  man  eloquent "  to  lead  at  will  "  that  fierce  de- 
mocracy "  in  any  direction  except  into  the  secrets  of 
their  own  bosoms  and  the  sins  of  their  own  past. 

"  French  of  the  French ! "  Our  sober  English 
maxims  fail  us  when  we  would  take  counsel  for  a 
nation  which  can  unite  so  much  that  we  think  despi- 
cable with  so  much  that  all  must  think  great,  which 
can  keep  her  hope  high  through  ruin,  through  chaos, 
and  through  shame,  and  which,  when  she  least  is 
leading  the  nations,  will  never  quit  her  claim  to  the 
primacy  of  the  world.  Let  us  say  with  M.  Eenan 
that  when  a  nation  brings  forth  a  Universal  Idea  it  is 
at  the  cost  of  much  shattering  of  her  own  frame,  much 
exhaustion  of  her  separate  life ;  that  it  was  by  cen- 
turies of  national  humiliation  that  Greece  expiated 
her  creation  of  science  and  of  art,  and  Italy  her 
foundation  of  the  Empire  and  the  Papacy,  and  Germany 
her  assertion  of  the  freedom  of  the  thought  of  man ; 
and  that  the  French  Eevolution,  though  a  lesser  thing 


374  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m. 

than  these,  was  great ;  and  therefore  that  till  the  echo 
of  the  thunderpeals  which  announced  that  birth  has 
died  away,  we  shall  see  the  strongest  sons  of  France 
still  staggering  blindly  beneath  "  the  too  vast  orb  of 
her  fate." 


III. 


Turning  from  M.  Hugo's  political  career  to  such 
of  his  personal  emotions  as  he  has  chosen  to  reveal  to 
us  in  his  poems,  we  shall  find  the  same  rich  and  puis- 
sant nature  shut  in  by  the  same  moral  barriers  which 
we  have  already  defined.  He  who  cannot  willingly 
take  any  but  a  central  place  may  have  friendships 
and  loves  in  plenty,  but  there  will  be  a  point  where 
all  these  will  cease.  The  self -worshipper  may  not  enter 
the  shrine  of  another  soul.  He  can  never  know  an  in- 
timate and  absolute  comradeship,  a  second  conscience 
in  the  heart  of  a  friend.  Still  less  can  he  experience 
that  rarest  joy  of  a  man  and  a  woman's  love,  when  the 
man  feels  with  a  proud  triumph  her  stainless  spirit 
outsoa;:  his  own,  and  bear  him  with  her  to  a  paradise 
which  she  both  creates  and  reveals.  These  things,  to 
such  as  have  known  them,  are  the  very  substance  and 
delight  of  Ufe.  Yet  much  remains.  All  that  is  bene- 
volent, protective,  paternal — compassion  for  the  poor 
and  the  suffering,  loving  joy  in  childhood  and  infancy, 
loving  remembrance  of  the  dead — all  this  a  man  may 
feel   without   compromising  the   dignity   of   the   idol 


rn.J  VICTOR  HUGO.  375 

seated  in  his  breast.  And  all  this — pressed  down,  as 
it  were,  and  running  over — is  to  be  found  in  M. 
Hugo's  works.  It  is  with  him  as  we  often  see  it 
with  very  vain  but  kindly  people,  who  pour  themselves 
with  a  prodigality  of  warm-heartedness  into  those 
affections  where  no  equality  can  be  claimed  or  desired. 
Valjean  the  convict,  Gilliatt  the  fisherman,  Gavroche 
the  gamin  de  Paris,  divide  the  honours  of  his  romances. 
And  the  poems  to  his  baby  grandchildren  are  the  true 
crown  and  glory  of  his  age. 

His  amatory  poems  have  not  carried  the  world  with 
them.  More  tact,  perhaps,  than  he  has  deigned  to 
use  is  necessary  if  we  would  touch  on  our  own  suc- 
cesses. He  has  naturally  wished  to  descant  on  the 
being  (or  beings)  who  watch  with  mute  devotion  the 
thinker's  brow,  or  kindle  into  rapture  at  the  occasional 
largess  of  his  smile.  But  he  has  forgotten  that  the 
heart  of  the  male  reader,  unless  it  be  skilfully  sur- 
prised, is  apt  to  be  hardened  by  an  obscure  instinct 
which  tells  him  that  there  is  something  almost  shock- 
ing in  the  notion  of  a  woman's  adoring  any  man  but 
himself.  The  truth  is  that  the  pleasures  of  love,  like 
all  pleasures,  require  a  certain  element  of  seK-sup- 
pression  before  they  can  be  made  typical  in  art;  the 
want  which  separates  patronage  and  desire  from  chivalry 
and  passion  is  more  easily  felt  than  described ;  nor  can 
we  make  the  lover's  fortunes  our  own  till  his  love  has 
dethroned  him  from  his  own  heart. 

And  yet  perhaps  this  is  to  moralise  overmuch.    Some 


376  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iii. 

love-poems  there  must  be  in  which  these  serious  con- 
siderations find  no  place  —  some  careless  bird-songs 
of  an  emotion  which  existed  before  morality  had  its 

birtk 

"  Si  tu  veux,  faisons  un  rSve, 
Montons  sur  deux  palefrois ; 
Tu  m'emmfenes,  je  t'enl^ve. 
L'oiseau  chante  dans  les  bois. 

"  Je  suis  ton  maitre  et  ta  proie ; 
Partons,  c'est  la  fin  du  jour ; 
Men  cheval  sera  la  joie. 
Ton  cheval  sera  ramour. 

"  Nous  ferons  toucher  leurs  tites ; 
Les  voyages  sent  aises ; 
Nous  donnerons  k  ces  betes 
Una  avoine  de  baisers. 

"  Allons-nous-en  par  la  terre, 
Sur  nos  deux  chevaux  charmants, 
Dans  I'azur,  dans  le  mystere, 
Dans  les  ^blouissements  ! 

"  Tu  seras  dame  et  moi  comte  ; 
Viens,  mon  coeur  s'^panouit, 
Viens,  nous  conterons  ce  conLe 
Aux  etoiles  de  la  nuit." 

These  exquisite  stanzas  from  Eviradnus  may  fairly  be 
compared  with  Mr.  Swinburne's  If  you  were  April's 
lady,  and  I  were  lord  in  May,  in  the  sense  which  they 
give  of  aU  the  dash  of  playftil  adventure,  the  amorous 
eagerness  of  a  flying  and  irresponsible  joy. 

The  love  of  Marius  for  Cosette  in  Les  Misirdbles 


III.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  377 

attempts  a  higher  flight,  and  reflects  the  poet's  most 
fervent  days.  And  here  there  is  much  that  is  pas- 
sionate and  sweet.  But  there  is,  too,  a  strong  element 
of  selfishness  in  the  lovers'  conduct  towards  every  one 
but  each  other.  And  the  attempted  delineation  of 
delicate  innocence  suggests  the  eflbrt  of  an  imperfect 
memory.  "  Le  pur  et  s^raphique  Marius,"  we  are  told, 
"  e<it  iti  plutot  capable  de  monter  chez  une  fille  pub- 
lique  que  de  soulever  la  robe  de  Cosette  k  la  hauteur 
de  la  cheville."  A  sentence  like  this  somehow  fails  to 
convey  the  impression  of  seraphic  purity.  We  need 
not  dwell  on  this  topic.  But  I  must  allude  to  one 
scene  in  L' Homme  qui  rit  which  Mr.  Swinburne  has 
highly  praised.  This  is  the  scene  where  Josiane  offers 
herself  to  the  distorted  and  outcast  Gwynplaine. 
Surely  to  admire  this  scene  is  to  confound  monstrosity 
with  power.  It  is  no  new  idea  that  a  woman  may 
have  vile  impulses  and  yet  dally  on  the  verge  of  vice ; 
it  is  not  hard  to  draw  a  staring  picture  of  this  unlovely 
self-restraint.  Nor  is  Josiane's  morbid  desire  for  utter 
debasement  in  any  degree  novel ;  the  sixth  satire  of 
Juvenal  would  furnish  forth  a  hundred  Josianes.  But 
in  the  sixth  satire  of  Juvenal  the  wor^is  which  describe 
vicious  instincts  are  written,  as  it  were,  with  a  brand 
on  the  offender's  flesh.  In  L' Homme  qui  rit  the  in- 
decency is  decked  out  with  rhetoric,  and  presented  to 
us  as  a  psychological  revelation.  Surely  MM.  Gautier, 
Feydeau,  and  Zola  might  be  left  to  supply  us  with 
such  revelations  as  this. 


378  MODERN  ESSAYS.  rra. 

Connected  perhaps  with  this  defect  is  another  form 
of  want  of  sensibility  even  more  repugnant  to  a  healthy 
mind.  We  mean  the  taste  which  delights  in  dwell- 
ing not  only  on  physical  ugliness,  but  on  physical 
horrors,  which,  without  any  wish  to  be  cruel,  pleases 
itself  in  realising  the  details  of  torture,  filth,  and  cor- 
ruption. M.  Hugo's  readers  are  not  always  safe  from 
outrage  of  this  kind.  He  has  written,  for  instance,  a 
poem  called  Le  Crapaud,  which  I  regret  having  read, 
and  must  decline  to  transcribe.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
it  describes  minutely  certain  acts  of  hideous  cruelty 
perpetrated  on  a  toad  by  the  young  Victor  and  his 
schoolboy  friends — described  as  "blonds,  charmants," 
"  I'aube  dans  les  yeux,"  "  le  printemps  sur  la  joue,"  and 
so  forth.  Before  comparing  a  French  boy's  behaviour 
with  that  of  an  Etonian  or  a  Wykehamist,  we  ought 
to  make  allowance  for  the  system  of  French  education, 
which  is  said  to  foster  a  certain  unmanliness  for  which 
the  boy  himself  is  hardly  to  blame.  But  such  excuses 
can  avail  little  here.  The  sport  of  these  children 
"with  the  morning  in  their  eyes"  consisted  in  a  kind  of 
loathsomeness  of  cruelty  for  which  an  English  National 
School  boy  would  have  been  kicked.  And  half  a  cen- 
tury afterwards  the  great  poet  puts  tlais  shameful  story 
into  a  poem  in  order  to  point  a  copy-book  moral  to 
the  effect  that  beasts  are  sometimes  kinder  than  men ! 
We  need  not  be  sentimental  with  regard  either  to  pain 
or  to  death.  Many  reasons  may  make  it  desirable  to 
inflict  or  to  suffer  either.     But  when  we  find  a  man 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  379 

who  can  derive  a  literary  pleasure  from  enlarging 
effectively  upon  the  details  of  torture,  then,  however 
philanthropic  his  general  aims  may  be,  we  cannot 
pardon  him  ;  we  must  assert  that  his  mind  is  tainted 
with  a  disease  more  hateful  than  obscenity  itself. 

Let  us  turn  rapidly  from  these  horrors  to  the  poems 
which  treat  of  the  loveliness  and  mystery  of  childhood. 
Here  M.  Hugo  is  always  at  his  best.  Never  does  the 
exile's  regret  appear  so  noble  as  when  he  laments 
above  all  things  that  he  is  exiled  from  his  daughter's 
tomb  ;  never  is  the  gray  head  so  venerable  as  when  it 
bends  over  the  cradle  or  the  memory  of  a  child. 

"  0  Jeanne  !   Georges  !  voix  dont  j'ai  le  coeur  saisi  I 
Si  les  astres  chantaient  ils  b^gaieraient  ainsL 
Leur  front  tourn6  vers  nous  nous  Eclairs  at  nous  dore. 
Oh !  d'ofi  venez-vous  done,  inconnus  qu'on  adore  1 
Jeanne  a  I'air  6tonne  ;  George  a  les  yeux  hardis. 
lis  tr6buchent,  encore  ivres  du  paradis." 

I  would  gladly  linger  on  these  charming  poems.  But 
they  have  been  praised  already  more  eloquently  than 
I  could  praise  them.  I  will  not  attempt  to  vie  with 
the  force  and  abundance  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  style. 
But  wMle  I  would  refer  the  reader  to  these  glowing 
and  generous  criticisms  I  must  in  fairness  add  some 
words  of  caution.  The  limits  within  which  M.  Hugo 
can  preserve  truth  and  pathos  are  somewhat  narrow. 
While  he  talks  only  about  children  he  can  bring  tears 
into  our  eyes.     But  the  least  allusion  to  himself  or  to 


380  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m. 

God  is  immediately  disastrous.  In  the  elegiac  poems, 
for  instance,  the  picture  of  the  vanished  child  is  grace 
itself : — 

"  EUe  6tait  pale  et  pourtant  rose, 
Petite  avec  de  grands  cheveux  ; 
Elle  disait  souvent :  Je  n'ose, 
Et  ne  disait  jamais  :  Je  veux." 

But  when  the  mourner  attempts  a  higher  strain  the 
old  unreality  recurs.  It  would  need  all  the  simplicity 
of  the  saints  to  keep  ns  in  sympathy  with  an  address 
to  God  couched  in  terms  like  these  : — 

*'  Je  sais  que  vous  avez  bien  autre  chose  i  faire 
Que  de  nous  plaindre  tous, 
Et  qu'un  enfant  qui  meurt,  dtJsespoir  de  sa  mfere, 
Ne  vous  fait  rien,  k  vous  !  " 

Nor  can  we  think  it  dignified  for  a  man  thus  to  urge 
his  own  merits  on  the  Almighty : — 

"  Consid6rez  encor  que  j'avais,  d6s  I'aurore, 
Travaill^,  combattu,  pens6,  march6,  lutt6, 
Expliquant  la  nature  k  rhomme  qui  I'ignore, 
Eclairant  toute  chose  avec  votre  clart6 ; 

"  Que  j'avais,  affrontant  la  haine  et  la  colfere, 
Fait  nia  tache  ici-bas, 
Que  je  ne  pouvais^)a8  m'attendre  a  ce  salaire,"  etc.  etc. 

There  is  something  which  provokes  a  smUe  in  the 
notion  of  M.  Hugo's  demanding  special  consideration 
from  the  Author  of  Nature  on  account  of  the  very 
original  explanations  which  he  has  given  from  time  to 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  381 

time  of  natural  phenomena.  But  had  his  achieve- 
ments in  this  line  been  all  that  he  imagines  them,  can 
we  sympathise  with  a  man  whose  mind  in  this  hour 
of  deepest  bereavement  reverts  irresistibly  to  his  own 
merits  ;  whose  first  feeling  is  that  he  is  not  as  other 
men  are,  and  ought  not  to  suffer  as  they  ?  Is  not  this 
a  strange  contradiction  to  the  noble  idea  which  lies  at 
the  root  of  Christianity  —  that  he  alone  can  become 
representative  of  humanity  who  has  borne  to  the  utter- 
most the  sorrows  of  men  ? 

The  same  defect  of  the  higher  instincts  appears 
strikingly  in  the  poem  in  memory  of  Charles  Vac- 
querie,  the  husband  of  M.  Hugo's  daughter,  who  com- 
mitted suicide  after  vainly  attempting  to  rescue  his 
drowning  wife. 

This  young  man  left  behind  him  a  mother  "  pale  et 
perdant  la  raison,"  and,  we  may  suppose,  the  ordinary 
duties  and  responsibilities  of  life.  M.  Hugo,  however, 
considers  no  explanation  necessary ;  he  treats  the 
deliberate  suicide  of  sane  persons  under  the  pain  of 
bereavement  as  an  act  which  deserves  unqualified 
praise,  and  has  adopted  it  as  the  crowning  glory  of 
more  than  one  of  his  imaginary  heroes. 

"  Oh  !  s'immoler,  sortir  avec  I'ange  qui  sort, 
Suivre  ce  qu'on  aima  dans  I'horreur  de  la  mort, 

Dans  le  s^pulcre  ou  sur  les  claies, 
Donner  ses  jours,  son  sang  et  ses  illusions ! 
J6sus  baise  en  pleurant  ces  saintes  actions 

Avec  les  Ifevres  de  ses  plaies." 


382  MODERN  ESSAYS,  [ni. 

An  easy  heroism !  To  yield  to  the  first  impulse  of 
anguish,  to  enter  with  Eurydice  among  the  shades,  to 
follow  from  a  world  grown  desolate  some  beloved  and 
incomparable  soul !  Jesus,  and  that  code  of  cour- 
ageous virtue  which  the  name  of  Jesus  represents, 
teach  us  a  different  lesson.  They  teach  us  that  the 
way  to  reunion  with  the  best  and  dearest  lies  not 
through  defection  and  despair,  but  through  work  and 
hope,  and  that  those  alone  can  expect  the  reward  of 
great  hearts  who  have  borne  with  constancy  aU  that 
great  hearts  can  bear.  "  'Tis  letter  that  our  griefs 
should  not  spread  far." 

IV. 

Before  we  close  our  survey  of  this  puissant  and 
many-gifted  nature  it  is  natural  to  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  can  discern  any  guiding  conception  which 
has  regulated  the  exercise  of  all  these  powers — any 
individual  and  consistent  \dew  of  the  sum  of  things 
which  reveals  itself  from  time  to  time  amid  these 
labyrinths  of  song.  Certain  principles  we  can  plainly 
discern,  a  belief  in  France,  a  beUef  in  democracy,  a 
true  sympathy  with  the  weak,  the  outcast,  the  oppressed. 
To  some  of  us  the  exaggeration  of  his  patriotism  may 
seem  to  fit  it  rather  for  boys  than  men.  To  some  of 
us  an  admiration  for  republics  as  such  may  seem  rather 
fanciful  than  sublime,  unless  it  be,  as  in  Mazzini, 
simply  the  form  in  which  a  profound  craving  for  public 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  383 

virtue  finds,  from  historical  causes,  its  readiest  channel 
But  at  any  rate  these  are  living  watchwords:  France,  the 
Republic,  Childhood,  the  Oppressed — these  are  worthy 
themes  for  a  great  poet  to  sing.  And  here  we  would 
stop,  but  that  it  is  plain  that  these  are  not  all  that  he  has 
aimed  at  singing.  He  claims  to  speak  to  us  not  only 
as  a  Frenchman  and  a  pliilanthropist,  but  as  a  preacher 
and  a  seer.  Vision,  revelation,  mission,  apostolate  — 
words  like  these  are  ever  on  his  lips.  He  would  have 
us  believe  that  he  has  gazed  deeply  into  the  Infinite, 
that  he  has  heard  the  words  which  issue  from  the 
"  Mouth  of  Shade."  As  confidently  as  any  "  God- 
intoxicated  "  mystic,  he  invokes  as  his  authority  and 
inspiration  the  Eternal  Name. 

Is  there  any  reality  in  all  this  ?  Is  there  any  har- 
monising truth  about  the  universe,  any  illuminating 
conception  of  the  Divine,  which  this  great  poet  has 
received,  and  has  been  sent  to  teach  us  ?  With  real, 
with  deep  regret  I  answer  that  I  believe  that  there  is 
Twt.  Reluctantly  I  say  that  long  study  of  his  works 
has  revealed  only  a  wild  and  whirling  chaos — a  cloud- 
land  which  reflects  no  figure  grander  than  the  poet's 
own. 

Friends  of  M.  Hugo's  have  indeed  affirmed  that  he 
has  given  us  the  clue  to  his  inner  meaning — that  he 
has  in  many  ways  indicated  that  the  central  point  of 
his  system,  his  true  kernel  of  belief,  is  that  religion 
within  religions  which  we  associate  with  the  name  of 
Pythagoras,  which  reappears  under  different  semblances 


384  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [in. 

in  many  ages  and  many  lands,  and  which,  it  is  hinted, 
some  mysterious  revelation  has  impressed  with  special 
force  on  this  poet's  mind.  But  I  cannot  say  that 
these  visions  of  his  seem  to  me  to  bring  us  any  light, 
or  that  his  mystical  and  transmigi-ational  poems  (from 
Ge  que  dit  la  louche  d' Ombre  to  Ze  Poeme  du  'Jardin 
des  Plantes)  are  written  with  a  truer  accent  of  convic- 
tion than  a  thousand  other  pages  embodying  a  hundred 
other  faiths.  For  all  faiths  are  there.  Theism,  pan- 
theism, atheism,  every  mood  from  a  glowing  optimism 
to  a  cynical  despair — all  these  appear  in  turn  and  are 
used  alike  as  the  vehicle  of  the  accustomed  rhetoric, 
the  old  self-praise.  Even  when  words  are  put  into 
God's  own  mouth  we  cannot  help  feeling  that  no  alias 
is  more  transparent  than  M.  Hugo's  God. 

How  deep  an  irreverence  is  here  !  We  are  shocked 
by  the  Bieu  des  Bonnes  Gens  of  B^ranger,  the  Dieu 
devant  qui  I'on  s'incline  le  verve  en  main,  the  vulgar 
patron  of  ignoble  pleasures.  But  at  least  a  God  like 
Beranger's  is  hardly  meant  to  be  taken  seriously ;  he 
is  the  offspring  of  an  imagination  bound  and  rooted 
in  this  world  and  amid  the  shows  of  things.  M.  Hugo 
has  profaned  a  higher  light — has  driven  astray  a 
chariot  which  might,  in  Plato's  words,  have  followed 
with  the  company  of  gods  across  the  vault  of  heaven. 
He  has  sought  first  his  own  glory,  and  the  glory  of  the 
Invisible  has  been  hid  from  his  eyes.  And  thus  it 
has  come  to  pass  that  in  this  age  of  faith's  formation 
and  of  faitli's  decay,  which  feels  above  all  things  its 


m.]  VICTOR  HUGO..  385 

need  of  the  sincere  expression  of  all  shades  of  reasoned 
belief  and  unbelief,  of  heartfelt  confidence  or  despair 
—  in  this  age,  when  a  harmony  as  yet  unknown  is 
shaping  itself,  as  it  were,  audibly  from  the  cry  and 
shock  of  souls,  this  great  singer's  strain  has  no  part  in 
that  attuning  choir ;  his  voice  that  fain  had  filled  in- 
finity dies  out  into  the  void. 

I  might  double  the  length  of  this  essay  with  pas- 
sages illustrative  of  my  meaning  here.  I  will  quote 
one  alone,  a  passage  in  which  the  Almighty  does  not 
escape  the  fate  which  befalls  every  one  whose  name 
M.  Hugo  mentions — the  fate  of  being  employed  as  a 
foil  and  contrast  to  the  greatness  and  goodness  of  M. 
Hugo. 

To  imderstand  the  lines  in  question  a  few  words 
of  introduction  are  required. 

Most  men  who  think  at  all,  whatever  their  creed 
may  be,  have  at  one  time  or  another  faced  the  terrible 
possibility  that  after  all  there  is  no  hope — that  there 
are  no  "  gods  who  prefer  the  just  man  to  the  unjust " 
— that  our  loves  and  aspirations  do  but  mock  us  with 
an  ever  unattainable  desire.  And  the  poets  who  have 
been  the  voices  of  humanity  have  given  utterance  to 
this  dark  fear  in  many  a  passage  which  has  sunk 
deeply  into  human  hearts — from  the  stern  realism  of 
Achilles  among  the  shades  down  to  the  visionary  de- 
spair of  the  end  of  Alastor — from  the  bitterness  of 
the  Hebrew  preacher  down  to  the  melodious  complain- 
ings of  "  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day."  Often, 
•  .  2c 


386  MODERN  ESSAYS,  [m. 

indeed,  we  measure  the  elevation  of  the  poet  or  of  the 
race  to  which  he  sings  by  noting  the  nature  of  the 
regret  on  which  he  chiefly  dwells — whether  it  be,  as 
often  with  the  Greeks,  mainly  for  the  loss  of  our  own 
joy  in  life  and  sunlight,  or,  as  in  the  sadder  Psalms, 
resentment  at  the  outrage  of  Death  against  Justice,  or 
the  stiU  nobler  agony  of  the  thought  that  the  claim  of 
Love  to  its  own  continuance  shall  be  made  in  vain. 

By  what  indeed  are  we  to  judge  a  man  if  not  by 
the  way  in  which  he  meets  this  problem  ?  Be  his 
speculative  conclusions  what  they  may,  if  there  be  any 
unselfishness  in  him,  if  any  heroism,  if  any  holiness,  he 
will  show  them  in  the  face  of  these  extreme  possibili- 
ties, this  one  hope  worth  hoping,  this  only  formidable 
fear. 

In  one  of  the  last  poems  of  L' Annie  Terrible  M. 
Hugo  paints  at  great  length  and  with  startling  rhetoric 
the  possibility  that  God  may  at  last  be  found  to  have 
deceived  us  aU  along — that  "  the  moral  cosmos  may  be 
reduced  to  a  chaos,"  and  man,  the  sport  of  destiny, 
expire  in  a  ruined  universe.  What,  then,  is  the  central 
point  of  this  poem  ?  what  is  the  idea  which  stands  out 
for  our  strength  or  solace  from  this  profusion  of  rhetoric 
and  metaphor  ?  It  is — I  blush  with  shame  for  M, 
Hugo  in  writing  it  down — it  is  that  M.  Hugo  himself 
may  be  relied  upon  to  chase  and  catch  the  recalcitrant 
Deity,  like  a  wolf  in  the  forest,  and  to  overawe  Him 
by  the  majesty  of  his  personal  appearance  and  the 
eloquence  of  his  rebuke : — 


□I.]  VICTOR  HUGO.  387 

"  J'irais,  je  le  verrais,  et  je  le  saisirais 
Dans  les  cieux,  comme  on  prend  un  loup  dans  les  forets, 
Et  terrible,  indign6,  calme,  extraordinaire, 
Je  le  d6noncerais  k  son  propre  tonnerre." 

M.  Hugo,  forsooth,  would  be  terrible !  M.  Hugo 
would  be  calm !  M.  Hugo  would  be  extraordinary ! 
It  seems  likely  that  at  the  crack  of  doom  even  M. 
Hugo  might  see  something  more  terrible  and  extra- 
ordinary than  himself. 

Can  the  force  of  egoism  farther  go  ?  Can  we  accept 
as  a  teacher  or  a  prophet  a  man  who  sees  on  the  whole 
vault  of  heaven  only  the  Brocken-spectre  of  his  own 
soul  ?  Must  not  all  our  admiration  for  this  man's 
talents  enclose  within  itself  an  ineffaceable  core  of 
contempt  ? 

Or  rather  let  us  say  that  this,  like  all  contempt, 
must  ultimately  resolve  itself  into  a  profound  compas- 
sion. Must  we  not  pity  the  man,  however  great  his 
genius  or  his  fame,  who  has  not  found  in  this  or  the 
other  world  one  love  or  one  worship  which  could  teach 
him  to  forget  himself  ?  Let  him  call  his  works  moun- 
tains, himself  a  Titan,  if  he  will :  the  Titans  with  their 
heaped-up  mountains  could  never  scale  the  sky. 

But  we  will  not  accept  his  metaphor.  We  wUl  not 
part  from  him  except  with  a  comparison  which  has  in 
it  at  «nce  less  of  arrogance  and  more  of  hope.  For 
when  we  ponder  on  that  keen  but  troubled  vision,  that 
soaring  but  self- captive  spirit,  we  recur  to  Plato's 
charioteer,  who  has  indeed  in  times  foregone  driven 


388  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [m 

upwards  to  feast  and  festival  with  the  blessed  gods — 
who  has  looked,  indeed,  for  a  moment  on  very  Justice, 
very  Beauty,  very  Triith,  but  in  the  midst  of  the  thimdei; 
of  rebellious  horses  and  a  storm  and  confusion  of  the 
soul, — -tiU  he  crashes  downwards  to  the  earth,  aud  feeds 
upon  the  semblances  of  thiugs,  and  half  forgets  and 
half  remembers  what  that  true  world  lias  shown.  For 
him,  in  Plato's  myth,  there  yet  is  a  glorious  hope; 
there  remains  for  him  some  needful  draught  of  self- 
forgetfulness,  some  purifying  passage  beneath  the  earth ; 
and  then  again  he  may  look  with  the  gods  on  Truth, 
and  stand  with  firmer  footsteps  upon  the  heavenly 
way. 


^ 


ERNEST    RENAN. 


lloirjffov  5'  aWp7]v,  56s  5'  6<pB(i\ixo1aiv  IS^tjOai, 
'Ei/  5^  tpdei  Kal  SKeffaov,  ineL  vC  rot  €i5a5o'  OLTwy. 

The  little  town  of  St.  Renan  in  Cornwall,  and  various 
springs  and  waters  in  other  Celtic  regions,  preserve  for 
us  the  memory  of  an  anomalous  and  a  formidable  saint. 
Ronan  or  Renan,  indeed,  seems  properly  to  have  been 
one  of  those  autochthonous  divinities,  connected  with 
earth  and  the  elements,  who  preceded  almost  everywhere 
the  advent  of  more  exalted  gods.  He  was  received,  how- 
ever, after  some  hesitation,  into  the  Christian  Pantheon, 
and  became  the  eponymous  saint  of  a  Celtic  clan.  This 
clan  of  Renan  migrated  from  Cardiganshire  to  Ledano 
on  the  Trieux  in  Brittany,  about  the  year  480,  and 
have  ever  since  lived  in  honourable  poverty,  engaged 
in  tilling  the  groimd  and  fishing  on  the  Breton  coast ; 
one  of  the  families  who  there  form  an  unexhausted 
repository  of  the  pieties  and  loyalties  of  the  past. 

From  this  simple  and  virtuous  stock,  in  this  atmo- 


390  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n 

sphere  of  old-world  calm,  Eruest  Eenan  was  born  sixty 
years  ago.  In  a  charming  series  of  autobiographical 
papers  he  has  sketched  his  own  early  years  ;  his  child- 
hood surrounded  by  legends  of  the  saints  and  of  the 
sea ;  his  schooling  received  from  the  pious  priests  of 
Tr^guier;  and  then  his  sudden  transference,  in  1836, 
as  the  most  promising  boy  of  his  district,  to  the  Petit 
S^minaire  Saint  Nicolas  du  Chardonnet  at  Paris,  where 
for  three  years  he  was  one  of  M.  Dupanloup's  most 
eager  pupils.  Thence  he  was  sent  for  four  years  to 
Issy,  the  country  establishment  of  the  S^minaire  Saint- 
Sulpice,  to  receive  his  final  preparation  for  the  priest- 
hood. For  to  that  life  he  had  always  aspired,  and  had 
he  been  left  beneath  the  shadow  of  his  Breton  cathe- 
dral he  might  have  become  a  learned  and  not  an 
unorthodox  priest.  But  now  his  education  had  gone 
too  far;  sojourn  in  Paris,  even  in  a  seminary,  had 
awakened  his  critical  and  scientific  interests,  and  he 
began  to  feel  that  such  a  career  was  impossible  to  him. 
He  left  it  with  hesitation  and  much  self-questioning, 
but  without  bitterness  and  without  subsequent  regrets. 
Much  pain  naturally  followed  on  this  disruption  of 
life-long  affections  and  ties.  There  were  material 
hardships,  too,  but  his  sister's  devoted  care  solaced  and 
supported  him  till  he  had  made  friends  of  his  own 
and  reached  an  independent  position.  His  attainment, 
in  1847,  of  the  Volney  Prize  for  a  treatise  on  the 
Semitic  languages,  afterwards  developed  into  a  general 
history,  may  be  taken  as  the  first  step  in  a  long  career  of 


J 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  391 

successful  literary  and  scientific  labour.  To  one  episode 
in  that  career — his  professorship  of  Hebrew  at  the 
College  de  France — we  shall  have  to  recur  again  ;  but 
with  this  exception  we  may  confine  our  attention  to  his 
published  works  alone ;  always  the  most  satisfactory 
course  in  the  case  of  a  yet  living  man  whose  writings, 
and  not  his  actions,  have  made  him  a  public  character. 
The  subjects  of  these  works  are  so  various,  and 
they  indicate  so  far-reaching  a  study  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  mind,  that  some  brief  sketch  of 
their  scope  is  essential  if  we  would  understand  oh  how 
wide  an  induction  the  views  of  this  great  historical 
critic  are  based.  It  is  in  the  garden  of  Eden  that  M. 
Reoan  makes  his  first  appearance  on  the  field  of  his- 
tory, and  his  localisation  of  that  cradle  of  the  Semitic, — 
perhaps  also  of  the  Aryan  race, — in  the  Beloortag,  near 
the  plateau  of  Pamir,  at  the  junction  of  the  Beloortag 
with  the  Himalayas,  forms  one  of  the  most  interesting 
discussions  in  his  history  of  the  Semitic  languages.' 
It  is  at  this  point  in  the  world's  career  that  he  is 
inclined  to  place  the  beginning  of  articulate  speech ; 
and  his  treatise  on  the  origin  of  language^  embodies 
a  theory  of  great  ingenuity,  but  which,  however,  our 
increasing  knowledge  of  primitive  man  is  daily  render- 
ing less  plausible.  From  the  great  delicacy  and  com- 
plexity of  some  of  the  oldest  idioms  whiclj  have 
reached   us,   and   from    the   fact   that  the   history  of 

1  Hisloire  Gin&raU  des  Langues  Stmitigues, 
^  De  lOrigine  du  Lanyage. 


392  MODERN  ESSAYS.  -      [iv 

language,  almost  everywhere  that  we  can  trace  it,  is 
a  history  of  simpKfication  and  dissolution,  M.  Renan 
argues  that  language  appeared  at  once  in  a  highly- 
organised  state,  as  the  suddenly  projected  image  of  the 
mental  operations  of  families  of  mankind  far  removed 
from  barbarism.  Comparative  philology  has  entered 
on  a  different  phase  since  this  treatise  appeared,  and 
should  it  ever  be  re-written  its  author  will  have  to  take 
into  account  many  further  observations  on  the  pheno- 
mena of  savage  speech,  many  new  conceptions  as  to 
the  development  of  the  mind  of  primitive  man.  From 
these  prehistoric  questions  we  pass  on  to  the  great 
settled  civilisations,  Cushite,  Cliamite,  or  Turanian,  of 
the  early  world.  On  China,^  Nineveh,^  Egypt,'  M. 
Renan  has  published  admirable  essays,  but  essays 
which  show  power  of  generalisation  rather  than  any 
specialised  acquirement.  A  brilliant  paper  on  Berber 
Society,*  and  some  pages  on  the  Soudan,^  come  under 
the  same  category.  At  Babylon  he  enters  the  field  as 
an  independent  investigator.  His  tractate  "  On  the 
Book  of  Nabathsean  agriculture"  (which  survives  for 
us  in  an  Arabic  form),  was  for  some  time  held  to  have 
disposed  of  the  theory  that  a  literary  civilisation 
existed  at  Babylon  3000  years  before  our  era. 

Coming  now  to  the  Semitic  stem  we  find  the  traces 
of  M.  i^nau's  labours  on  every  member  of  this  group 

*  L' Instruction  Publique  en  Chine.       "  La  Dicouverte  de  Niyiivs. 
'  L'Aiwieniie  Eyypte.  *  La  SocliU  Bcrbire. 

'  La  Ddsert  et  le  Soudua. 


nr.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  393 

of  languages.  TTia  Comparative  History — a  standard 
work — has  been  already  referred  to.  The  Phcenicians 
are  his  especial  province.  Hia  work  on  the  mission  to 
Phoenicia/  a  government  expedition  of  archaeological 
survey  in  which  he  took  part  in  1860,  is  recognised  as 
the  highest  authority  on  that  ancient  people ;  and  he 
has  completed  the  Phoenician  department  of  the  great 
collection  of  Semitic  inscriptions.^  On  the  Arabs  he 
has  written  much  which  carries  great  weight.  His 
exhaustive  monograph  on  Averroes'  is  a  complete  guide 
to  one  of  the  most  complex  byways  of  philosophical 
history.  His  essay  on  Mahomet/  and  his  articles  on 
Hariri,  Maqoudi,  Ibn-Batoutah,'  compress  into  a  short 
compass  the  very  spirit  of  Arab  literature  and  life.  It 
is,  however,  on  the  history  and  literature  of  the  Jews 
that  he  has  expended  most  time  and  thought.  With- 
out dwelling  on  minor  performances,  in  the  Journal  de 
la  Soci4t6  Asiatique  and  elsewhere,  we  may  notice  first 
his  translations  of  Job*  and  of  Solomon's  Song,'  as 
admittedly  equal  to  any  German  work  for  thoroughness 
and  accuracy,  while  showing  in  their  style  and  in  the 
introductions  prefixed  to  them  a  literary  grace  and  in- 
sight which  are  M.  Eenan's  own.  The  preface  to  the 
Book  of  Job,  in  particular,  may  well  lead  us  to  look 
forward  with  a  peci;liar  interest  to  that  History  of  the 
Jewish  People  by  which  it  is  understood  that  M.  Kenan 

'  Mission  de  PhSnicie.  ^  Corpus  Inscriplivnum  Semiticarum. 

'  Averrois  et  V Averroisme.  *  In  the  Etudes  d'Histoire  Heligieuse. 

'  In  the  Milaiiges  d'Histoire  et  de  Voyages. 
'  Le  lAvre  de  Job,  etc.  '  le  CarUique  des  Cantiques,  etc. 


394  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

purposes  to  complete  his  account  of  the  origins  from 
which  Christianity  sprang.  In  the  meantime  it  is  with 
the  birth  of  Christ  that  his  systematic  treatment  of 
Jewish  history  and  literature  begins.  The  Vie  de  Jisus, 
which  forms  the  first  volume  of  the  Orir/ines  du  Chris- 
tianisme,  owes  both  to  its  merits  and  its  defects  a 
celebrity  which  has  tended  to  cast  into  the  background 
other  works  of  its  author,  which  possess  at  least  equal 
value.  The  Vie  de  Jisus  has  been  followed  by  Les 
Apotres,  Saint  Paul,  I'Antechrist,  les  Evanyiles,  L^Eglise 
Chritienne,  and  the  series  has  now  been  concluded  by 
Marc  AuHle,  which  last  volume  leaves  the  Christian 
Church  an  established  power  in  the  full  light  of  day. 

M.  Eenan's  labours,  however,  have  not  been  con- 
fined to  the  Semitic  race.  Turning  to  the  Aryan  stock 
we  find  to  begin  with  an  essay  on  the  Primitive 
Grammar  of  India,  and  for  the  Persian  branch,  an 
article  on  the  Schahnaraeh.'  On  the  Greco-Eoman 
branch  of  the  family  he  has  written  much  of  interest, 
though  not  often  in  a  separate  form.  Essays  on  the 
Greek  grammarians,  on  the  philology  of  the  ancients, 
on  the  Secret  History  of  Procopius,  indicate  unlooked- 
for  stores  of  learning  held  in  reserve.  The  volumes  on 
the  Origin  of  Christianity  deal  with  the  history  of  the 
earlier  Empire  with  a  vividness  and  mastery  unequalled 
by  any  other  historian  of  that  age.  In  Marcus 
Aurelius,  especially,  he  has  found  a  hero  on  whom  he 
can  dwell  with  all  the  eloquence  of  complete  sympathy. 
'  In  the  Milanges  d'Sisloire  ei  de  Voyages. 


tv.]  ERNEST  KENAN.  396 

Descending  now  to  the  Latin  nations  of  modern  times, 
we  find  an  interesting  essay  on  Mussulman  Spain,  and 
two  on  the  Eevolutions  of  Italy,  and  Dom  Luigi  Tosti,^ 
the  second  of  which  will  be  recognised  as  a  master- 
piece by  all  who  are  familiar  with  the  great  story  of 
Italy's  resurrection.  French  history  may  conduct  us 
from  the  Latin  to  the  Celtic  branch  of  the  Aryan 
stock.  And  here,  too,  M.  Eenan  fiUs  a  leading  place. 
He  has  been  an  important  collaborator  in  the  great 
Benedictine  history  of  French  literature,  which,  begun 
a  century  and  a  half  ago,  is  stiU  far  from  completion. 
In  conjimction  with  M.  Victor  le  Clerc,  he  supplied 
the  history  of  the  fourteenth  century,  taking  the  pro- 
gress of  the  fine  arts  as  his  especial  department.  His 
history  of  Gothic  architecture  is  full  of  learning  and 
originality,  though  suggesting  (were  this  a  fitting 
occasion)  many  topics  of  aesthetic  controversy.  Minor 
essays  on  the  cause  of  the  decline  of  mediaeval  art,  on 
the  sources  of  the  French  tongue,  on  the  farce  of  PateUn, 
etc.,  indicate  how  completely  he  has  made  this  period 
his  own.  The  numerous  essays  on  Frenchmen  of  more 
modern  date,  Thierry,  de  Sacy,  Cousin,  Lamennais, 
B^ranger,  VUlemain,  belong  rather  to  literature  or  to 
philosophy  than  to  history  proper.  To  conclude,  then, 
with  the  Celtic  stock,  to  which  M.  Eenan  himself 
belongs.  Nothing  that  he  has  written  is  better  than 
his  essay  on  the  poetry  of  the  Celtic  races,^  a  model  of 

'  In  Essais  de  Morale  et  de  Critique. 
"  In  the  same  volume. 


396  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv 

that  kind  of  composition,  erudite  without  ostentation, 
and  attractive  in  the  highest  degree  without  loss  of 
dignity  or  of  precision. 

I  will  not  extend  the  list  farther.  It  wUl  be 
obvious  that  M.  Eenan  has  not  spared  his  pains ;  that 
his  opinions  are  not  foimded  on  a  narrow  historical  in- 
duction, on  a  one-sided  acquaintance  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  mind  of  man. 

We  must  now  inquire  what  are  the  main  lines  of 
the  teaching  which  he  can  support,  if  necessary,  by 
so  varied  an  appeal  to  the  lessons  of  the  past.  This 
teaching  resolves  itself  into  tliree  main  branches — 
educational,  political,  and  religious.  I  might  add  the 
heading  of  philosophy,  under  which  one  at  least  of  his 
most  attractive  works  would  seem  naturally  to  fall.^ 
But  his  own  view,  as  indicated  in  his  essay  on  the 
Future  of  Metaphysics,  is  less  ambitious,  and  prefers  to 
regard  philosophy  rather  as  a  comprehensive  term  for 
the  mere  aggregate  of  the  highest  generalisations  than 
as  forming  a  distinct  and  coherent  department  of  human 
study. 

M.  Renan's  educational  convictions  do  not  need  any 
elaborate  historical  support ;  nor  wUl  they  be  openly 
disputed  in  this  coimtry.  They  are,  briefly,  that  the 
higher  instruction  should  be  untrammelled,  and  that 
it  should  be  thorougL  '  That  the  most  competent 
teachers  should  be  appointed,  irrespective  of  any  con- 
siderations of  sect  or  party ;  that  they  should  then  be 

'  Dialogues  et  Fragments  Philosophiquai. 


IV.]  ERNEST  KENAN.  397 

allowed  to  exercise  their  functions  without  interference 
from  Church  or  State ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  it 
is  their  imperative  duty  to  follow  truth  with  their 
best  efforts  whithersoever  she  may  lead ;  these  are  the 
substantive  themes  of  many  essays  of  M.  Eenan's, 
whether  he  is  praising  the  Institut  for  its  catholicity, 
or  the  College  de  France  for  its  independence,  or  the 
Academy  for  its  permanent  and  stable  power.  These 
topics,  indeed,  may  seem  little  more  than  truisms,  but 
truisms  may  acquire  a  certain  dignity  when  a  man 
is  called  upon  to  suffer  for  their  truth ;  and  it  so  hap- 
pens that  M.  Eenan's  own  career  contains  an  episode 
which  well  illustrates  the  dangers  to  which  honest  and 
candid  teaching  may  still  sometimes  be  exposed,  and 
the  spirit  in  wliich  such  dangers  should  be  met. 

In  the  year  1857  the  death  of  M.  Quatremfere  left 
vacant  the  chair  of  "  the  Hebrew,  Chaldaic,  and  Syriac 
languages  "  at  the  College  de  France.  The  College  de 
France  .was  founded  by  Francis  I.  expressly  for  the  pur- 
pose of  providing  a  lay  and  independent  arena"  for  the 
exposition  of  studies  which  were  treated  by  the  Sor- 
bonne  under  closer  restrictions,  and  in  accordance  with 
traditional  rules.  There  is  at  the  College  de  France 
no  theological  chair,  nor  has  the  institution  ever  been 
connected  with  any  Church.  The  fimctions  of  its 
Hebrew  professor  are  in  no  way  hortatory  or  polemical ; 
on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  place  above  aU  others  iri 
France  where  real  philological  teaching,  unbiassed  by 
considerations   external    to   philology,   may   fairly  be 


398  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

looked  for.  The  appointment  virtually  rests  with  the 
other  professors  and  with  the  members  of  the  Academy 
of  Inscriptions,  whose  recommendation,  addressed  to 
the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  is  ratified  as  a 
matter  of  course. 

Perhaps  through  some  timidity  as  to  the  result  of 
either  the  appointment  or  the  non-appointment  of  M. 
Eenan  to  the  vacant  chair,  the  Emperor  did  not  fill  it 
up  till  1861.  In  that  year  the  Minister  of  Instruction 
inquired,  according  to  custom,  what  candidate  the  ex- 
isting professors  propose  to  nominate.  These  professors 
and  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  nominated  M.  Eenan, 
and  his  appomtment  was  coniirmed  in  January  1862. 

It  is  customary  at  the  CoUfege  de  France,  as  in  most 
other  academical  lecture-rooms,  that  a  newly-elected 
professor,  of  however  special  and  minute  a  character 
his  subsequent  teaching  is  to  be,  should  take  in  his 
inaugural  discourse  a  wider  scope,  and  give  some 
general  sketch  of  the  manner  in  which  he  conceives 
his  subject.  To  have  evaded  this  custom  in  this 
special  instance  would  have  been  to  abandon,  on  the 
threat  of  personal  inconveniences  to  follow,  the  right 
and  duty  of  those  to  whom  the  higher  education  of 
their  country  is  entrusted  to  speak  with  frankness, 
though  of  course  with  moderation,  on  all  such  topics 
as  fall  within  the  competence  of  their  chair.  M. 
Kenan  did  not  thus  shrink.  He  gave  a  masterly 
sketch  of  the  function  of  the  Semitic  peoples  in  the 
history  of   civilisation,  and   needing  to  touch  on  the 


IT.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  399 

greatest  Figure  whom  those  races  have  produced,  he 
described  him  as  "  un  homme  incomparable — si  grand 
que,  bien  qu'ici  tout  doive  §tre  jug6  au  point  de  vue  de 
la  science  positive,  je  ne  voudrais  pas  contredire  ceux 
qui,  frapp^  du  caract^re  exceptionnel  de  son  ceuvre, 
I'appellent  Dieu."     "  Jesus  of  Nazareth,"  said  St.  Peter, 

■  "  a  man  approved  of  God  among  you  ; "  and  if  M. 
Eenan  had  been  willing  by  a  turn  of  phrase  to  use 
the  Apostle's  words  for  his  own,  it  would  have  been 
hard  for  the  orthodox  to  find  an  occasion  of  censure. 
As  it  was,  the  demonstration  which  had  been  prepared 
against  him  was  held  in  check  by  a  large  body  of 
students  who  maintained  order  during  his  lecture  and 
accompanied  him  home.  He  had  announced  that  his 
future  lectures  were  to  be  purely  grammatical ;  but  the 
imperial  government,  which  was  at  that  time  much 

*under  the  influence  of  the  clerical  party,  pronounced 
that  a  continuance  of  the  course  would  be  dangerous, 
and  closed  his  lecture-room.  M.  Eenan  lectured  for 
two  years  in  his  own  apartments.  The  government 
then  announced  to  him  his  appointment  to  a  post  in 
the  Imperial  Library,  a  post  which  he  could  not  fill 
so  long  as  he  held  the  professorship,  at  the  same  time 
abolishing  the  emolument  of  his  professorship  by  an 
iagenious  meanness  of  administrative  detail  M.  Renan 
refused  to  accept  the  post  in  the  Library,  or  to  resign 
the  professorship.  Another  professor  was  appointed, 
held  the  post  for  a  few  years,  and  died.  On  his 
death  in  1870  M.  Kenan  was  again  selected  by  the 


400  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

College  de  France  and  the  Institut  as  the  fitting  candi- 
date. And  now  the  Emperor  consented,  but  M.  OUivier 
shuffled,  and  the  war  came.  It  ■fras  the  Government 
of  National  Defence  -which,  in  November  1870,  signed 
the  decree  which  re-established  the  dispossessed  pro- 
fessor in  the  chair  which  he  now  fills. 

The  Grand  Inquisitor,  hke  Pope  and  Pagan,  has  in  • 
our  age  lost  most  of  his  teetL  There  can  hardly  be 
a  surer  way,  and  this  episode  shows  it,  of  conferring 
a  benefit  on  a  man  of  learning  and  virtue  than  by 
persecuting  him  for  his  opinions'  sake.  He  gets  aU 
the  advantage  of  adversity  without  disablement,  and 
obloquy  without  disgrace.  He  has  the  opportunity 
(too  rarely  occurring  in  the  savant's  quiet  career)  of 
showing  courage,  sincerity,  and  dignity  of  character. 
And  meajitime  his  influence  is  not  impaired  but  in- 
creased ;  his  books  become  more  widely  known,  his* 
personality  is  invested  with  greater  interest.  The 
time,  moreover,  is  past  when  anything  can  be  done  for 
opinions  accoimted  orthodox  by  raising  those  who 
hold  them  to  posts  for  which  they  are  otherwise  unfit. 
These  are  not  days  when  income  can  give  influence,  or 
official  precedence  make  proselytes.    • 

Attempts  of  this  kind,  to  make  conformity  with 
received  opinions  rather  than  intellectual  competence 
the  first  requisite  in  a  teacher,  have,  in  fact,  their 
origin  in  a  mood  of  mind  of  which  religious  intoler- 
ance is  only  one  manifestation.  They  spring  from  a 
deep-rooted  infidelity  as  to  the  principles  themselves 


nr.]  ERNEST  BENAN.  401 

on  which  all  higher  education  rests.  Those  principles 
are,  that  it  is  good  to  have  a  mind  as  active  and  open 
as  possible,  and  to  know  all  the  truth  about  the 
universe  which  can  be  known.  But  though  these 
principles  are  seldom  openly  contested,  many  men, — 
most  even  of  those  whose  business  in  life  it  is  to  apply 
them, — hold  them  in  reality  in  a  qviite  difiFerent  form. 
They  hold  that  it  is  good  to  have  a  mind  well  trained 
for  purposes  of  work  or  enjoyment,  and  to  know 
enough  about  the  universe  to  enable  us  to  live  weU 
and  happily.  Now  this  second  view,  though  it  may 
in  some  minds  be  almost  identical  with  the  first,  may 
also  drop  in  other  minds  to  a  level  at  which  mental 
training  becomes  Uttle  more  than  a  repertorj'  of  artifices, 
and  knowledge  than  an  accomplislunent  The  tendency 
to  keep  the  mind  shut  and  to  be  contented  without 
knowledge  is  so  strong  that  it  is  only  by  steadfastly 
regarding  knowledge  as  an  end  in  itself  that  we  can 
be  safe  against  its  gradual  limitation,  tiU  even  the  arts 
which  affect  our  material  well-being  are  starved  by  its 
decay. 

The  force  with  which  Germany  has  grasped  this 
principle  has  been,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  one  of  the 
main  elements  in  all  her  successes.  She  has  had  more 
scientific  curiosity,  more  interest  in  truth  for  truth's 
own  sake,  than  any  other  nation,  and  she  has  reaped 
her  reward  in  the  serious  and  painst,aking  habit  of 
mind,  open  to  new  information,  and  resolved  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  which  has  in  its  turn  led  her  to 

2d 


402  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

military  and  political  greatness.  It  has  been  one  of 
M.  Eenau's  Ufa-long  tasks  to  hold  up  to  his  country- 
men the  example  of  Germany,  to  insist  on  the  need 
of  laborious  thoroughness  in  study,  on  the  nobility  of 
the  self-forgetfulnesfe  which  makes  a  man  neglect  his 
own  fame  in  the  interest  of  his  subject.  Some  of  his 
most  striking  essays, — those,  for  instance,  on  Oreuzer, 
Eugene  Burnouf,  J.  V.  le  Clerc, — are  devoted  to  the 
setting  forth  of  such  a  Hfe  with  a  kindred  enthusiasm. 
And  both  in  France  and  England  such  exhortations 
are  greatly  needed.  Physical  science,  indeed,  is  in 
both  countries  ardently  pursued.  But  the  philological 
and  historical  sciences  are  apt  in  Prance  to  form  the 
mere  material  for  rhetoric,  in  England  the  mere 
machinery  of  education. 

One  of  the  main  directions  in  which  the  influence 
of  M.  Eenan's  historical-mindedness  is  felt  is  in  his 
utterances  on  politics.  There,  at  any  rate,  the  study 
of  history  has  saved  him  from  any  tendency  to  rash- 
ness or  idealism.  It  has  taught  him,  above  all,  the 
doctrine  of  compensations,  —  the  apphcation,  as  one 
may  say,  of  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy  to 
states  and  nations,  which  assures  us  that  more  than 
a  certain  sum  of  efficiency  cannot  be  extracted  from 
any  one  race,  and  that,  after  gross  errors  have  been 
avoided,  what  is  gained  in  force  by  the  body  politic 
in  one  direction  is  likely  to  be  lost  in  another.  On  the 
examples  of  this  thesis  M.  Eenan  delights  to  dwell, 
from  the  Berbers,  enjoying  absolute  social  equality  and 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN. 


403 


government  by  commune  at  the  cost  of  all  national 
or  even  tribal  coherence,  to  the  German  Empire,  its 
collective  strength  based  on  a  fusion  of  bureaucracy 
and  feudalism  which,  in  M.  Eenan's  view,  must  neces- 
sarily involve  the  painful  self-abnegation  of  the  mass 
of  men. 

One  may  say,  indeed,  that  the  greatness  of  a  nation 
depends  on  her  containing  a  certain  amount,  but  only 
a  certain  amount,  of  unselfishness ;  on  her  keeping  her 
spiritual  life  neither  above  nor  below  a  certain  tem- 
perature. She  can  achieve  no  powerful  collective 
existence  if  public  virtue  in  her  have  grown  so  cold 
that  she  contains  no  class  ready  to  make  serious 
sacrifices  for  the  general  good.  And  on  the  other 
hand,  if  the  popular  devotion  to  some  impersonal  idea 
be  raised  to  too  glowing  a  pitch,  the  nation  loses  in 
concentration  what  she  gains  in  diffusion  ;  her  idea 
takes  possession  of  the  world,  but  she  herself  is  spent 
in  the  effort  which  gave  it  birth.  Greece  perishing 
exhausted  with  her  creation  of  art  and  science ;  Eome 
disappearing,  like  leaven  in  the  mass,  in  her  own 
universal  empire ;  Judaea  expiating  by  political  nullity 
and  dispersion  the  spiritual  intensity  which  imposed 
her  faiths,  in  one  form  or  another,  upon  civilised  man  ; 
such  are  some  of  the  examples  with  which  M.  Eenan 
illustrates  this  general  view.  And  such,  to  some 
extent,  is  his  conception  of  the  French  Eevolution.  In 
the  spiritual  exhaustion  and  unsettlement  which  have 
followed  on  that  crisis,  France  has  felt  the  reaction 


404  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [rv. 

from  that  fervour  of  conviction  and  proselytisni  with 
which  she  sent  forth  her  "  principles  of  '89  "  to  make 
the  circuit  of  the  world.  But  those  principles  were 
not  wholly  salutary  nor  wholly  true ;  they  were  the 
insistence  —  exaggerated  by  the  necessary  recoil  from 
privilege  and  inequality  —  on  one  side  only  of  the 
political  problem,  on  the  individual  right  to  enjojmient 
without  regard  to  those  ties  and  subordinations  which 
make  the  permanence  and  the  unity  of  states. 

The  French  Eevolution,  indeed,  was  but  the  mani- 
festation, in  a  specially  concentrated  form,  of  a  phase 
through  which  the  awakening  consciousness  of  the 
masses  must  needs  conduct  every  civilised  nation  in 
turn.  Its  characteristic  assertions  of  the  independence, 
the  essential  equality  of  men,  are  apt  to  lead,  if  rashly 
applied,  not  to  any  improved  social  structure,  but  to 
sheer  individualism,  to  the  jealous  spirit  of  democracy 
which  resents  the  existence  of  lives  fuller  and  richer 
than  its  own.  This  spread  of  an  enlightened  selfish- 
ness is  in  the  moral  world,  as  M.  Eenan  has  remarked, 
a  fact  of  the  same  nature  as  the  exhaustion  of  coal- 
fields in  the  physical  world.  In  each  case  the  exist- 
ing generation  is  living  upon,  and  not  replacing,  the 
economies  of  the  past.  A  few  words  of  explanation 
will  make  this  view  clearer.  As  a  general  rule,  we 
may  roughly  say  that  the  self -regarding  impulses  of 
brutes  and  men  are  limited  in  the  last  resort  by  the 
need  of  a  certain  amount  of  social  instinct,  if  their 
family  or  their  species  is  to  be  preserved  at  all.     And 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  405 

this  instinct,  if  it  may  he  said  without  paradox,  is 
often  more  moral  than  cJioice.  For  reasoning  powers, 
though  probably  acquired  as  the  result  of  highly  social 
habits,  sometimes  partially  destroy  the  very  habits  out 
of  which  they  arose,  by  suggesting  that  more  immediate 
pleasure  can  be  obtained  by  reversing  them.  For 
instance,  male  monkeys  are  not  systematically  cruel  to 
female  monkeys.  Instinct  teaches  them  to  divide  the 
work  of  the  family  in  the  way  best  suited  to  the 
attainment  of  healthy  offspring.  But  in  Australian 
savages  the  family  instinct  is  interfered  with  by  a 
reasoning  process  which  shows  them  that  men  are 
stronger  than  women,  and  can  unite  to  make  them 
their  slaves.  They  enslave  and  maltreat  their  women, 
with  the  result  that  they  injure  their  progeny,  and 
maintain  so  low  a  level  of  vigour  that  a  slight  change 
in  their  surroundings  puts  an  end  to  the  race.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  is  the  contrast  between  the 
feudal  peasant  of  the  middle  ages  and  the  self-seeking 
artisan  of  the  present  day.  The  mediaeval  peasant  owed 
his  very  existence  to  the  high  development  of  certain 
social  instincts, — fidelity,  self-abnegation,  courage  in 
defence  of  the  common  weal.  And  thus  in  a  Highland 
clan,  for  instance,  the  qualities  which  enable  a  society 
to  hold  together  existed  almost  in  perfection.  The 
sum  of  social  instincts  with  which  each  of  its  members 
was  bom  far  exceeded  any  such  self-seeking  impulses 
as  might  (for  instance)  have  led  him  in  time  of  war  to 
enrich  himself  by  betraying  his  chief. 


406  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [n. 

Instinctive  virtue  of  this  kind,  however,  can  hardlj 
be  maintained  except  by  pressure  from  without.  As 
civilisation  develops,  the  need  for  it  hecomes  less  ap- 
parent. The  seK-abnegation  which  in  a  rude  society 
was  plainly  needed  to  prevent  the  tribe's  extinction 
now  seems  to  serve  only  to  maintain  a  pampered  and 
useless  court  or  aristocracy.  The  proletariat  gra- 
dually discover  that  they  are  the  stronger  party, 
and  their  instinctive  reverence  for  their  hereditary 
leaders  dies  away.  If  circumstances  are  favour- 
able they  devote  themselves  to  pleasure  and  money- 
making;  if  not,  they  rise,  perhaps,  as  in  1789,  and 
"  decapitate  the  nation,"  leaving  themselves  incapable 
of  self-government,  and  certain  to  be  made  the  prey 
of  military  force,  the  only  power  left  standing  among 
them. 

Meantime  it  is  not  only  the  proletariat  whose 
coherence  in  the  body  politic  is  loosened  by  the  dictates 
of  an  enlightened  selfishness.  The  feudal  leader,  quite 
as  much  as  his  retainer,  subsisted  by  virtue  of  his 
possession  of  certain  social  instincts, — courage  in  de- 
fending his  clan,  and  a  rude  identification  of  his  inter- 
ests and  pleasures  with  theirs.  Even  amid  the  more 
refined  scenes  of  the  Kenaissance  the  noble  had  still 
much  in  common  with  the  peasant.  The  young  aristo- 
crat (to  take  M.  Eenan's  illustration),  whose  marriage 
procession  defiled  through  the  streets  of  Gubbio  or 
Assisi  was  delighting  the  populace  and  himself  by  the 
same  action.      His  instinct  was  to  share  his  pleasiu'ea 


IV.]  EENEST  RENAN.  407 

thus  with  the  commonalty,  and  he  enjoyed  them  the 
more  for  so  doing. 

But  as  civilisation  becomes  more  assured  there  is 
no  longer  anything  which  the  nobleman  feels  plainly 
called  on  to  do  for  the  common  people,  who  are  pro- 
tected by  law  without  his  aid.  And  moreover,  as 
numbers  get  vaster,  and  differences  of  wealth  more 
extreme,  the  rich  man  finds  his  pleasure  more  and 
more  aloof  from  the  poor.  His  instincts,  both  of 
leadership  and  of  companionship,  tend  to  decay ;  he 
lives  in  some  luxurious  city,  and  converts  his  territorial 
primacy  into  a  matter  of  rents. 

Individualism,  in  short,  as  opposed  to  active  patriot- 
ism, becomes  increasingly  the  temptation  of  rith  and 
poor  alike.  Questions  as  to  forms  of  government, 
rivalries  of  dynasties,  are  of  small  importance  as  com- 
pared with  the  progress  of  this  disintegrating  tendency, 
which  forms  a  kind  of  dry-rot  in  all  civilised  states. 
The  reserve  forces  of  inherited  and  instinctive  virtue 
(to  return  to  the  simile  of  the  coal-fields)  are  becoming 
exhausted,  and  while  we  live  in  a  society  which  has 
been  rendered  possible  by  the  half-conscious  self-devo- 
tions of  the  past,  we  have  not  as  yet  discovered  a  source 
of  energy  which  shall  maintain  our  modern  states  at 
the  moral  temperature  requisite  for  organic  life. 

Reflections  of  this  nature,  long  familiar  to  M. 
Eenan,  were  forced  upon  all  Frenchmen  by  the  Franco- 
German  war.  That  contest,  as  has  been  often  observed 
repeated  the  old  histories  of  the  incursions  of  the  bar- 


408  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv 

barians  into  the  declining  Eoman  empire  in  its  con- 
trast between  the  ndim  and  self-devoted  unity  of  the  one 
force,  and  the  self-seeking  apathy  which  ruined  the  other. 
The  main  difference  was  that  the  Germans,  having 
applied  their  patient  efforts  to  self-education  as  weU  as 
to  warfare,  united  in  a  certain  sense  the  advantages  of 
a  civilised  with  the  advantages  of  a  barbarous  people. 

The  war  passed  by,  and  M.  Eenan's  was  perhaps 
the  wisest  voice  which  discussed  the  maladies  of  France. 
France  seemed  to  have  before  her  then  the  choice  of 
two  paths ;  the  one  leading  through  national  self- 
denial  to  national  strength,  the  other  through  demo- 
cratic laxity  to  a  mass  of  private  well-being,  likely  to 
place  its  own  continuance  above  all  other  aims.  In 
a  collection  of  political  essays,^  published  in  1871, 
M.  Eenan  advocates  the  sterner  policy  in  a  series  of 
weighty  suggestions  too  detailed  for  insertion  here. 
Yet  he  feels  the  difficulty  of  carrying  out  this  rigime  of 
penitence  and  effort  without  the  help  of  a  commanding 
central  power.  He  regrets  (for  he  had  already  fore- 
seen) the  impossibility  of  placing  at  the  head  of  France 
a  strong  dynasty,  capable  of  direction  to  serious  ends. 
All  her  dynasties  have  fallen ;  the  experience  of  1830, 
1848,  1870,  has  shown  that  not  one  of  them  can  sur- 
vive a  single  blow ;  nor  can  the  departed  instinct  of 
loyalty  be  revived  by  partisans  wielding  the  weapons 
of  superstition,  corruption,  insolent  bravado.  Already 
when  M.  Kenan  wrote  there  seemed  no  choice  but  a 
'  La  Riforme  Intcllcctuelie  ct  Morale  de  la  France. 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  409 

Eepublic ;  and  a  striking  passage  (put,  it  is  fair  to  say, 
into  the  mouth  of  an  imaginary  speaker)  will  indicate 
with  how  mixed  a  hope  he  regarded  that  prospect : — 

"  Des  r6formes,  supposant  que  la  France  abjure  ses  pr6- 
jug6s  d6mocratiques,  sent  des  r6formes  chimf^riques.  La 
France,  croyez-le,  restera  un  pays  de  gens  aimables,  doiix, 
honnetes,  droits,  gais,  superficiels,  pleins  de  bon  coeur,  de 
faible  intelligence  poUtique ;  elle  conservera  son  adminis- 
tration mediocre,  ses  comit6s  entet6s,  ses  corps  routiniers, 
persuad6e  qu'ils  sont  les  premiers  du  monde  ;  elle  s'enfon- 
cera  de  plus  en  plus  dans  cette  voie  de  mat6rialisme,  de 
republicanisme  vulgaire  vers  laquelle  tout  le  monde  moderne, 
exceptii  la  Prusse  et  la  Eussie,  paralt  se  tourner. " 

Such  a  state,  in  M.  Eeuan's  view,  can  never  hope 
to  rival  Prussia's  strength  in  the  field, — a  strength 
founded  on  a  social  organisation  which  can  transform 
itself  into  a  military  organisation  when  need  is,  with- 
out shock,  unwillingness,  or  delay.  The  revenge  of 
France,  he  thinks,  is  likely  to  be  rather  of  that  insidi- 
ous kind  which  saps  the  enemy's  robust  self-denial  by 
the  spectacle  of  ease  and  luxury,  and  gradually  draws 
down  its  neighbours  to  a  self-indulgent  impotence  like 
its  own. 

The  events  of  the  dozen  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  this  prophecy  was  uttered  may  seem  to  have 
tended  towards  its  fulfilment.  On  the  one  hand  there 
is  visible  in  Germany  an  increased  impatience  of  the 
hardships  of  the  Prussian  rSgime,  a  growing  exodus  of 
the  lower  class  to  states  which  demand  less  of  risk  and 


410  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ry 

self-sacrifice  from  their  constituent  members.  And  on 
the  other  hand  the  prestige  of  Paris  as  the  city  of 
pleasure  has  revived  ;  the  wealth  of  France,  and  her 
eagerness  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  are  greater  than  ever 
before.  Her  habits  and  institutions  (as  M.  Kenan 
predicted)  are  undoubtedly  assimilating  her  not  to 
Germany,  but  to  the  United  States.  The  example  of 
the  United  States, — capable,  under  strong  excitement, 
of  putting  forth  such  military  energy  from  the  midst 
of  a  society  apparently  so  self-seeking  and  incoherent, 
may  well  prevent  us  from  asserting  that  democratic 
France  can  never  wage  a  successful  war  with  Germany. 
But  such  strong  impulses  will  be  rare,  and  for  the  most 
part  it  would  seem  that  we  must  look  on  France  as 
swelling  that  dominant  current  of  the  modern  world 
which  sets  in  the  direction  of  mere  wealth  and  luxury, 
and  threatens  to  dissolve  the  higher  aims  and  unity  of 
nations  in  its  enervating  flow. 

"  Without  war,"  says  Von  Moltke,  "  the  world 
would  stagnate,  and  lose  itself  in  materialism."  The 
problem  is  to  prevent  this ;  to  secure  that  as  the  world 
gradually  changes  from  a  place  of  struggle  into  a  place 
of  enjoyment  the  change  shall  not  sap  the  roots  of 
virtue  or  the  structure  of  society.  As  the  'old  social 
superiorities,  defined  by  birth,  and  resting  ultimately 
on  force  and  conquest,  tend  to  disappear,  we  must 
create  new  social  superiorities,  inarked  enough  to  com- 
pel the  respect  of  the  mviltitude  to  their  fitting  leaders, 
and  attained  by  enough  of  effort  to  give  to  the  character 


rv.J  EENEST  RENAN.  411 

of  those  leaders  the  same  force  and  self-confidence  which 
were  previously  won  in  war. 

In  pursuing  this  train  of  thought  M.  Eenan  sur- 
prises the  English  reader  by  his  apparent  want  of 
acquaintance  with  the  similar  speculations  of  Comte. 
Yet  these  two  greatest  thinkers  of  modem  France 
tmverse  to  a  considerable  extent  the  same  ground. 
Fully  to  note  their  points  of  agreement  and  of  differ- 
ence would  demand  a  separate  essay.  They  agree  in 
the  spirit, — historical,  scientific,  positive  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  term, — in  which  they  approach  these 
social  problems,  and  which  guarantees  them  alike 
against  revolutionary  vehemence  and  against  the  mere 
sentimentality  of  reaction.  On  the  other  hand,  Comte's 
confident  dogmatism,  and  the  prophetic  and  hieratic 
pretensions  of  his  later  years,  are  little  in  accord  with 
M.  Kenan's  gentle  and  sceptical  irony,  his  strain  of 
aristocratic  nonchalance.  In  their  respective  views  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  government  of  the  future  these 
divergences  are  plainly  marked.  Comte's  hierarchy 
of  bankers  is  the  conception  of  a  complacently  industrial, 
-a  frankly  optimistic  age ;  while  in  M.  Eenan's  fastidi- 
ous attitude  towards  material  prosperity  we  discern  a 
certain  loss  of  moral  prestige  which  wealth  has  tended 
to  undergo  even  while  its  practical  predominance  in 
the  world  has  increased.  Wealth  is,  of  course,  the 
form  of  superiority  which  the  multitude  tend  more  and 
more  exclusively  to  respect  as  the  traditional  reverence 
for  birth  declines.     And,  in  some  cases,  wealth  is  a 


412  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

tolerable  criterion  of  merit,  as  indicating  diligence  and 
ability  in  those  by  whom  it  is  made,  habits  of  refine- 
ment in  those  by  whom  it  is  inherited.  But,  unfortun- 
ately, it  becomes  increasingly  evident  that  the  criterion 
is  too  rough ;  there  is  too  much  Ul-gotten  wealth  in 
the  world  to  allow  us  to  respect  it  without  inquiry ; 
and  the  dishonest  rich  man  is  not  merely  not  better, 
but  is  more  actively  mischievous  than  his  neighbours. 
America,  in  short,  has  become  our  type  of  a  country 
which  has  sought  wealth  with  success ;  and  America  is 
not  a  country  where  kings  are  philosophers  and  philoso- 
phers are  kings.  Virtue,  again,  (the  criterion  which 
we  should  all  prefer),  is  not  easy  to  recognise  on  a  public 
arena,  and  its  genuineness  is  not  recommended  to  us 
when  it  loudly  claims  recognition.  We  are  driven 
back  upon  intellectual  superiority ;  and  here  the  pro- 
blem is  to  find  that  disinterested  wisdom  which  is,  in 
fact,  a  part  of  virtue,  and  not  the  mere  plausibility  of 
skUful  egoism.  There  is  no  certain  method  of  attain- 
ing this,  but  the  method  which  looks  most  promising 
is  to  raise  a  considerable  number  of  the  citizens  to  a 
pitch  of  knowledge  and  culture  which  ought,  at  least, 
to  teach  them  to  look  on  human  affairs  as  philosophers, 
and  not  as  adventurers  or  as  partisans.  And  this,  at 
least,  we  can  do ;  by  the  thoroughness  of  our  higher 
education  we  can  create  a  new  aristocracy,  an  aristo- 
cracy which  will  not  press  its  services  on  the  multitude, 
but  win  constitute  a  weighty  court  of  appeal  from 
popular  passion  and  prejudice.      Some  such  position. 


IV.]  ERXEST  RENAN.  413 

indeed,  has  long  been  held  by  men  of  talent  in  France, 
owing  to  the  inadequacy  of  the  French  noblesse,  which 
never  performed  important  political  functions,  and  has 
now  practically  disappeared.  And  in  other  countries, 
too,  the  public  is  learning  to  recognise  a  sort  of  senate 
in  one  group  of  learned  men, — in  the  professors,  namely, 
of  the  physical  sciences.  Their  superior  knowledge  can 
be  palpably  proved  and  is  readily  believed  in ;  their 
advice  is  urgently  needed  about  many  matters,  and  the 
decisiveness  of  utterance  natural  to  men  much  occu- 
pied with  definite  and  soluble  problems  is  in  itself  con- 
vincing to  those  who  wish  for  guidance.  But  to  the 
devotees  of  the  historical  sciences  the  world  has  hitherto 
paid  less  att€ntion.  Philologists  cannot  hit  upon  lucra- 
tive inventions ;  rival  critics  cannot  demonstrate  their 
historical  insight  by  a  crucial  experiment.  The  his- 
torian is  not  so  convincing  as  the  physicist,  nor  does 
he  labour  so  manifestly  for  the  practical  good  of  man- 
kind. Comte,  indeed,  claimed  to  have  done  away  with 
both  these  distinctions.  He  claimed  to  have  given  to 
the  science  of  society  a  precision  which  enabled  it  to 
be  at  once  applied  as  an  art,  and  he  was  eager  to 
subordinate  even  the  highest  speculations  to  the  actual 
needs  of  men.  M.  Eenan,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
desiring  no  such  direct  dogmatic  influence,  is  not  dis- 
posed to  shape  the  course  of  his  researches  according 
to  their  immediate  bearing  on  the  common  weaL  That 
"passion  for  truth  in  itself,  without  any  mixture  of 
pride  or  vanity,"  which  Comte  condemns  as  "  intense 


414  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

egoism,"  is  the  very  breath  of  M.  Eenan's  being ;  and, 
as  is  wont  to  be  the  case  when  truth  rather  than 
utility  is  aimed  at,  there  are  many  matters  on  which 
he  is  unwilling  to  preach  any  very  definite  doctrine. 
"  La  v^rit4  est  dans  une  nuance,"  he  says ;  and  again, 
"  Qui  sait  si  la  finesse  d'esprit  ne  consists  pas  k  s'ahstenir 
de  conclure  ?"  It  is  the  part  of  men  like  this  to  pro- 
test against  all  extreme  views,  aU  patriotic  illusions,  to 
sit  dispersed  amid  the  countries  of  civilised  men,  and 
to  try  their  hopes  and  creeds  by  an  appeal  to  the  laws 
of  their  own  being,  and  to  their  own  forgotten  past. 

"  Ex  necessitate  est,"  the  old  saying  runs,  "  ut  sit 
aliquis  philosophus  in  specie  humana."  In  order  that 
humanity  may  be  fuUy  conscious  of  itself  there  must, 
we  instinctively  feel,  be  somewhere  on  earth  a  life 
disengaged  from  active  or  personal  aims,  and  absorbed 
in  the  mere  exercise  of  intellectual  curiosity.  And 
such  a  life,  which  sometimes  seems  to  us  to  lie  outside 
all  human  interests  and  emotions,  vrill  sometimes  also 
appear  as  the  centre  of  them  all.  For  the  universe  in 
which  man  is  placed  so  far  transcends  his  power  to 
grasp  it, — the  destinies  amidst  which  his  future  lies 
are  so  immense  and  so  obscure, — that  the  most  diverse 
manners  of  bearing  ourselves  among  them  will  in  turn 
occupy  our  full  sympathies,  satisfy  our  changing  ideal. 
Sometimes  a  life  of  action  seems  alone  worthy  of  a 
man ;  we  feel  that  we  exist  in  vain  unless  we  manage 
to  leave  some  beneficent  trace  of  our  existence  on  the 
world  around  us;  unless  we  enrich  it  with  art,  civilise 


IV.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  415 

it  by  education,  extend  it  by  discovery,  pacify  it  with 
law.  Sometimes,  again,  our  relations  to  the  Unseen 
wiU  take  possession  of  the  soul ;  thought  is  lost  in 
love,  and  emotion  seems  to  find  its  natural  outlet  in 
spiritual  aspiration  and  prayer.  But  there  is  a  mood, 
again,  in  wliich  all  action,  all  emotion  even,  looks  futile 
as  the  sport  of  a  child ;  when  it  is  enough  to  be  a 
percipient  atom  swayed  in  the  sea  of  things  ;  when 
the  one  aim  of  the  universe  seems  to  be  consciousness 
of  itself  and  all  that  is  to  exist  only  that  it  may  at 
last  be  known. 

There  was  a  time  when  all  these  strains  of  feeling 
could  co-exist  effectively  in  a  single  heart.  Plato, 
"the  spectator  of  all  time  and  of  all  existence,"  was 
also  the  centre  of  the  religion  of  the  world.  And  if 
this  can  rarely  be  so  now,  it  is  not  necessarily  or 
always  that  saints  and  philosophers  in  themselves  are 
smaller  men,  but  rather  that  man's  power  of  thought 
and  emotion  has  not  expanded  in  proportion  to  the 
vast  increase  of  aU  that  is  to  be  felt  and  known. 
There  has  been  a  specialisation  of  emotions  as  well  as 
of  studies  and  iadustries ;  it  has  become  necessary  that 
what  is  gained  in  extension  should  in  some  degree  be 
lost  in  intensity,  and  that  the  wisdom  that  compre- 
hends the  world  shovdd  cease  to  be  compatible  with 
the  faith  that  overcomes  it. 

Let  us  not,  then,  expect  all  things  from  any  man. 
Let  us  welcome  the  best  representative  of  every  mood 
of  the  mind.    And- if  the  philosophic  mood  can  scarcely 


416  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

find  expression  without  some  pitying  consciousness  of 
the  ignorance  and  error  which  envelop  the  multitude 
of  men,  let  us  remember  that  this  compassion- 
ating tone,  though  it  can  hardly  be  made  agreeable  to 
the  mass  of  men,  may  nevertheless  be  most  salutary. 
For  so  much  knowledge  is  now  diffused  among 
men  of  ordinary  education  that  it  is  difficult  to  remain 
steadily  conscious  how  small  a  fraction  this  is  of  what 
it  imports  us  to  know.  It  is  not  that  we  fail  in 
admiration  for  eminent  talents  ;  never,  perhaps,  has 
eminent  talent  been  more  admired.  But  we  cannot 
habitually  realise  to  ourselves  our  incapacity  to  form 
true  opinions ;  we  decide  wliere  doctors  disagree ;  we 
rush  in  where  a  Goethe  has  feared  to  tread.  We 
have  to  make  up  our  minds,  we  say,  for  we  have  to 
act.  Be  it  so,  but  we  must  be  content  to  be  reminded 
that  in  that  case  our  decision  proves  nothing,  except 
that  we  were  anxious  to  decide. 

In  the  domain  of  the  physical  sciences  we  are  less 
tempted  thus  rashly  to  dogmatise,  and  the  blunders  to 
which  our  dogmatism  leads  us  are  more  easUy  seen. 
It  is  when  we  deal  with  questions  affecting  the  inner 
being,  the  profounder  beliefs  of  men,  that  we'  are  able 
contentedly  to  forget  that  these  beliefs  repose  ulti- 
mately on  historical  and  philological  considerations 
with  which  we  have  made  no  effort  to  acquaint  our- 
selves. Yet  as  the  conception  of  science  broadens  and 
deepens,  this  apathy  must  pass  away ;  and  already 
during  recent  years  there  has  been  a  marked  awaken- 


fv.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  417 

ing  in  the  European  mind,  a  growing  perception  that 
the  historical  sciences  will  prove  to  be  as  essential 
to  our  guidance  through  life  as  the  physical  sciences 
have  already  shown  themselves  to  be.  "  L'union  de  la 
pHlologie  et  de  la  philosophic,"  says  M.  Eenan,  "de 
I'drudition  et  de  la  pens^e,  devrait  gtre  le  caractfere 
du  travail  intellectuel  de  notre  dpoque."  And  again, 
"C'est  aux  sciences  de  I'humanit^  qu'on  demand- 
era  ddsormais  lea  elements  des  plus  hautes  specula- 
tions." 

But  desisting  from  further  summary  of  discussions 
whose  fulness  and  subtlety  make  them  almost  impos- 
sible to  summarise,  let  us  test,  by  a  few  concrete 
instances,  the  value  of  this  philosophical  outlook  on 
contemporary  history.  M.  Renan  has  lived  in  close 
contact  with  the  French  and  German  people,  and  with 
the  "  Bretons  bretonnants "  who  linger  around  his 
early  home.  Let  us  inquire  if  there  be  anything  in 
his  way  of  regarding  these  nations  which  indicates 
a  mind  accustomed  to  an  impartial  weighing  of  the 
fates  of  men ;  anything  beyond  the  conventional  glorifi- 
cation of  France,  the  conventional  bitterness  against 
Germany ;  anything  which  penetrates  beneath  surface 
characteristics  to  a  race's  true  genius  and  essential 
power. 

And  inasmuch  as  philosophy  is  an  aroma  which 
should  penetrate  every  leaflet  of  the  tree,  I  will  take 
my  illustration  of  M.  Eenan's  insight  into  the  character 
of  his  own  countrymen  from  a  short  article  on  the 

2e 


418  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

Theology  of  Bi^ranger/  called  forth  by  the  appearance 
of  a  family  edition  of  the  works  of  the  poet  of  Lisette 
ami  Ghambertin,  at  first  sight  so  ill-adapted  for  domestic 
perusal. 

"  'De  toutes  les  parties  du  systSme  po6tique  de  B^ranger,' 
says  M.  Renan,  after  some  admirable  comments  on  the 
moral  side  of  his  poems,  'celle  qui  me  surprit  le  plus, 
quand  je  le  lus  pour  la  premiere  fois,  ce  fut  sa  th6ologie. 
Je  connaissais  peu  alors  I'esprit  fran9ais ;  je  ne  savais  pas 
les  singuliferes  alternatives  de  I6g6ret6  et  de  pesanteur,  de 
timidity  6troite  et  de  folle  t6merit6,  qui  sont  un  des  traits 
de  son  caractfere.  Toutes  mes  iddes  furent  troubl6es  quand 
je  vis  que  ce  joyeux  convive,  que  je  m'6tais  figur6  m6cr6ant 
au  premier  chef,  parlait  de  Dieu  en  langage  fort  arr^t6,  et 
engageait  sa  maitresse  k 

'  Lever  les  yeui  vers  ce  monde  invisible 
Oi  pour  toujours  nous  nous  riunissons. ' 

"'La  na'ivet6  toute  bourgeoise  de  cette  th6ologie  d'un 
genre  nouveau,  cette  fa5on  de  s'incliner  le  verre  en  main 
devant  le  Dieu  que  je  clierchais  avec  tremblement,  furent 
pour  moi  un  trait  de  lumifere.  A  1' indignation  que  me 
causa  rid6e  d'une  confraternity  religieuse  avec  ceux  qui 
adorent  de  la  sorte  se  mSla  le  sentiment  de  ce  qu'il  y  a  de 
fatalement  limiti  dans  les  maniferes  de  voir  et  de  sentir 
de  la  France.  L'incurable  m6diocrit6  religieuse  de  ce  grand 
pays,  orthodoxe  jusque  dans  sa  gaiet6,  me  fut  r6v6l6e,  et  le 
Dieu  des  bons  gens  m'apparut  comme  I'^ternel  dieu  gaulois 
centre  lequel  lutterait  en  vain  toute  tentative  de  philosophie 
et  de  religion  6pur6e.'  " 

And  from  this  text  he  argues  how  closely  akin  aie 
*  In  Questions  Contemporaines. 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  419 

licence  and  bigotry ;  how  it  is  the  same  spirit  of  con- 
tented shallowness  which  in  each  direction  is  impatient 
of  modest  self-restraint ;  which  leads  to  easy  vulgarity 
in  the  domain  of  morals,  empty  rhetoric  in  the  domain 
of  literature,  ready  and  confident  dogmatism  in  the 
domaia  of  religion.  To  protest  against  each  of  these 
in  turn  has  been  the  mission  of  M.  Eenan,  and  surely 
by  no  other  example  or  exhortation  could  he  have  de- 
served better  of  France. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  he  can  also  praise  his 
country  with  grace  and  enthusiasm,  though  never  witli 
that  monstrous  adulation  to  which  she  is  sometimes 
too  willing  to  lend  her  ear.  More  remarkable  is 
the  generous  candour  with  which,  in  the  very  shock 
and  crisis  of  the  war,  when  nothing  was  heard  on 
either  side  but  outrage  and  execration,  the  French 
philosopher  did  justice  to  the  impulse  which  urged 
Germany  to  assert  her  unity  and  her  place  among 
great  nations.^ 

"  S'il  y  a  une  nationality  qui  ait  un  droit  6vident  d'exister 
en  toute  son  ind6pendance,  c'est  assur6ment  la  nationality 
allemande.  L'Allemagne  a  le  meilleur  titre  national,  je 
veux  dire  un  role  historique  de  premiere  importance,  une 
kme,  une  htt^rature,  des  hommes  de  g6nie,  une  conception 
particulifere  des  choses  divines  et  humaines.  L'Allemagne 
a  fait  la  plus  importante  revolution  des  temps  modernes,  la 
E^forme ;  en  outre,  depuis  un  siecle,  I'Allemagne  a  produit 
un  des  plus  beaux  d6veloppements  intellectuels  qu'il  y  ait 

'  Lettre  d  M.  Strauss, 


420  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

jamais  eu,  un  d6veloppement  qui  a,  si  j'ose  le  dire,  ajout6 
un  degr6  de  plus  k  I'esprit  liumain  en  profondeur  et  en 
6tendue,  si  bien  que  ceux  qui  n'ont  pas  particip6  k  cette 
culture  nouvelle  sont  k  ceux  qui  I'ont  travers6e  comme 
celui  qui  ne  connait  que  les  math6matiques  6l6mentaircs 
est  k  celui  qui  connait  le  calcul  difi6rentieL" 

He  proceeds  to  draw  a  picture  of  what  united  Ger- 
many might  become,  the  Prussian  leaven  disappearing 
when  it  has  leavened  the  whole  lump,  and  leaving  a 
nation  open,  perhaps,  beyond  any  other,  to  the  things 
of  the  spuit ;  more  capable,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
of  founding  a  State  organisation  on  a  scientific  and 
rational  basis.  And  he  concludes  with  a  dignified 
appeal  to  the  moral  intervention  of  Europe  in  the 
present  extremity,  a  dignified  protest  against  the  dis- 
memberment and  degradation  of  France. 

On  reading  the  letter  to  M.  Strauss  from  which 
this  passage  is  taken — a  letter  full  of  large  general 
views  and  scrupulous  candour — one  is  tempted  to 
think  that  it  must  be  an  easy  thing  for  a  professed 
philosopher  to  retain  his  philosophy  even,  as  the 
ancients  said,  "  when  earth  is  mixed  with  fire."  A 
curious  incident  to  which  this  correspondence  gave 
rise  may  be  quoted,  however,  as  showing  how  difficult 
it  is  in  these  moments  of  excitement,  even  for  the 
controversialist  whose  arguments  are  supported  by 
thirty  legions,  to  maintain  a  tone  on  which  he  can 
afterwards  look  back  with  satisfaction.  The  corre- 
spondence in  question  was  begun  by  M.  Strauss,  who 


IV.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  421 

addressed  a  letter  to  M.  Eenan  in  the  Augsburg  Gazette 
of  the  18th  of  August  1870.  M.  Eenan  caused  a 
translation  of  this  letter  to  appear  in  the  Journal  des 
Dihats  of  the  15th  of  September, — no  easy  matter,  as 
may  be  supposed,  in  that  furj'  of  rage  against  Ger- 
many; and  on  the  16th  of  September  appeared  M. 
Eenan's  own  reply.  The  Axigsburg  Gazette  refused  to 
insert  this  reply  of  M.  Eenan's ;  and  perhaps  no  one 
circumstance  was  more  significant  than  this  of  the 
temper  of  Germany  at  the  time.  There  was  not  a 
word  (it  is  needless  to  say)  in  M.  Eenan's  letter  which 
could  give  just  offence ;  but,  nevertheless,  the  organ  of 
the  victorious  nation,  having  itself  challenged  a  dis- 
cussion, refused  to  insert  the  courteous  reply  of  the 
vanquished  party.  It  might  have  been  thought  that 
under  these  circumstances  M.  Strauss  would  withdraw 
with  displeasure  from  his  connection  with  a  newspaper 
which  took  this  view  of  what  was  fair  and  honourable. 
But  it  was  not  so.  On  the  contrary,  he  wrote  a  reply 
to  M.  Eenan's  letter,  and  inserted  it  in  the  Augsburg 
Gazette  on  the  2d  of  October  1870,  at  a  time  when 
the  Prussian  blockade  of  Paris  of  course  prevented 
M.  Eenan  from  receiving  the  newspaper.  By  this 
ingenious  method  of  controversy  M.  Strauss  was  able 
to  appear  to  challenge  a  champion  of  the  opposite  side 
to  an  impartial  discussion ;  then  to  permit  the  suppres- 
sion of  that  champion's  reply ;  then  to  write  to  him 
again  in  a  stUl  more  violent  tone  (with  misrepresenta- 
tions on  which  I  need  not  dwell),  and  to  choose  a 


422  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv 

moment  for  this  rejoinder  when  his  antagonist  could 
not  possibly  receive  or  reply  to  it.  All  tliis  he  did  as 
one  philosopher  communing  with  another  philosopher, 
and  with  the  consciousness  that  he  belonged  to  an 
entirely  virtuous  nation,  which  was  justly  chastising 
a  nation  sunk  in  ignorance  and  corruption. 

I  have  said  that  M.  Strauss  permitted  the  suppres- 
sion '  in  the  Augsburg  Gazette  of  M.  Eenan's  letter. 
He  chose,  however,  to  give  it  to  the  world  in  another 
fashion.  He  translated  it  into  German,  and  published 
it,  along  with  his  own  two  letters,  for  the  benefit  of 
a  German  military  infLrmary. 

The  Nouvelle  lettre  d,  M.  Strauss  (September  1871), 
in  which  M.  Kenan  gently  recounts  these  transactions, 
and  indicates  some  particulars  in  which  the  great 
German  people  may  seem  still  to  fall  short  of  perfec- 
tion, affords  perhaps  as  good  an  instance  as  this  century 
has  to  show  of  the  sarcastic  power  of  the  French 
language  in  hands  that  can  evoke  its  subtleties  and 
manoeuvre  its  trenchant  blade.  The  paragraph  which 
I  quote  below  appears  as  if  its  only  anxiety  were  to 
make  excuses  for  M.  Strauss.  But  it  would  be  hard 
to  find  any  passage  since  Pope's  Atticus  ■  which  it 
would  be  more  disagreeable  to  have  addressed  to  one. 

"II  est  vrai  que  vous  m'avez  fait  eusuite  un  honneur 
auquel  je  suis  sensible  comma  je  le  dois.  Vous  avez 
traduit  vous-meme  ma  r^ponse,  et  I'avez  r^unie  dans  une 
brochure  k  vos  deux  lettres.  Vous  avez  voulu  que  cette 
brochure  se  vendlt  au  profit  d'un  6tablissement  d'invalides 


tv.]  ERNEST  KENAN.  423 

allemands.  Dieu  me  garde  de  vous  faire  une  chicane  au 
point  de  vue  de  la  propri6t6  litt^raire  !  L'cBuvre  k  laquelle 
vous  m'avez  fait  contribuer  est  d'ailleurs  une  oeuvre 
d'humanit^,  et  si  ma  ch^tive  prose  a  pu  procurer  quelques 
cigaros  k  ceux  qui  ont  pill6  ma  petite  maison  de  Sevres,  je 
vous  remercie  de  m'avoir  fourni  I'occasion  de  conformer 
ma  conduite  k  quelques-uns  des  pr6ceptes  de  J6sus  que  je 
crois  le  plus  authentiques.  Mais  remarquez  encore  ces 
nuances  16gferes.  Certainement,  si  vous  m'aviez  permis  de 
publier  un  6crit  de  vous,  jamais,  au  grand  jamais,  je  n'aurais 
eu  I'id^e  d'en  faire  une  Edition  au  profit  de  notre  Hotel  des 
Invalides.  Le  but  vous  entratne  ;  la  passion  vous  emp^che 
de  voir  ces  mifevreries  de  gens  blas6s  que  nous  appelons  le 
goftt  et  le  tact." 

From  the  temper  of  mind  which  calls  forth  M. 
Renan's  strongest  expressions  of  repulsion,  —  this 
temper  of  domineering  dogmatism  and  blind  conceit, 
— let  us  pass  to  the  opposite  extreme.  Let  us  turn 
to  the  race  from  which  M.  Renan  sprang,  the  race 
whose  character  is  traceable  in  all  that  he  has  written. 
The  nationality  of  the  romantic,  emotional,  unpractical 
Celt,  surviving  in  his  western  isles  and  promontories 
from  an  age  of  less  hurrying  effort,  less  sternly-moulded 
men,  has  fallen  into  the  background  of  the  modern 
world.  Yet  every  now  and  then  we  are  reminded — 
by  some  persistent  loyalty,  as  in  La  Vendue,  to  a  de- 
throned ideal ;  by  some  desperate  incompatibility,  as 
in  Ireland,  with  the  mechanism  of  modern  progress — 
that  there  exists  by  our  side  a  nation  whose  origin, 
language,  memories,  differ  so  profoundly  from  our  own. 


424  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

M.  Eenan  is  a  Celt  who  has  become  conscious  of  his 
Celtic  nature ;  a  man  in  whom  French  savoir-vivre, 
German  science,  are  perpetually  contending  with  alien 
and  ineradicable  habits  of  mind, — "  comme  cet  animal 
fabuleux  de  Ctdsias,  qui  se  mangeait  les  pattes  sans 
s'en  douter."  This  mixed  nature,  the  result,  as  one 
may  say,  of  a  modern  intelligence  working  on  a 
temperament  that  belongs  to  a  far-off  past,  and  making 
of  him  "  un  romantique  protestant  centre  le  romantisme, 
un  utopiste  prSchant  en  politique  le  terre-^-terre,  un 
id^aliste  se  donnant  inutilement  beaucoup  de  peine 
pour  paraitre  bourgeois,"  has  rendered  M.  Eenan's 
works  unintelligible  and  displeasing  to  many  readers. 
"  Twy-natured  is  no  nature  "  is  the  substance  of  many 
a  comment  on  the  great  historian's  union  of  effusive 
sympathy  and  destructive  criticism.  But  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  a  man  may  be  double-minded  without 
being  hypocritical,  and  the  warp  and  woof  of  his 
nature,  shot  with  different  colours,  may  produce  for 
this  very  reason  a  more  delicate  and  changing  charm. 
In  his  essay  on  Celtic  poetry  M.  Kenan  has  abandoned 
himself  to  his  first  predilections.  Nowhere  is  he  more 
unreservedly  himself  than  when  he  is  depicting  that 
gentle  romance,  that  half  humorous  sentiment,  that 
devout  and  pensive  peace,  which  breathe  alike  in 
Breton,  in  Welsh,  in  Irish  legend,  and  which,  after  so 
many  a  journeying  into  the  imaginary  or  the  invisible 
world,  find  their  truest  earthly  ideal  in  the  monasteries 
of  lona  or  Liudisfarne.     Here  it  is  that  we  discern 


IV.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  425 

his  spiritual  kin;  among  these  saints  and  dreamers 
whose  fancy  is  often  too  unrestrained,  their  emotion 
too  femininely  sensitive,  for  commerce  with  the  world, 
these  populations  who  to  the  faults  inherent  in  weak- 
ness have  too  often  added  the  faults  that  are  begotten 
of  oppression,  but  yet  have  never  wholly  sunk  to 
commonness,  nor  desisted  from  an  unworldly  hope. 
There  have  been  races  which  have  had  a  firmer  grasp 
of  this  life.  There  have  been  races  which  have  risen 
on  more  steady  and  soaring  wing  when  they  would 
frame  their  conceptions  of  another.  But  there  has 
been  no  race,  perhaps,  which  has  borne  witness  more 
unceasingly,  by  its  weakness  as  by  its  strength,  to 
that  strange  instinct  in  man's  inner  being  which  makes 
him  feel  himself  as  but  a  pilgrim  here ;  which  rejects 
as  unsatisfying  all  of  satisfaction  that  earth  can  bring, 
and  demands  an  unknown  consolation  from  an  obscurely 
encompassing  Power. 

" '  0  frferes  de  la  tribu  obscure,'  exclaims  M.  Renan, 
'  au  foyer  de  laquelle  je  puisai  la  foi  h,  I'invisible,  humble 
clan  de  laboureurs  et  de  marins,  k  qui  je  dois  d'avoLr  con- 
serve la  vigueur  de  men  ame  en  un  pays  6teint,  en  un 
sifecle  sans  esp^rance,  vous  errates  sans  doute  sur  ces  mers 
enchantees  oil  notre  pfere  Brandan  cherchait  la  terre  de 
pramission ;  vous  parcourdtes  avec  saint  Patrice  les  cercles 
de  ce  monde  que  nos  yeux  ne  savent  plus  voir.  .  .  .  Inutiles 
en  ce  monde,  qui  ne  comprend  que  ce  qui  le  dompte  ou  le 
sert,  fuyons  ensemble  vers  I'Eden  splendide  des  joies  de 
I'ame,  celui-li  meme  que  nos  saints  virent  dans  leurs  songes. 
Consolons-nous  par  nos  chimferes,  par  notre  noblesse,  por 


426  MODERN  ESSAYS.  fiv. 

notre  d6dain.  Qui  sait  si  nos  reves,  a  nous,  ne  sont  pas 
plus  vrais  que  la  r6alit6 1  Dieu  m'est  t6moin,  vieux  pferes, 
que  ma  seule  joie,  c'est  que  parfois  je  songs  que  je  suis 
votre  conscience,  et  que  par  moi  vous  arrivez  a  la  vie  et  k 
la  voix.'" 

Enough,  perhaps,  has  now  been  said  to  give  a  gene- 
ral conception  of  the  sum  of  powers  and  tendencies 
which  M.  Eenan  brings  to  bear  on  the  complex  pro- 
blems of  man's  life  and  destiny.  We  have  seen  that 
his  mind  is  stored  with  wide  -  reaching  knowledge, 
thoroughly  penetrated  with  the  scientific  spirit.  We 
have  seen  at  the  same  time  that  he  is  by  instinct 
conservative  ;  that  his  sympathies  are  aristocratic  rather 
than  democratic ;  but  aristocratic  in  the  highest  sense, 
as  desiriag  to  fortify  or  replace  the  aristocracy  of  birth 
by  an  aristocracy  of  unselfish  wisdom,  which  may  serve 
as  a  barrier  against  the  ignoble  deference  too  often  paid 
to  wealth  alone.  We  have  seen,  again,  that  this  philo- 
sophy which  he  preaches  is  in  himself  no  merely 
nominal  or  idle  thing ;  but  has  enabled  him  not  only 
to  bear  himself  with  dignified  firmness  under  the  mUd 
persecution  of  modern  days,  but  also — a  harder  achieve- 
ment— to  recognise,  though  a  Frenchman,  the  faults  of 
France,  and  in  the  crisis  of  an  embittered  struggle  to 
admit  with  generous  largeness  the  essential  worth  and 
mission  of  the  foe.  Lastly,  we  have  traced  his  sym- 
pathies to  their  deeper  roots,  and  have  discerned  in  his 
vein  of  emotion — ever  between  a  smOe  and  a  sigh — 
the  latest  self-expression  of  a  gentle  old-world  race,  the 
dreamy  prophesyings  of  the  Merlin  of  a  later  day. 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  427 

We  shall  thus,  it  may  be  hoped,  be  better  qualified 
to  estimate  M.  Eenan's  views  on 'those  great  matters 
to  which  his  thoughts  have  mainly  turned ;  man's 
position,  namely,  in  the  spiritual  universe,  as  he  has 
himself  in  different  ages  regarded  it,  or  as  to  us  it  may 
now  appear ;  and  especially  the  story,  full  of  ever  new 
interest  and  wonder,  wliich  tells  how  one  conception 
of  man's  Creator  and  his  destiny  has  overcome  the  rest, 
and  one  life  of  perfect  beauty  has  become  the  model  of 
the  civilised  world. 


II. 


Whether  or  no  this  modern  age  be  in  its  actual 
practice  manifesting  an  increased  regard  for  morals  and 
religion,  there  seems  at  least  to  be  no  doubt  that  those 
subjects  occupy  now  a  larger  space  in  its  thoughts  than 
has  been  the  case  since  the  Reformation.  Discussions 
of  this  kind  pervade  all  schools  of  opinion,  and  Goethe 
himself  could  scarcely  in  our  days  maintain  his  antique 
impassiveness  amid  the  problems  of  man's  life  and 
destiny.  To  stiidents  of  the  historical  sciences  these 
questions  are  necessarily  of  the  first  importance.  A 
language  and  a  religion  are  the  legacies  of  every  race, 
and  these  two  things  are  for  the  most  part  indistin- 
guishably  fused  together  into  a  single  record  of  the 
minds  of  far-off  men.  In  Germany  and  Holland,  and 
less  markedly  in  France  and  England,  the  current  of 
research  has  for  some  time  set  strongly  in  the  direction 


428 


MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 


of  the  history  of  religions.  And  no  book  of  this  kind 
has  attained  a  greater  fame,  as  none  has  dealt  with  a 
theme  more  important,  than  ^I.  Eenan's  Origines  du 
Christianisme,  now  concluded  by  the  volume  entitled 
Marc-AurUe,  after  occupying  twenty  years  of  its  author's 
labours. 

Detailed  criticism  on  a  learned  work  of  this  magni- 
tude would  be  hardly  in  place  here.  It  must  suffice 
to  indicate  some  general  points  of  view,  often  over- 
looked amid  the  desultory  and  acrimonious  comment 
to  which  a  work  of  such  scope  and  novelty,  on  themes 
of  such  close  concern  to  all,  is  not  unnaturally  exposed. 
"We  may  remark,  in  the  first  place,  that  M.  Eenan's 
great  work  almost  exactly  fills  up  the  gap  between  the 
two  most  considerable  histories  of  ancient  times  to 
which  modern  erudition  has  given  birth.  Between 
the  foundation  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  where  Mommsen 
ends,  and  the  reign  of  Conimodus,  where  Gibbon  begins, 
the  main  event  in  the  world's  history  is  the  rise  of 
Christianity,  and  of  this,  with  much  reference  to  con- 
temporary occurrences,  M.  Eenan  treats. 

Better  examples  than  these  three  writers  it  would 
be  hard  to  find  of  the  various  tempers  of  mind  in  which 
the  historian  may  approach  the  facts  and  personages 
with  which  he  has  to  deal : — examples  of  philosophic 
indifference,  of  strong  and  clear  cou\ictions,  of  many- 
sided  sympathy.  Gibbon's  method  lays  him  least  open 
to  criticism,  but  it  is  suited  only  for  a  Byzantine  abase- 
ment of  human  things.     Many  tracts  in  his  thousand 


IV.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  429 

yeara  of  history  still  seem  as  if  they  had  been  made  to 
suit  him ;  but  wherever  extraordinary  characters  or 
impulses  of  strong  life  and  passion  claim  a  place  on 
his  canvas  we  feel  that  all  his  learning  does  not  save 
him  from  being  superficial.  Mommsen,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  by  far  the  most  effective  as  a  teacher.  A 
third,  if  one  may  so  say,  in  the  intellectual  triumwate, 
with  Bismarck  and  Von  Moltke,  he  hurls  upon  his 
readers  a  greater  mass  of  knowledge  with  a  greater 
momentum  than  any  of  his  rivals.  Yet  through  the 
garb  of  the  historian  is  sometimes  visible  the  pamph- 
leteer ;  and  the  unimpassioned  Gibbon  would  scarcely 
have  repudiated  Eenan's  Jesus  so  decisively  as  Momm- 
sen's  Cffisar.  The  chameleon  sympatliies  of  M.  Eenan, 
his  critical  ^«€ss«,  his  ready  emotion,  again  have  both 
advantages  and  dangers  of  their  own.  On  the  one 
hand,  they  enable  him  to  see  more  of  truth  than 
ordinary  men  ;  for  insight  requires  imagination,  and 
the  data  of  history  cannot  always,  like  the  data  of 
physical  science,  be  best  investigated  in  a  "  dry  light." 
Eather  may  we  say — if  it  be  allowed  to  specialise  the 
metaphor — that  they  often  need  to  fall  upon  some 
mind  which,  like  a  fluorescent  liquid,  can  give  lumi- 
nosity to  rays  which  were  dark  before,  and  extend  by 
its  own  intimate  structure  the  many-tinted  spectrum 
of  the  past.  On  the  other  hand,  he  who  attempts  to 
descend  so  deeply  into  the  springs  of  human  thought 
and  feeling  cannot  but  unconsciously  lay  open  also  the 
limitations  of  his  o^vn  being.     Gibbon  may  dismiss  all 


430  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [it. 

events  alike  with  majestic  indifference  or  a  contented 
sneer.  The  definite  and  straightforward  judgments  of 
Momnisen  give  little  grasp  on  their  author's  idiosyn- 
cracy.  But  M.  Eenan,  —  explaining  his  characters 
from  vrithin,  indicating  their  subtler  interrelations  and 
intimate  desires, — attempts  much  that  is  usually  left  to 
the  poet  or  dramatist ;  and,  like  the  poet  or  dramatist, 
whatever  else  he  is  depicting  depicts  himself.  And 
thus  it  is  that  one  defect  in  him — a  defect,  it  is  fair 
to  say,  in  which  he  does  not  stand  alone  among  his 
countrymen — has  appeared  so  conspicuously,  and  has 
been  so  readily  seized  on  by  opponents,  that  it  has 
come  to  colour  the  popular  conception  of  him  to  a 
quite  unjust  extent.  This  is  his  want — one  cannot 
exactly  say  of  dignity,  for  the  master  of  a  style  so 
flexible  and  so  urbane  cannot  but  be  dignified  when- 
ever he  pleases  —  but  of  the  quality  to  which  the 
Eomans  gave  the  name  of  gravitas,  the  temper  of 
mind  which  looks  at  great  matters  with  a  stern  sim- 
plicity, and  which,  in  describing  them,  disdains  to 
introduce  any  intermixture  of  less  noble  emotion. 
Such,  at  least,  has  undoubtedly  been  our  English 
verdict.  Yet  it  is  so  hard  to  say  in  what  manner  a 
history  which  many  centuries  have  held  for- sacred  is 
to  be  retold  in  the  language  of  historical  science,  that 
it  is  only  just  to  inquire  whether  others  have  been 
more  successful,  and  in  what  points  precisely  M. 
Kenan's  deficiency  Ues. 

We  may  admit  then — it  is  impossible  to  deny  it 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  431 

— that  a  great  part  of  the  so-called  orthodox  scheme 
of  Bible  interpretation  is  a  tradition  of  the  least  trust- 
worthy kind,  a  tradition  of  mistakes  and  misrepresent- 
ations, which  have  come  down  to  us  from  an  uncritical 
and  unscrupulous  age.  "We  may  admit  that  the  Ger- 
man school  of  theology — more  persuasively  represented 
by  M.  Kenan  than  by  any  one  among  their  own  num- 
ber— have  performed  a  task  of  urgent  necessity,  and 
have  left  Biblical  exegesis  no  longer  one  of  the  oppro- 
bria  of  historical  science.  But  along  with  these  large 
admissions  large  reservations  also  must  be  made.  The 
student,  whatever  his  speculative  opinions,  who  is 
really  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament, 
will  assuredly  deny  —  wlU  be  tempted  to  deny  even 
with  a  touch  of  indignant  scorn  —  that  this  recent 
school  of  criticism  has  reproduced  that  essential  spirit 
with  anytliing  like  the  potency  and  profundity  which 
may  often  be  found  in  the  comments  of  an  equivo- 
cating father  or  an  ill -educated  saint.  Around  the 
productions  of  Leyden  or  Tubingen  there  hangs  the 
rawness  of  a  revolutionary  scheme  of  things ;  one  feels 
at  every  turn  that  to  treat  these  matters  aright  there 
needs  not  only  patience,  accuracy,  ingenuity,  which 
these  men  give  us,  but  depth  of  feeling  and  width  of 
experience,  which  they  have  not  got  to  give.  We  are 
impressed,  for  instance,  by  Strauss's  air  of  laborious 
thoroughness  as  he  explains  away  the  wonder  and 
beauty  of  the  Christian  story  with  an  arid  logic  which 
its  very  aridity  seems  to  make  more  convincing.      But 


432  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

our  regard  for  his  opinion  drops  rather  suddenly  when, 
as  at  the  close  of  his  Old  And  New  Faith,  he  takes  a 
constructive,  an  edifying  tone.  One  feels,  at  least, 
that  it  takes  a  very  thorough -going  Germanism  to 
enable  him  to  indicate  Goethe's  Elective  Affinities,  or 
the  libretto  of  the  Moffic  Flute,  "  which  no  less  a  man 
than  Hegel  has  long  ago  demonstrated  to  be  a  very 
good  text,"  ^  as  a  sample  of  the  consolations  to  which 
mankind,  disabused  of  ancient  errors,  will  always  be 
enabled  to  cling. 

FiW  w<f>iX'  'Apyov^  nr]  SiaTTTmrOai  ctkcic^os 
KoA\a)v  Is  a^ai'  Kvavias  'Sv/iTrXrjya.Sas — 

Would  that  the  band  of  adventurous  critics  had  never 
sailed  between  the  clashing  rocks  of  Tradition  and 
Authority  in  quest  of  truth,  if  the  golden  treasure  is 
to  be  set  forth  for  worship  by  hands  like  these ! 

In  F.  C.  Baur,  again,  the  combination  of  sagacity 
and  naivete  is  German  in  a  more  agreeable  way. 
Much  of  his  work  commands  our  adhesion,  aU  of  it 
deserves  our  respect.  Never  was  there  a  more  ingeni- 
ous professor.  But  his  outlook  on  life  has  not  en- 
abled him  to  imagine  any  early  Christian  writer  less 
ingenious  or  professorial  than  himself.  To  keep  well 
informed  of  each  other's  favourite  doctrines,  and  then 
promptly  to  issue  Tendenz- Schriften,  or  academical 
programmes,  designed,  beneath  an  appearance  of  amity, 
to  put  those  doctrines  down — such,  it  seems,  was  the 

»  The  Old  Faith  and  the  New,  p.  418,  English  translation. 


tv.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  433 

leading  preoccupation  of  these  lioly  men.  Nay,  to  such 
a  pitch  of  subtlety  did  they  push,  in  Baur's  view,  their 
damning  insinuations,  that  surely  the  worst  fate  which 
pseudo-Paul  could  have  wished  for  pseudo-Peter,  or 
pseudo-Peter  for  pseudo-Paul,  would  have  been  that 
he  should  be  called  on  to  explain  his  own  sous-entendvs 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Tiibingen  school. 

M.  Kenan's  danger  certainly  does  not  lie  in  the 
direction  of  narrowness  or  pedantry.  And  indeed 
French  tact,  French  elegance,  French  propriety  of 
thought  and  expression,  are  so  often  and  so  justly 
proposed  as  models  to  our  English  bluffness  and 
crudity,  that  there  seems  some  presumption  in  taking 
to  task,  for  faults  of  taste,  the  greatest  living  master 
of  French  prose.  Yet  it  is  surely  no  insular  coldness 
that  makes  us  shrink,  for  instance,  from  the  phrase 
"  roulant  d'extases  en  extases,"  as  descriptive  of  the 
ideally  religious  man,  or  dislike  the  constant  repeti- 
tion of  such  words  as  ravissant  and  ddicieux  in  con- 
nection with  the  person  and  teachings  of  Christ. 
And  when  we  find  M.  Penan  suggesting  that  Jesus 
at  Gethsemane  may  have  looked  back  with  a  sigh  on 
the  young  girls  of  Galilee  who,  under  other  circum- 
stances, might  have  made  his  bliss,  we  feel  that  from 
the  point  of  view  of  art  alone — supposing  that  he  were 
telling  a  tale  like  that  of  Prometheus  on  Caucasus  or 
Hercules  on  (Eta — the  expression  is  a  blunder  worse 
than  a  blasphemy.  A  mistake  like  this  brings  its  own 
retribution  with  it,  and  it  would  be  almost  unkind  to 

2f 


434  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

wish  M.  Renan  to  be  fully  aware  of  the  extremily  of 
bad  taste  which  almost  all  his  readers  find  ia  this  un- 
lucky passage.  All  his  readers,  I  was  going  to  say,  but 
I  remembered  hearing  of  a  sympathetic  lady  who  laid 
down  the  Vie  de  J4sus  with  a  sigh,  exclaiming,  "  Quel 
dommage  que  tout  qa  ne  finit  pas  par  un  mariage ! " 

A  few  excisions  would  remove  this  sentimental 
taint,  which  indeed  seldom  appears  except  in  the  Vie 
de  Jesus,  as  an  element  in  the  quasi-poetical  tone  in 
which  that  volume  is  written ;  a  tone  which,  to  Eng- 
lish taste  at  least,  is  on  M.  Eenan's  lips  entirely  mis- 
taken and  disadvantageous — a  gratuitous  divergence 
into  a  realm  which  is  beyond  his  mastery. 

Another  element  inM.  Kenan's  "personal  equation" 
may  be  noticed  as  sometimes  modifying  his  historical 
views.  I  mean  his  exclusively  contemplative  life, 
and  the  mood  of  gentle  irony  which  such  a  life  has 
begotten.  In  dealing  with  almost  all  subjects  this 
disengagement  of  temper  is  an  unmixed  advantage. 
When  the  theme  is  one  of  the  heroes  of  philosophy — 
a  Marcus  Aurelius  or  a  Spinoza — the  reader  reaps  the 
full  benefit  of  this  similarity  between  author  and 
subject ;  their  kinship  in  wise  elevation  and  disen- 
chanted calm.  But  M.  Kenan's  favourite  subjects  are 
chosen  from  a  race  of  men  of  nature,  as  he  has  himself 
remarked,  as  different  as  possible  from  his  own.  It  is 
the  founders  of  religions  whose  career  he  loves  to  trace; 
and  it  is  always  perceptible  how  far  his  spontaneous 
sympathy  carries  him  with  them,  and  where  his  ad- 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  435 

miration  for  them  becomes  almost  pity  in  that  they 
had  so  little  conception  of  the  relativity  of  truth, 
the  limitations  of  virtue,  the  vanity  of  all  things  be- 
neath the  sun.  The  Book  of  Job  is  the  theme  of  the 
finest  of  his  Old  Testament  expositions ;  the  mournful 
Preacher  is  in  his  eyes  "  the  most  inspired  of  the 
sacred  writers." 

In  a  well-known  passage  he  has  given  a  half  hum- 
orous expression  to  the  kind  of  provocation  excited  in 
his  mind  by  St.  Paul's  confident  self-assurance  and 
dominating  force  of  faith  : 

"  Certes,  une  inert  obscure  pour  le  fougueux  apotre  a 
quelque  chose  qui  nous  sourit.  Nous  aimerious  h  rever 
Paul  sceptique,  naufrag6,  abandonn6,  trahi  par  les  siens, 
seul,  atteint  du  d6senchantement  de  la  vieillesse  ;  il  nous 
plairait  que  les  6cailles  lui  fussent  tomb6es  une  seconds  fois 
des  yeux,  et  notre  incr6dulit6  douce  aurait  sa  petite  revanche 
si  le  plus  dogmatique  des  hommes  6tait  mort  triste,  d6ses- 
p6r6  (disons  mieux,  tranquille),  sus  quelque  rivage  ou  quel- 
que route  de  I'Espagne,  en  disant  lui  aussi, '  Ergo  erravi ! '  " 

It  would,  however,  be  grossly  unfair  to  speak  as 
if  M.  Eenan's  peculiar  temperament  —  emotional  at 
once  and  philosopliic — were  productive,  in  his  historical 
pictures,  only  of  distortion  and  melodrama.  So  far  is 
this  from  being  the  case  that  there  is  hardly  a  page  of 
his  history  where  there  may  not  be  found  some  touch 
of  feeUng  which  has  real  beauty,  some  connection 
of  deep  significance  between  early  Christian  faith  and 
practice  and  the  meditations  of  other  times  and  men. 


43fi  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

In  his  account  of  the  resurrection,  for  instance,  amidst 
much  which  may  well  seem  to  us  merely  futile,  he  has 
brought  out,  as  few  before  him  had  ever  done,  what  is 
in  one  sense  the  profoundest  lesson  which  the  life  of 
Jesus  has  to  teach.  He  has  described,  that  is  to  say, 
the  absorbing  power  with  which  one  high  afiection 
may  possess  the  soul ;  and  most  of  all  where  wrongs 
nobly  borne  have  added  to  reverence  a  solemn  com- 
passion, and  given  its  last  intensity  to  love.  The 
object  of  that  affection  fades  from  our  bodily  sight,  but 
stands  forth  more  plainly  revealed  in  its  essential 
beauty ;  succeeding  life  is  giiided  and  glorified  by  the 
transcendent  memory,  and  love  is  transfigured  into 
worship  in  the  deep  of  the  heart.  M.  Eenan  has  had 
the  skUl  to  make  us  feel  how  glorious  a  lot  was  theirs, 
who  through  aU  perils  carried  in  their  bosoms  this 
ineffaceable  joy ;  how  true  were  the  words  which  said 
that  "  kings  have  desired  to  see  the  things  which  ye 
see,  and  have  not  seen  them." 

Again,  a  kindred  spirit  of  unworldliness  has  enabled 
M.  Eenan  to  interpret  with  wise  conviction  the  beati- 
tude of  the  poor.  He  has  dwelt  on  the  tie  which 
unites  all  those  whose  aim  it  is  to  subserve  the  spirit- 
ual welfare  of  men,  and  who  turn  with  indifference  or 
distaste  from  the  rewards  which  the  world  bestows  on 
its  material  benefactors.  Speaking  of  the  sect  of  those 
who  took  this  evangelic  poverty  in  its  strictest  sense 
he  says : — 

"  Bien  que  vite  d6pass6  et  oubU6,  r^bionisme  laissa  dans 


IV.]  ERNEST  KENAN.  437 

toute  I'histoire  des  institutions  chr^tiennes  iin  levain  qui  ne 
se  perdit  pas.  .  .  .  Le  grand  mouvement  ombrien  du 
XIIP  siecle,  qui  est,  entre  tous  les  essais  de  fondation  re- 
ligieuse,  celui  qui  ressemblait  le  plus  au  mouvement  galil6en. 
se  fit  tout  entier  au  nom  de  la  pauvret6.  Frangois  d' Assise, 
I'homme  du  monde  qui,  par  son  exquise  bont6,  sa  commun- 
ion delicate,  fine  et  tendre  avec  la  vie  universelle,  a  le  plus 
ressembl6  k  Jesus,  fut  un  pauvre.  .  .  .  L'humanit6,  poui 
porter  son  fardeau,  a  besoin  de  croire  qu'elle  n'est  pas 
completement  pay^e  par  son  salaire.  Le  plus  grand  ser- 
vice qu'on  puisse  lui  rendre  est  de  lui  r6p6ter  souvent 
qu'elle  ne  vit  pas  seulement  de  pain." 

And  again : — 

"  La  noblesse  et  le  bonheur  de  la  pauvret6, — c'6tait  peut> 
6tre  la  plus  grande  v6rit6  du  cliristianisme,  celle  par  la- 
quelle  il  a  reussi  et  par  laquelle  il  se  survivra.  En  un  sens, 
tous,  tant  que  nous  sommes,  savants,  artistes,  pretres,  ouv- 
riers  des  oeuvres  d6sint6ressdes,  nous  avons  encore  le  droit  de 
nous  appeler  des  6bionim.  L'ami  du  vrai,  du  beau  et  du 
bien  n'admet  jamais  qu'il  touche  une  retribution.  Les 
choses  de  I'ame  n'ont  pas  de  prix ;  au  savant  qui  I'dclaire, 
au  pretre  qui  la  moralise,  au  poete  et  k  I'artiste  qui  la  char- 
ment,  I'humanit^  ne  donnera  jamais  qu'une  aumone,  totale- 
ment  disproportionn6e  avec  ce  qu'elle  reijoit." 

It  is  thus  indeed.  The  evangelic  poverty  is  not  so 
much  a  deliberate  as  an  unconscious  abstinence  from 
that  which  most  men  desire ;  or  if  conscious,  then 
conscious  not  with  self-applauding  effort,  but  with  the 
glad  indifference  of  one  who  has  his  treasure  other- 
where. 


438  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

It  is  needless  to  multiply  instances  to  show  that  in 
M.  Eenan's  case,  as  in  aU  others,  the  law  prevails  that 
to  eyes  which  read  aright  the  book  reveals  the  author, 
so  that  the  recounters  of  a  history  which  holds  a  place 
for  all  of  greatness  and  goodness  to  which  man's  soul 
can  reach  may  give,  indeed,  artistic  expression  to  much 
which  is  beyond  their  ken,  but  convincing  reality  to 
such  things  only  as  they  themselves  have  known. 

A  more  perplexing  topic  remains  behind,  a  topic 
which  it  is  difficult  to  discuss  briefly,  but  which  cannot 
be  passed  over  in  silence  in  any  serious  attempt  to 
estimate  the  value  of  M.  Kenan's  work :  I  mean  his 
treatment  of  the  miraculous  element  in  the  Gospel 
history.  I  must  begin  by  saying  that  I  do  not  think 
that  it  can  be  maintained  that  he  is  ever  consciously 
imfair.  He  is  not  animated,  as  so  many  free-thinkers 
have  been,  by  a  spirit  of  malignity  against  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  On  the  contrary,  his  expressed  sympathies 
are  always  with  that  faith  ;  and  those  who  cannot 
understand  so  vigorous  a  criticism  conducted  in  so  mild 
a  spirit  are  apt  to  think  him  hypocritically  enthusiastic 
and  offensively  patronising.  The  fact  is  that  the  whole 
gist  of  his  controversy  is  included  in  a  single  frank 
assumption.  He  begins  liis  liistory  by  avowedly  exclud- 
ing all  that  is  miraculous  or  supernatural  from  the 
domain  of  the  scientific  historian.  When  a  story  is 
told,  he  says,  which  includes  such  elements  as  these, 
we  simply  know  that  it  is  told  incorrectly.  We  may 
not  always  be  able  to  give  a  plausible  account  of  oui 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  439 

own  of  the  events  in  question.  But  if  we  caunot 
explain  the  miraculous  story  we  may  simply  let  it 
alone,  and  feel  certain  that  there  is  some  explanation 
to  it  which  it  is  now  impossible  to  recover. 

It  is  obvious  that  a  wholesale  assimiption  of  this 
kind  relieves  the  sceptical  historian  from  much  polemic 
in  detail  He  takes,  once  for  all,  the  full  advantage 
which  the  present  commanding  attitude  of  Science 
gives  him,  and  he  is  not  obliged,  as  Voltarre  or  Gibbon 
were  obliged,  to  meet  each  miracle  separately  with 
argument  or  sarcasm.  He  is  not  therefore  tempted,  as 
they  were  tempted,  to  minimise  the  importance  of  his  - 
theme,  or  to  emphasise  its  less  dignified  aspects.  On 
the  contrary,  he  will  be  disposed  to  bring  out  all  its 
meaning,  and  to  show,  if  he  can,  that  the  story  possesses 
a  truer  grandeur  and  impressiveness  when  narrated  in 
the  scientific  rather  than  in  the  theological  temper. 

To  this  line  of  argument  we  shall  best  reply,  not 
by  controverting  his  treatment  of  individual  points, 
but  by  some  such  careful  definition  of  the  disputed 
field  as  may  (if  this  be  possible)  reduce  the  conflict 
between  science  and  orthodoxy  from  the  shape  which 
it  too  often  assumes  of  a  sheer  and  barren  contradic- 
tion to  some  form  in  which  an  ultimate  reconcilement 
may  be  at  least  conceivable.  Let  us  attempt,  therefore, 
to  give  the  view  of  each  party  in  its  most  moderate  and 
non-polemical  form.  And  first  let  us  reject  all  qiiestion- 
hegcjing  terms — all  phrases  such  as  "  violation  of  the 
order  of  Nature,"  or  "  direct  interposition  of  the  Deity," 


440  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv 

which  are  not  mere  descriptions  of  recorded  facts,  but 
descriptions  coloured,  the  first  by  anti-theological,  the 
second  by  theological  feeling.  Phrases  such  as  these 
have  often  been  felt  as  repugnant  both  by  the  deeply 
religious  and  by  the  calmly  scientific  mind.  "  God," 
says  St.  Augustine  in  a  well-known  passage,^  "  does 
nothing  against  Nature.  When  we  say  that  He  does 
so  we  mean  that  He  does  sometliing  against  Nature 
as  we  know  it — in  its  famiKar  and  ordinary  way — but 
against  the  highest  laws  of  Nature  He  no  more  acts 
than  He  acts  against  Himself" 

FoUowing  this  weighty  hint,  let  us  altogether  dis- 
pense with  unproved  assumptions  and  merely  polemical 
antitheses.  Let  us  not  oppose  law  and  miracle,  for 
whatever  abnormal  phenomena  may  have  occurred 
must  (as  we  shall  all  now  feel  with  St.  Augustine) 
have  occurred  consistently  with  eternal  law.  Let  us 
not  oppose  the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  for  "  God 
does  nothing  against  Nature,"  and  all  that  these  two 
terms  can  mean  is  "  what  we  expect  to  see  in  nature," 
and  "  what  we  do  not  expect  to  see." 

Avoiding,  then,  these  verbal  fallacies,  let  us  con- 
sider with  what  various  prepossessions  the  study  of  the 
Gospel  records  is  usually  approached.  On  each  side 
of  the  controversy  we  find  a  reasonable  prepossession 
pushed  too  often  to  an  unreasonable  extreme.      The 

'  Contra  Faustimi,  ixvi.  3.  Ou  tliis  passage  see  (for  instance) 
Archbishop  Treueii  in  the  preface  to  his  treatise  On  tlie  Miracles,  as  an 
example  of  modern  orthodoxy  enforcing  St.  Augustine's  view. 


rv.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  441 

Christian  begins  by  saying :  "  Many  facts  point  to  the 
existence  of  a  beneficent  Ruler  of  the  Universe.  If 
there  be  such  a  Euler,  it  is  probable  that  he  would 
wish  to  make  some  revelation  of  himself ;  and  such  a 
revelation  would  probably  be  accompanied  with  un- 
usual phenomena."  This  may  weU  be  thought  reason- 
able ;  but  it  is  not  reasonable  to  go  on  to  affirm : 
''  This  revelation  is  in  fact  contained  solely  in  a  certain 
set  of  men,  called  the  Chiirch,  or  a  certain  set  of  books, 
called  the  Bible ;  these  teach  absolute  truth,  and  all 
soi-disant  revelations  elsewhere  are  absolutely  untrust- 
worthy." There  is  no  basis  admissible  by  liistorical 
science  on  which  such  assertions  as  these  can  rest. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  savant  begins  by  saying : 
"  Unusual  events,  alleged  to  have  happened  in  un- 
critical times,  and  not  observed  to  recur  in  critical 
and  scientific  times,  are  unworthy  of  credence."  This 
may  well  be  thought  reasonable ;  but  it  is  not  reason- 
able to  go  on  to  affirm  :  "  Alleged  phenomena,  which 
cannot  be  repeated  at  pleasure,  nor  explained  by  the 
known  laws  of  nature,  miist  be  referred  to  illusion  or 
imposture."  There  is  no  scientific  basis  on  which  such 
an  assertion  as  this  can  rest.  For  our  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  nature  is  in  its  infancy ;  many  observed 
phenomena  are  admittedly  as  yet  inexplicable,  and 
among  explicable  phenomena  there  are  a  countless 
number  which  we  cannot  repeat  at  will. 

Dismissing,  then,  the  extravagances  of  either  side, 
our  position  seems  to  be  this.     It  is  not  unreasonable 


442  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [i«r. 

to  suppose  that  such  a  life  and  work  as  Christ's  upon 
earth  was  accompanied  by  some  abnormal  phenomena. 
But  the  age  in  which  these  occurred,  if  they  did  occur, 
was  so  uncritical,  and  the  accounts  wliich  have  reached 
us  are  so  surprising,  that  we  are  bound  to  suspend  our 
acceptance  of  the  wonders  until  some  confirmatory 
evidence  can  be  adduced  from  later  times  as  to  the 
possibility  of  such  occurrences.  And  we  find  that 
substantially  this  is  the  position  of  the  Catholic  and 
the  Orthodox  Churches,  which  corroborate  evangelical 
by  ecclesiastical  miracles,  alleged  by  Eome  especially 
to  have  continued  in  unbroken  series  down  to  the  pre- 
sent day.  Protestants,  disgusted  by  the  fraud  and 
folly  wliich  they  discern  in  connection  with  some  of 
these  ecclesiastical  miracles,  reject  them  in  toto,  but 
since  the  evidence  for  some  among  them  is,  according 
to  ordinary  historical  canons,  much  stronger  tlian  for 
some  of  the  evangelical  ones,  the  Protestant  position  is 
maintained  with  difficulty  against  Catholic  assaults. 

Science,  on  the  other  hand,  classes  all  such  abnor- 
mal events,  whether  recorded  in  the  Gospels,  in  the 
"  Acta  Sanctorum,"  or  elsewhere,  in  the  same  category 
of  error.  She  points  to  the  fact  that  the  tendency  to 
credit  them  diminishe.s  with  the  spread  of  enlighten- 
ment, and  she  shows  a  marked  reluctance  to  enter  on 
their  discussion  in  detail.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this 
reluctance  is  natural,  and  up  to  a  certain  point  salu- 
tary, but  also  that  there  are  transient  circumstances  in 
the  position  of  science  which  dispose  her  at  present  to 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  443 

push  to  an  unphilosopliical  extent  her  aversion  to  such 
forms  of  inquiry.  Her  reluctance  is  natural :  for  the 
subject  is  beset  with  difficulties  of  a  bafBing  and  dis- 
tasteful kind.  The  observer,  hke  Franklin  waiting  for 
his  thunderstorms,  must  catch  his  abnormal  phenomena 
when  and  where  he  can.  Like  an  ethnologist  classi- 
fying savage  religions  on  the  strength  of  the  reports  of 
traders  or  of  missionaries,  he  must  often  depend  on  the 
accounts  of  witnesses  who  are  wholly  unaccustomed  to 
observe,  or  who  are  acc\istomed  to  observe  in  precisely 
the  wrong  way.  Like  the  registrar  of  hysterical  cases, 
he  will  have  to  extract  his  history  of  symptoms  from 
persons  whose  whole  energies  are  devoted  to  deceiving 
him.  He  will  be  tempted  to  pronounce  Simon  Magus 
the  only  wonder-worker  who  has  left  successors,  and 
to  retire  in  disgust  from  the  task  of  discriminating  the 
shades  of  fraud  and  systematising  the  stages  of  foUy. 

These  causes  of  scientific  repulsion,  moreover,  are 
reinforced  (as  above  intimated)  by  another,  which 
belongs  to  a  less  philosophical  side  of  the  savant's 
nature.  Science,  like  aU  strong  forces  which  have  been 
too  long  repressed  and  are  now  asserting  themselves  in 
triumph,  must  necessarily  be  at  first  intolerant  of  the 
power  which  persecuted  her.  In  the  disdainful  dis- 
missal of  all  such  evidence  in  favour  (for  instance)  of 
apparitions  after  death  as  might  be  supposed  to  hang 
together  in  some  sense  with  the  Gospel  narrative,  there 
is  more  to  be  seen  than  a  mere  cool  scientific  scepti- 
cism.    There  is  a  requital  of  decaying  tyranny  with 


444  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

strengthening  scorn ;  there  is  a  tacit  rejoinder  to  the 
sentence  on  Galileo. 

But  from  whatever  source  it  has  arisen,  this  reluc- 
tance of  science  to  examine  into  these  alleged  abnor- 
malities has  probably  been  thus  far  of  advantage  to 
mankind.  It  was  primarily  essential  that  the  idea  of 
unvarying  law  should  get  possession  of  men's  minds ; 
that  Malebranche's  doctrine,  "  Dieu  n'agit  pas  par  des 
volont^s  particuli^res,"  should  descend  from  the  lecture- 
room  into  the  street.  And  in  order  to  establish  or  to 
popularise  a  great  generalisation  it  may  be  desirable  to 
keep  out  of  sight  for  a  time  some  few  apparent  excep- 
tions, which  will  be  better  dealt  with  when  the  general 
principles  of  the  subject  shall  have  become  familiar 
and  easy  to  handle. 

It  may  be  said,  I  think,  that  this  is  now  the  case 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  fixity  of  natural  laws.  That 
this  doctrine  has  fairly  taken  possession  of  the  public 
mind  is  proved — and  it  is  the  only  thing  which  is 
proved — by  the  rapid  decline  in  the  general  belief  in 
the  reality  of  such  phenomena  as  have  been  popularly 
held  to  be  violations  of  law,  to  be  miracles.  In  times 
when  miracles  were  thought  to  be  probable  things, 
abnormalities  were  readily  credited,  and  set-  down  as 
miraculous.  But  now  that  miracles  are  looked  on  as 
impossible  things,  abnormalities,  if  they  occur,  will  find 
no  disposition  in  the  popular  mind  to  accept  them  in 
spite  of  their  abnormality.  The  report  of  them  will 
die  away  in  its  battle  with  the  resisting  medium, — the 


rv.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  445 

belief  that  Nature  is  uniform,  and  that  her  laws  are 
mostly  known. 

"  Phenomena  of  this  kind,"  it  is  sometimes  said, 
"  need  not  now  be  disproved,  for  they  are  disbelieved 
without  formal  disproof."  Precisely  so ;  they  are  dis- 
beheved  because  they  are  traditionally  supposed  to  be 
violations  of  natural  law,  and  we  know  now  that 
natural  laws  are  never  violated.  But  this  argument 
has  a  flaw  in  it.  For  until  such  phenomena  are  not 
only  disbelieved,  but  weighed  and  sifted,  we  cannot  tell 
whether  they  are  in  truth  violations  of  natural  law 
or  not. 

Moreover,  as  soon  as  these  abnoimalities  are  con- 
ceived as  possibly  reducible  to  law,  it  is  seen  how  un- 
pMlosophical  it  is  to  mass  them  all  together.  When 
they  were  looked  upon  as  violations  of  law,  there  was 
certainly  a  kind  of  absurdity  in  claiming  "  moderation  " 
for  the  Gospel  miracles.  But  if  the  Gospels  be  taken 
as  a  humanly  inaccurate  record  of  unusual  but  strictly 
natural  phenomena,  it  is  but  reasonable  to  sift  these 
phenomena  among  themselves.  All  the  causes  alleged 
as  working  for  the  distortion  of  the  history  may  in  fact 
have  worked,  and  may  have  had  their  share  in  shaping 
the  account ;  and  yet  there  may  be  a  residuum  highly 
important  both  to  science  and  to  religion.  Historical 
criticism  shows  us  that  some  of  these  phenomena  are 
supported  by  better  evidence  than  others.  Scientific 
criticism  tells  us  that  some  of  them  come  nearer  thai, 
others  to  known  analogy.     The  scientific  way  of  deal- 


446  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

ing  with  them,  then,  will  be — not  to  ignore  all  of  them 
equally  —  but  to  begin  with  those  which  are  most 
strongly  affirmed,  and  for  whose  subsequent  repetition 
there  is  also  most  evidence,  and  to  examine  in  detail 
what  that  evidence  is  worth.  Por  instance ;  none  of 
these  wonders  are  more  strongly  affirmed  than  that 
Christ  healed  the  sick  with  his  touch,  and  appeared  to 
his  disciples  after  death.  Can  it  be  said,  or  rather 
would  it  be  said,  if  no  professional  pedantry  intervened, 
that  tlie  action  of  one  human  organism  on  another  is 
thoroughly  understood  ?  that  the  phenomena  called 
hypnotism  or  mesmerism  have  been  explained  ?  that 
the  physiological  doctrine  as  regards  what  is  styled 
the  influence  of  mind  on  body  is  settled  or  complete  ? 
Can  it  be  said,  or  rather  would  it  be  said,  if  no  polemi- 
cal passion  were  involved,  that  the  widely -spread 
accounts  of  apparitions  seen  at  the  moment  of  death, 
or  soon  after  death,  have  been  collected  and  scrutinised 
as  they  would  have  been  had  the  testimony  related  to 
any  other  class  of  facts  ?  Notoriously  they  have  not 
been  so  coHected  and  so  weighed.  And  the  reason  for 
this  is  perhaps  to  be  sought  in  a  want  rather  than  an 
excess  of  confidence  felt  by  men  of  science  in  the 
strength  of  their  own  central  position, — the  immutable 
regularity  of  the  course  of  Nature.  They  have  shunned 
all  mention  of  such  phenomena  from  a  vague  fear  that 
if  they  were  established  the  spiritual  world  would  be 
found  to  be  intruding  on  the  material  world ;  that,  as 
they  have  sometimes  naively  expressed  it,  "an  incal- 


IV.]  ERNEST  REN  AN.  447 

culable  element  would  be  introduced  which  would 
interfere  witli  the  certainty  of  all  experiments."  The 
scientific  answer  to  this  of  course  is,  that  whatever 
worlds,  whatever  phenomena  exist,  are  governed  by 
rigid  law,  and  that  all  elements  in  all  problems  are 
incalculable  only  till  they  are  calculated.  The  true 
disciple  of  science  should  desire  to  bring  all  regions, 
however  strange  and  remote,  under  her  sway.  They 
may  be  productive  in  ways  which  he  can  little  imagine. 
Some  of  the  outlying  facts  whose  production  Aristotle 
tranquilly  ascribed  to  "  chance  and  spontaneity  "  have 
proved  the  corner-stones  of  later  discovery.  And  the 
bizarre  but  obstinately  recurring  phenomena  which  thus 
far  have  been  inadeqiiately  attested  and  incompletely 
disproved,  which  have  been  left  as  the  nucleus  of 
legend  and  the  nidus  of  charlatanerie,  may  in  their 
turn  form  the  starting-point  for  wider  generalisations, 
for  unexpected  confirmations  of  universal  law.  A  his- 
tory of  primitive  Christianity  which  sets  them  altogether 
aside  may  be  the  clearest  and  most  consistent  history 
of  which  existing  knowledge  admits,  but  it  can  only 
be  a  provisioned  one.  It  can  hardly  be  expected,  for 
instance,  that  the  common  sense  of  the  public  will 
permanently  accept  any  of  the  present  critical  explana- 
tions of  the  alleged  appearances  of  Christ  after  death. 
It  will  not  accept  the  view  of  Strauss,  according  to 
which  the  "  mythopoeic  faculty "  creates  a  legend 
without  an  author  and  without  a  beginning ;  so  that 
when  St.  Paul  says  "  He  was  seen  of  Cephas,  then  of 


448  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

the  twelve,"  he  is  repeatmg  about  acquaintances  of  his 
own  au  extraordinary  assertion,  which  was  never  origin- 
ated by  any  definite  person  on  any  definite  grounds, 
but  which  somehow  proved  so  persuasive  to  the  very 
men  who  were  best  able  to  contradict  it  that  they  were 
willing  to  suffer  death  for  its  truth.  Nor  wUl  the 
world  be  contented  with  the  theory  according  to  which 
Christ  was  never  really  killed  at  all,  but  was  smuggled 
by  some  unknown  disciples  iato  the  room  where  the 
Twelve  sat  at  meat,  and  then  disappeared  unaccount- 
ably from  the  historic  scene,  after  crowning  a  divine 
life  with  a  bogus  resurrection.  Nor  will  men  continue 
to  believe — if  anybody  besides  M.  Eenan  beheves  it 
now — that  the  faithful  were  indeed  again  and  again 
convinced  that  their  risen  Master  was  standing  visibly 
among  them,  but  thought  this  because  there  was  an 
accidental  noise,  or  a  puff  of  air,  or  even  an  Hrangc 
miroitement,  an  atmospheric  effect.  An  Strange  miroite- 
menf !  Paley's  Evidences  is  not  a  subtle  book  nor  a 
spiritual  book.  But  one  wishes  that  the  robust  Paley 
with  his  "  twelve  men  of  known  probity  "  were  alive 
again  to  deal  with  hypotheses  like  this.  The  Apostles 
were  not  so  much  like  a  British  jury  as  Paley  im- 
agined them.  But  they  were  more  like  a  British  jury 
than  like  a  parcel  of  hysterical  monomaniacs. 

And  if,  as  we  must  hold,  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  will  insist  on  feeling  that  the  marvels  of  the 
New  Testament  history  have  as  yet  neither  been  ex- 
plained away  nor  explained,  so  also  will  it  assuredly 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  449 

refuse  to  concur  with  the  view,  often  expressed  botli 
in  the  scientific  and  the  theological  camps,  according 
to  which  these  marvels  are  after  all  unimportant,  the 
spiritual  content  of  the  Gospels  is  everything,  and 
religion  and  science  alike  may  be  glad  to  get  rid  of 
the  miracles  as  soon  as  possible.  According  to  the 
cruder  view  of  the  Gospel  wonders,  indeed,  this  would 
be  reasonable  enough.  To  wish  to  convert  men  by 
magic,  to  prove  theological  dogmas  by  upsetting  the 
sequence  of  things,  this  is  neither  truly  religious  nor 
truly  scientific.  But  if  these  Gospel  signs  and  wonders 
are  considered  as  indications  of  laws  which  embrace, 
and  in  a  sense  unite,  the  seen  and  the  unseen  worlds, 
then  surely  it  is  of  immense  importance  to  science 
that  they  should  occur  anywhere,  and  of  immense 
importance  to  Christianity  that  they  should  occur  in 
connection  with  the  foundation  of  that  faith. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  Christianity — understood  in 
our  days,  it  may  perhaps  be  asserted,  more  profoundly 
than  ever  before — has  brought  to  us  inestimable  bless- 
ings which  no  possible  view  of  the  wonders  narrated 
in  the  Gospels  could  now  take  away.  It  has  given  us 
a  conception  of  the  universe  which  most  minds  accept 
as  at  once  the  loftiest  and  the  most  intelligible  to 
which  the  spirit  of  man  has  attained ;  it  has  taught  us 
a  temper — the  temper  as  of  a  child  towards  an  unseen 
Father — which  alone,  as  we  now  feel,  can  bring  peace 
to  the  heart.  It  is  true,  moreover,  that  the  best  men 
of  all  schools  of  thought  are  ever  uniting  more  closely 

2g 


450 


MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 


in  the  resolve  to  be  practically  Christian — to  look  on 
the  labouring  universe  with  this  high  affiance,  to  shape 
life  after  this  pattern  of  seK-sacrificing  love,  whatever 
the  universe  and  life  may  really  be — though  the  uni- 
verse be  a  lonely  waste  of  ether  and  atoms,  and  life  a 
momentary  consciousness  winch  perishes  with  the  brain's 
decay.     So  far  will  philosophy  carry  good  and  wise 
men.     But  even  the  best  and  the  wisest  men  would 
prefer  to  rest  their  practical  philosophy  upon  a  basis  of 
ascertained  facts.     And  for  tlie  "  hard-headed  artisan," 
"  the  sceptical  inquirer,"  the  myriads  of  stubborn  souls 
.to  which  Christianity  has  a  message   to  bring  —  for 
such  men  facts  are  everything,  and  philosophy  without 
facts  is  a  sentimental  dream.     They  will  never  cease 
to  desire  actual  e\'idence  of  another  world  which  may 
develop  the  faculties,  prolong  the  affections,  redress 
the  injustices  of  this.     And  they  will  feel  more  and 
more  strongly,  as  the  scientific  spirit  spreads,  that  such 
evidence  cannot  come  to  us  conclusively,  either  through 
lofty  ideas  generated  within  our  own  minds,  or  through 
traditions  which  reach  us  faintly  from  an  ever-receding 
Past     Science  rests  not  on  intuition,  nor  on  tradition, 
but  on  patiently  accumulated  observations  which  on  a 
sudden  flash  into  a  law. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  M.  Eenan's  essays  * 

treats  of  the  religious  future  of  the  civilised  world.     He 

indicates  therein,  with  a  delicacy  which  it  would  be 

unfair  to  epitomise,  which  parts  of  existing  religion  are 

»  L'Atenir  BdigUax  del  SocUUs  Uodemu, 


rv.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  451 

destined  to  survive  and  which  to  disappear.  He  pre- 
dicts on  the  whole  an  increase  of  religious  sentiment, 
expressing  itself  in  a  "  free  Cliristianity,"  whose  pliant 
dogmas,  selected  by  each  mind  as  its  need  may  prompt 
it,  will  leave  room  for  the  development  of  man's  spirit- 
ual nature  in  many  different  ways.  But  he  allows  for 
the  growth  of  no  new  element,  the  foundation  of  no 
surer  faith.  He  assumes  rather  that  mankind  will 
resign  themselves  to  the  long  uncertainty,  and  will 
confront  at  last  the  eternal  problems  with  scarce  an 
effort  for  their  solution. 

Even  such  was  the  spirit  in  which  Socrates, — the 
genuine,  the  characteristic  Socrates,  shrewdest  of  mortal 
men,  —  looked  out  on  the  various  theories  of  the 
constitution  of  the  visible  universe  which  he  found  in 
favour  around  him.  Convinced  of  the  arbitrariness  of 
the  explanations,  of  the  inaccessibility  of  the  pheno- 
mena, he  insisted  that  nothing  more  could  be  known, 
or  should  be  inquired,  concerning  the  visible  universe 
save  that  its  substance  and  operations  were  august  and 
divine ;  and  he  summoned  the  attention  of  men  to 
matters  where  improvement  was  urgent  and  knowledge 
possible,  the  conduct  and  the  laws  of  their  moral  being. 

The  parallel  is  an  instructive  one.  For  we  shall 
find,  perhaps,  on  examination,  that  the  old  philosopher's 
despair  of  discovering  the  truth  about  the  physical 
world,  and  the  modern  savant's  despair  of  discovering 
the  truth  about  the  spiritual  world,  are  the  reactions 
against  precisely  the  same  form  of  error  on  the  part 


462  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

of  those  who  have  taken  in  hand  to  expound  the 
mysteries  of  the  visible  universe  or  of  that  which  is 
unseen.  For  the  founders  of  religions  have  hitherto 
dealt  in  the  same  way  with  the  invisible  world  as 
Tliales  or  Anaximander  dealt  with  the  visible.  They 
have  attempted  to  begin  at  once  with  the  highest 
generalisations.  Starting  from  the  existence  of  a  God, 
—  the  highest  of  all  possible  truths,  and  the  least 
capable  of  being  accurately  conceived  or  defined, — 
they  have  proceeded  downwards  to  explain  or  justify 
his  dealings  with  man.  They  have  assumed  that  the 
things  which  are  of  most  importance  to  us  are  there- 
fore the  things  which  we  are  most  likely  to  be  enabled 
to  know.  Some  inquirers  have  boldly  avowed  them- 
selves unable  to  believe  anything  inconsistent  with 
their  notions  of  absolute  right.  Others  have  accepted 
with  resignation  some  mysterious  message  of  wrath 
and  doom.  But  all  alike  have  agreed  in  disdaining 
any  knowledge  of  things  unseen  save  such  as  is  of  a 
lofty  character,  and  capable  of  throwing  direct  light  on 
the  destinies  of  man. 

It  is  possible  that  in  all  this  mankind  have  begun 
at  the  wrong  end.  The  analogy  of  physical  discovery, 
at  any  rate,  suggests  that  the  truths  which  we  learn 
first  are  not  the  highest  truths,  nor  the  most  attractive 
truths,  nor  the  truths  which  most  concern  ourselves. 
The  chemist  begins  with  the  production  of  fetid  gases 
and  not  of  gold ;  the  physiologist  must  deal  with  bone 
and  cartilage  before  he  gets  to  nerve  and  brain.     The 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  453 

more  interesting  to  us  anything  is,  the  less,  and  not  the 
more,  are  we  likely  to  know  about  it.  We  must  learn 
first  not  what  we  are  most  eager  to  learn,  but  what  fits 
on  best  to  what  we  know  already. 

Let  us  apply  this  analogy  to  the  spiritual  world. 
Let  us  consider  how  along  that  strange  road  also 
we  may  proceed  systematically  from  the  most  complex 
of  the  things  which  we  have  learnt  already  to  the 
simplest  of  those  which  we  have  yet  to  learn.  And 
here  we  must  first  reflect  that  although  it  is  possible, 
indeed,  that  any  number  of  worlds,  or  of  states  of 
being,  may  exist,  differing  from  our  world  or  from  each 
other  in  inconceivable  ways,  yet  the  only  difference 
which  we  can  take  account  of, — the  only  line  of  de- 
marcation which  science  can  draw, — is  between  things 
which  can,  or  which  cannot,  be  cognised  by  our  existing 
faculties  ;  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  between  things 
which  have  become  a  part  of  our  common  knowledge, 
and  things  which  as  yet  can  only  be  imagined  or 
supposed  ; — though  this  imagination  may  indeed  sus- 
tain the  intensest  faith  and  hope.  And  this  line  of 
demarcation  is  not  a  permanent  and  immovable  one : 
experience  shows  us  no  broad  gulf  between  the 
sensible  and  the  super-sensible,  the  seen  and  the  un- 
seen. On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  continual  work  of 
science  to  render  that  which  is  iiicognisable  cognisable, 
that  which  is  unperceived  perceptible,  that  which  is 
fitfully  seen  and  uncontrollable  habitually  manifest 
and   controlled.      In  this  process    she    is    constantly 


454  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

encroacbmg  on  the  domain  of  old  religions,  and  bring- 
ing things  which  once  seemed  so  unearthly  that  they 
must  needs  be  divine  into  her  ordinary  categories  of 
observation  and  experiment.  A  subtler  ether  than 
ever  hung  round  the  windless  Olympus  is  now  the  sub- 
ject of  differential  equations.  And  man  — Kepavvov 
Kpeiaraov  evprjKm  (f>\6ya — has  tamed  for  his  use  and 
fixed  for  his  illumination  the  very  flash  and  bolt  of 
Jove.  There  is  no  need  to  multiply  instances.  Science, 
while  perpetually  denying  an  unseen  world,  is  per- 
petually revealing  it.  Meantime  we  are  unavoidably 
subject  to  the  same  illusion  as  our  fathers.  We 
too  fancy  that  a  great  gulf  surrounds  our  field  of 
vision ;  there  must  be  void  or  mystery  where  we  cease 
to  see.  Aristotle,  having  done  more  than  any  one 
before  or  since  to  explain  the  affairs  of  this  planet, 
relegated  his  unknowable  to  the  fixed  stars.  The  nature 
of  the  stars,  he  says,  is  eternal,  and  the  first  essences 
which  they  represent  divine.^  Our  standpoint  now  is 
not  the  same  as  Aristotle's.  But  we  have  no  more 
reason  than  he  had  to  take  our  mental  horizon  for  an 
objective  line. 

If,  then  (apart  from  the  inspirations  of  the  in- 
dividual soul),  we  are  asked  in  what  manner  we  can 
hope  to  obtain  definite  knowledge  about  spuitual 
things,  the  answer  which  we  shall  be  forced  to  give 
will  seem,  like  the  prophet's  saying,  Wash  in  Jordan 
and  be  clean,  at  once  a  disappointing  platitude  and  a 

'  Metaph.  xii.  8. 


iv.l  ERNEST   RENAN.  455 

wild  chimera.  For  we  can  reply  only :  In  the  same 
way  as  we  have  obtained  definite  knowledge  about 
physical  things.  The  things  which  we  now  call  sensible 
or  natural  we  have  learnt  by  following  scientific 
methods  up  to  a  certain  point.  The  things  which  we 
stiU  call  supra-sensible  or  supernatural  we  shall  learn 
by  following  those  methods  farther  stiU.  But  while 
we  thus  commit  ourselves  to  science  with  loyal  con- 
fidence, we  shall  call  on  her  to  assume  the  tone  of 
an  unquestioned  monarch  rather  than  of  a  successful 
usurper.  AU  phenomena  are  her  undoubted  subjects  ; 
let  her  press  all  into  her  service,  and  not  ignore  or 
proscribe  any  because  ignorance  may  have  misrepre- 
sented them,  or  theology  misused.  Let  her  find  her 
profit  where  she  may,  without  contempt  and  without 
prepossession,  in  the  superstitions  of  the  savage  as 
in  the  speculations  of  the  sage. 

But  this  has  yet  to  be.  And  even  if,  more 
doggedly  persistent  herein  than  M.  Eenan,  we  cannot 
bring  ourselves  to  allow  that  religious  aspiration  and 
emotion  are  all  that  can  be  ours,  and  that  the  effort 
after  a  systematic  knowledge  of  the  unseen  world  must 
be  abandoned  in  despair,  we  may  nevertheless  feel  a 
strong  sympathy  with  the  attitude  in  which  he  con- 
fronts the  deep  spiritual  unsettlement  which  divides 
the  modern  world. 

"  '  La  plus   rude  des  peines,'  he   says,^  '  par  lesquelles 

1  Etudes  cFHisloire  Eeligieuse  (preface). 


466  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

rhomme  arriv6  k  la  vie  r6fl6chie  expie  sa  position  excep- 
tionnelle  est  sans  doute  de  se  voir  ainsi  isol6  de  la  grande 
famUle  religieuse,  oil  sont  les  meilleures  ames  du  monde, 
et  de  songer  que  les  personnes  avec  lesquelles  il  aimerait 
le  mieux  etre  en  communion  morale  doivent  forc6ment  le 
regarder  comme  pervers.  II  taut  etre  bien  sdr  de  soi  pour 
ne  point  se  troubler  quand  les  femmes  et  les  enfants 
joiguent  leurs  mains  pour  vous  dire,  Croyez  comme  nous  ! 
On  se  console  en  songeant  que  cette  scission  entre  les 
parties  simples  et  les  parties  cultiv6es  de  I'humanit^  est 
une  loi  fatale  de  r6tat  que  nous  traversons,  et  qu'il  est  una 
region  sup6rieure  des  ames  61ev6es,  dans  laquelle  se  recon- 
trent  souvent  sans  s'en  douter,  ceux  qui  s'anath6matisent ; 
cit6  id6ale  que  contempla  le  Voyant  de  1' Apocalypse,  oil  se 
pressait  une  foule  que  nul  ne  pouvait  compter,  de  toute 
tribu,  de  toute  nation,  de  toute  langue,  proclamant  d'une 
seule  voix  le  symbole  dans  lequel  tous  se  r6unissent : 
*  Saint,  saint,  saint,  celui  qui  est,  qui  a  6t6,  et  qui  sera  ! "  " 

Again  he  says  ^  (and  the  few  lines  that  I  quote 
contain  the  upshot  of  almost  all  his  teaching) : — 

"  Ja'i  cru  servir  la  reUgion  en  essayant  de  la  transporter 
dans  la  region  de  I'inattaquable,  au-deli  des  dogmes 
particuliers  et  des  croyances  surnaturelles.  Si  celles-ci 
viennent  k  crouler  il  ne  faut  pas  que  la  religion  croule,  et 
un  jour  viendra  peut^tre  ofi  ceux  qui  me  reprochent 
comme  un  crime  cette  distinction  entre  le  fond  imp6rissable 
de  la  religion  et  ses  formes  passagferes  seront  heureux  de 
chercher  un  refuge  contre  des  attaques  brutales  derrifere 
I'abri  qu'ils  ont  d6daign6." 

Passages  of  this  kind  may  surely  be  welcomed  even 
'  Essais  de  Morale  et  de  Critique  (preface). 


IV.]  ERNEST  BEN  AN.  457 

by  those  who  feel  the  fullest  confidence  in  the  ultimate 
victory  of  a  more  definite  form  of  faith.  They  show, 
at  least,  the  nobler  aspect  of  an  age  of  transition,  the 
real  advantage  which  times  of  doubt  and  hesitancy 
may  bring  to  many  men  in  caUing  out,  as  it  were,  the 
reserve  forces  of  their  nature,  in  compelling  them  to 
confront  the  great  problems  and  to  realise  what  it  is 
that  they  hold  most  dear.  One  might  too  often  be 
led  to  think,  by  the  tone  of  its  defenders,  that  the 
Christian  religion  was  a  kind  of  transcendental  insur- 
ance company ;  that  its  object  was  merely  to  enalile 
men  to  enjoy  this  temporal  life  without  anxiety  as 
to  the  eternal.  But  this  is  not  so.  The  object  of 
aU  true  religion  is  not  the  tranquillity,  but  the  life  of 
the  spirit ;  and  our  modern  days  have  seen  this  life 
grow  strong  and  vigorous  in  regions  where  it  has  re- 
ceived no  conscious  sustenance  from  an  environing 
Power.  It  would  be  rash  to  turn  aside  from  fellow- 
ship witli  such  men  because  their  language  jars  on 
orthodox  tradition.  "  Le  blaspheme  des  grands  esprits," 
as  M.  Eenan  has  said  in  words  that  recall  the  deepest 
thoughts  of  Pascal — 

"  le  blaspheme  des  grands  esprits  est  plus  agr^able  k  Dieu 
que  la  pri^re  int6ress6e  de  rhorame  vulgaire  ;  car,  bien  que 
le  blasphfeme  r^ponde  k  une  vue  incomplete  des  choses,  il 
renferme  une  part  de  protestation  juste,  tandis  que  I'^goisme 
no  contient  aucune  parcelle  de  v6rit6." 

I   must    draw  to    a    conclusion.      Yet    lest,  amid 
criticism  and  controversy,  I  may  seem  to  have  rendered 


458  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [rv 

imperfectly  the  substantive  character  and  lessons  of 
one  above  whose  voice,  for  width  and  wisdom,  it  were 
hard  to  place  the  voice  of  any  living  teacher,  I  must 
yet  find  room  for  two  passages  which  represent  him  at 
his  best.  The  first  was  written  at  a  crisis  of  private 
son'ow  and  public  contention,  and  spoke  out,  in  answer 
to  a  swift  emergency,  the  inward  habit  of  his  soul. 

"  'J'ai  vu  la  mort,'  ^  he  said,  '  de  tres-prfes.  J'ai  perdu 
le  goflt  de  ces  jeux  frivoles  oh  Ton  peut  prendre  plaisir 
quand  on  n'a  pas  encore  souffert.  Les  soucis  de  pygmies, 
dans  lesquels  s'use  la  vie,  n'ont  plus  beaucoup  de  sens  pour 
moL  J'ai,  au  contraire,  rapport6  du  seuil  de  I'infini  une 
foi  plus  vive  que  jamais  dans  la  r6alit6  sup6rieure  du 
monde  id6al.  C'est  lui  qui  est,  at  le  monde  physique  qui 
parait  6tre.  Fort  de  cette  conviction,  j'attends  I'avenir 
avec  calms.  La  conscience  de  bien  faire  suflSt  i  mon  repos, 
Dieu  m'ayant  donn6  pour  tout  ce  qui  est  6tranger  k  ma  vie 
morale  une  parf aite  indifference. 

The  last  passage  which  I  shall  quote  is  one  written 
in  calmness,  not  in  exaltation."  It  seems  to  me  to 
contain  thoughts  as  lofty,  in  language  as  clear  and 
noble,  as  any  meditation  on  these  eternal  things  which 
our  age  has  known. 

"  Si  la  religion  n'6tait  que  le  fruit  du  calcul  naif  par 
lequel  I'homme  veut  retrouver  au  dela  de  la  tombe  le  fruit 
des  placements  vertueux  qu'il  a  faits  ici-bas  I'homme  y 
serait  surtout  port6  dans  ses  moments  d'6goisme.  Or,  c'est 
dans   ses  meilleurs   moments  que  I'homme  est  religieux, 

1  La  Okaire  d'Mibreu  au  GolUge  de  France. 
-  From  L'Avenir  Religieux  des  SocUtts  Modenua. 


IV.]  ERNEST  RENAN.  459 

c'est  quand  il  est  bon  qu'il  veut  que  la  vertu  corresponde  k 
un  ordre  6ternel,  c'est  quand  il  contemple  les  choses  d'une 
manifere  d6sint6ress6e  qu'il  trouve  la  mort  r6voltante  et 
absurde.  Disons  done  hardiment  que  la  religion  est  un 
produit  de  rhomme  normal,  que  I'homme  est  le  plus  dans 
le  vrai  quand  il  est  le  plus  religieux  et  le  plus  assur6  d'une 
destin6e  infinie;  mais  6cartons  toute  confiance  absolue  dans 
les  images  qui  servent  k  exprimer  cette  destin^e,  et  croyons 
seulement  que  la  r6alit6  doit  Stre  fort  sup^rieure  k  ce  qu'il 
est  permis  au  sentiment  de  ddsirer  et  k  la  fantaisie 
d'imaginer.  On  crut  que  la  science  allait  diminuer  le 
monde.  En  r(5alit6  elle  I'a  infiniment  agrandi.  La  terre 
semblable  k  un  disque,  le  soleil  gros  comme  le  P6lopon6se, 
les  6toiles  roulant  k  quelques  lieues  de  hauteur  sur  les 
rainures  d'une  voflte  solide,  un  univers  ferm6,  entour6  de 
murailles,  cintr6  comme  un  coffre,  voilk  le  syst^me  du 
monde  le  plus  splendide  que  Ton  e(it  pu  concevoir.  .  .  . 
Croyons  hardiment  que  le  systeme  du  monde  moral  est  de 
merae  sup6rieur  k  nos  symboles.  .  .  .  Qui  sait  si  la  m6ta- 
physique  et  la  th^ologie  du  pass6  ne  seront  pas  k  celles  que 
le  progrfes  de  la  speculation  r6v61era  un  jour  ce  que  le 
cosmos  d'Anaximtoe  ou  d'Indicopleustfes  est  au  cosmos  de 
Laplace  et  de  Humboldt]" 

And  now,  perhaps,  enough  indication  has  been 
given  of  the  temper  in  which  this  subtlest  of  seekers 
after  God  approaches  the  mystery  on  whose  skirts  we 
dwell.  The  value  of  his  reflections  it  must  be  left  in 
great  part  for  the  succeeding  age  to  determine.  AU 
that  can  be  claimed  for  him,- — that  must  be  claimed 
now  and  ever  by  honest  men  for  honest  men, — is  that 
disagreement  should  carry  with  it  no  detraction  ;  that 


460  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [iv. 

there  should  never  be  anything  but  honour  paid  to  the 
search  for  truth. 

"  Things  are  what  they  are,"  said  Bishop  Butler, 
"  and  their  consequences  will  he  what  they  wUl  be  ; 
why,  then,  should  we  wish  to  be  deceived  ? "  EI9 
olwvo<;  apiaTo<; — the  one  best  of  omens  is  that  we  our- 
selves be  brave  and  true.  "  Light !  though  thou  slay 
us  in  the  light !"  is  the  aspiration  of  all  noble  souls. 
Nor  was  it  in  vain  that  that  prayer  of  Ajax  was 
uttered  beside  Scamander's  shore.  The  cloud-veil  was 
withdrawn  at  his  bidding,  and  light  was  given  indeed ; 
but  it  was  not  destruction  which  it  pleased  Zeus  to 
send  for  the  sons  of  the  Achseans,  but  entry  into  sacred 
Ilium,  and  a  return  to  their  immemorial  home. 


ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S   POEMS. 

SK^ios  fiffTts  iSbjv  iKtlva.  Kol\tiv 
or5e;'  5^  StdaSoTOf  apx^y. 

Even  in  these  days  of  eager  appreciation,  of  ready  eulogy, 
one  living  Englishman  who  may  fairly  lay  claim  to  the 
title  of  poet  seems  as  yet  to  have  received  but  inade- 
quate recognition.  Yet  he  is  of  all  English  poets  the 
one  whose  position  in  the  world  is  the  most  conspicu- 
ous and  considerable.  But  Dr.  Trench's  poems  have 
in  no  wise  depended  upon  his  status  as  an  ecclesiastic ; 
they  have  appealed  to  no  party  in  the  Church ;  they 
have  made  their  way  by  no  organised  praise  or  factiti- 
ous diffusion,  but  by  slow  pervasive  contact  with  earnest 
and  lonely  minds.  His  public  has  been  gradually  won, 
and  is  gradually  increasing ;  there  are  many  for  whom 
his  words  have  mingled  themselves  with  Tennyson's  in 
hours  of  bereavement,  with  Wordsworth's  in  hours  of 
meditative  calm. 

For  there  are  many  who  have  found  in  these  poems 
the  fit  expression  of  a  spirit  by  nature  mournful,  by 
conviction  and  courage  serene ;  dwelling,  as  it  were, 


462  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v. 

beneath  the  pressure,  but  in  the  light,  of  Eternity ;  a 
spirit  stirred,  indeed,  by  romance,  and  alive  to  martial 
adventure,  but  occupied  chiefly  with  (he  profounder 
symbolism  and  occult  significance  of  the  world,  and 
finding  its  congenial  nourishment  wheresoever  Greek, 
or  Persian,  or  Arabian,  German  or  Spaniard,  Jewish 
rabbi  or  mediseval  saint,  has  set  wisdom  in  hidden 
apologues  and  has  miugled  mystery  with  song ;  a  spirit 
whose  own  utterances  come  rarely  and  with  effort,  and 
express  for  the  most  part  only  a  massive  wisdom,  a 
snomic  and  sententious  calm  ;  but  which  under  the 
stimulus  of  strong  poetic  sympathy,  or  of  desolating 
bereavement,  or  merely  of  the  more  closely  reahsed 
imminence  of  the  unseen,  will  sometimes  become  as  it 
were  slowly  enkindled  from  within,  and  for  a  while  find 
grace  and  power  to  mix  with  those  who  through  the 
weight  and  confusion  of  earthly  things  have  fought 
upwards  into  the  spiritual  universe  "  their  practicable 
way." 

I  have  mentioned  poetic  sympathy  as  one  of  the 
impulses  which  have  most  powerfully  stimulated  Dr. 
Trench's  powers.  The  strongest  instance  of  this  is  the 
influence  of  Pindar.  And  it  is  strange  to  reflect  how 
subtle  must  that  connection  be  between  verbal  melody 
and  deep-seated  emotion  which  enables  not  merely  the 
thoughts  and  imagiuations,  but  the  very  mood  and 
temper  of  Pindar  on  some  given  day  to  reproduce 
themselves  with  such  awakening  intensity  in  the  breast 
of  a  man  so  remote  in  language,  nation,  and  faith.      It 


v.]       ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.      463 

is  strange  to  think  that  when  Pindar  had  written  down 
the  words  beginning 

Tlov  Sk  TrafiTTiiOrj  yXvKVV  r^fiiOkouriv  iroBov  TrpoaSaiti'   lipa — 

he  had  made  it  practically  certain  that  whatever  might 
befall  Greece  or  her  gods,  in  every  generation  of  men 
who  should  thereafter  be  born  there  should  be  some  at 
least  to  whom  those  words  should  carry  a  shock  and 
exaltation  hardly  to  be  equalled  by  any  personal  de- 
light ;  to  whom  they  should  sound  as  the  very  charter 
of  heroism,  the  trumpet-call  of  honour  and  of  joy. 
"  Hidden  are  tlie  keys,"  to  use  his  own  words,  of  the 
art  which  so  wrought  the  fourth  Pythian  ode  as  that  it 
should  outlast  the  Parthenon  : — 

"  Seeing  it  was  built 
To  music,  therefore  never  buUt  at  all. 
And  therefore  bmlt  for  ever." 

In  his  Orpheus  and  the  Sire7is  Dr.  Trench  gives  us  the 
peculiar  pleasure  which  is  afforded  by  a  poem  which 
is  not  a  translation  but  a  transmutation  of  some  great 
remembered  song;  melted  afresh  in  the  crucible  of  an 
understanding  heart,  and  poured  into  a  new  shape  which 
recalls  without  imitating  the  old  : — - 

"  High  on  the  poop,  with  many  a  godlike  peer, 

With  heroes  and  with  kings,  the  flower  of  Greece, 
That  gathered  at  his  word  from  far  and  near, 
To  snatch  the  guarded  fleece, 

"  Great  Jason  stood,  nor  ever  from  the  soil 
The  anchor's  brazen  tooth  unfastened, 


464  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v, 

Till,  auspicating  so  his  glorious  toil, 
From  golden  cup  he  shed 

"  Libations  to  the  gods,  to  highest  Jove, 

To  Waves,  and  prospering  Winds,  to  Night  and  Day, 
To  all  by  whom  befriended  he  might  prove 
A  favourable  way." 

There  is  something  in  this  stately  opening,  in  the 
"  ample  pinion  "  of  this  high  and  manly  strain,  which 
recalls  at  a  distance  the  sailing  glory  of  the  great 
original : — 

dp\o'S   €V   irpv[J,v^    Trarep'   OvpaviSdv    €y\€LKepavvov  Zjjva,    Kai 

o]KV7r6pov<; 
KV/iaTWV  piiras  avfpwv  T  CKaAft,  vvikths  T6  Kai  ttovtov  KcXfuOow 
afuxTO.  t'  ev<f>pova  Koi  t^ikiav  vo<ttolo  jxoipav. 

But  as  the  poem  proceeds  Dr.  Trench  quits  the  track 
of  Pindar,  and  describes  the  encounter  of  the  returning 
Argonauts  with  the  Sirens  in  a  passage  which  should 
be  compared  with  Mr.  Morris'  beautiful  treatment  of 
the  same  situation  in  the  Life  and  Death  of  Jason. 

"  The  winds,  suspended  by  the  charmed  song, 
Shed  treacherous  calm  about  that  fatal  isle ; 
The  waves,  as  though  the  halcyon  o'er  its  young 
Were  always  brooding,  smile ; 

"  And  every  one  that  listens,  presently 

Forgetteth  home,  and  wife,  and  children  dear. 
All  noble  enterprise  and  purpose  high, 
And  turns  his  pinnace  here, — 


v.]  ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  465 

"  He  turns  his  pinnace,  warning  taking  none 

From  the  plain  doom  of  all  that  went  before, 
Whose  bones  lie  bleaching  in  the  wind  and  sun, 
And  whiten  all  the  shore. 

"  The  heroes  and  the  kings,  the  wise,  the  strong, 

That  won  the  fleece  with  cunning  and  with  might, 
They  too  are  taken  in  the  net  of  song, 
Snared  in  that  false  delight ; 

"  Till  ever  loathlier  seemed  all  toil  to  be, 

And  that  small  space  they  yet  must  travel  o'er 
Stretched,  an  immeasurable  breadth  of  sea, 
Their  fainting  hearts  before. 

« '  Let  us  turn  hitherward  our  b;irk,'  they  cried, 
'  And,  bathed  in  blisses  of  this  happy  isle, 
Past  toil  forgetting  and  to  come,  abide 
In  joyfulness  awhile  ; 

"  '  And  then,  refreshed,  our  tasks  resume  again, 
If  other  tasks  we  yet  are  bound  unto. 
Combing  the  hoaiy  tresses  of  the  main 
With  sharp  swift  keel  anew.'" 

They  are  on  the  point  of  yielding  to  the  charm  when 
Orpheus  sings : — 

"  He  singing  (for  mere  words  were  now  in  vain, 
That  melody  so  led  all  souls  at  will). 
Singing  he  played,  and  matched  that  earthborn  strain 
With  music  sweeter  still. 

«  Of  holier  joy  he  sang,  more  true  delight, 
In  other  happier  isles  for  them  reserved, 

2h 


466  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v. 

Who,  faithful  here,  from  constancy  and  right 
And  truth  have  never  swerved  ; 

"  How  evermore  the  tempered  ocean  gales 

Breathe  round  those  hidden  islands  of  the  blest. 
Steeped  in  the  glory  spread,  when  daylight  fails 
Far  in  the  sacred  West ; 

"  How  unto  them,  beyond  our  mortal  night. 

Shines  evermore  in  strength  the  golden  day; 
And  meadows  with  purpureal  roses  bright 
Bloom  round  their  feet  alway ; 

"  And  plants  of  gold — some  burn  beneath  the  sea, 
And  some,  for  garlands  apt,  the  land  doth  bear. 
And  lacks  not  many  an  incense-breathing  tree, 
Enriching  all  that  air. 

"  Nor  need  is  more,  with  sullen  strength  of  hand. 
To  vex  the  stubborn  earth,  or  plough  the  main : 
They  dwell  apart,  a  calm  heroic  band. 
Not  tasting  toil  or  pain. 

"  Nor  sang  he  only  of  unfading  bowers, 

Where  they  a  tearless,  painless  age  fulfil, 
In  fields  Elysian  spending  blissful  hours, 
Eemote  from  every  ill ; 

"  But  of  pure  gladness  found  in  temperance  high, 
In  duty  owned,  and  reverenced  with  awe, 
Of  man's  true  freedom,  that  may  only  lie 
In  servitude  to  law ; 

"  And  how  'twas  given  through  virtue  to  aspire 
To  golden  seats  in  ever-calm  abodes ; — 
Of  mortal  men  admitted  to  the  choir 
Of  high  immortal  Gods." 


i 


v.]  ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  467 

It  will  be  seeu  that  Pindar's  second  Olympian  Ode 
has  furnished  much  of  the  inspiration  of  these  noble 
stanzas.     And  it  is  a  noticeable  fact  that  Dr.  Trench, 
himself  the   very   type   and   norm   of    Christian   and 
Anglican  orthodoxy,  has  yet  by  the  intensity  of  his 
pondering  on  the  things  unseen  been  led  to  feel  the 
profound  affinity  which  has  existed  between  the  hopes 
and  creeds  of  such  men  in  aU  times  and  countries  as 
have  set  themselves  to  seek  after  God,  and  has  thus 
been  upheld  in  one  of  his  highest  moments   by  the 
Vision  of  the  Pindaric  Apocalypse,  the  tale  told  in  the 
Mysteries  of  the  blessedness  of  the  just,  Keivav  vapci 
hiairav,  "  in  the  Life  that  is  to  be."      The  Poems  from 
Eastern  Sources  afford  many  illustrations  of  this  ten- 
dency of  an  inward  and  meditative  faith  to  identify 
itself  with  the  diverse  but  convergent  imaginations  of 
remote  and  ancient  men.     And  in  the  Monk  and  Bird 
we  may  see  how  strongly  this  brooding  spirit  has  been 
drawn  towards  that  element  in  European  life  which 
has  most  resembled  the  monotony  of  the  East,  —  the 
Hfe  of  monks  and  hermits  in  the  middle  ages, — a  life 
closed  about  with  narrowing  cloister-walls,  yet  having 
as  it  were  a  single  opening  on  the  infinite,  like  the 
chink  which  serves  for  the  astronomer's  outlook  upon 
the  abysses  of  heaven. 

In  the  Monk  and  Bird  Dr.  Trench  has  treated  one 
of  the  profoundest  of  mediaeval  parables, — an  apologue 
which  deals  with  a  real  difficulty  and  suggests  a  real, 
though  not  a  novel,  solution.     The  difficulty  lies  in 


468  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v. 

conceiving  that  our  finite  faculties  can  be  capable 
■ndthout  weariness  of  infinite  delight;  the  answer  is 
the  Platonic  one,  that  the  limitations  of  our  faculties 
can  even  now  by  an  occasional  insight  be  discerned 
to  be  accidental  and  temporary,  and  not  inherent  in 
the  percipient  soul  itself.  Such  insight,  as  Plato  has 
urged,  comes  to  us  mainly  through  the  passion  of 
Love,  which  in  its  highest  form  refuses  to  conceive  of 
its  own  satisfaction  in  less  than  infinite  time.  The 
author  of  tliis  legend,  if  such  legends  have  an  author, 
has  chosen  a  simpler  experience  through  which  to  in- 
timate the  spirit's  essential  power,  and  has  imagined 
his  Paradise  in  the  unwonted  prolongation  of  a  single 
and  elementary  joy. 

The  story  is  of  "  a  cloistered  solitary  man,"  vowed 
to  poverty  and  celibacy,  and  debarred  from  the  ordinary 
interests  and  pleasures  of  mankind. 

"  Yet  we  should  err  to  deem  that  he  was  left 
To  bear  alone  our  being's  lonely  weight, 
Or  that  his  soul  was  vacant  and  bereft 
Of  pomp  and  inward  state. 

"  Morn,  when  before  the  sun  his  orb  unshrouds, 
Swift  as  a  beacon  torch  the  light  has  sped, 
Kiudhug  the  dusky  summits  of  the  clouds 
Each  to  a  fiery  red  ; — 

"  The  slanted  columns  of  the  noon-day  light, 
Let  down  into  the  bosom  of  the  hUls, 
Or  sunset,  tliat  with  golden  vapour  bright 
The  purple  mountains  fills, — 


v.]  ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  469 

"  These  made  him  say  :  '  If  God  has  so  arrayed 
A  fading  world  that  quickly  passes  by. 
Such  rich  provision  of  delight  has  made 
For  every  human  eye, 

"  '  What  shall  the  eyes  that  wait  for  Him  survey, 
Where  His  own  presence  gloriously  appears 
In  worlds  that  were  not  founded  for  a  day, 
But  for  eternal  years  1 '  " 

But  gradually  a  spiritual  anxiety  undermined  this 
spiritual  calm : — 

"For  still  the  doubt  came  back,  'Can  God  provide 
For  the  large  heart  of  man  what  shall  not  pall, 
Nor  thro'  eternal  ages'  endless  tide 
Ou  tired  spirits  fall  1 

"  '  Here  but  one  look  toward  heaven  will  oft  repress 
The  crushing  weight  of  undelightful  care  ; 
But  what  were  there  beyond,  if  weariness 
Should  ever  enter  there  f" 

How  in  this  mood  of  mind  he  wanders  in  the  woods, 
how  he  hears  a  bird  singing  and  listens  with  rapt 
attention,  and  turns  homeward  with  a  dim  sense  of 
strangeness  when  the  song  is  done,  I  must  leave  the 
reader  to  learn  from  the  poem  itself.  I  can  only 
quote  the  concluding  stanzas  : — 

"  Yet  was  it  long  ere  he  received  the  whole 

Of  that  strange  wonder — how,  while  he  had  stood 
Lost  in  deep  gladness  of  his  inmost  soul 
Far  hidden  in  that  wood. 


470  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v 

"  Three  generations  had  gone  down  unseen 
Under  the  thin  partition  that  is  spread — 
The  thin  partition  of  thin  earth — between 
The  living  and  the  dead. 

"  Nor  did  he  many  days  to  earth  belong, 

For  like  a  pent-up  stream,  released  again. 
The  years  arrested  by  the  strength  of  song 
Came  down  on  him  amain  ; 

"  Sudden  as  a  dissolving  thaw  in  spring  ; 
Gentle  as  when  upon  the  first  warm  day 
Which  sunny  April  in  its  train  may  bring 
The  snow  melts  all  away. 

"  They  placed  him  in  his  former  cell,  and  there 

Watched  him  departing ;  what  few  words  he  said 
Were  of  calm  peace  and  gladness,  with  one  care 
Mingled — one  only  dread — 

"  Lest  an  eternity  should  not  suflBce 

To  take  the  measure  and  the  breadth  and  height 
Of  what  there  is  reserved  in  Paradise — 
Its  ever-new  delight." 

These  stanzas  will  give  an  idea  of  Dr.  Trench's 
characteristic  style ;  equally  remote  from  convention 
and  from  extravagance,  keeping  as  it  were  in  the 
main  track  of  the  English  language,  and  giving  to 
simple  and  natural  forms  of  speech  a  grave  distinction 
and  a  melodious  power. 

From  the  poems  which  derive  their  motive  from 
external  sources  I  pass  on  to  the  more  purely  subjec- 


v.]  ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  471 

tive   pieces.     The  keynote  of  these  is  given  in   two 
weighty  stanzas  : — 

"  0  hfe,  0  death,  0  world,  0  time, 
0  grave,  where  all  things  flow, 
'Tis  yours  to  make  our  lot  sublime 
With  your  great  weight  of  woe. 

"Though  sharpest  anguish -hearts  may  wring, 
Though  bosoms  torn  may  be, 
Yet  suffering  is  a  holy  thing  ; 
Without  it  what  were  we  ?" 

Elevation  through  sorrow  is  as  distinctly  the  lesson 
which  Dr.  Trench  has  to  teach  as  elevation  through 
spiritual  oneness  with  Nature  is  Wordsworth's  lesson. 
And  the  sorrow  with  which  this  poet  deals,  which  he 
so  wholly  vanquishes  in  the  triumphant  joy  of  the 
lines  which  he  has  called  "  The  kingdom  of  God,"  is 
not  merely  such  isolated  grief  as  may  fall  upon  an 
alert  and  buoyant  spiiit,  to  be  shaken  off  with  a  quick 
rush  of  hope,  or  with  the  life-bringing  recurrence  of 
the  years.  Eather  it  is  that  inbred  and  heavy  gloom, 
that  sense  of  oppression  and  of  exile,  of  punishment 
and  fall,  which  may  be  said  to  form  the  darker  side  of 
our  "  intimations  of  immortality,"  and  wliich  has  made 
the  lives,  not  of  monks  or  recluses  only,  but  of  some 
of  the  best  and  most  active  men  whose  fates  history 
records,  one  long  struggle  between  the  indomitable 
effort  of  courage  and  the  paralysing  relapse  of  pain. 
The    Ode    to   Sleep,   of   which    I   quote   the   two   last 


472  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v. 

stanzas,  will  illustrate  this  temper  of  mind  ;  and 
will  show  that  the  confident  and  deliberate  hope 
which  is  the  sum  and  outcome  of  this  volume  is 
sometlung  more  than  the  easy  optimism  of  tempera- 
ment or  convention. 

"  And  therefore  am  I  seeking  to  entwine 
A  coronal  of  poppies  for  my  head, 
Or  wreathe  it  with  a  wreath  engarlanded 
By  Lethe's  slumberous  waters.     Oh  !   that  mine 
Were  some  dim  chamber  turning  to  the  north, 
With  latticed  casement,  bedded  deep  in  leaves. 
That  opening  with  sweet  murmur  might  look  forth 
On  quiet  fields  from  broad  o'erhanging  eaves, 
And  ever  when  the  Spring  her  garland  weaves 
Were  darkened  with  encroaching  ivy-traU 
And  jagged  vine-leaves'  shade  ; 
And  aU  its  pavement  starred  with  blossoms  pale 
Of  jasmine,  when  the  wind's  least  stir  was  made; 
Where  the  sunbeam  were  verdurous-cool,  before 
It  wound  into  that  quiet  nook,  to  paint 
With  interspace  of  light  and  colour  faint 
That  tesselated  floor. 

"  How  pleasant  were  it  there  in  dim  recess, 
In  some  close-curtained  haunt  of  quietness, 
To  hear  no  tones  of  human  pain  or  care, 
Our  own  or  others',  little  heeding  there 
If  morn  or  noon  or  night 
Pursued  their  weary  flight. 
But  musing  what  an  easy  thing  it  were 
To  mix  our  opiates  in  a  larger  cup, 
And  drink,  and  not  perceive 


^•J 


ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  473 

Sleep  deepening  lead  his  truer  kinsman  up, 

Like  undistinguished  Night  darkening  the  skirts  of  Eve." 


Surely  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  profound 
charm  of  these  lines,  the  charm  of  the  slowly-falling 
syllables,  the  strong  and  lingering  rhythm,  which  paint 
the  gradual  eclipse  of  the  last  faint  joy  in  light  and 
form  and  colour,  and  the  wliole  soul's  abeyance  in  an 
unstirred  and  unawakening  gloom. 

One  more  quotation  shall  illustrate  the  contrasting 
form  of  self-abandonment ;  a  dissolution  which  is  not 
into  the  night  but  into  the  day ;  the  last  renunciation 
of  egoism,  the  absorption  of  individual  effort  and 
rebellion  in  the  Infinite  Home  of  men. 

"  If  there  had  anywhere  appeared  in  space 
Another  place  of  refuge,  where  to  flee, 
Our  souls  had  taken  refuge  in  that  place, 
And  not  with  Thee. 

"  For  we  against  creation's  bars  had  beat 

Like  prisoned  eagles,  through  great  worlds  had  sought 
Though  but  a  foot  of  ground  to  plant  our  feet 
Where  Thou  wert  not. 

"  And  only  when  we  found  in  earth  and  air, 

In  heaven  or  hell,  that  such  might  nowhere  be, — 
That  we  could  not  flee  from  Thee  anywhere, — 
We  fled  to  Thee." 

But  it  is  by  his  Elegiac  Poems  that  Dr.  Trench 
has  won  his  almost  unique  position  in  many  hearts. 
For  it  is  the  especial  privilege  of  Poetry  that  by  her 


474  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v. 

close  intermingling  of  ethical  and  artistic  sentiment 
she  can  bring  definite  consolation  to  some  of  the 
deepest  sorrows  of  men.  Painting  can  fill  our  minds 
with  ennobling  images,  but  iu  the  hour  of  our  tribula- 
tion these  are  apt  to  look  coldly  at  us,  like  dead  gods. 
Music  can  exalt  us  into  an  unearthly  and  illimitable 
world,  but  the  treasures  which  we  have  grasped  there 
melt  away  when  we  descend  from  that  remote 
empyrean.  Poetry  can  meet  our  sorrows  face  to  face, 
can  show  us  that  she  also  knows  them,  and  can  trans- 
form them  into  "  something  rich  and  strange  "  by  the 
suggestive  magic  of  her  song.  And  since  there  does 
without  doubt  exist  a  kind  of  transference  and  meta- 
stasis of  the  emotions,  since  the  force  of  any  strong 
feeling  can  to  some  extent  be  led  off  into  other 
channels,  the  work  of  Art  in  the  moral  world,  like  the 
work  of  Science  in  the  material  world,  is  to  transform 
the  painful  into  the  useful,  the  lower  into  the  higher 
forms  of  force ;  to  change  scorn  and  anger  into  a 
generous  fervency,  and  love  that  is  mixed  with  sorrow 
into  a  sacred  and  impersonal  flame.  And  of  all  sor- 
rows the  sorrow  of  bereavement  needs  this  aid  the 
most.  For  to  some  troubles  a  man  may  become 
indifferent  by  philosophy,  and  from  some  he  may 
become  through  virtue  free,  but  this  one  soirow  grows 
deeper  as  the  character  rises  and  the  heart  expands  ; 
and  an  object  more  unique  and  loveable  is  mourned 
with  a  more  inconsolable  desire.  And  to  such  mourn- 
ers those  who  trust  in  an  ultimate  reunion  may  often 


V.J  ARCHBISHOP  TRENCH'S  POEMS.  475 

speak  with  an  effective  power.  For  on  whatever 
evidence  or  revelation  men  may  base  this  faith  for 
themselves,  it  does  yet  unconsciously  in  great  part 
rest  for  each  man  upon  the  faith  of  those  around  him, 
upon  the  desire  of  great  hearts  and  the  consenting 
expectation  of  the  just.  It  is  a  belief  which  only  in 
a  certain  moral  atmosphere  finds  strength  to  grow ;  it  0^ 

is  chiefly  when  the  conviction  of  spiritual  progress 
through  sorrow  is  dominant  and  cleai  that  men  are 
irresistibly  led  to  believe  that  in  this  crowning  sorrow 
also  courage  must  conquer,  and  constancy  must  be 
rewarded,  and  love  which  as  yet  has  known  no  bar  or 
Hmit  shall  find  no  limit  in  the  grave.  Be  this  per- 
suasion well  founded  or  not,  to  those  "  who  have 
intelligence  of  love "  human  life  without  such  hope 
would  be  itself  a  chaos  or  a  hell.  A  nature  like  Dr. 
Trench's,  full  of  clinging  affections,  profound  religious 
faith,  and  constitutional  sadness,  was  likely  to  feel  in 
extreme  measiue  both  these  bereavements  and  these 
consolations.  The  loss  of  beloved  children  taught  him 
the  lessons  of  sorrow  and  of  hope,  and  the  words  in 
which  that  sorrow  and  that  hope  found  utterance  have 
led  many  a  mourner  in  his  most  desolate  hour  to  feel 
that  this  grave  writer  is  his  closest  and  most  consoling 
friend. 

For  although  these  poems  deal  so  largely  with  the 
poet's  sorrow  and  yearning,  it  is  not  compassion  only, 
nor  compassion  chiefly,  which  they  inspire  in  our 
hearts.     Eather  we  feel  that  for  one  whose  hopes  are 


476  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [v 

based  so  firmly  and  raised  so  high  we  can  desire 
nothing  but  what  he  already  possesses ;  no  "  treasures," 
no  "  friends,"  as  another  poet  has  told  us,  except  such 
treasures  as  are  his  indefeasibly,  and  those 

"  Three  firm  friends,  more  sure  than  Day  or  Night, 
Himself,  his  Maker,  and  the  Angel  Death." 


GEORGE   ELIOT. 

"  Homo  homini  deus  est,  si  suum  oBicium  sciat." — Cj;oiliii8. 

It  is  no  easy  task* to  write  for  the  public  eye  an 
account  of  a  deeply-venerated  friend  whom  death  has 
newly  taken.  It  is  a  task  on  which  one  might  well 
shrink  from  entering,  save  at  the  wish  of  those  whose 
desire  in  such  a  matter  carries  the  force  of  a  command. 
He  who  makes  the  attempt  can  scarcely  avoid  two 
opposite  perils.  Strangers  will  be  apt  to  think  his 
admiration  excessive.  Friends  more  intimate  than 
himself,  on  the  other  hand,  wiU  find  a  disappointing 
incompleteness  in  any  estimate  formed  by  one  less 
close  than  they, — one  who,  seeing  only  what  his  own 
nature  allowed  him  to  see,  must  needs  leave  so  much 
imseen,  untold.  Between  these  conflicting  dangers  the 
only  tenable  course  is  one  of  absolute  candour.  To 
fail  in  candour,  indeed,  would  be  to  fail  in  respect. 
"  Obedience  is  the  courtesy  due  to  kings,"  and  to  the 
sovereigns  of  the  world  of  mind  the  courtesy  due  is 
truth. 

The  world  has  already  been  made  acquainted  with 


478  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

most  of  the  external  facts  of  George  Eliot's  life.  Mary 
Ann  Evans,  youngest  cliQd  of  Robert  Evans,  land 
agent,  was  born  at  Arbury,  near  Nuneaton,  in  War- 
wickshire, on  November  22,  1820.  Her  birthplace 
was  thus  only  some  twenty  miles  from  Shakspeare's, 
and  the  "  rookery  elms "  of  her  childish  memories, 
survivors  of  the  Forest  of  Arden,  may  have  cast  their 
shadow  also  on  the  poet  of  Jaques  and  Rosalind: 
Arbury  Hall,  the  seat  of  Sir  Eoger  Newdigate,  her 
father's  principal  employer,  is  reproduced  as  the 
Cheverel  Manor  of  Mr.  GilfiVs  Love-Story.  So,  also, 
does  Chilvers  Coton  Church  appear  as  Shepperton, 
Astley  Church — Tlie  Lanthorn  of  Arden — as  Knebley, 
and  Nuneaton  as  Milby,  while  many  of  the  inhabitants 
of  that  quiet  region  are  painted  in  Scenes  of  Clerical 
Life,  as  they  were,  or  as  they  might  have  been. 

Her  education  was  mainly  self-acquired.  For  a 
short  time — before  she  was  ten  years  old — she  was  at 
school  in  Nuneaton,  afterwards  at  the  Miss  Franklins' 
in  Coventry.  "  I  began  at  sixteen,"  she  says,  in  a 
letter  which  lies  before  me,  "  to  be  acquainted  with 
the  imspeakable  grief  of  a  last  parting,  in  the  death  of 
my  mother."  After  this  loss,  and  the  marriage  of  her 
brothers  and  sisters,  she  lived  alone  with  her  father, 
and  in  1841  they  removed  from  Griff  House  toFoles- 
hill,  near  Coventry. 

During  all  these  early  years,  as,  indeed,  during  all 
the  years  which  followed  them,  religious  and  moral 
ponderings  made  the  basis  of  George  Eliot's  life.     To 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  479 

her,  as  to  most  of  the  more  serious  spirits  of  her 
generation,  religion  came  first  after  the  Evangelical  — 
for  a  time  even  after  the  Calvinistic  —  pattern.  The 
figure  of  Dinah  Morris  is  partially  taken  from  her 
aunt,  Elizabeth  Evans,  whose  simple  goodness  had 
much  attraction  for  the  earnest,  self-questioning  girl. 
And  in  other  well-known  characters  she  has  shown 
her  deep  realisation  of  those  forms  of  faith  and  piety 
which  rest,  not  on  outward  ceremonies,  but  on  the 
direct  communion  of  the  heart  with  God.  The  story 
of  the  spiritual  growth  of  Maggie  Tulliver — in  great 
part,  no  doubt,  autobiographical  —  has  been  felt  by 
many  readers  to  be  almost  unique  in  its  delineation  of 
passionate  search,  of  an  eager,  self-renouncing  souL 
But  there  are  those  who  seek  and  cannot  find,  who 
knock  and  to  whom  it  is  not  opened.  There  are 
those,  the  very  intensity  of  whose  gaze  seems  to  dim 
the  great  hope  on  which  it  rests ;  who,  while  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  fulfils  itself  within  them,  cease  to 
discern  it  before  them  and  afar. 

Such  was  the  case  with  George  Eliot.  After  a  few 
years  spent  at  Foleshill  in  close  study,  aided  by  the 
Charles  Brays  and  other  intelligent  friends  at  Coventry, 
we  find  her  coming  first  before  the  world,  though 
anonymously,  in  1846,  with  a  translation  of  Strauss' 
Life  of  Jesus.  This  was  followed  by  a  translation  of 
Eeuerbach's  Essence  of  Christianity,  and  a  translation, 
as  yet  unpublished,  of  Spinoza's  Ethics.  Her  mind 
had   taken  its  ply,  and  while  her  nature,  eminently 


480  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

constant  and  conservative,  retained  always  a  deep 
reverence  and  aifection  for  whatever  names  itself  br 
the  name  of  Christ,  she  never  sought  again  the  old 
means  of  grace,  nor  felt  the  old  hope  of  glory. 

Her  father  died  in  1849,  and  for  some  time  before 
his  death  she  was  mainly  absorbed  in  attendance  on 
him.  She  told  me  once  that  for  the  last  year  of  his 
life  she  had  read  Scott's  novels  aloud  to  him  for  many 
hours  almost  daily ;  and  thus,  we  may  suppose,  amid 
her  severer  studies,  she  was  imbibing  something  of  the 
method  of  one  to  whom  she  always  looked  up  as  a 
master.  After  her  father's  death  she  went  abroad  with 
the  Brays,  and  remained  for  some  eight  months  en 
pension  near  Geneva,  and  afterwards  at  M.  d' Albert's 
house  in  the  town.  This  was  to  her  a  time  of  intense 
delight  in  the  external  world.  The  shock  of  bereave- 
ment had  left  her  spirit  open  to  those  consolations 
with  which  Nature  is  ever  ready  to  soothe  a  generous 
pain. 

She  returned  to  England  in  1850,  and  in  1851 
she  became  sub-editor  of  the  Westminster  Review,  a 
periodical  which  has  often  been  the  first  to  welcome 
the  contributions  of  writers  who  have  afterwards  risen 
to  fame.  She  lodged  with  the  editor.  Dr.  Chapman, 
and  his  wife,  in  a  large  house  in  the  Strand,  which  was 
the  centre  of  a  literary  group,  penetrated  for  the  most 
part  with  strongly  scientific  tendencies,  and  especially 
with  the  philosophy  of  the  Comtist  school.  Among 
the    articles    in    the  Review  which  have   since   been 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  481 

pointed  out  as  hers,  that  on  "  Worldliness  and  Other- 
Worldliness  "  (Jan.  1857),  is  especially  characteristic 
and  noteworthy. 

This  course  of  placid  self-culture  was  interrupted 
by  personal  events  which  increased  the  perplexity,  deep- 
ened the  significance,  of  life.  A  long  tragedy  unrolled 
itself  before  her  ;  her  pity,  affection,  gratitude,  were 
subjected  to  a  strong  appeal ;  a  path  was  chosen  over 
which,  amidst  much  of  happiness,  a  certain  shadow 
hung.  It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  if  ever  her  intimate 
history  is  made  more  fvilly  known  to  the  world  it  will 
be  found  to  contain  nothing  at  variance  with  her  own 
unselfish  teaching ;  no  postponement  of  principle  to 
passion  ;  no  personal  happiness  based  upon  others'  pain. 

In  1854  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lewes  went  to  Germany, 
and  spent  a  year  mainly  at  Weimar  and  Berlin. 
They  saw  much  of  the  most  intellectual  society  of 
Germany,  and  it  was,  perhaps,  in  this  stimulating 
companionship  that  the  earnest  student  first  became 
strongly  conscious  of  original  power.  It  was,  at  any 
rate,  soon  afterwards  that  she  discovered  the  means  of 
self-expression  by  which  she  was  best  able  to  move 
mankind,  in  a  fonn  of  literature  whose  freedom  of 
plan  renders  it  specially  fitted  to  reflect  the  complexity 
of  modern  life  and  thought.  She  preluded  with  one 
or  two  short  tales,  which  indicate  that  her  power  was 
only  just  ripening.  Then  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  ap- 
peared in  1857,  Adam  Bede  in   1859,  and   Tlie  Mill 

on  the  Floss  in  1860. 

2i 


482  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi 

The  author's  identity  was  soon  discovered  under 
her  nom,  de  jolume  of  "  George  Eliot,"  and  the  publica- 
tion of  these  first  books  made  a  sudden  change  in  her 
life  and  surroundings.  She  awoke  and  found  herself 
famous.  From  an  obscure  sub-editor  of  an  unfashion- 
able review,  she  rose  at  a  bound  to  the  first  place 
among  the  imaginative  prose  writers  of  her  time. 

Her  remaining  twenty  years  of  life  were  such  as 
the  spirit  conscious  of  a  message  to  deliver  might  most 
desire.  Her  mind  was  fed  by  strenuous  and  constant 
study,  —  scientific,  hnguistic,  literary,  —  by  frequent 
travel  in  those  historic  lands  whose  air  quickens 
spirit  as  well  as  body,  and  by  habitual  intercourse 
with  many  of  the  foremost  minds  of  the  age.  She 
never  had  much  connection  with  the  political — still 
less,  of  course,  with  the  merely  fashionable  —  world, 
but  nearly  all  who  were  most  eminent  in  art,  science, 
literature,  philanthropy,  might  be  met  from  time  to 
time  at  her  Sunday  afternoon  receptions.  There  were 
many  women,  too,  drawn  often  from  among  very  differ- 
ent traditions  of  thought  and  belief  by  the  unfeigned 
goodness  which  they  recognised  in  Mrs.  Lewes'  look 
and  speech,  and  sometimes  illumining  with  some  fair 
young  face  a  salon  whose  grave  talk  needed  the  grace 
which  they  could  bestow.  And  there  was  sure  to  be 
a  considerable  admixture  of  men  not  as  yet  famous — 
probably  never  to  be  so — but  whom  some  indication 
of  studies  earnestly  pursued,  of  sincere  effort  for  the 
good  of  their  fellow-men,  had  recommended  to  "  that 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  483 

hopeful  interest  which  " — I  quote  the  generous  words 
of  a  letter  which  lies  before  me — "  the  elder  mind,  dis- 
satisfied with  itself,  delights  to  entertain  with  regard 
to  the  younger,  whose  years  and  powers  hold  a  larger 
measure  of  unspoiled  life." 

It  was  Mr.  Lewes  who,  on  these  occasions,  contri- 
buted the  cheerful  bonhomie,  the  observant  readiness, 
which  are  necessary  for  the  fusing  together  of  any 
social  group.  Mrs.  Lewes'  manner  had  a  grave  sim- 
plicity wliich  rose  in  closer  converse  into  an  ahnost 
pathetic  anxiety  to  give  of  her  best  —  to  establish  a 
genuine  human  relation  between  herself  and  her  inter- 
locutor —  to  utter  words  which  should  remain  as  an 
active  influence  for  good  in  the  hearts  of  those  who 
heard  them.  To  some  of  her  literary  admirers  this 
serious  tone  was  distasteful ;  they  were  inclined  to 
resent,  as  many  critics  in  print  have  resented,  the 
prominence  given  to  moral  ideas  in  a  quarter  from 
which  they  preferred  to  look  merely  for  intellectual 
refreshment. 

Mrs.  Lewes'  humour,  though  fed  from  a  deep  per- 
ception of  the  incongruities  of  human  fates,  had  not, 
except  in  intimate  moments,  any  buoyant  or  contagious 
quality,  and  in  all  her  talk, — full  of  matter  and  wis- 
dom and  exquisitely  worded  as  it  was, — there  was  the 
same  pervading  air  of  strenuous  seriousness  which  was 
more  welcome  to  those  whose  object  was  distinctly  to 
learn  from  her  than  to  those  who  merely  wished  to 
pass  an  idle  and  brilliant  hour.     To  her  these  mixed 


484  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

receptions  were  a  great  effort.  Her  mind  did  not 
move  easily  from  one  individuality  to  another,  and 
when  she  afterwards  thought  that  she  had  failed  to 
understand  some  difficulty  which  had  been  laid  before 
her, — had  spoken  the  wrong  word  to  some  expectant 
heart, — she  would  suffer  from  almost  morbid  accesses 
of  self-reproach.  Perhaps  to  no  imaginative  writer — 
to  no  writer,  at  any  rate,  of  what  is  commonly  called 
"  light  literature  " — has  fame  ever  presented  itself  so 
unmixedly  as  responsibility.  Each  step  that  she  gained 
in  popular  favour  drove  her  into  a  more  sedulous  con- 
scientiousness, —  a  conscientiousness  which  probably 
injured  her  later  books,  by  the  over-elaboration  to 
which  it  led.  Aware  of  this  danger  of  a  too  sensitive 
care,  she  abstained  almost  wholly  from  reading  reviews 
of  her  works.  She  had  no  appetite  for  indiscriminate 
eulogy.  "  Vague  praise,"  she  writes  to  a  friend,  "  or 
praise  with  false  notes  in  its  singing,  is  something  to 
be  endured  with  difficult  resignation."  And  censure, 
or  criticism  which  called  on  her  for  what  she  could 
not  give,  would,  she  felt,  only  serve  to  emban-ass 
and  depress  her.  In  this  matter,  as  in  all,  Mr.  Lewes 
stood  between  her  and  the  world  without,  with  the 
loyal  care  with  which  he  repaid  the  priceless  benefit 
which  his  character  drew  from  hers. 

Tlius  passed  a  score  of  years.  Then  came  his 
sudden  death ;  her  heavy  sorrow ;  her  faithful  effort  to 
preserve  for  ever  the  memory  which  she  held  so  dear. 
She  edited  his  last  book  with   scrupulous  care,  and 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  485 

founded  the  "  George  Henry  Lewes  Studentship "  in 
Physiology ;  providing,  with  a  loving  minuteness,  that 
his  full  name  should  be  for  ever  associated  with  a  wisely 
planned  scheme  for  the  fostering  of  his  chosen  study. 
And  then,  beyond  expectation,  it  came  about  that  fate 
reserved  for  her  yet  seven  months  of  a  new  happiness  ; 
and  she  reached  unawares  the  term  of  earthly  life  in 
the  midst  of  uuslackening  intellectual  activities,  ot 
ever-deepening  loves. 

Nothing,  indeed,  was  more  remarkable  in  this  last 
period  of  her  life  than  her  intense  mental  vitality, 
which  failing  health  did  not  seem  in  the  least  to  im- 
pair. She  possessed  in  an  emiuent  degree  that  power 
which  has  led  to  success  in  so  many  directions — which 
is  ascribed  both  to  Newton  and  to  Napoleon  —  of 
keeping  her  mind  unceasingly  at  the  stretch  without 
conscious  fatigue.  She  would  cease  to  read  or  to 
ponder  when  other  duties  called  her,  but  never  (as  it 
seemed)  because  she  herself  felt  tired.  Even  in  so 
complex  an  effort  as  a  visit  to  a  picture-gaUery  implies, 
she  could  continue  for  hours  at  the  same  pitch  of 
earnest  interest,  and  outweary  strong  men.  Nor  was 
this  a  mere  habit  of  passive  receptivity.  In  the 
intei-vals  between  her  successive  compositions  her 
mind  was  always  fusing  and  combining  its  fresh  stores, 
and  had  her  Life  been  prolctaged,  it  is  probable  that  she 
would  have  produced  work  at  least  equal  in  merit  to 
anything  which  she  had  already  achieved.  I  may 
perhaps  be  allowed  to  illustrate  what  has  here  been 


486  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

said  by  a  few  words  as  to  the  occupations  of  her  last 
days  on  earth. 

On  the  Friday  night  before  her  death  Mrs.  Cross 
witnessed  a  representation  of  the  "  Agamemnon,"  in 
Greek,  by  Oxford  undergraduates,  and  came  back  fired 
with  the  old  words,  thus  heard  anew,  and  planning 
to  read  through  the  Greek  dramatists  again  with  her 
husband.  On  Saturday  she  went  as  usual  to  the 
concert  of  classical  music,  and  there,  as  it  seems,  she 
caught  the  fatal  chiU.  That  evening  she  played 
through  on  the  piano  much  of  the  music  which  had 
been  performed  in  the  afternoon  ;  for  she  was  an 
admirable  executant,  and  rendered  especially  her 
favourite  Schubert  with  rare  delicacy  of  touch  and 
feeling.  And  thus,  as  her  malady  deepened,  her  mind 
could  stiU  respond  to  the  old  trains  of  thought  and 
emotion,  tUl,  all  unexpectedly  to  herself  and  those  who 
loved  her,  she  passed  into  the  state  of  unconsciousness 
from  which  she  woke  on  earth  no  more. 

The  story  of  George  Eliot's  life,  it  will  be  seen,  is  a 
simple  and  unsuggestive  one.  It  is  merely  the  record 
of  the  steady  development  of  a  strong  and  serious 
mind.  There  is  not  much  in  her  which  we  can  trace 
as  inherited ;  not  much  which  we  can  ascribe  to  the 
influence  of  any  unusual  circumstances  in  her  journey 
through  life.  Yet  from  her  father, — the  carpenter 
who  rose  to  be  forester,  the  forester  who  rose  to  be 
land-agent, — whose  modified  portrait  appears  both  in 
Caleb  Garth  and   in  Adam  Bede,  —  she   derived,  no 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  487 

doubt,  that  spirit  of  thoroughness,  that  disdain  of  aU 
pretentious  or  dishonest  work,  that  respect  for  con- 
scientious effort,  however  mistaken  and  clumsy,  which 
were  so  distinctive  of  her  in  later  life.  And  it  must 
also  be  considered  as  a  most  fortunate  thing,  —  more 
important,  perhaps,  for  a  female  novelist  in  England 
than  for  an  author  of  any  other  type, — that  the  posi- 
tion of  her  family,  while  sufficiently  comfortable  to 
allow  of  her  being  liberally  educated,  was  humble 
enough  to  bring  her  into  close  and  natural  contact  with 
the  quaint  types  of  rural  life, — as  much  superior  in 
picturesqueness  to  the  habitues  of  literary  drawing- 
rooms  as  Mrs.  Poyser  is  to  Theophrastus  Such.  At 
the  time  when  impressions  sink  deepest,  it  was  among 
the  Tullivers,  the  Silas  Marners,  the  Bartle  Masseys  of 
this  world  that  George  Eliot's  lot  was  cast.  And  thus 
in  the  shy  and  quaint,  but  affectionate  and  observant 
child,  grew  up  the  habit  of  discerning  worth  and 
wisdom  beneath  rugged  envelopes,  of  feeling  that 
"  keen  experience  with  pity  blent "  of  which  she 
speaks  in  one  of  her  poems — 

"  The  pathos  exquisite  of  lovely  minds 
Hid  in  harsh  forms — not  penetrating  them 
Like  fire  divine  within  a  common  bush 
Which  glows  transfigured  by  the  heavenly  guest 
So  that  men  put  their  shoes  off ;  but  encaged 
Like  a  sweet  child  within  some  thick-walled  cell, 
Who  leaps  and  fails  to  hold  the  window-bars, 
But  having  shown  a  little  dimpled  hand. 


488  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vl 

Is  visited  thenceforth  by  tender  hearts, 

Whose  eyes  keep  watch  about  the  prison  walls." 

This  sympathy  with  imperfection,  this  skill  in 
interpreting  the  signs  by  -which  dumb  and  baffled 
creatures  seek  to  show  their  love  and  need,  was  at  the 
root  of  much  both  of  her  humour  and  of  her  pathos. 
Her  gaze  did  not  invest  the  world  around  her  with 
"  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,"  but  seeing 
men  and  women  without  ideaKsation,  she  still  could 
love  them  as  they  were.  This  gave  to  her  sympathy 
a  peculiar  quality  which  made  it  less  flattering  to  the 
recipient,  though  in  one  sense  of  greater  value.  It 
was  full  and  penetrating,  but  it  seemed  rather  to  be 
bestowed  on  principle,  and  as  to  a  human  being  in 
difficulty  or  distress,  than  to  be  prompted  by  any  such 
momentary  glow  as  could  induce  her  to  forget  what 
she  calls 

"  The  twists  and  cracks  in  our  poor  earthenware, 
That  touch  me  to  more  conscious  feUowsbip 
(I  am  not  myself  the  finest  Parian) 
Witli  my  coevals." 

She  contemplated,  indeed,  her  own  powers  and 
character  with  a  gaze  of  the  same  impartial  scrutiny. 
Her  natural  candour  of  self-judgment  had  perhaps  been 
fostered  by  the  tardiness  of  her  success,  which  had 
worked  in  her  the  best  effect  which  long  obscurity  can 
produce  on  strong  and  humble  natures.  It  had 
accustomed  her  to  conceive  of  herself  as  of  one  who 


n.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  489 

must  still  strive,  who  sees  his  work  before  him,  whose 
ideal  is  uot  yet  attained.  And  it  was  noticeable  that 
in  any  casual  allusion  to  her  own  faulty  tendencies  she 
seemed  to  have  felt  less  need  to  guard  against  those 
which  go  with  success  than  against  those  which  go 
witli  failure. 

Mr.  Lewes  and  she  were  one  day  good-humouredly 
recounting  the  mistaken  effusiveness  of  a  too-sym- 
pathising friend,  who  insisted  on  assuming  that  Mr 
Casaubon  was  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Lewes,  and  on  condol- 
ing witli  the  sad  experience  which  had  taught  the 
gifted  authoress  of  Middlemarch  to  depict  that  gloomy 
man.  And  there  was  indeed  something  ludicrous  in 
the  contrast  between  the  dreary  pedant  of  the  novel 
and  the  gay  self-content  of  the  living  savant  who  stood 
acting  his  vivid  anecdotes  before  our  eyes.  "  But  from 
whom,  then,"  said  a  friend,  turning  to  Mrs.  Lewes, 
"  did  you  draw  Casaubon  ? "  With  a  humorous 
solemnity,  which  was  quite  in  earnest,  nevertheless, 
she  pointed  to  her  own  heart.  She  went  on  to  say — 
and  this  one  could  well  believe — tliat  there  was  one 
other  character — that  of  Eosamond  Vincy — which  she 
had  found  it  hard  to  sustain ;  such  complacency  of 
egoism  being  aUen  to  her  own  habits  of  mind.  But 
she  laid  no  claim  to  any  such  natural  magnanimity  as 
could  avert  Casaubon's  temptations  of  jealous  vanity, 
of  bitter  resentment.  No  trace  of  these  faults  was 
ever  manifest  in  her  conversation.  But  much  of  her 
moral  weight  was  derived  from  the  impression  which 


490  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [tl 

her  friends  received  that  she  had  iiot  been  by  any 
means  ■without  her  full  share  of  faulty  tendencies  to 
begin  with,  but  that  she  had  upbuilt  with  strenuous 
pains  a  resolute  virtue, — what  Plato  calls  an  iron  sense 
of  truth  and  righi,  —  to  which  others,  also,  however 
faulty,  by  effort  might  attaiu 

A  few  months  since  there  were  still  living  in 
England  three  prophets :  for  by  what  other  name,  as 
distinguished  from  our  poets  and  statesmen,  can  we  so 
fitly  call  them  ?  Two  have  passed  away ;  the  third 
still  lives  to  complete  his  mission.  Carlyle's  was  the 
most  awakening  personality.  To  Euskin  is  given  the 
most  of  revelation.  But  for  the  lessons  most  impera- 
tively needed  by  the  mass  of  men,  the  lessons  of 
deliberate  kindness,  of  careful  truth,  of  unwavering 
endeavour, — for  these  plain  themes  one  could  not  ask 
a  more  convincing  teacher  than  she  whom  we  are  com- 
memorating now.  Everything  in  her  aspect  and 
presence  was  in  keeping  with  the  bent  of  her  souL 
The  deeply -lined  face,  the  too  marked  and  massive 
features,  were  united  with  an  air  of  delicate  refine- 
ment, which  in  one  way  was  the  more  impressive 
because  it  seemed  to  proceed  so  entirely  from  within. 
Nay,  the  inward  beauty  would  sometimes  quite  trans- 
form the  external  harshness ;  there  would  be  moments 
when  the  thin  hands  that  entwined  themselves  in  their 
eagerness,  the  earnest  figure  that  bowed  forward  to 
speak  and  hear,  the  deep  gaze  moving  from  one  face 
to  another  with  a  grave  appeal, — all  these  seemed  the 


I 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  491 

transparent  symbols  that  showed  the  presence  of  a 
wise,  benignant  soul.  But  it  was  the  voice  which  best 
revealed  her; — a  voice  whose  subdued  intensity  and 
tremulous  richness  seemed  to  environ  her  uttered 
words  with  the  mystery  of  a  world  of  feeling  that 
must  remain  untold.  "  Speech,"  says  her  Don  Silva 
to  Fedalma,  in  The  Spanish  Grypsy, 

"  Speech  is  but  broken  Ught  upon  the  depth 
Of  the  unspoken  :  even  your  loved  words 
Float  in  the  larger  meaning  of  your  voice 
As  something  dimmer." 

And  then  again,  when  in  moments  of  more  intimate 
converse  some  current  of  emotion  would  set  strongly 
through  her  soul,  when  she  would  raise  her  head  in 
unconscious  absorption  and  look  out  into  the  unseen, 
her  expression  was  not  one  to  be  soon  forgotten.  It 
had  not,  indeed,  the  serene  felicity  of  souls  to  whose 
child -like  confidence  all  heaven  and  earth  are  fair. 
Eather  it  was  the  look  (if  I  may  use  a  Platonic  phrase) 
of  a  strenuous  Demiurge,  of  a  soul  on  which  high  tasks 
are  laid,  and  which  finds  in  their  accomplishment  its 
only  imagination  of  joy. 

"  It  was  her  thought  she  saw  :  the  presence  fair 
Of  unachieved  achievement,  the  high  task, 
The  mighty  unborn  spirit  that  doth  ask 
With  irresistible  cry  for  blood  and  breath 
Till  feeding  its  great  hfe  we  sink  in  death." 

I  do  not  wish  to  exaggerate.     The  subject  of  these 


492  MODERN  ESSAYS.  fvi. 

pages  would  not  tolerate  any  words  which  seemed  to 
present  her  as  an  ideal  type.  For,  as  her  aspect  had 
greatness  but  not  beauty,  so,  too,  her  spirit  had  moral 
dignity  but  not  saintly  holiness.  A  loftier  potency 
may  sometimes  have  been  given  to  some  highly- 
favoured  woman  in  whom  the  graces  of  heaven  and 
earth  have  met ;  moving  through  all  life's  seasons 
with  a  majesty  which  can  feel  no  decay ;  affording  by 
her  very  presence  and  benediction  an  earnest  of  the 
supernal  world.  And  so,  too,  on  that  thought-worn 
brow  there  was  visible  the  authority  of  sorrow,  but 
scarcely  its  consecration.  A  deeper  pathos  may  some- 
times have  breathed  from  the  unconscious  heroism  of 
some  child-like  soul. 

It  is  perhaps  by  thus  dwelling  on  the  last  touches 
wliich  this  high  nature  was  dimly  felt  to  lack — some 
aroma  of  hope,  some  felicity  of  virtue — that  we  can 
best  recognise  the  greatness  of  her  actual  achievement, 
of  her  practical  working-out  of  the  fundamental  dogma 
of  the  so-caUed  Eeligion  of  Humanity — the  expansion, 
namely,  of  the  sense  of  human  fellowship  into  an 
impulse  strong  enough  to  compel  us  to  live  for  others, 
even  though  it  be  beneath  the  on-coming  shadow  of  an 
endless  night.  For  she  held  that  there  was  so  little 
chance  of  man's  immortality  that  it  was  a  grievous 
error  to  flatter  him  with  such  a  belief;  a  grievous 
error  at  least  to  distract  him  by  promises  of  future 
recompense  from  the  urgent  and  obvious  motives  of 
well-doing,  —  our   love   and  pity  for  our   feUowmea 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  493 

She  repelled  "  that  impiety  toward  the  present  and  the 
visible,  which  flies  for  its  motives,  its  sanctities,  and 
its  religion  to  the  remote,  the  vague,  and  the  unknown," 
as  contrasted  with  "  that  genuine  love  which  cherishes 
things  in  proportion  to  their  nearness,  and  feels  its 
reverence  grow  in  proportion  to  the  intimacy  of  its 
knowledge."  These  words  are  from  the  essay  on 
"  Worldliness  and  Other-Worldliness,"  which  has  been 
alluded  to,  and  which  contains  a  forcible  condemnation 
of  the  view — advanced  by  the  poet  Young  in  its  utmost 
crudity — according  to  which  the  reason  for  virtue  is 
simply  the  prospect  of  being  rewarded  for  it  hereafter. 
So  far  as  moral  action  is  dependent  on  that  belief,  so 
far,  she  urges,  "  the  emotion  which  prompts  it  is  not 
truly  moral  —  is  still  in  the  stage  of  egoism,  and  has 
not  yet  attained  the  higher  development  of  sympathy." 
And  she  adds  to  this  a  moving  argument,  wliich  in 
after  life  was  often  on  her  lips  and  in  her  heart.  "  It 
is  conceivable,"  she  says,  "  that  in  some  minds  the  deep 
pathos  lying  in  the  thought  of  human  mortality — that 
we  are  here  for  a  little  while  and  then  vanish  away, 
that  this  earthly  life  is  all  that  is  given  to  our  loved 
ones  and  to  our  many  suffering  fellowmen — lies  nearer 
the  fountains  of  moral  emotion  than  the  conception  of 
extended  existence." 

It  was,  indeed,  above  all  things,  this  sadness  with 
which  she  contemplated  the  lot  of  dying  men  which 
gave  to  her  convictions  an  air  of  reality  far  more 
impressive   than   the   rhetorical   satisfaction   which   is 


494  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

sometimes  expressed  at  the  prospect  of  individual 
annihilation.  George  Eliot  recognised  the  terrible 
probability  that,  for  creatures  with  no  future  to  look 
to,  advance  in  spirituality  may  oftenest  be  but  advance 
in  pain;  she  saw  the  sombre  reasonableness  of  that 
grim  plan  which  suggests  that  the  world's  life -long 
struggle  might  best  be  ended — not,  indeed,  by  indi- 
vidual desertions,  but  by  the  moving  off  of  the  whole 
great  army  from  the  field  of  its  unequal  war — by  the 
simultaneous  suicide  of  all  the  race  of  man.  But  since 
this  could  not  be ;  since  that  race  was  a  united  army 
only  in  metaphor — was,  in  truth,  a  never-ending  host 

"  Whose  rear  lay  wrai)t  in  night,  wliile  breaking  dawn 
Eoused  the  broad  front,  and  called  the  battle  on," 

she  held  that  it  befits  us  neither  to  praise  the  sum  of 
things  nor  to  rebel  in  vain,  but  to  take  care  only  that 
our  brothers'  lot  may  be  less  grievous  to  them  in  that 
we  have  lived.  Even  so,  to  borrow  a  simile  from  M. 
Eenan,  the  emperor  who  summed  up  his  view  of  life  in 
the  words  Nil  expedit,  gave  none  the  less  to  his  legions 
as  his  last  night's  watchword,  Laboremus. 

This  stoic  lesson  she  would  enforce  in  tones  which 
covered  a  wide  range  of  feeling,  from  the  grave  exhor- 
tation which  disdained  to  appeal  to  aught  save  an 
answering  sense  of  right,  to  the  tender  words  which 
offered  the  blessedness  of  self-forgetting  fellowship  as 
the  guerdon  won  by  the  mourner's  pain. 

I  remember  how,  at  Cambridge,  I  walked  with  hei 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  496 

once  in  the  Fellows'  Garden  of  Trinity,  on  an  evening 
of  rainy  May ;  and  she,  stirred  somewhat  beyond  her 
wont,  and  taking  as  her  text  the  three  words  which 
have  been  used  so  often  as  the  inspiring  trumpet-calls 
of  men, — the   words  God,  Immortality,  Duty, — pro- 
nounced, with  terrible  earnestness,  how  inconceivable 
was  the  first,  how  unbelievable  the  second,  and  yet  how 
peremptory  and   absolute  the  third.     Never,  perhaps, 
have  sterner  accents  affirmed  the  sovereignty  of  im- 
personal and  unrecompensing  Law.      I  listened,  and 
night   fell ;    her  grave,   majestic    countenance    turned 
toward  me  Like  a  Sibyl's   in  the   gloom  ;    it  was  as 
though  she  withdrew  from  my  grasp,  one  by  one,  the 
two  scrolls  of  promise,  and  left  me  the  third   scroll 
only,   avrful    with    inevitable    fates.      And   when   we 
stood  at  length  and  parted,  amid  that  columnar  circuit 
of  the  forest-trees,  beneath  the  last  twilight  of  starless 
skies,  I  seemed  to  be  gazing,  like  Titus  at  Jerusalem,  on 
vacant  seats  and  empty  halls, — on  a  sanctuary  with  no 
Presence  to  hallow  it,  and  heaven  left  lonely  of  a  God. 
This  was  the  severer  aspect  of  her  teaching.     How 
gentle,  how  inspiring  a  tone  it  could  assume  when  it 
was  called  upon  to  convey  not  impulse  only  but  con- 
solation, I  must  quote  a  few  words  to  show.     Writing 
to  a  friend  who  was  feeling  the  first  anguish  of  bereave- 
ment, she  approaches  with  tender  delicacy  the  themes 
with  which  she  would  sustain  his  spirit.      "  For  the 
first  sharp  pangs,"  she  says,  "  there  is  no  comfort ; — 
whatever  goodness    may   surround   us,   darkness  and 


496  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi, 

silence  still  hang  about  our  pain.  But  slowly  the 
clinging  companionship  with  the  dead  is  linked  with 
our  living  affections  and  duties,  and  we  begin  to  feel 
our  sorrow  as  a  solemn  initiation  preparing  us  for  that 
sense  of  loving,  pitying  fellowship  with  the  fullest 
human  lot  which,  I  must  tliink,  no  one  who  has  tasted 
it  will  deny  to  be  the  chief  blessedness  of  our  life. 
And  especially  to  know  what  the  last  parting  is  seems 
needful  to  give  the  utmost  sanctity  of  tenderness  to 
our  relations  with  each  other.  It  is  that  above  all 
which  gives  us  new  sensibilities  to  '  the  web  of  human 
things,  Birth  and  the  grave,  that  are  not  as  they  were.' 
And  by  that  path  we  come  to  find  for  ourselves  the 
truth  of  the  old  declaration,  that  there  is  a  difference 
between  the  ease  of  pleasure  and  blessedness,  or  tlie 
fullest  good  possible  to  us  wondrously  mixed  mortals. 
.  .  .  All  the  experience  that  makes  my  communion 
with  your  grief  is  summed  up  in  a '  God  bless  you,'  which 
represents  the  swelling  of  my  heart  now  as  I  write, 
thinking  of  you  and  your  sense  of  what  was  and  is  not." 
It  is  on  reading  words  Like  these  that  one's  thoughts 
recall  the  apophthegm  of  old  Cfficihus  prefixed  as  a 
motto  to  this  paper — 

"  If  each  for  each  be  all  he  can, 
A  very  God  is  man  to  man." 

Every  one  of  George  Eliot's  works  might  be  read  as 
a  commentary  on  that  text.  In  each  there  is  a  moral 
crisis,  which   depends   on   some   strong   efflux    of  the 


n.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  497 

feeling  of  human  fellowship — sometimes  pouring  forth 
unchecked,  but  with  unwonted  energy,  and  sometimes 
overcoming  the  counter  impulses  of  egoistic  pleasure  or 
pain, — some  selfish  craving,  some  angered  pride,  some 
wounded  and  bleeding  love.  I  need  not  recall  each 
individual  instance.  Throughout  the  earlier  novels, 
where  there  is  less  of  visible  purpose  and  more  of 
mere  humorous  portraiture  than  in  the  later  ones,  this 
lesson  nevertheless  is  always  recurring.  Romola,  the 
most  laboriously  executed  of  all  her  works, — the  book 
which,  as  she  said,  "  she  began  a  young  woman  and 
ended  an  old  one," —  is  almost  from  first  to  last  one 
strain  of  grave  insistence  on  the  human  bond.  Or 
consider  especially  her  poems  ;  for  these,  though  often 
failing  in  that  instinctive  melody  which  is  the  indis- 
pensable birth-gift  of  poets,  are  yet  the  most  concen- 
trated expression  of  herself  which  she  has  left  behind 
her.  The  poems  move  through  more  ideal  scenes,  but 
they  enforce  the  self-same  lesson;  they  teach  that  as 
the  mounting  spirit  becomes  more  conscious  of  its  own 
being,  it  becomes  more  conscious  also  of  the  bonds 
which  unite  it  to  its  kin ;  that  thus  the  higher  a  man 
is,  the  closer  he  is  drawn  to  the  lowest,  and  greatness 
is  not  an  exemption,  but  a  debt  the  more. 

The  Legend  of  Juhal  is,  as  it  were,  the  sublima- 
tion of  all  she  had  to  say.  It  is  in  that  mythic  tale 
that  the  benefit  conferred  is  most  far-reaching,  the 
self-effacement  most  absolute,  the  absorption  into  the 
universal  good  most  satisfying  and  sacred. 

2k 


49a  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

"  Would'st  thou  have  asked  aught  else  from  any  god — 
Whether  with  gleaming  feet  on  earth  he  trod, 
Or  thundered  through  the  skies — aught  else  for  share 
Of  mortal  good,  than  in  thy  soul  to  bear 
The  growth  of  song,  and  feel  the  sweet  unrest 
Of  the  world's  spring-tide  in  thy  conscious  breast  1 
No,  thou  hadst  grasped  thy  lot  with  all  its  pain. 
Nor  loosed  it  any  painless  lot  to  gain 
Where  music's  voice  was  silent ;  for  thy  fate 
Was  human  music's  self  incorporate  : 
Thy  senses'  keenness  and  thy  passionate  strife 
Were  flesh  of  her  flesh  and  her  womb  of  life." 

Few  passages  could  so  completely  lift  us  into  the 
region  where  Art  melts  into  Virtue ;  where  they  are 
discerned  as  twin  aspects  of  the  spirit's  unselfish  earnest- 
ness, which  would  fain  lose  itself  in  a  larger  joy.  The 
visible  Jubal  perishes  forsaken  and  alone,  but  he  lives 
on  in  the  life  of  Music,  his  deathless  gift  to  mankind. 

In  the  well-known  lines  which  begin,  "  0  may  I 
join  the  choii  invisible,"  the  ardent  writer  has  given 
voice  to  her  own  aspirations.  This  poem  received  its 
fittest  commentary  when  it  was  read  above  her  grave : 

"  May  I  reach 
That  purest  heaven,  be  to  other  souls 
The  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony, 
Enkindle  generous  ardour,  feed  pure  love, 
Beget  the  smiles  that  have  no  cruelty." 

To  those  who  knew  her  these  words  are  her  very  self 
Language  has  never  expressed  with  more  directness 
the  innermost  of  a  noble  souL 


VI.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  499 

Yet,  in  this  realm  of  high  speculation,  to  admire 
is  not  necessarily  to  feel  complete  agreement.  There 
were  some  to  whom  these  consolations  seemed  all  too 
shadowy,  this  resignation  premature ;  some  whose  im- 
pulsion to  a  personal  life  beyond  the  grave  was  so 
preoccupying  and  dominant  that  they  could  not  readily 
acquiesce  in  her  negations,  nor  range  themselves  un- 
reservedly as  the  fellow-workers  of  her  brave  despaii'. 
Those,  especially,  to  whom  life's  most  impressive  ex- 
perience had  been  the  spectacle  of  some  tragedy  without 
an  issue,  of  some  unmerited  anguish  driven  in  storms 
upon  an  innocent  soul,  —  such  men  might  well  have 
scarcely  heart  enough  to  work  for  the  future,  with 
thoughts  for  ever  turning  to  an  irredeemable  injustice 
in  the  past.  Bather  they  would  still  recur  to  the 
ancient  hopes  of  men ;  they  would  urge  that  great 
discoveries  follow  on  great  needs  ;  that  problems  which 
have  resisted  a  hundred  keys  may  yield  to  yet  one  key 
more :  that  in  some  field  of  knowledge  there  may  yet 
be  that  to  know  which  shall  not,  indeed,  diminish  life's 
effort,  but  shall  establish  its  felicity, — shall  not  relax 
duty  but  add  hope.  To  one  who  thus,  amid  great 
sorrow,  could  not  abandon  this  anchor  of  the  soul,  she 
used  words  some  of  which  I  quote,  since  they  may 
serve  to  bring  her  nearer  to  some  minds  which  may 
have  shrunk  at  times  from  the  despondency  discernible 
beneath  her  bravest  speech.     She  wrote : — 

"  I  have  no  controversy  with  the  faith  that  cries  out  and 
clings  from  the  depths  of  man's  need.     I  only  long,   if  it 


500  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vi. 

were  possible  to  me,  to  help  in  satisf3'ii)g  the  need  of  those 
who  want  a  reason  for  living  in  the  absence  of  what  has 
been  called  consolatory  belief.  But  all  the  while  I  gather 
a  sort  of  strength  from  the  certainty  that  there  must  be 
limits  or  negations  in  my  own  moral  powers  and  life- 
experience  which  may  screen  from  me  many  possibilities 
of  blessedness  for  our  suffering  human  nature.  The  most 
melancholy  thought  surely  would  be  that  we  in  our  own 
persons  had  measured  and  exhausted  the  sources  of  spiritual 
good.     But  we  know  how  the  poor  help  the  poor." 

Those  whose  own  faith  is  most  assured  can,  I  think, 
"  have  no  controversy "  with  such  a  temper  as  this. 
The  faithful  servant,  —  we  may  reverently  suppose, — 
will  not  be  met  with  condemnation  because,  hke  her 
own  Fedalma,  she  would  not  count  on  aught  but  being 
faithful.  Nor  can  it  be  ours  to  blame  her  because, 
in  the  presence  of  solemn  issues,  she  was  resolved  to 
keep  within  the  limits  of  what  she  did  certainly  feel 
and  know,  and — a  sterner  Prometheus — at  least  to 
omit  "  vain  hopes "  from  the  gifts  which  she  brought 
to  men.  She  gave  us  of  her  best ;  she  gave  us  all  her 
best ;  she  had  no  wish,  no  pleasure,  but  to  give. 

"  This  was  thy  lot,  to  feel,  create,  bestow, 
And  that  immeasureable  life  to  know 
From  which  the  fleshly  self  falls  shrivelled,  dead  ; 
A  seed  primeval  that  has  forests  bred. 

Thy  gifts  to  give  was  thine  of  men  alone : 
'Twas  but  in  giving  that  thou  could'st  atone 
For  too  much  wealth  amid  their  poverty  " 


n.]  GEORGE  ELIOT.  501 

For  what  she  gave  to  the  world  the  world  has  not 
been  slow  to  thank  her.  But  what  she  gave  of  private 
amity ; — of  companionship  which  never  knew  that  it 
was  condescending,  of  sympathy  the  more  salutary  for 
its  sternness,  of  encouragement  which  pointed  to  duty 
only  as  the  goal :  —  the  thought  of  these  things  can 
come  to  few  without  some  self-condemning  tinge  in 
their  regret.  Who  is  there  that  has  drawn  from  an 
ennobling  friendship  all  the  blessing  which  he  might 
have  won  ?  Wisdom  is  everlasting  ;  early  or  late  we 
apprehend  her  still  the  same.  But  "  Wisdom  herself," 
as  Plato  says,  "  we  cannot  see ; — or  terrible  had  been 
the  loves  she  had  inspired."  And  the  living  forms  in 
which  she  is  in  some  wise  embodied,  the  eyes  through 
which  there  looks  some  parcel  of  her  eternal  fire,— 
these  pass  suddenly  from  our  sight,  and  we  have  hardly 
recognised  them,  hardly  known.  For  those  who  thus 
lament  there  is  a  stern  consolation.  Let  them  draw 
near  by  faith ;  what  they  missed  in  presence  let  them 
recover  by  contemplation ;  what  is  wanting  to  memory 
let  them  reserve  for  hope.^ 

»  See  Note  B,  p.  335. 


AETHUE  PENEHYN  STANLEY. 

A  MAN  of  many  gifts  and  graces  has  passed  away ;  a 
man  so  singularly  central  in  English  society  and  amid 
English  schools  of  thought,  so  individual  and  yet  so 
multiform,  that  among  the  wreaths  which  bestrewed 
his  tomb  in  Henry  VII.'s  chapel, — the  offering  of  all 
nations,  from  Ireland  to  Armenia,  of  men  of  all  opinions, 
from  dignitaries  of  the  Church  to  scientific  materialists, 
of  all  classes  of  society,  from  the  Queen  of  England  to 
the  poor  children  of  Westminster, — it  would  be  hard 
to  say  which  tokens  were  the  most  natural,  the  most 
appropriate,  the  most  sincere. 

A  man  so  many-sided  should  be  described  by  many 
men ;  a  man  of  such  wide  and  active  sympathies  should 
be  commemorated  not  by  Ms  intimates  alone,  but  by 
others  who  have  looked  up  to  him  as  to  a  source  of 
life  and  light ;  who  have  enjoyed,  perhaps,  some  amities 
of  a  hereditary  friendship,  some  encouragement  of  his 
cordial  smile.  Without  repeating  what  has  been  already 
said,  or  anticipating  what  may  be  more  fitly  said  by 
others,  there  is  room  for  some  such  reilections  on  his 
work  and  character  as  will  be  suggested  here. 


VII.]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  503 

The  outward  life  of  Arthur  Stanley  was  so  ordered 
from  childhood  upward  as  lo  enable  him  to  mature  and 
exercise  his  powers  in  the  most  favourable  way,  and  to 
lead  his  receptive  nature  through  scene  after  scene  of 
sterling  virtue  or  of  old  renown.  The  happy  Eectory- 
home  at  Alderley  gave  to  his  after  years  the  inestim- 
able background  of  childish  memories  of  unmingled 
brightness  and  peace.  His  intercourse  with  Dr.  Arnold 
at  Eugby  showed  the  relation  of  teacher  and  pupU  in 
its  ideal  form.  At  Oxford  the  three  great  colleges  of 
BaUiol,  University,  Christ  Church,  welcomed  him  in 
turn,  and  each  upbuilt  some  part  of  the  fabric  of  his 
being.  The  ancient  shrine  of  Canterbury  fostered  at 
once  his  historic  instincts  and  his  deep  sense  of  the 
greatness  of  the  English  Church.  And  finally  West- 
minster received  him  to  an  office  so  congenial  to  every 
aspiration  of  bis  heart  that  all  else  seemed  to  have 
been  but  a  prolusion  to  those  stately  duties  and  an 
antechamber  to  that  famous  home.  He  was  blessed, 
too,  in  father  and  mother,  in  family  and  friends  ;  blessed 
most  of  all  in  the  wife  whose  presence  doubled  both 
his  usefulness  and  his  felicity,  and  whose  loss  gave  to 
his  latest  years  the  crowning  dignity  of  sorrow. 

One  incongruity  alone  was  sometimes  felt  in  this 
harmonious  career,  —  a  certain  discrepancy  between 
Stanley's  habits  of  thought  and  those  of  the  clerical 
world  around  him.  Scruples  of  this  kind  had  led  him 
to  hesitate  as  to  taking  orders,  but  they  had  then  been 
brushed  aside  with  rough  vigour  by  Arnold's  friendly 


504  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vii. 

hand.  But  as  Stanley  rose  into  prominence  his  sup- 
posed laxity  of  dogmatic  view  gave  umbrage  to  many 
members  of  his  profession ;  he  experienced  "  that  diffi- 
culty "  which,  in  his  own  words,  "  is  occasioned  not  so 
much  by  the  actual  divergence  of  opinion  amongst 
educated,  or  amongst  uneducated  men,  as  by  the  com- 
bination in  the  same  religious  and  the  same  social 
community  of  different  levels  of  education," — and  it 
may  be  added  of  original  temperaments  so  diverse,  that 
their  professors,  however  educated,  must  needs  construe 
tliis  perplexing  imiverse  in  many  varying  ways.  Dean 
Stanley's  view  of  his  own  position  in  the  Church  is 
given  in  a  striking  passage  in  the  preface  to  his  Essays 
on  Church  and  State  : — 

"  The  choice  is  between  absolute  individual  separation 
from  every  conceivable  outward  form  of  organisation,  and 
continuance  in  one  or  other  of  those  which  exist,  in  the 
hope  of  modifying  or  improving  it.  There  are,  doubtless, 
advantages  in  the  former  alternative.  The  path  of  a  tbeo 
logian  or  ecclesiastic,  who  in  any  existing  system  loves 
truth  and  seeks  charity,  is  indeed  difficult  at  the  best. 
Many  a  time  would  such  a  one  gladly  exchange  the  thank- 
less labour,  the  bitter  taunts,  "  the  law's  delay,"  the  "  in- 
solence of  office,"  the  waste  of  energy,  that  belong  to  the 
friction  of  public  duties,  for  the  hope  of  a  few  tranquil 
years  of  independent  research  or  studious  leisure,  where 
lie  need  consult  no  scruples,  contend  with  no  prejudices, 
entangle  himself  with  no  party,  travel  far  and  wide  over 
the  earth,  with  nothing  to  check  the  constant  increase  of 
knowledge  which  such  experience  alone  can  fully  give. 
But  there  is  a  counterbalancing  attraction,  which  may  well 


VII.]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STAJ^LEY.  506 

be  felt  by  those  who  shrink  from  sacrificing  their  love  of 
country  to  a  sense  of  momentary  relief,  or  the  hopes  of  the 
future  to  the  pressure  of  the  present.  To  serve  a  great 
institution,  and  by  serving  it  to  endeavour  to  promote 
within  it  a  vitality  which  shall  secure  it  as  the  shelter  for 
such  as  will  have  to  continue  the  same  struggle  after  they 
are  gone,  is  an  object  for  which  much  may  be,  and  ought 
to  be,  endured  which  otherwise  would  be  intolerable." 

This  passage  is  interesting,  moreover,  as  distinctly 
indicating  Stanley's  conception  of  the  functions  of  a 
National  Church.  A  National  Church  may  be  regarded 
as  aiming  at  either  of  two  somewhat  different  ends. 
We  may  say  that  it  is  meant  to  promulgate  that  body 
of  spiritual  truth  which  has,  at  a  given  historical  epoch, 
approved  itself  to  a  given  nation.  Or  we  may  say  that 
it  is  meant  to  promulgate  such  spiritual  truth  as  may 
from  time  to  time  approve  itself  to  that  nation  as  it 
lives  and  grows.  On  the  first  theory,  the  Church  must 
represent  a  fixed  code  in  the  midst  of  a  changing  world, 
as  the  Greek  and  Eoman  Churches  profess  to  do.  Ou 
the  second  theory,  it  must  modify  its  teaching,  as  the 
Eeformed  Churches  actually  did,  when  the  great  mass 
of  thinking  men  in  a  nation  are  seen  to  have  modified 
their  belief.  Such  changes  can  have  no  finality ;  and 
if  a  violent  wrench  like  the  English  Eeformation  was 
justifiable,  it  must  be  still  more  justifiable,  in  those 
who  now  wish  to  maintain  the  National  Church,  to  in- 
troduce as  gently  as  possible  such  changes  as  may  keep 
her  in  sympathy  with  the  advancing  knowledge  of  the 


606  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vti. 

time.  And  these  changes,  though  initiated  by  laymen, 
must  be  adopted  by  Church  dignitaries  if  they  are  to 
become  a  part  of  the  established  creed  of  the  nation. 
It  is  noticeable,  indeed,  that  in  past  centuries  the  same 
men  have  often  been  first  denounced  as  heretics,  and 
afterwards  accepted  as  pillars  of  the  Church,  having 
carried  through  at  their  ovra  risk  some  reform  which 
was  ultimately  felt  by  all  to  be  beneficial.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  the  recent  rise  of  science,  physical  and 
historical,  has  effected  an  even  greater  alteration  in 
men's  mental  outlook  than  was  effected  by  the  revival 
of  learning,  which  led  almost  necessarily  to  the  Eefor- 
mation.  If,  then,  the  English  Church  is  to  maintain 
her  position  as  national,  she  must  be  prepared  to  modify 
her  teaching  with  little  delay,  and  such  modification 
can  best  be  carried  through  by  men  of  Stanley's  com- 
prehensive sympathies  and  strong  common  sense. 

There  remains,  however,  the  question  whether  reli- 
gious unity  is  really  strongly  desired  by  many  men ; 
whether  the  different  sections  of  the  English  Church 
or  the  English  nation  are  disposed  to  make  much  effort 
to  preserve  the  idea  of  a  National  Church.  And  the 
answer  commonly  given  is  that  such  union  is  not 
strongly  desired,  that,  on  the  other  hand,  men  tend  to 
hold  views  more  divergent,  and  to  express  them  with 
more  distinctness,  than  ever  before.  It  might,  per- 
haps, have  been  expected  that  as  the  conclusions  of 
science  become  more  definite,  as  it  grows  easier  to 
make  men  understand  the  same  demonstrations  and 


vn.]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  507 

obey  the  same  laws,  it  would  also  grow  easier  to  unite 
them  in  the  same  religion.  But  this  is  not  so ;  for 
religion  is  a  matter  of  tastes  and  emotions,  as  well  as 
of  reason.  Along  with  what  is  deepest  and  most  uni- 
versal its  sphere  includes  all  that  is  most  indi\adual 
and  variable  in  man.  It  includes  points  on  which  classes 
of  men  at  different  mental  levels — nay,  even  differ- 
ent individuals  on  the  same  level — cannot  possibly  be 
expected  to  agree.  On  the  one  hand,  as  fresh  bodies  of 
men  wake  up  to  religion  they  inevitably  pass  through 
stages  of  thought  and  feeling  which  many  of  their  con- 
temporaries have  already  outgrown.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  learning  and  intellect,  so  far  from  securing  uni- 
formity, will,  when  combined  with  certain  tempera- 
ments, only  serve  to  make  the  cases  of  reversion  to  an 
older  type,  or  of  divergence  into  an  individual  type, 
more  marked  and  impressive. 

So  long,  in  short,  as  the  evidence  as  to  an  unseen 
world  remains  much  where  it  is,  that  evidence  will 
probably  be  interpreted  as  variously  as  heretofore.  An 
accession  of  new  evidence  might,  no  doubt,  lead  to  a 
greater  unity  of  creed ;  but  the  possibility  of  such  an 
accession  of  evidence  is  just  what  all  sects  unite  to 
deny. 

From  the  theological  point  of  view,  therefore,  it 
may  seem  neither  possible  nor  very  important  to 
maintain  the  Church  of  England.  On  the  otlier  hand, 
the  political  and  the  philanthropical  arguments  for  a 
National  Church  are  strong.     It  is,  or  it  may  be  made, 


508  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vn. 

the  safest  bulwark  against  sectarian  bigotry,  the  most 
efficient  machinery  for  supplying  the  moral  needs  of 
the  community.  And  there  is  also  a  historical  point 
of  view  of  which  Stanley  was  the  best  representative. 
It  seemed  to  him  a  childish,  almost  an  impious  thing, 
that  our  disagreements  on  questions  which,  for  the 
most  part,  we  can  neither  solve  nor  comprehend,  should 
lead  us  rashly  to  destroy  that  august  institution  which 
so  many  names  have  adorned,  so  many  memories  hal- 
lowed, which  has  spread  wide  arms  from  pole  to  pole, 
and  has  embodied  for  centuries  the  spiritual  life  of 
a  mighty  people.  How  premature  were  such  a  dis- 
solution !  For  no  one  knows  what  direction  opinion 
will  iiltimately  take;  and  the  Church  of  England, 
which  is  committed  to  so  much  less  than  the  Church 
of  Eome,  and  which,  with  her  allied  churches  in  both 
hemispheres,  stands  already  second  in  importance  to 
the  Church  of  Rome  alone — the  Church  of  England,  it 
may  well  be  said,  has  a  better  chance  than  any  other 
religious  corporation  of  finding  herself  erect  after  the 
general  reconstruction,  and  constituting,  in  some  sense 
or  other,  the  Church  of  the  Future.  Should  such  a 
fate  be  hers,  she  will  be  grateful  to  those  whose  his- 
torical instinct  saved  her  from  disruption,  who  did  not 
despair  of  the  spiritual  republic  in  times  of'  inward 
conflict  and  dismay. 

Descending  from  general  principles  to  details  we 
find  the  peculiar  type  of  Stanley's  historical  instinct, — 
his  deliglit  in  striking  anecdote,  in  unlooked-for  paral- 


VII.]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  509 

lels,  in  the  picturesqueness  of  the  past, — well  illustrated 
by  his  treatment,  in  his  latest  book,  of  the  rites  and 
symbols  of  the  early  Church.  To  the  mystic  these 
symbols  seem  still  instinct  with  spiritual  truth.  To 
the  philosopher  they  suggest  a  field  of  unexhausted 
inquiry ;  they  lead  back  the  mind  to  the  Seven  Eivers 
of  the  Indus  valley,  to  the  worships  of  our  Aryan  ances- 
tors in  Persia  or  Babylon,  to  the  remote  and  essential 
unity  of  the  creeds  of  men.  Stanley  is  not  attracted 
in  either  of  these  ways.  He  does  not  deal  with  thought 
and  emotion  in  their  subterranean  currents,  but  rather 
in  their  dramatic  manifestation  on  the  great  theatres 
of  the  world.  And  he  is  never  better  pleased  than 
when  by  some  quaint  juxtaposition  he  can  show  the 
irony  of  men's  pretensions  to  dogmatic  infallibility,  or 
to  the  authority  of  immemorial  tradition.  In  Chris- 
tian Institutions  it  delights  him  to  pomt  out  that 
the  only  true  Sabbatarians  are  to  be  found  in  Abys- 
sinia ;  that  the  kiss  of  peace  was  "  one  of  the  most 
indispensable  of  primitive  practices,"  but  is  now  pre- 
served only  by  "  the  Glassites,  or  Sandemanians " ; 
that  although  the  Coptic  Church  alone  retains  the 
original  form  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  some  vestige  of  the 
true  position  is  retained  by  the  Presbyterians  and  the 
Pope.  The  Pope,  in  fact,  is  for  Dean  Stanley  a  perfect 
museum  of  paradoxes.  While  reflecting  with  regret 
that  "  Augustine  would  have  condemned  him  as  an 
unbaptised  heretic,"  he  is  pleased  to  find,  in  the  peculi- 
arities which  surround  him,  "  a  mass  of  latent  Primi- 


510  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vil 

tive  Protestantism."  He  traces  with  interest  the  origin 
of  his  wliite  gown,  his  red  shoes,  his  peacock  fans ; 
while  he  is  careful  to  remind  us  that  the  only  ecclesi- 
astical vestment  recognised  by  the  early  Fathers  con- 
sisted of  trousers. 

The  breadth,  and  also  the  limitations  of  Stanley's 
view,  are  well  exemplified  by  his  essay  on  the  pictures 
in  the  catacombs  of  Eome.  He  draws  out  admirably 
from  these  figures  the  ayaWiaa-K  and  a(f>€\6TiT;,  the 
joy  and  simplicity  of  the  primitive  Church.  There  is 
found  there  no  crucifix,  no  cypress,  no  death's-head, 
no  dance  of  skeletons,  no  martyrdom  of  saints,  but  the 
young  shepherd  carrying  the  lamb  amid  green  pastures, 
and  dove-like  souls  that  soar  to  heaven,  and  the 
mysterious  gladness  of  the  vine.  All  this  he  sees  in 
that  ancient  imagery,  but  he  does  not  attempt  to  ex- 
plain its  strange  anomalies  by  any  reference  to  a  yet 
remoter  past.  He  has  no  word  of  comment  (for 
instance)  on  the  view  of  those  in  whose  eyes  an  occult 
tradition  mingles  here  with  the  new-risen  faith ;  who 
see  in  the  crux  ansata,  with  its  recurved  extremities, 
the  cross  of  wood  from  whose  central  hollow  our  Aryan 
forefathers  made  spring  the  friction-fire ;  who  discern 
in  Agnus  the  mystic  Agni,  and  in  the  lamb's  luminous 
aureole  the  transmuted  symbol  of  that  Vedic  flame. 

We  can,  indeed,  hardly  claim  for  Stanley  the  title 
of  an  original  investigator  on  any  subject,  save  only 
the  very  difficult  and  interesting  one  of  the  geography 
of  Sinai  and  Palestine.     But  it  would  be  equally  unfair 


VII.]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  511 

to  speak  of  such  popularisations  as  his  Jeiuish  Chxvrch 
as  though  they  were  slight  or  easy  productions.  Crude 
knowledge  must  be  digested  and  re-digested  before  it 
can  enter  vitally  into  the  intellectual  system  of  man- 
kind, and  rightly  to  assimilate  such  nutriment  may 
often  be  as  difficult  as  to  collect  it.  The  Englishman, 
especially,  writing,  as  Stanley  did,  for  two  hemispheres 
and  some  half-dozen  nations,  must  needs  feel  that  the 
form  in  which  he  gives  his  results  to  this  enormous 
public  is  a  matter  of  no  slight  concern. 

Of  this  Dean  Stanley,  with  his  keen  interest  in 
America,  his  vivid  sense  that  "  westward  the  course  of 
empire  takes  its  way,"  was  certain  to  be  fully  conscious. 
And  he  remembered  it  most  of  all  when  he  dealt  with 
that  subject  whose  world-wide  diffusion  has  given  to  it 
its  chief  importance.  For  the  history  and  literature 
of  England  may  be  said  to  have  had  greatness  thrust 
upon  them.  They  have  not  been  selected  for  universal 
study  on  account  of  their  intrinsic  interest  and  per- 
fection, as  have  been  the  history  and  literature  of 
Greece.  But  they  belong  to  a  race  which  happens  to 
have  just  those  qualities  which  enable  it  to  overrun 
the  earth.  Whatever  the  history  of  such  a  race  may 
be,  the  world  must  know  it ;  whatever  its  literature, 
the  world  must  study  it.  And  in  recounting  the 
English  Past  no  tone  could  be  fitter  than  Dean  Stan- 
ley's,— a  tone  indicating  at  once  a  glowing  sense  of 
the  dignity  of  the  story,  and  an  honest  conscious- 
ness   of    its    many   blots    and    imperfections       Long 


512  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viL 

before  Stanley  was  made  Dean  of  Westminster  it  was 
felt  that  the  memories  which  hallow  English  ground 
appealed  to  no  man  more  vividly  than  to  him.  And 
when  he  was  placed,  as  it  were,  in  official  connection 
with  English  history, — when  he  was  made  the  guardian 
of  that  pile  of  buildings  which  is  to  the  British  Em- 
pire,—  nay,  to  all  English-speaking  lands,  —  almost 
what  the  Capitol  was  to  Rome, — then  indeed  the  thought 
of  him  became  so  inseparable  from  the  thought  of  the 
Abbey  that  one  knew  not  whether  the  man  magnified 
the  office,  or  the  office  the  man. 

It  is  there,  in  some  part  of  that  vast  irregular  pile, 
that  the  memory  of  all  who  knew  him  will  choose  to 
imagine  him  still.  Some  will  best  recall  him  as  he 
dispensed  hospitality  in  the  Deanery,  or  stood  in  that 
long  library  which  seems  immersed  in  silence  and 
antiquity  within  a  bow -shot  of  earth's  busiest  roar. 
These  will  remember  his  talk,  its  vivacity  and  simpli- 
city, its  tone  as  of  a  man  accustomed  to  feel  that  his 
words  carried  weight,  yet  never  grasping  at  an  undue 
share  in  the  conversation,  nor  failing  to  recognise  the 
least  contribution  which  those  who  spoke  with  him 
might  bring.  To  those  who  recall  such  scenes  he  may 
well  appear  as  the  very  type  of  civilisation,  of  the 
mannera  to  which  birth  and  breeding,  mind  and  char- 
acter, add  each  their  charm ;  which  can  show  feeling 
without  extravagance,  and  power  without  pride ;  which 
can  convince  men  by  comprehending  them,  and  control 
with  a  smile. 


vil]  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  513 

To  some,  again,  his  image  will  present  itself  as  he 
stood  in  his  pulpit  in  the  nave  of  Westminster,  or  by 
the  tomb  of  some  great  man  departed,  or  before  the 
altar  on  the  rare  occasions  when  the  solemn  Abbey 
opened  its  portals  to  a  scene  of  marriage  joy.  These 
will  recall  the  voice  of  delicate  resonance,  the  look  of 
force  and  dignity  enhanced  by  the  contrast  with  a  body 
so  small  and  frail ;  and,  above  all,  that  efflux  of  vivid 
human  fellowship  which  all  men  felt  when  he  was 
near,  the  sense  of  the  responsive  presence  of  a  living 
soul. 

He  lies  where  he  had  most  truly  lived.  Beside 
him,  in  the  niche  of  Henry  VII.'s  chapel,  is  laid  the 
wife  to  whom,  in  his  own  solemn  words,  the  earthly 
union  was  but  designed  to  link  him  "  till  death  us  join  " 
in  some  bond  more  sacred  still.  Above  him  float  the 
banners  of  his  knightly  Order  of  the  Bath,  whose  ideal 
chivalry  and  purity  have  never  found  an  earthly  em- 
bodiment more  chivalrous  or  more  pure.  The  chapel 
opens  into  the  mighty  Abbey,  solemn  and  noble  as 
work  of  men's  hands  can  be,  yet  filled  with  tombs  and 
tablets  miscellaneous  as  life,  incongruous  as  history. 
Many  a  strange  shape  is  there  :  Eodney's  captains,  and 
Admiral  Tyrrell  rising  from  the  sea,  and  the  monstrous 
image  of  Watt ;  but,  in  the  midst  still  stands  the  shrine 
of  the  Confessor,  and  the  fifth  Henry's  helm,  with  the 
dints  of  Agincourt,  hangs  in  the  dusky  air. 

It  may  be  that,  in  ages  to  come,  those  who  tell  the 
roU  of  England's  worthies  in  the  aisles  of  Westminster 

2l 


614  AIODERN  ESSAYS.  [rii. 

may  think  that  Stanley's  name  stood  higher  with  his 
contemporaries  than  any  definite  achievement  of  his 
could  warrant.  We  cannot  correct  the  judgments  of 
posterity ;  but  we  may  feel  assured  that  if  it  had  been 
allowed  us  to  prolong,  from  generation  to  generation, 
some  one  man's  earthly  days,  we  could  hardly  have 
sent  any  pilgrim  across  the  centuries  more  wholly  wel- 
come than  Arthur  Stanley  to  whatever  times  are  yet 
to  be.  For  they,  like  us,  would  have  recognised  in 
him  a  spectator  whose  vivid  interest  seemed  to  give  to 
this  world's  spectacle  an  added  zest ;  an  influence  of 
such  a  nature  as  humanity,  howsoever  it  may  be  per- 
fected, wiU  only  prize  the  more ;  a  life  bound  up  and 
incorporated  with  the  advance  and  weal  of  men;  a 
presence  never  to  be  forgotten,  and  irreplaceable,  and 
beloved. 


A  NEW   EIRENICON. 

Some  sixteen  years  ago  the  English-speaking  world 
was  startled  by  a  treatise  which  discussed  the  weU- 
worn  theme  of  the  mission  of  Christ  in  a  tone  of  such 
freshness  and  originality  that  it  threw  into  confusion 
the  ranks  of  established  party;  and  whUe  one  great 
orthodox  statesman  denounced  the  book  as  "  vomited 
from  the  jaws  of  hell,"  another,  greater  stiU  and  equally 
orthodox,  did  not  disdain  to  call  attention  to  that  same 
work  in  a  subsidiary  volume  of  his  own,  full  of  sym- 
pathy, exposition,  and  eulogy. 

The  distinguished  author  of  Ecce  Homo,  whose  thin 
veil  of  anonymity  criticism  is  still  bound  to  respect, 
has  now  published  a  part  of  the  promised  sequel  to 
his  earlier  speculations  in  a  volume  which  may  not, 
perhaps,  prove  so  widely  popular  as  its  predecessor, 
but  which  undoubtedly  indicates  a  marked  advance  in 
power,  and  which  ought  to  exercise  a  strong  and  salu- 
tary influence  on  the  conduct  of  the  great  controversies 
of  our  day.  Yet  Natural  Religimi  is  not  (it  may  be 
said  at  once)  a  book  which  attempts  to  deal  with  the 
speculative  points  at  issue  among  the  schools  or  the 


516  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii. 

churches.  Still  less  does  it  profess  to  cast  any  fresh 
light  on  the  old  problems  of  whence  and  whither,  or  to 
supply  to  morality  that  independent  standing-point  for 
which  she  still  is  vainly  feeling  in  the  void.  The 
task  which  it  attempts  is  a  lesser  one,  but  great 
nevertheless,  and  within  the  power  of  man.  It  is  to 
prove  to  the  earnest  but  divergent  schools  of  modern 
thought,  to  the  artist,  the  Positivist,  the  man  of  science, 
the  orthodox  Christian,  that  their  agreement  lies 
deeper  than  their  differences,  that  the  enemy  of  aU  is 
the  same ;  that  for  the  most  part  they  are  but  looking 
at  different  sides  of  the  shield,  whether  they  worship 
the  Unity  of  the  Universe  by  the  cold  silver  light  of 
His  power  and  reality,  or  in  the  golden  radiance  of 
His  love.  And  thus  the  author  claims  for  all  forms 
of  enthusiastic  admiration  of  truth,  beauty,  goodness, 
the  title  of  religion,  which  he  deems  theirs  by  right 
both  of  logic  and  of  history,  and  urges  all  parties  to 
march  side  by  side,  so  far  at  least  as  they  may,  in  the 
self-elevating  culture  which  is  itseK  a  worship — in  the 
actively  beneficent  civilisation  which  is  the  missionary 
aspect  of  the  higher  life. 

The  treatise  is  too  full  of  matter  to  be  easily 
summarised.  Perhaps  we  may  get  the  clearest  idea  of 
our  author's  position  in  respect  to  the  various  schools 
around  him  if  we  transpose  abstract  terms  into  concrete 
in  some  homely  apologue.  Starting,  then,  from  the 
metaphor  which  compares  religion  to  "  hid  treasure," 
let  us  compare  mankind,  with  their  varied  efforts  to 


VIII.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  517 

grasp  the  meaning  of  the  world  around  them,  to  a  body 
of  shareholders  originally  established  as  a  "  General 
Mining  Company,"  and  working  a  large  estate  with 
mixed  success.  Suddenly  a  charter  is  presented  to 
them  conferring  a  title  to  an  enormous  gold-mine  in 
Central  Africa  ;  the  Gospel,  to  wit,  with  its  promise 
of  eternal  life.  For  a  time  nothing  else  is  thought  of ; 
but  gradually  the  samples  of  gold  sent  home  are  lost, 
and  the  validity  of  the  charter,  and  the  real  existence 
of  the  mine,  begin  to  be  disputed.  The  Company, 
however,  has  traded  largely  on  the  credit  of  this  gold- 
field,  and  when  its  existence  is  denied,  some  share- 
holders (the  Pessimists)  urge  that  the  Company  is 
bankrupt,  and  had  better  be  dissolved  as  soon  as  may 
be.  Others  (Positivists  and  Stoics)  maintain  that  the 
old  mines  can  still  be  made  to  give  returns  sufficient 
to  satisfy  reasonable  men.  And  many  shareholders  do 
actually  continue  mining  on  their  own  account.  But 
the  directors  (the  rulers  of  the  existing  Churches)  have 
already  changed  the  Company's  title  to  that  of  the  "Gold 
Mining  Company  of  Central  Africa,"  and  now  stand 
resolutely  on  their  charter,  ignore  all  operations  on 
their  old  estates,  and  proliibit  the  use  of  the  Com- 
pany's funds  and  appliances  (Church  organisation)  in 
any  mining  except  for  gold.  They  engage  in  constant 
law-suits,  in  which  the  old  testimony  as  to  the  value 
of  the  samples  of  gold  now  lost,  and  as  to  the  existence 
of  a  potentate  capable  of  granting  their  charter,  is 
thrashed  out  with  little  visible  progress.     Some  of  the 


518  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii. 

directors,  indeed,  assert  that  they  still  possess  some 
specimens  of  ore  (the  modern  Roman  Catholic  miracles), 
but  these  specimens  are  discredited  by  other  members 
of  the  board. 

Here  our  author  intervenes.  He  does  not  abandon 
hope  in  the  disputed  charter.  He  even  doubts  whether 
the  concern  can  be  kept  permanently  going  unless  it 
somehow  gets  hold  of  gold.  But  he  reminds  the 
directors  that  the  Company  was  originally  formed  for 
mining  of  every  description  before  gold  was  hoped  for ; 
for  religion,  even  religion  as  lofty  as  Isaiah's,  did  exist 
without  definite  hope  of  immortality.  And  he  points 
out  the  rich  results  actually  obtained  by  those  ener- 
getic shareholders  who  are  digging  for  other  metals, 
who  are  worshipping  God  by  science.  Nature  by  art. 
Humanity  by  civilisation.  These  men  are  using  the 
very  machinery  with  which  the  Company  started;  the 
instincts,  namely,  of  unselfish  reverence,  admiration, 
fellowship,  which  seem  innate  in  man.  And  they  are 
finding  (he  insists)  in  unlooked-for  abundance  the  very 
ores  which  the  Company  was  first  incorporated  to 
supply ;  for  most  religions  begin  as  rude  attempts  to 
explain  and  unify  the  natural  phenomena  which  science 
now  fits  with  more  exactness  into  that  very  concep- 
tion of  a  unity  in  Nature,  which  is  the  essence'  both  of 
all  science  and  of  all  Monotheistic  systems.  He  urges 
on  the  directors  to  recognise  and  incorporate  these 
independent  efforts,  and  advises  the  leaders  of  tlie 
opposition   not   to   separate   from   the    Company,    but 


vin.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  519 

to  get  themselves  gradually  put  on  its  direction, 
and  to  utilise  its  existing  rights  and  good-will  for 
their  own  purposes,  which  were  comprised,  at  any 
rate  by  implication,  in  its  original  scheme  of  under- 
takings. 

This  rude  sketch  may  help  to  show  the  drift  of 
arguments  which  must  now  be  considered  rather  more 
in  detail.  Our  author  begins  by  dwelling  on  the  points 
of  similarity  between  the  attitude  of  science  and  that 
of  religion  towards  the  secular  world.  Both  sides 
alike  "  agree  in  denouncing  that  pride  of  the  human 
intellect  which  supposes  it  knows  everything,  which 
is  not  passive  enough  in  the  presence  of  reality,  but 
deceives  itself  with  pompous  words  instead  of  things, 
and  with  flattering  eloquence  instead  of  sober  truth." 
Stni  more  bitter  is  the  contempt  which  both  feel  for 
that  torpid  conventionalism  whose  thoughts  cannot  rise 
to  great  generalisations,  but  are  embedded  in  the  petty 
cares  and  pleasures  of  the  day.  And  he  maintains 
that  Atheism  does  not  consist  in  the  denial  either  of  the 
absolute  benevolence  or  of  the  miraculous  interferences 
of  the  Being  held  supreme  (since  many  religions  have 
existed  in  which  these  beliefs  were  absent),  nay,  nor 
even  in  the  refusal  to  acknowledge  a  personality  in 
that  ultimate  power ;  since  personality  is,  after  all,  a 
metaphysical  conception  difficult  to  define  in  our  own 
world,  and  still  harder  to  realise  with  any  distinct- 
ness when  the  imagined  personality  has  no  boundary 
or  limit  of  being.     In  some  respects  the  God  of  science 


520  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vm. 

is   more  omnipresent,   more   pervading,  more  mighty, 
than  God  has  ever  yet  appeared  to  men. 

"  '  In  Him,'  may  the  worshipper  of  this  Deity  say  with 
intimate  conviction,  '  in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being.'  Wlien  men  whose  minds  are  possessed  with  a 
thought  like  this,  and  whose  lives  are  devoted  to  such  a 
contemplation,  say, '  As  for  God,  we  know  nothing  of  Him ; 
science  knows  nothing  of  Him ;  it  is  a  name  belonging  to 
an  extinct  system  of  philosophy  ;'  I  think  they  are  playing 
with  words.  By  what  name  they  call  the  object  of  their 
contemplation  is  in  itself  a  matter  of  little  importance — 
whether  they  say  God,  or  prefer  to  say  Nature,  the  import- 
ant thing  is  that  their  minds  are  filled  with  the  sense  of  a 
power  to  all  appearance  infinite  and  eternal,  a  power  to 
which  their  own  being  is  inseparably  connected,  in  the 
knowledge  of  whose  ways  alone  is  safety  and  well-being, 
in  the  contemplation  of  which  they  find  a  beatific  vision." 

Atheism,  then,  is  not  the  belief  in  such  a  God  as 
this,  but  the  denial  of  Him ;  it  is  to  be  without  a 
practical  belief  in  the  Order  of  the  Universe,  to  dash 
one's  self  wildly  against  its  laws  in  wilful  revolt,  or  to 
shut  one's  self  up  with  cautious  feebleness  in  a  paltry 
and  sensual  peace.  To  have  a  theology,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  to  know  something  of  the  relation  in  which 
human  life  stands  to  the  Universe ;  of  the  degree  of 
possibility  which  the  laws  of  that  Universe  have 
accorded  to  our  best  ideals.  The  man  who  has  no 
ideals,  or  who  believes  that  the  Universe  has  forbidden 
their  realisation,  sinks  into  baseness  or  despair ;  but 
he  whose  imagination  has  assimilated  some  noble  ideal, 


Tin.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  521 

whose  activity  urges  hiui  to  its  realisation,  this  man 
has  beg\in  to  possess  not  a  theology  only,  but  a 
religion. 

"  The  words  religion  and  worship  are  commonly  and 
conveniently  appropriated  to  the  feelings  with  which  we 
regard  God.  But  those  feelings — love,  awe,  admiration, 
which  together  make  up  worship — are  felt  in  various  com- 
binations for  human  beings,  and  even  for  inanimate  objects. 
It  is  not  exclusively,  but  only  par  excellence,  that  rehgion  is 
directed  towards  God.  When  feelings  of  admiration  are 
very  strong  they  find  vent  in  some  act ;  when  they  are 
strong  and  at  the  same  time  serious  and  permanent,  they 
express  themselves  in  recurring  acts,  and  hence  arise  ritual, 
liturgy,  and  wliatever  the  multitude  identifies  with  religion. 
But  without  ritual  religion  may  exist  in  its  elementary 
state,  and  this  elementary  state  of  religion  is  what  may  be 
described  as  habitual  and  permanent  admiration." 

And,  apart  from  Christianity,  this  admiration  still 
may  be,  and  still  is,  directed  towards  other  objects 
which  have  made  the  essence  of  many  of  the  religions 
of  the  past.  Some  men  are  returning  to  a  higher 
Paganism — to  the  religion  of  the  world's  childhood, 
the  worship  of  natural  forms  —  purified  now  and 
rationalised,  and  capable  of  elevating  such  a  spirit  as 
Wordsworth's  into  a  sacred  and  untroubled  peace. 
And  some  men,  approaching  Nature  from  a  different 
side,  can  hardly  tell  whether  to  call  themselves  Theists 
or  Pantheists,  as  not  knowing  whether  the  Unity 
which  they  reverence  be  immanent  in,  or  distinct  from, 
the   sum   of   things.     They    worship   they   know   not 


522  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vui. 

vvliat ;    and  yet   the   word   Nature   is   too   narrow   tc 
formulate  the  power  which  such  men  revere. 

"Nature,  as  the  word  has  hitherto  been  used  by  scien- 
tific men,  excludes  the  whole  domain  of  human  feeling, 
will,  and  morality.  Nevertheless,  in  contemplating  the 
relation  of  the  Universe  to  ourselves  and  to  our  destiny, 
or  again  in  contemplating  it  as  a  subject  of  admiration 
and  worship,  tlie  human  side  of  the  Universe  is  the  more 
important  side  to  us.  Our  destiny  is  affected  by  the 
society  in  which  we  live  more  than  by  the  natural  con- 
ditions which  surround  us,  and  the  moral  virtues  are 
higher  objects  of  worship  than  natural  beauty  and  glory. 
Accordingly  the  word  Nature  suggests  but  a  part,  and  the 
less  important  part,  of  the  idea  for  which  we  are  seeking 
an  expression.  Nature  presents  itself  to  us  as  a  goddess 
of  unweariable  vigour  and  unclouded  happiness,  but  with- 
out any  trouble  or  any  compunction  in  her  eye,  without  a 
conscience  or  a  heart.  But  God,  as  the  word  is  used  by 
ancient  prophets  and  modern  poets,  God,  if  the  word  have 
not  lost  in  our  ears  some  of  its  meaning  through  the 
feebleness  of  the  preachers  who  have  undertaken  to  inter- 
pret it,  conveys  all  this  beauty  and  greatness  and  glory, 
and  conveys  besides  whatever  more  awful  forces  stir  within 
the  human  heart,  whatever  binds  men  in  families,  and 
orders  them  in  states.  He  is  the  Inspirer  of  kings,  the 
Revealer  of  laws,  the  Reconciler  of  nations,  the  Redeemer  of 
labour,  the  Queller  of  tyrants,  the  Reformer  of  churches, 
the  Guide  of  the  human  race  towards  an  unknown  goal." 

But  let  us  ask  ourselves  what  the  practical  efficacy 
of  a  religion  like  this  will  be  ?  What  front  will  it  he 
able  to  offer  to  secularity  ?     To  what  extent  can  it 


vin.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  523 

inspire  an  active  life,  an  independent  virtue  ?  The 
first  instance  that  suggests  itself  is  not  wholly  re- 
assuring. The  central  maxim  of  this  comprehensive 
faith,  the  injunction  "  to  live  resolutely  in  the  whole, 
the  good,  the  beautiful,"  is  offered  to  us  by  Goethe 
imbedded  in  a  kind  of  amorous  drinking-song ;  and 
although  the  great  German  poet  may,  no  doubt,  have 
'•'  felt  the  whole  six  days'  work  go  on  within  him,"  yet 
(as  our  author  frankly  admits)  "morality  itself,  as  it 
is  commonly  understood,  was  not  much  favoured  in  his 
writings,  nor  perhaps  in  his  life." 

To  objections  of  this  kind  our  author  replies  with 
an  eloquent  re-statement  of  that  cardinal  truth  of  morals 
whose  proclamation  has  given  to  every  moral  reformer, 
from  Jesus  Chiist  downwards,  something  of  the  air  of 
an  antinomian : — the  subordination,  namely,  of  works 
to  faith,  of  letter  to  spirit,  of  law  to  grace. 

"  According  to  the  view  here  taken  too  much  is  said 
by  modern  rationalists  of  morality,  and  too  little  of  art 
and  science,  since  these  are  related  no  less  closely  to 
religion,  and  must  be  taken  with  morality  to  make  up  the 
higher  life.  This  view,  indeed,  regards  the  very  word 
morality,  and  the  way  of  thinking  which  leads  to  a  fre- 
quent use  of  the  word,  with  the  same  sort  of  impatience 
which  the  Pauline  writings  show  towards  the  law.  In 
any  description  of  an  ideal  community  which  might  be 
given  m  accordance  with  this  view  not  much  stress  would 
be  laid  on  its  moral  purity.  This  would  rather  be  taken 
for  granted  as  the  natural  result  of  the  healthy  working  of 
the  higher  life.    The  peculiarity  most  strongly  marked  would 


524  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viil 

be  leather  that  what  we  call  genius  would  be  of  ordinary 
occurrence  in  such  a  community.  Every  one  there  would 
be  alive.  The  cares  of  livelihood  would  not  absorb  the 
mind,  taming  all  impulse,  clogging  all  flight,  depressing 
the  spirit  with  a  base  anxiety,  smothering  all  social  inter- 
course with  languid  fatigue,  destroying  men's  interest  in 
each  other  and  making  friendship  impossible.  Every  one 
would  worship,  that  is,  every  one  would  have  some  object 
of  habitual  contemplation,  which  would  make  life  rich  and 
bright  to  him,  and  of  which  he  would  think  and  speak 
with  ardour.  Every  one  would  have  some  supreme  in- 
terest, to  which  he  would  be  proud  to  sacrifice  every  kind 
of  help,  and  by  which  he  would  be  bound  in  the  highest 
kind  of  friendship  to  those  who  shared  it.  The  higher 
life  in  all  hearts  would  be  a  soil  out  of  which  many  fair 
growths  would  spring ;  morality  would  be  one  of  these ; 
but  it  would  appear  in  a  form  so  fresh  that  no  such  name 
would  seem  appropriate  to  it." 

The  inhabitants  of  this  ideal  commonwealth,  as  it 
appears,  would  not  be  inclined  to  look  on  morality 
either  as  a  direct  supernatural  law,  or  as  the  outcome 
of  laborious  philosophical  inquiry.  They  would  look 
rather  to  the  religion  which  underlies  morality ;  to 
the  Natural  Christianity  which,  as  the  thing  in  the 
known  universe  most  manifestly  worshipful,  chooses  the 
goodness  and  nobleness  of  men.  "  As  virtue  can 
only  show  itself  in  our  relations  to  our  fellowmen,  the 
religion  that  leads  to  virtue  must  be  a  religion  that 
worships  men.  If  in  God  Himself  we  did  not  believe 
qualities  analogous  to  the  human  to  exist,  the  worship 
of  Him  would  not  lead  to  virtue."     And  this  strenuous 


viii.J  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  525 

admiration,  carrying  with  it  the  desire  to  imitate  and 
to  associate  with  the  thing  admired,  while  in  private 
relations  it  is  private  virtue,  becomes  patriotism  when 
it  is  directed  towards  a  united  community  of  men.  It 
is  a  common  view  of  the  universe,  a  common  ideal  of 
conduct,  which  collects  tribes  into  nationalities,  and 
ripens  nationalities  into  states.  "  Eeligions  are  com- 
monly what  may  be  called  nationalities  in  an  idealised 
form,"  an  idealisation  which  is  apt  to  start  into  con- 
trolling reality  at  the  shock  of  danger,  or  even  in  the 
throes  of  what  might  well  seem  death.  Thus  it  was 
"  by  the  waters  of  Babylon  that  Jewish  nationality 
was  transformed  into  Judaism  ; "  and  Eome  became 
the  religion  of  Eegulus,  and  Italy  of  Mazzini,  and 
Sparta  of  those  who  bade  the  passer-by  bear  news  of 
how  they  lay  at  Thermopylae  "  in  obedience  to  her 
precepts."  And  as  the  great  nations  of  the  world 
emerge  gradually  from  their  isolation  and  enmity  into 
the  consciousness  of  a  deep  community  of  ideals  and 
aims,  so  also,  says  our  author,  should  the  Churches 
broaden  too ;  till  the  several  National  Churches,  being 
each  of  them  no  narrower  than  the  whole  spiritual 
aspect  or  content  of  each  individual  State,  unite  and 
gather  in  a  Church  more  Catholic  than  was  ever  the 
Eoman,  even  in  the  Universal  Church,  which  is  uni- 
versal civilisation. 

With  its  united  influence  this  Church  will  teach  to 
the  barbarous  races  all  that  the  civilised  have  learnt — 
science,  humanity,  delight  and  confidence  in  nature. 


626  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viu 

And  to  each  several  nation  her  National  Church  will 
hold  up  the  higher  aspect,  the  inner  meaning,  the 
renowned  exemplars  of  her  own  character  and  cor- 
porate life ;  demanding  of  her  preachers  nothing  more 
than  intelligence  and  sincerity,  and  shrinking  above 
all  things  from  binding  them  to  fixed  historical  con- 
ceptions which  the  very  march  of  history  itself  is 
certain  in  some  sort  to  overthrow. 

"  Suppose,"  says  our  author,  in  one  of  his  most  brilliant 
passages,  "  suppose  we  had  formulated  in  the  sixteenth 
century  the  principles  or  beliefs  which  we  supposed  to  he 
at  the  basis  of  our  national  Constitution.  Suppose  we  had 
made  a  political  creed.  Perhaps  the  doctrine  of  divine 
right  and  the  power  of  kings  to  cure  disease,  perhaps  the 
whole  legend  of  Brute  and  the  derivation  of  our  State 
from  Troy,  would  have  appeared  in  this  creed.  Once 
formulated,  it  would  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  the 
dogmatic  basis  upon  which  our  society  rested.  Then  in 
time  criticism  would  have  begun  its  work.  Philosophy 
would  have  set  aside  divine  right,  science  would  have 
exploded  the  belief  about  the  king's  evil,  historical  criti- 
cism would  have  shaken  the  traditionary  history,  and  each 
innovation  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  blow  dealt  at 
the  Constitution  of  the  country.  At  last  it  would  have 
come  to  be  generally  thought  that  the  Constitution  was 
undermined,  that  it  had  been  found  unable  to-  bear  the 
light  of  modern  science.  Men  would  begin  publicly  to 
renounce  it ;  officials  would  win  great  applause  by  resign- 
ing their  posts  from  conscientious  doubts  about  the  person- 
ality of  King  Arthur.  It  would  be  generally  agreed  that 
the  honest  and  manly  course  was  to  press  the  controversy 


viii.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  527 

firmly  to  a  conclusion,  to  resist  all  attempts  to  confuse  the 
issue,  and  to  keep  the  public  steadily  to  the  fundamental 
points.  Has  the  sovereign,  or  has  he  not,  a  divine  right  1 
Can  he,  or  can  he  not,  cure  disease  by  his  touch  1  Was 
the  country,  or  was  it  not,  colonised  by  fugitives  from 
Troy  1  And  if  at  last  the  public  sliould  come  by  general 
consent  to  decide  these  questions  in  the  negative,  then  it 
would  be  felt  that  no  weak  sentiment  ought  to  be  listened 
to,  no  idle  gratitude  to  the  Constitution  for  having, 
perhaps,  in  past  times  saved  the  country  from  Spanish  or 
French  invasion  ;  that  all  such  considerations  ought  sternly 
to  be  put  aside  as  irrelevant ;  that  as  honest  men  we  are 
bound  to  consider,  not  whether  our  Constitution  was  use- 
ful or  interesting,  or  the  like,  but  whether  it  was  true,  and 
if  we  could  not  any  longer  say,  with  our  hands  on  our 
hearts,  that  it  was  so,  then,  in  the  name  of  eternal  truth, 
renounce  it  and  bid  it  farewell ! " 

Hell  certainly  could  have  "  vomited  from  its  jaws  " 
few  passages  better  calculated  than  this  to  undermine 
the  orthodoxy  of  established  churches.  This  is  the  in- 
vitation, of  which  we  spoke,  to  the  leaders  of  reaction 
against  the  Christian  Church  to  become  the  leaders  of 
progress  within  it ;  it  is  the  appeal  addressed  (in  the 
terms  of  our  homely  simile)  to  the  shareholders  who 
are  mining  independently  of  the  Company  to  try  to 
get  elected  among  its  directors.  The  invitation  seems 
so  persuasive  that  there  must  be  strong  arguments  on 
the  other  side,  or  the  coalition  would  have  been  already 
effected.  And  in  fact  we  can  imagine  some  plain  men 
among  the  shareholders  who  might  think  that  only 
philosophers    or    renegades   could   enter    on    such   an 


528  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii. 

amalgamation  as  this.  "  The  advice,"  they  might  say, 
"  is  precisely  such  as  might  have  been  expected  from 
an  eminent  counsel  who  considers  our  past  discussions 
as  mere  fruitless  foUy,  and  thinks  only  of  what  course 
of  conduct  will  increase  the  dividends  of  the  Company. 
But  the  difference  has  gone  too  far.  The  directors 
have  borrowed  too  largely  on  the  strength  of  their 
gold-field,  and  are  far  too  sure  of  it  still  to  be  able  to 
unite  with  men  who  have  pronounced  it  a  sheer  illusion. 
They  will  not  alter  their  prospectus,  in  which  that 
famous  charter  fills  the  leading  place.  And  if  the 
opposition  leaders,  with  their  known  views,  were  to 
sign  that  prospectus,  it  would  be  the  destruction  of  all 
confidence  among  business  men." 

Nay,  even  after  tliese  projects  of  practical  union 
have  been  dismissed  as  too  probably  chimerical,  there 
remain  two  theoretical  objections  to  our  author's  defini- 
.  tion  of  religion  which  many  men  will  find  it  hard  to 
get  over.  In  the  first  place,  can  that  be  called  religion 
which  offers  nothing  of  personal,  of  spiritual  intercourse 
between  the  soul  and  God  ?  Our  author's  reply  to 
this  is  the  hint  that  personality  in  an  Infinite  Being 
can  be  little  more  than  a  metaphor,  that  when  we  are 
dealing  with  the  eternal,  the  all-embracing,  then  in- 
deed,— - 

"  dextrae  jungere  dextram 
Non  datur,  ac  veras  audire  et  reddere  voces." 

Our  spiritual  intercourse  must  lie  in  the  evocation  of 
the  memory  of  our  great  predecessors,  as  when  we  ask 


VIII.]  .     A  NEW  EIRENICON.  629 

ourselves,  would  Socrates,  would  Marcus  Aurelius,  have 
approved  what  I  am  doing  now  ?    • 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  Christian,  however 
undogmatic,  will  never  be  satisfied  with  this.  He  will 
never  call  it  religion  to  keep,  like  Septimius  Severus, 
a  bust  of  Christ  in  his  private  chapel,  "  along  with 
Virgil,  Orpheus,  Abraham,  and  other  persons  of  the 
same  kind."  He  claims  to  address  himself  to  a  Being 
made  human  enough  to  give  our  love  a  place  to  cling, 
but  remaining  divine  in  His  perfection,  in  His  illumi- 
nating and  responsive  power. 

Nor  is  this  intense  impulse  towards  a  spiritual 
union  with  something  that  is  at  once  above  and  within 
us  confined  to  Christians  alone,  or  necessarily  associated 
with  any  form  of  traditional  belief  whatever.  For 
while  it  may  be  the  fact  that  the  behef  in  any  definite 
superhuman  personality  becomes  harder  to  maintain 
as  men's  minds  become  subtler  and  their  scrutiny  of 
evidence  more  exacting,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see 
the  craving  for  divine  communion,  divine  forgiveness 
and  blessing,  satisfying  itself  with  a  spiritual  answer 
which  it  shrinks  from  defining,  and  growing  (as  in 
Plotinus)  the  more  absorbing  as  its  object  grows  more 
incognisable  to  man.  Not  science  alone,  but  mysticism, 
has  shown  itself  ready  to  become  the  heir  of  all 
religions ;  and  the  churches  of  Christendom  may  be 
destined  to  dissolve  away,  not  into  civilisation  only, 
but  into  ecstasy. 

If,  then,  man's  spiritual  nature  should  not  wither 

2m 


630  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii, 

before  the  growth  of  his  intellectual  nature,  but  grow 
with  it  to  the  end^it  is  likely  that  the  distinction 
between  philosophy  and  religion  will  not  be  obliterated, 
and  that  it  will  continue  to  be  only  by  a  stretch  of 
language  that  science,  patriotism,  culture,  can  be  in- 
cluded under  the  latter  and  more  sacred  name. 

And,  in  the  second  place,  even  apart  from  such 
speculations  as  these,  there  is,  for  plain  men,  here  and 
now,  an  inadequacy  in  the  very  idea  of  natural  religion, 
as  defined  in  this  book,  which  our  author  has  not 
indeed  concealed,  to  which  he  has  given  earnest  and 
forcible  expression,  but  which  to  minds  less  philosophic 
or  less  hopeful  than  his  own  will  present  itself  like 
the  Sphinx's  riddle,  which  palsied  all  inquiry  into  things 
remote  or  speculative  with  the  urgency  of  an  instant 
feax. 

^  iroiKiXtfSos  2(^i-y^  Ta  irpos  Trocrl  aKOTreiV 
HfdevTas  ■^fjLoii  Ta<f>avrj  TrpocrrjyeTO, 

"When  the  supernatural,"  says  our  author,  "does  not 
come  in  to  overwhelm  the  natural  and  turn  life  upside 
down,  when  it  is  admitted  that  religion  deals,  in  the  first 
instance,  with  the  known  and  the  natural,  then  we  may 
well  begin  to  doubt  whether  the  known  and  the  natural 
can  suffice  for  human  life.  No  sooner  do  we  try  to  think 
so  than  pessimism  raises  its  head.  The  more  our  thoughts 
widen  and  deepen,  as  the  universe  grows  upon  us  and  we 
become  accustomed  to  boundless  space  and  time,  the  more 
petrifying  is  the  contrast  of  our  own  insignificance,  the 
more  contemptible  become  the  pettiness,  shortness,  fragility 
of  the  individual  life.     A  moral  paralysis  creeps  upon  us. 


VIII.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  531 

For  awhile  we  comfort  ourselves  with  the  notion  of  self- 
sacrifice  ;  we  say,  What  matter  if  I  pass,  let  me  think  of 
others !  But  the  other  has  become  contemptible  no  less  than 
the  self;  all  human  griefs  alike  seem  little  worth  assuaging, 
human  happiness  too  paltry  at  the  best  to  be  worth  in- 
creasing. The  whole  moral  world  is  reduced  to  a  point ; 
the  spiritual  city,  '  the  goal  of  all  the  saints,'  dwindles  to 
the  '  least  of  little  stars ' ;  good  and  evil,  right  and  wrong, 
become  infinitesimal,  ephemeral  matters,  while  eternity  and 
infinity  remain  attributes  of  that  only  which  is  outside  the 
sphere  of  morality.  Life  becomes  more  intolerable  the 
more  we  know  and  discover,  so  long  as  everything  widens 
and  deepens  except  our  own  duration,  and  that  remains  as 
pitiful  as  ever.  The  affections  die  away  in  a  world  where 
everything  great  and  enduring  is  cold ;  they  die  of  their 
own  conscious  feebleness  and  bootlessness." 

This  passage  falls  upon  the  reader  with  a  shock  of 
disenchantment.  "  What,  then,"  he  exclaims,  "  did  our 
author  mean  by  so  confident,  so  encouraging  a  tone  ? 
Has  he  not  been  masterfully  persuading  us  that  at 
bottom  we  are  all  agreed,  and  that  the  inward  satisfac- 
tion which  belongs  to  the  foi  du  charhonnier  may 
somehow  be  shared  also  by  the  severest  sage  ?  And 
now  the  hand  which  raised  the  fabric  dashes  it  to  the 
ground — the  digestive  energy  which  dissolved  away 
so  many  a  stubborn  morsel  ends  by  dissolving  away 
the  organism  itself."  Alas  !  this  book  is  no  exception 
to  the  rule  which  bids  the  writer  of  every  Theodicy 
break  off  his  demonstration  with  some  abraptuess  when 
he  reaches  the  question  whose  answer  it  concerns  us 


532  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii. 

most  to  know.  We  may  be  carried  beyond  ourselves 
by  our  teacher's  eloquence  and  enthusiasm,  yet  we  are 
always  dimly  conscious  that  eloquence  and  enthusiasm 
will  after  all  leave  us  where  we  were,  with  everytliing 
depending  on  a  single  point  which  neither  our  teacher 
nor  we  have  the  data  to  determine. 

But  here  let  us  make  an  end  of  controversy. 
Whether  we  call  our  author's  utterances  by  the  name 
of  religion  or  of  philosophy,  they  contain,  at  any  rate, 
sublime  ideas,  vast  generalisations,  far-reaching  hopes. 
As  a  mere  model  of  simple  and  noble  style  this  work 
is  likely  to  be  widely  studied  and  to  be  remembered 
long.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  could  we  find  a  more  signal 
example  of  the  characteristic  excellences  of  the  English 
prose  of  the  present  era,  of  its  mingled  subtlety  and 
trenchancy,  of  its  flashes  of  impassioned  feeling  seen 
through  an  atmosphere  of  steady  self-control.  It  is 
instructive  to  compare  our  author's  style  with  M. 
Eenan's.  The  Frenchman  seems  like  the  very  spirit 
of  the  age  whispering  in  our  ear.  We  gradually 
get  to  think  all  other  voices  partial  or  foolish,  and 
though  we  may  never  once  feel  in  cordial  agreement 
with  him,  we  end  by  admitting  to  ourselves  that  we 
cannot  get  nearer  to  the  truth  than  he.  The  English- 
man, on  the  other  hand,  does  not  shrink  from  startling, 
almost  offending  us.  His  arguments  often  seem  one- 
sided, his  aims  impracticable.  But  even  his  paradoxes 
have  a  kind  of  combative  cogency,  and  wlien  some 
veritable  truth  "  swims  into  his  ken,"  then,  indeed,  he 


viii.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  533 

speaks  like  a  captain  calling  to  the  onset,  and  declares 
in  tones  of  trumpet  clearness  the  chief  concerns  of 
man. 

And  whatever  may  be  the  event  and  upshot  of  our 
present  perplexities,  there  must  at  any  rate  be  need 
of  this  spirit  of  earnest  catholicity  which  strives  to 
raise  all  the  elements  of  our  spiritual  being  to  a  heat 
so  glowing  that  they  may  fuse  and  combine  themselves 
in  one.  If  we  are  always  to  remain  uncertain  as  to 
any  life  save  that  of  earth,  then  it  will  be  to  these 
eager  and  dominating  spirits  that  we  shall  have  to 
look  for  much  of  the  impulse  that  is  to  keep  us  from 
stagnating  in  despair.  And  even  if  some  clearer  con- 
viction of  immortality  be  yet  reserved  for  men,  such 
exhortations  as  these  should  keep  us  from  the  com- 
placent quietism  which  thinks  that  it  is  enough  to  be 
"saved."  They  should  remind  us  that  the  Natural 
Eeligion  of  this  life  may  continue  to  be  the  Natural 
Religion  of  another,  and  that  "  the  Eternal  and  the 
Infinite  and  the  All-embracing "  may  need  to  be 
approached  by  many  pathways  which  priestly  tradition 
has  never  known. 

And  surely  the  more  we  are  persuaded  that  a 
belief  in  a  life  to  come  may  be  the  most  potent  of  all 
agencies  in  repressing  vice  and  stimulating  virtue,  the 
more  must  we  recognise  that  this  belief,  as  presented 
in  the  popular  theology,  has  crystallised  into  a  shape 
which  much  needs  some  salutary  concussion.  We  do 
not  want  a  languid  belief  in  the  reversion  of  a  sinecure 


634  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [vni. 

acquirable  by  conformity  to  a  test ;  we  want  a  con- 
viction such  as  may  make  death  even  welcome,  that 
death  is  but  the  entrance  to  a  career  of  more  joyful, 
because  more  strenuous,  virtue.  We  need  a  widened 
and  invigorated  ideal  of  the  spiritual  universe  through 
which  we  may  one  day  wander.  We  need  prophets,  bold 
as  the  Hebrew,  to  secularise  a  conception  of  eternity 
which  has  become  too  exclusively  hieiatic ;  to  illustrate 
with  cogent  vividness  the  solidarity  of  aU  attainable 
fragments  of  truth,  to  prepare  that  ultimate  syncretism 
of  all  genuine  faiths  toward  which,  if  we  hope  at  all, 
we  must  hope  that  the  world  is  tending. 

Even  those  who  stiU  hold  to  Paul's  watchword 
of  "  Christ  and  Eesurrection  "  may  feel,  perhaps,  that 
this  process  of  expansion  is  a  gain  to  all  forms  of 
religion  alike, — and  yet  that  it  would  scarcely  have 
been  urged  forward  so  earnestly  had  not  the  faith  in 
Christ  and  Eesurrection  been  for  a  time  impaired. 
They  may  admit  that  this  also  may  be  in  the  Provi- 
dence of  God,  and  that  a  temporary  doubt  as  to  the 
everlasting  arms  upholding  us  may  be  needed  to  teach 
us  to  put  forth  all  the  strength  which  is  our  own. 
VirgU  compares  the  human  race  and  its  destiny  to  a 
rower  struggling  hopelessly  against  an  opposing  stream. 
Those  who  believe  that  the  boat  which  carries  man 
and  his  fortunes  is  in  reality  towed  onwards  by  an 
unseen  Power  should  listen,  not  with  resentment,  but 
with  attentive  interest,  to  their  comrades  who  maintain 
that  the  tow-rope  is   swaying  idly  in  the  water,  but 


vin.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  535 

who  yet  feel  confident  that  they  can  themselves  propel 
the  vessel.  Perhaps  that  confidence  is  vain,  but  at  least 
we  should  note  how  they  apply  their  force,  and  unite 
in  the  strenuousness  of  their  endeavour. 

And  how  large  a  part  of  the  most  deeply-religious 
thought  of  recent  years  has  been  directed  toward  some 
such  endeavour  as  this !  How  often  wiU  it  be  needful 
to  seek  the  characteristic,  the  vital  points  of  the  theo- 
logy of  this  century  (as  of  many  that  have  preceded 
it)  in  the  writings  of  men  who  formed  in  their  lifetime 
the  standing  targets  of  orthodox  zeal !  What  future 
history  of  man's  higher  life  can  ignore  that  revival 
and  systematisation  of  the  instinct  of  human  brother- 
hood which  we  owe  to  Comte  and  his  disciples? 
What  theory  of  man's  duty  to  bis  Maker  can  forget 
Mill's  noble  conception  of  a  Divinity  whoUy  good, 
completely  wise,  but  who  nevertheless,  as  being  not 
all-powerful,  does  actually  need  and  rejoice  in  the  help 
of  His  creatures  towards  the  attainment  of  His  glorious 
ends  ?  What  religious  poetry  of  our  century  will  sway 
men  more  profoundly  than  George  Eliot's  hymn  of  the 
Choir  Invisible,  whose  impassioned  expression  of  the 
absorption  of  personal  in  universal  hope  is  not  alien 
assuredly  from  the  spu-it  of  the  apostle  who  was 
almost  willing,  for  his  converts'  sake,  himself  to  become 
a  castaway  ?  The  list  might  easily  be  prolonged. 
But  it  could  contain  few  voices  better  adapted  to 
present  needs  than  that  of  the  author  of  Natural 
Religion,  proclaiming  that  whether   our  eternal  hope 


536  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [viii. 

is  to  sul3sist  or  fail,  we  must  at  any  rate  absorb  as 
culture,  reproduce  as  worshij),  the  truths  of  science, 
the  ideals  of  art,  the  sum  of  slowly- won  and  ever-spread- 
ing humanities  which  make  for  each  nation  severally 
its  national  and  corporate  soul  and  being,  and  con- 
stitute in  the  world  at  large  the  world-wide  Church  of 
civilisation. 

It  is  true  that  those  who  cling  to  immortality  as 
the  world's  one  hope  may  naturally  find  something 
depressing  in  the  visible  spread  of  these  efforts  to  con- 
duct human  life  without  it.  Like  Adam,  at  the  first 
approach  of  night,  they  well  may  "  tremble  for  this 
lovely  frame,"  and  cry  aloud  with  terror  at  the  advanc- 
ing veil  of  shade.  But  to  Adam,  as  we  know,  the  dark- 
ness became  revelation. 

"  Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame 
Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came, 

And  lo  !  creation  widened  in  man's  view." 

The  lights  that  rule  the  night  may  bestow  no  warmth 
with  their  illumination.  Art,  perhaps,  may  seem  to 
us  but  a  moonlight  halo ;  Science  and  Stoicism — the 
resolve  to  learn  and  to  endure — may  be  but  as  Tioctis 
signa  severa — night's  austere  constellations,  enthroned 
in  a  frozen  heaven.  And  yet  tliat  nocturnal'  outlook 
is  the  pre-requisite  of  ahuost  aU  we  know ;  nor  with- 
out the  sun's  withdrawal  and  obscuration  could  men 
truly  have  conceived  the  sim. 

If  the  belief  in  a  life  to  come  should  ever  regain  as 


vni.]  A  NEW  EIRENICON.  537 

firm  possession  of  men's  mind  as  of  old,  that  belief 
will  surely  be  held  in  a  nobler  fashion.  That  life 
wUl  be  conceived  not  as  a  devotional  exercise  nor  as  a 
passive  felicity,  but  as  the  prolongation  of  aU  generous 
energies,  and  the  unison  of  all  high  desires.  It  may 
be  that  till  we  can  thus  apprehend  it  its  glory  must 
be  hid  from  our  eyes.  Only,  perhaps,  when  men  have 
learnt  that  virtue  is  its  own  reward  may  they  safely 
learn  also  that  that  reward  is  eternal. 


EOSSETTI  AND  THE  EELIGION 
OF  BEAUTY. 

Among  those  picturesque  aspects  of  life  which  the 
advance  of  ci^'ilisation  is  tending  to  reduce  to  smooth- 
ness and  uniformity  we  ma)'  include  that  hubbub  and 
conflict  which  in  rougher  days  used  to  salute  the 
appearance  of  any  markedly  new  influence  in  science, 
literature,  or  art.  Prejudice — not  long  since  so  for- 
midable and  ubiqiutous  a  giant — now  shows  some- 
times little  more  vitality  than  Bunyan's  Pope  or 
Pagan ;  and  the  men  who  stone  one  of  our  modern 
prophets  do  it  hurriedly,  feeling  that  they  may  be 
interrupted  at  anj'  moment  by  having  to  make  arrange- 
ments for  his  interment  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Now,  while  it  would  be  absurd  not  to  rejoice  in 
this  increasing  receptivity  of  cultivated  men — absurd 
to  wish  the  struggle  of  genius  sharper,  or  its  recogni- 
tion longer  deferred — we  may  yet  note  one  incidental 
advantage  which  belonged  to  the  older  r6gwie.  While 
victory  was  kept  longer  in  doubt,  and  while  the 
conflict  was  rougher,  the  advocates  of  a  new  cause  felt 
a  stronger  obligation  to  master  it  in  all  its  aspects, 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    539 

and  to  set  it  forth  wdth  such  exposition  as  might 
best  prepare  a  place  for  it  in  ordinary  minds.  The 
merits  of  "Wordsworth  (to  take  an  obvious  instance) 
were  long  ignored  by  the  public ;  but  in  the  meantime 
his  admirers  had  explained  them  so  often  and  so  fully 
that  the  recogiution  which  was  at  last  accorded  to 
them  was  given  on  those  merits,  and  not  in  mere 
deference  to  the  authority  of  any  esoteric  circle. 

The  exhibition  of  Dante  Eossetti's  pictures  which 
now  (February  1883)  covers  the  walls  of  Burlington 
House  is  the  visible  sign  of  the  admission  of  a  new 
strain  of  thought  and  emotion  within  the  pale  of  our 
artistic  orthodoxy.  And  since  Eossetti's  poetry  ex- 
presses with  singular  exactness  the  same  range  of  ideas 
as  his  painting,  and  is  at  any  rate  not  inferior  to  his 
painting  in  technical  skill,  we  may  fairly  say  that  his 
poetry  also  has  attamed  hereby  some  sort  of  general 
recognition,  and  that  the  enthusiastic  notices  which 
appeared  on  his  decease  embodied  a  view  of  him  to 
which  the  public  is  willing  to  some  extent  to  defer. 

Yet  it  hardly  seems  that  enough  has  been  done  to 
make  that  deference  spontaneous  or  intelligent.  The 
students  of  Eossetti's  poems — taking  their  tone  from 
Mr.  Swinburne's  magnificent  eulogy  —  have  for  the 
most  part  rather  set  forth  tlieir  artistic  excellence  than 
endeavoured  to  explain  their  contents,  or  to  indicate 
the  relation  of  the  poet's  habit  of  thought  and  feeling 
to  the  ideas  which  Englishmen  are  accustomed  to  trust 
or   admire.     And   consequently  many   critics,   whose 


640  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

ethiccal  point  of  view  demands  respect,  coulinue  to 
find  in  Eossetti's  works  an  enigma  not  worth  the 
pains  of  solution,  and  to  decry  them  as  obscure,  fan- 
tastic, or  even  as  grossly  immoral  in  tendency. 

It  wiU  he  the  object  of  this  essay — written  from  a 
point  of  view  of  by  no  means  exclusive  sympathy 
with  the  movement  which  Eossetti  led — to  show,  in 
the  first  place,  the  great  practical  importance  of  that 
movement  for  good  or  evU ;  and,  further,  to  trace  such 
relations  between  this  EeUgion  of  Art,  this  Worship 
of  Beauty,  and  the  older  and  more  accredited  mani- 
festations of  the  Higher  Life,  as  may  indicate  to  the 
moralist  on  what  points  he  should  concentrate  his 
efforts  if,  hopeless  of  withstanding  the  rising  stream, 
he  seeks  at  least  to  retain  some  power  of  deepening 
or  modifying  its  channel. 

From  the  aesthetic  side  such  an  attempt  wiU  be 
regarded  with  indifference,  and  from  the  ethical  side 
with  little  hope.  Even  so  bold  a  peacemaker  as  the 
author  of  Natural  Religion  has  shrunk  from  this  task ; 
for  the  art  which  he  admits  as  an  element  in  his 
Church  of  Civilisation  is  an  art  very  different  from 
Eossetti's.  It  is  an  art  manifestly  untainted  by 
sensuousness,  manifestly  akin  to  virtue ;  an  art  which, 
like  Wordsworth's,  finds  its  revelation  in  sea  and  sky 
and  mountain  rather  than  in  "  eyes  which  the  sun- 
gate  of  the  soul  unbar,"  or  in 

"  Such  fire  as  Love's  soul-winnowing  hands  distil, 
Even  from  his  inmost  ark  of  hght  and  dew." 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.     541 

Yet,  however  slight  the  points  of  contact  between  the 
ethical  and  the  esthetic  theories  of  life  may  be,  it  is 
important  that  they  should  be  noted  and  dwelt  upon. 
For  assuredly  the  "  cesthetic  movement "  is  not  a  mere 
fashion  of  the  day  —  the  modish  pastime  of  nincom- 
poops and  charlatans.  The  imitators  who  surround 
its  leaders,  and  whose  jargon  almost  disgusts  us  with 
the  very  mysteries  of  art,  the  very  vocabulary  of 
emotion — these  men  are  but  the  straws  that  mark  the 
current,  the  inevitable  parasites  of  a  rapidly -rising 
cause.  We  have,  indeed,  only  to  look  around  us  to 
perceive  that — whether  or  not  the  conditions  of  the 
modem  world  are  favourable  to  artistic  excellence — all 
the  main  forces  of  civilisation  are  tending  towards 
artistic  activity.  The  increase  of  wealth,  the  diffusion 
of  education,  the  gi-adual  decline  of  the  military,  the 
hieratic,  the  aristocratic  ideals — each  of  these  causes 
removes  some  obstacle  from  the  artist's  path  or  offers 
some  fresh  prize  to  his  endeavours.  Art  has  outlived 
both  the  Puritans  and  the  Inquisition ;  she  is  no 
longer  deadened  by  the  spirit  of  self-mortification,  nor 
enslaved  by  a  jealous  orthodoxy.  The  increased 
wealth  of  the  world  makes  the  artist's  life  stable  and 
secure,  while  it  sets  free  a  surplus  income  so  large 
that  an  increasing  share  of  it  must  almost  necessarily 
be  diverted  to  some  form  of  aesthetic  expenditure. 

And  more  than  this.  It  is  evident,  especially  in 
new  countries,  that  a  need  is  felt  of  some  kind  of 
social   distinction  —  some  new  aristocracy — based  on 


542  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [is. 

differences  otlier  than  those  of  birth  and  wealth.  Not, 
indeed,  that  rank  and  family  are  likely  to  cease  to  be 
held  in  honour ;  but,  as  power  is  gradually  dissociated 
from  them,  they  lose  their  exclusive  predominance, 
and  take  their  place  on  the  same  footing  as  other 
graces  and  dignities  of  Hfe.  Still  less  need  we  assume 
any  slackening  in  the  pursuit  of  riches ;  the  fact 
being  rather  that  this  pursuit  is  so  widely  successful 
that  in  civilised  capitals  even  immense  opulence  can 
now  scarcely  confer  on  its  possessor  all  the  distinction 
which  he  desires.  In  America,  accordingly,  where 
modern  instincts  find  their  freest  field,  we  have  before 
our  eyes  the  process  of  the  gradual  distribution  of  the 
old  prerogatives  of  birth  amongst  wealth,  culture,  and 
the  proletariat.  In  Europe  a  class  privileged  by  birth 
used  to  supply  at  once  the  rulers  and  the  ideals  of 
other  men.  In  America  the  rule  has  passed  to  the 
multitude;  largely  swayed  in  subordinate  matters  by 
organised  wealth,  but  in  the  last  resort  supreme. 
The  ideal  of  the  new  community  at  first  was  Wealth  ; 
but,  as  its  best  literature  and  its  best  society  plainly 
show,  that  ideal  is  shifting  ia  the  direction  of  Culture. 
The  younger  cities,  the  coarser  classes,  still  bow  down 
undisguisedly  to  the  god  Dollar ;  but  when  this 
Philistine  deity  is  rejected  as  shaming  his  worshippers, 
sesthetic  Culture  seems  somehow  the  only  Power  ready 
to  instal  itself  in  the  vacant  shrine. 

And  all  over  the  world  the  spread  of  Science,  the 
diffusion   of    Morality,   tend   in   this   same   direction. 


IX  ]     ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.     543 

For  the  net  result  of  Science  and  Morality  for  the 
mass  of  men  is  simply  to  give  them  comfort  and 
leisure,  to  leave  them  cheerful,  peaceful,  and  anxious 
for  occupation.  Nay,  even  the  sexual  instinct,  as  men 
become  less  vehement  and  unbridled,  merges  in  larger 
and  larger  measure  into  the  mere  aesthetic  enjoyment 
of  beauty ;  till  Stesichorus  might  now  maintain  with 
more  truth  than  of  old  that  our  modern  Helen  is  not 
herself  fought  for  by  two  continents,  but  rather  her 
etSwXov  or  image  is  blamelessly  diffused  over  the 
albums  of  two  hemispheres. 

It  is  by  no  means  clear  that  these  modern  condi- 
tions are  favourable  to  the  development  either  of  the 
highest  art  or  of  the  highest  virtue.  It  is  not  certain 
even  that  they  are  permanent — that  this  aesthetic 
paradise  of  the  well-to-do  may  not  sometime  be  con- 
vulsed by  an  invasion  from  the  rough  world  without. 
Meantime,  however,  it  exists  and  spreads,  and  its 
leading  figiires  exert  an  influence  which  few  men  of 
science,  and  fewer  theologians,  can  surpass.  And 
alike  to  savant,  to  theologian,  and  to  moralist,  it 
must  be  important  to  trace  the  workings  of  a 
powerful  mind,  concerned  with  interests  which  are  so 
different  from  theirs,  but  which  for  a  large  section 
of  society  are  becoming  daily  more  paramoimt  and 
engrossing. 

"  Under  the  arch  of  Life,"  says  Eossetti  in  a  sonnet 
whose  Platonism  is  the  more  impressive  because  prob- 
ably unconscious — 


544  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix 

"  Under  the  arch  of  Life,  where  love  and  death, 
Terror  and  mystery,  guard  her  shrine,  I  saw 
Beauty  enthroned  ;  and  though  her  gaze  struck  awe, 
I  drew  it  in  as  simply  as  my  breath." 

Eossetti  was  ignorant  of  Greek,  and  it  seems  doubt- 
ful whether  he  knew  Plato  even  by  translations. 
But  his  idealising  spirit  has  reproduced  the  myth  of 
the  Phccdrus — even  to  the  Tpe(peTai  Kal  eviradel — the 
words  that  affirm  the  repose  and  well-being  of  the 
soul  when  she  perceives  beneath  the  arch  of  heaven 
the  pure  Idea  which  is  at  once  her  sustenance  and 
her  lord : — 

"  Hers  are  the  eyes  which,  over  and  beneath, 

The  sky  and  sea  bend  on  thee ;  which  can  draw. 
By  sea  or  sky  or  woman,  to  one  law. 
The  allotted  bondman  of  her  palm  and  wreath." 

For  Beauty,  as  Plato  has  told  us,  is  of  all  the  divine 
ideas  at  once  most  manifest  and  most  loveable  to  men. 
When  "  Justice  and  Wisdom  and  all  other  things  that 
are  held  in  honour  of  souls"  are  hidden  from  the 
worshipper's  gaze,  as  finding  no  avenue  of  sense  by 
which  to  reach  him  through  the  veil  of  flesh,  Beauty 
has  still  some  passage  and  entrance  from  mortal  eyes 
to  eyes,  "and  he  that  gazed  so  earnestly  on  what 
things  in  that  holy  place  were  to  be  seen,  he  when  he 
discerns  on  earth  some  godlike  countenance  or  fashion 
of  body,  that  counterfeits  Beauty  well,  first  of  all  he 
trembles,  and  there  comes  over  him  something  of  the 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    545 

fear  which  erst  he  knew ;  but  then,  looking  on  that 
earthly  beauty,  he  worships  it  as  divine,  and  if  he  did 
not  fear  the  reproach  of  utter  madness  he  would 
sacrifice  to  his  heart's  idol  as  to  the  image  and 
presence  of  a  god." 

"  This  is  that  Lady  Beauty,  in  whose  praise 

Thy  voice  and  hand  shake  stUl — long  known  to  thee 
By  flying  hair  and  fluttering  hem — the  beat 
rollowing  her  daily  of  thy  heart  and  feet, 
How  passionately  and  irretrievably, 
In  what  fond  flight,  how  many  ways  and  days !  " 

There  are  some  few  hearts,  no  doubt,  in  which 
"sky  and  sea"  and  the  face  of  Nature  are  able  to 
inspire  this  yearning  passion.  But  with  this  newer 
school — with  Eossetti  especially — we  feel  at  once 
that  Nature  is  no  more  than  an  accessory.  The  most 
direct  appeals,  the  most  penetrating  reminiscences, 
come  to  the  worshipper  of  Beauty  from  a  woman's 
eyes.  The  steady  rise  in  the  status  of  women  ;  that 
constant  deepening  and  complication  of  the  commerce 
between  the  sexes  which  is  one  of  the  signs  of  pro- 
gressive civilisation ;  all  this  is  perpetually  teaching 
and  preaching  (if  I  may  say  so)  the  charms  of  woman- 
hood to  all  sections  of  the  community.  What  a 
difference  in  this  respect  has  the  century  since 
Turner's  birth  made  ia  England !  If  another  Turner 
were  born  now — an  eye  which  gazed,  as  it  were,  on  a 
new-created  planet  from  the  very  bedchamber  and 
outgoing  of  the  sun — can  we  suppose  that  such  an 

2n 


546  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

eye  would  still  find  its  most  attractive  feminine  type 
in  the  bumboats  of  Wapping  ?  The  anomaly,  strange 
enough  in  Turner's  day,  is  now  inconceivable.  Our 
present  danger  lies  in  just  the  opposite  direction.  We 
are  in  danger  of  losing  that  direct  and  straightforward 
outlook  on  human  loveliness  (of  which  Mr.  MiUais 
may  serve  as  a  modern  example)  which  notes  and 
represents  the  object  with  a  frank  enjoyment,  and 
seeks  for  no  further  insight  into  the  secret  of  its 
charm.  All  the  arts,  in  fact,  are  returning  now  to  the 
spirit  of  Leonardo,  to  the  sense  that  of  all  visible 
objects  known  to  us  the  human  face  and  form  are 
the  most  complex  and  mysterious,  to  the  desire  to 
extract  the  utmost  secret,  the  occult  message,  from  all 
the  phenomena  of  Life  and  Being. 

Now  there  is  at  any  rate  one  obvious  explanation 
of  the  sense  of  mystery  which  attaches  to  the  female 
form.  We  may  interpret  it  all  as  in  some  way  a 
transformation  of  the  sexual  passion.  This  essentially 
materialistic  view  is  surrounded  with  a  kind  of  glamour 
by  such  writers  as  Gautier  and  Baudelaire.  The  tone 
of  sentiment  thus  generated  is  repugnant — is  some- 
times even  nauseating — to  English  feeling ;  but  this 
tone  of  sentiment  is  certainly  not  Eossetti's.  There  is 
no  trace  in  him  of  this  deliberate  worship  of  Baal  and 
Ashtoreth  ;  no  touch  of  the  cruelty  which  is  the  char- 
acteristic note  of  natures  in  which  the  sexual  instincts 
have  become  haunting  and  dominant. 

It  is,  indeed,  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  scale — 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.     547 

among  those  who  meet  the  mysteries  of  love  and 
womanhood  with  a  very  different  interpretation — that 
Rossetti's  nearest  affinities  are  to  be  found.  It  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  one  of  his  most  exquisite  literary 
achievements  consists  in  a  translation  of  the  Vita 
Nuova  of  Dante.  Now,  the  Vita  Nwova,  to  the  vulgar 
reader  a  childish  or  meaningless  tale,  is  to  those  who 
rightly  apprehend  it  the  very  gospel  and  charter  of 
mystical  passion.  When  the  child  Dante  trembles  at 
the  first  sight  of  the  child  Beatrice  ;  when  the  voice 
within  him  cries  Ecce,  deus  fortior  me,  qui  veniens 
dominahitur  mihi ;  when  that  majestic  spirit  passes,  at 
a  look  of  the  beloved  one,  through  all  the  upward  or 
downward  trajectory  between  heaven  and  hell;  this, 
indeed,  is  a  love  which  appertains  to  the  category  of 
reasoned  affections  no  more  ;  its  place  is  with  the 
visions  of  saints,  the  intuitions  of  philosophers,  in 
Plato's  ideal  world.  It  is  recognised  as  a  secret  which 
none  can  hope  to  fathom  till  we  can  discern  from  some 
mount  of  unearthly  vision  what  those  eternal  things 
were  indeed  to  which  somewhat  in  human  nature 
blindly  perceived  itself  akin. 

The  parallel  between  Rossetti  and  Dante  must  not 
be  pushed  too  far.  Rossetti  is  but  as  a  Dante  still 
in  the  selva  oscura ;  he  has  not  sounded  hell  so  pro- 
foundly, nor  mounted  into  heaven  so  high.  He  is  not 
a  prophet  but  an  artist ;  yet  an  artist  who,  both  by  the 
very  intensity  of  his  artistic  vision,  and  by  some  inborn 
bent  towards  symbol   and   mysticism,   stands  on  the 


648  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

side  of  those  who  see  in  material  things  a  spiritual 
significance,  and  utters  words  of  universal  meaning 
from  the  fulness  of  his  own  heart.  Yet  he  is,  it  must 
be  repeated,  neither  prophet,  philosopher,  nor  saint. 
The  basis  of  his  love  is  the  normal  emotion — "  the 
delight  in  beauty  alloyed  with  appetite,  and  strength- 
ened by  the  alloy;" — and  although  that  love  has 
indeed  learned,  in  George  Eliot's  words,  to  "acknow- 
ledge an  effect  from  the  imagined  light  of  unproven 
firmaments,  and  have  its  scale  set  to  the  grander  orbit 
of  what  hath  been  and  shall  be,"  this  transfiguration  is 
effected  not  so  much  by  any  elevation  of  ethical  feel- 
ing, as  by  the  mere  might  and  potency  of  an  ardent 
spirit  which  projects  itseK  with  passionate  intensity 
among  things  unreachable  and  unknown.  To  him  his 
beloved  one  seems  not  as  herself  alone,  "  but  as  the 
meaning  of  all  things  that  are;"  her  voice  recalls  a 
prenatal  memory,  and  her  eyes  "  dream  against  a  dis- 
tant goal."  We  hear  little  of  the  intellectual  aspects 
of  passion,  of  the  subtle  interaction  of  one  character 
on  another,  of  the  modes  in  which  Love  possesses  him- 
self of  the  eager  or  the  reluctant  heart.  In  these 
poems  the  lovers  have  lost  their  idiosyncrasies  ;  they 
are  made  at  one  for  ever ;  the  two  streams  have  mingled 
only  to  become  conscious  that  they  are  being  drawn 
together  into  a  boundless  sea.  Nay,  the  very  passion 
which  serves  to  unite  them,  and  which  is  sometimes 
dwelt  on  with  an  Italian  emphasis  of  sensuousness 
which  our  English  reserve  condemns,  tends  oftener  to 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    549 

merge  itself  in  the  mystic  companionship  which  holds 
the  two  souls  together  in  their  enchanted  land. 

"  One  flame-winged  brought  a  white-winged  harp-player 
Even  where  my  lady  and  I  lay  all  alone  ; 
Saying  :  '  Behold,  this  minstrel  is  unknown  ; 

Bid  him  depart,  for  I  am  minstrel  here  ; 

Only  my  strains  are  to  Love's  dear  ones  dear.' 

Then  said  I :  '  Through  thine  haut-boy's  rapturous  tone 
Unto  my  lady  still  this  harp  makes  moan, 

And  still  she  deems  the  cadence  deep  and  clear.' 

"  Then  said  my  lady  :  '  Thou  art  Passion  of  Love, 
And  this  Love's  Worship ;  both  he  plights  to  me 
Thy  mastering  music  walks  the  sunlit  sea  ; 
But  where  wan  water  trembles  in  the  grove. 
And  the  wan  moon  is  all  the  light  thereof, 

This  harp  stUl  makes  my  name  its  Voluntary.' " 

The  voluntaries  of  the  white-winged  harp-player  do 
not  linger  long  among  the  accidents  of  earth ;  they 
link  with  the  beloved  name  aU  "  the  soul's  sphere  of 
infinite  images,"  all  that  she  finds  of  benign  or  won- 
drous "  amid  the  bitterness  of  things  occult."  And  as 
the  lover  moves  amid  these  mysteries  it  appears  to 
him  that  Love  is  the  key  which  may  unlock  them  all. 
For  the  need  is  not  so  much  of  an  intellectual  insight 
as  of  an  elevation  of  the  whole  being — a  rarefaction, 
as  it  were,  of  man's  spirit  which  Love's  pure  fire  effects, 
and  which  enables  it  to  penetrate  more  deeply  into  the 
ideal  world. 

In   that  thin   air   Love  undergoes    a    yet   further 


850  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix, 

transformation.  The  personal  element,  already  sub- 
limed into  a  mystic  companionship,  retires  into  the 
background.  The  lover  is  now,  in  Plato's  words,  iirl  to 
TToXii  7re\ayo<;  reTpafifievo'i  toD  koXov  ;  he  has  set 
sail  upon  the  ocean  of  Beauty,  and  Love  becomes  the 
kpiii)vevov  ical  BiaTropd/jLevov,  the  "  interpreter  and 
mediator  between  God  and  man,"  through  whom  the 
true  prayer  passes  and  the  true  revelation  is  made. 

"  Not  I  myself  know  all  my  love  for  thee  : 

How  should  I  reacli  so  far,  who  cannot  weigh 
To-morrow's  dower  by  gage  of  yesterday  ? 
Shall  birth  and  death,  and  all  dark  names  that  be 
As  doors  and  windows  bared  to  some  loud  sea, 

Lash  deaf  mine  ears  and  blind  my  face  with  spray ; 
And  shall  my  sense  pierce  love — the  last  relay 
And  ultimate  outpost  of  eternity  1 " 

For  thus,  indeed,  is  Love  discerned  to  be  something 
which  lies  beyond  the  region  of  this  world's  wisdom  or 
desire — something  out  of  proportion  to  earthly  needs 
and  to  causes  that  we  know.  Here  is  the  point  where 
the  lover's  personality  seems  to  be  exalted  to  its 
highest,  and  at  the  same  moment  to  disappear ;  as  he 
perceives  that  his  individual  emotion  is  merged  in  the 
flood  and  tideway  of  a  cosmic  law : — 

"  Lo  !   what  am  I  to  Love,  the  lord  of  all  1 

One  murmuring  shell  he  gathers  from  the  sand — 
One  little  heart-flame  sheltered  in  his  hand. 

Yet  througli  thine  eyes  he  grants  me  clearest  call 

And  veriest  touch  of  powers  primordial 
That  any  hour-girt  life  may  understand." 


^ 
« 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    551 

Alas !  this  call,  by  its  very  nature,  is  heard  in  one 
heart  alone ;  this  "  touch  of  powers  primordial "  is 
iatransferable  to  other  souls.     The  eyes  which,  to  the 

lover's  vision, 

"  The  sun-gate  of  the  soul  unbar, 
Being  of  its  furthest  fires  oracular," 

can  send  this  message  to  the  world  only  through  sign 
and  symbol  ;  the  "  bower  of  unimagined  flower  and 
tree"  is  fashioned  by  Love  in  such  hearts  only  as  he 
has  already  made  his  own. 

And  thus  it  is  that  so  much  of  Eossetti's  art,  in 
speech  or  colour,  spends  itself  in  the  effort  to  com- 
municate the  incommunicable.  It  is  toward  "  the 
vale  of  magical  dark  mysteries  "  that  those  grave  low- 
hanging  brows  are  bent,  and  "  vanished  hours  and 
hours  eventual"  brood  in  the  remorseful  gaze  of 
Pandora,  the  yearning  gaze  of  Proserpine.  The  pictures 
that  perplex  us  with  their  obvious  incompleteness, 
their  new  and  haunting  beauty,  are  not  the  mere 
caprices  of  a  richly  -  dowered  but  wandering  spirit. 
Eather  they  may  be  called  (and  none  the  less  so  for 
their  shortcomings)  the  sacred  pictures  of  a  new  reli- 
gion ;  forms  and  faces  which  bear  the  same  relation  to 
that  mystical  worship  of  Beauty  on  which  we  have 
dwelt  so  long,  as  the  forms  and  faces  of  a  Francia  or  a 
Leonardo  bear  to  the  mediaeval  mysteries  of  the  wor- 
sliip  of  Mary  or  of  Christ.  And  here  it  is  that  in 
Eossetti's  pictures  we  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  a 
novel   symbolism — a   symbolism  genuine  and  deeply 


552  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

felt  as  that  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  using  once 
more  birds  and  flowers  and  stars,  colours  and  lights  of 
the  evening  or  the  dawn,  to  tell  of  beauties  impalpable, 
spaces  unfathomed,  the  setting  and  resurrection  of  no 
measurable  or  earthly  day. 

It  is  cliiefly  in  a  series  of  women's  faces  that  these 
ideas  seek  expression.  All  these  have  something  in 
common,  some  union  of  strange  and  puissant  physical 
loveliness  with  depth  and  remoteness  of  gaze.  They 
range  from  demon  to  angel — as  such  names  may  be 
interpreted  in  a  Religion  of  Beauty  —  from  Lilith, 
whose  beauty  is  destruction,  and  Astarte,  throned 
between  the  Sun  and  Moon  in  her  sinister  splendour, 
to  the  Blessed  Damozel  and  the  "  maiden  pre-elect,"  type 
of  the  love  whose  look  regenerates  and  whose  assump- 
tion lifts  to  heaven.  But  all  have  the  look — charac- 
teristic of  Rossetti's  faces  as  the  mystic  smile  of 
Leonardo's  —  the  look  which  bids  the  spectator 
murmur — 

"  What  netherworld  gulf-whispers  doth  she  hear, 
In  answering  echoes  from  what  planisphere, 
Along  the  wind,  along  the  estuary  1 " 

And  since  these  primal  impulses,  at  any  rate,  will 
remain  to  mankind,  since  Love's  pathway  will  be  re- 
trodden by  many  a  generation,  and  all  of  faith  or 
knowledge  to  which  that  pathway  leads  will  endure, 
it  is  no  small  part  of  the  poet's  function  to  show  in 
how  great  a  measure  Love  does  actually  pre-3uppose 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    553 

and  consist  of  this  exaltation  of  the  mystic  element  in 
man ;  and  how  the  sense  of  unearthly  destinies  may 
give  dignity  to  Love's  invasion,  and  steadfastness  to 
his  continuance,  and  surround  his  vanishing  with  the 
mingled  ecstasy  of  anguish  and  of  hope.  Let  us  trace, 
with  Rossetti,  some  stages  of  his  onward  way. 

The  inexplicable  suddenness  with  which  Love  wUl 
sometimes  possess  himself  of  two  several  hearts — find- 
ing a  secret  kinship  which,  like  a  common  aroma, 
permeates  the  whole  being  of  each- — has  often  sug- 
gested the  thought  that  such  companionship  is  not  in 
reality  now  first  begun ;  that  it  is  founded  in  a  pre- 
natal affection,  and  is  the  unconscious  prolongation  of 
the  emotions  of  an  ideal  world — 

"  Even  so,  when  first  I  saw  you,  seemed  it,  love, 
That  among  souls  allied  to  mine  was  yet 

One  nearer  kindred  then  life  hinted  of. 

0  bom  with  me  somewhere  that  men  forget, 
And  though  in  years  of  sight  and  sound  unmet, 

Known  for  my  soul's  birth-partner  well  enough  ! " 

It  is  thus  that  Eossetti  traces  backward  the  kind- 
ling of  the  earthly  flame.  And  he  feels  also  that  if 
love  be  so  pervading,  so  fateful  a  thing,  the  man  who 
takes  it  upon  him  has  much  to  fear.  He  moves 
among  great  risks  ;  "  the  moon-track  of  the  journeying 
face  of  Fate  "  is  subject  for  him  to  strange  perturba- 
tions, to  terrible  eclipse.  What  if  his  love  be  a  mis- 
take ?  —  if  he  feels  against  his  wiU  a  disenchantment 
stealing  over  the  enchanted  garden,  and  his  new  self 


% 


/ 


554  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

walking,  a  ghastly  intruder,  among  scenes  vainly  con- 
secrated by  an  illusive  past  ? 

"  Whence  came  his  feet  into  my  field,  and  why  ? 
How  is  it  that  he  finds  it  all  so  drear  t 
How  do  I  see  his  seeing,  and  how  hear  ^ 

The  name  his  bitter  silence  knows  it  by  1 "  j 

Or  what  of  him  for  whom  some  iinforgotten  hour  has 
marred  his  life's  best  felicity,  et  inquinavit  aere  tempus 
aureum  ?  What  of  the  recollection  that  chUls  his  freest 
moments  with  an  inward  and  icy  breath  ? 

"  Look  in  my  face,  my  name  is  Might-have-been  ; 
I  am  also  called  No-more,  Too-late,  Farewell." 

There  is  no  need  to  invite  attention  to  the  lines 
which  thus  begin.  They  will  summon  their  own 
auditors ;  they  will  not  die  till  that  inward  Presence 
dies  also,  and  there  sits  not  at  the  heart  of  any  man  a 
memory  deeper  than  his  joy. 

But  over  all  lovers,  however  wisely  they  may  love, 
and  well,  there  hangs  one  shadow  which  no  wisdom 
can  avert.  To  one  or  other  the  shock  must  come, 
the  separation  which  wUl  make  the  survivor's  after- 
life seem  something  posthumous,  and  its  events  like 
the  changes  in  a  dream. 

Without  intruding  into  the  private  story  of  a  life 
which  has  not  yet  been  authoritatively  recounted  to 
us,  we  may  recognise  that  on  Eossetti  the  shock  of 
severance,  of  bereavement,  must  have  fallen  with  deso- 
lating force.    In  several  of  his  most  pregnant  poems, — 


ix]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.    555 

in  the  sonnets  entitled  Willow-wood  most  of  all,  — 
those  who  know  the  utmost  anguish  of  yearning  have 
listened  to  a  voice  speaking  as  though  from  their  own 
hearts.  The  state  of  tension,  indeed,  which  finds  utter- 
ance in  these  sonnets  is  by  its  very  nature  transitory. 
There  comes  a  time  when  most  men  forget.  But  in 
some  hearts  the  change  which  comes  over  the  passion 
of  love  is  not  decay,  but  transfiguration.  That  passion 
is  generalised,  as  Plato  desired  that  it  should  be  gen- 
eralised, though  in  a  somewhat  different  way.  The 
Platonic  enthusiasm  of  admiration  was  to  extend  itself 
"from  one  fair  form  to  all  fair  forms,"  and  from  fair 
forms  to  noble  and  beautiful  ideas  and  actions,  and  all 
that  is  likest  God.  And  something  not  unlike  this 
takes  place  when  the  lover  feels  that  the  object  of  his 
earthly  worship,  now  removed  from  his  sight,  is  be- 
coming identified  for  him  with  all  else  that  he  has 
been  wont  to  revere  —  representative  to  him,  to  use 
Plato's  words  again,  "  of  those  tilings,  by  dwelling  on 
which  it  is  that  even  a  god  is  divine."  It  is  not, 
indeed,  the  bereaved  lover  only  who  finds  in  a  female 
figure  the  ideal  recipient  of  his  impulses  of  adoring 
love.  Of  how  many  creeds  has  this  been  the  inspiring 
element !  —  from  the  painter  who  invokes  upon  his 
canvas  a  Virgin  revealed  in  sleep,  to  the  philosopher 
who  preaches  the  worship  of  Humanity  in  a  woman's 
likeness,  to  be  at  once  the  Mother  and  the  Beloved  of 
alL  Yet  this  ideal  will  operate  most  actively  in  hearts 
which  can  give  to  that  celestial  vision  a  remembered 


656  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [a. 

reality,  whose  "  memorial  threshold  "  seems  visibly  to 
bridge  the  passage  between  the  transitory  and  the 
supernal  world. 

"  City,  of  thine  a  single  simple  door, 

By  some  new  Power  reduplicate,  must  be 
Even  yet  my  life-porch  in  eternity. 
Even  with  one  presence  fiUed,  as  once  of  yore  ; 
Or  mocking  winds  whirl  round  a  chaff-strewn  floor 
Thee  and  thy  years  and  these  my  words  and  me." 

And  if  sometimes  this  transmuted  passion — this  re- 
ligion of  beauty  spiritualised  into  a  beatific  dream  — 
should  prompt  to  quietism  rather  than  to  vigorous 
action, —  if  sometimes  we  hear  in  the  mourner's  utter- 
ance a  tone  as  of  a  man  too  weak  for  his  destiny — 
this  has  its  pathos  too.  For  it  is  a  part  of  the  lot  of 
man  that  the  fires  which  purify  should  also  consume 
him,  and  that  as  the  lower  things  become  distasteful 
the  energy  which  seeks  the  higher  things  should  fade 
too  often  into  a  sad  repose. 

"  Here  with  her  face  doth  Memory  sit, 
Meanwhile,  and  wait  the  day's  decline. 

Till  other  eyes  shall  look  from  it — 
Eyes  of  the  spirit's  Palestine, 

Even  than  the  old  gaze  tenderer  ; 

While  hopes  and  aims,  long  lost  with  her, 
Stand  round  her  image  side  by  side, 
Like  tombs  of  pilgrims  that  have  died 

About  the  Holy  Sepulclire." 

And  when  the  dream  and  the  legend  which  inspired 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  A>T)  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.     557 

Eossetti's  boyhood  with,  the  vision  of  the  Blessed 
Damozel — which  kindled  his  early  manhood  into  the 
sweetest  Ave  that  ever  sainted  "  Mary  Virgin,  fnll  of 
grace  " —  had  transformed  themselves  in  his  heart  into 
the  reality  and  the  recollection ;  when  Love  had  been 
made  known  to  him  by  life  itself  and  death — then  he 
had  at  least  gained  power  to  show  how  the  vaguer 
worship  may  become  a  concentrated  expectancy  :  how 
one  vanished  hand  may  seem  to  offer  the  endless  wel- 
come, one  name  to  symbolise  all  heaven,  and  to  be  in 
itself  the  single  hope. 

"  Ah  !  when  the  wan  soul  in  that  golden  air 
Between  the  scriptured  petals  softly  blown 
Peers  breathless  for  the  gift  of  grace  unknown, — 
Ah  !  let  none  other  alien  spell  soe'er, 
But  only  the  one  Hope's  one  name  be  there, — 
Not  less  nor  more,  but  e'en  that  word  alone." 

Enough,  perhaps,  has  been  said  to  indicate  not  only 
how  superficial  is  the  view  which  represents  Kossetti 
as  a  dangerous  sensualist,  but  also  how  inadequately 
we  shall  understand  him  if  we  think  to  find  in  him 
only  the  commonplaces  of  passion  dressed  out  in 
fantastic  language  and  Italianised  allegory.  There  is 
more  to  be  leamt  from  him  than  this,  though  it  be  too 
soon,  as  yet,  to  discern  with  exactness  his  place  in  the 
history  of  our  time.  Yet  we  may  note  that  his  sensi- 
tive and  reserved  indi\-iduality ;  his  life,  absorbed  in 
Art,  and  aloof  from — without  being  below — the  circles 
of  politics  or  fashion ;  his    refinement,  created  as  it 


558  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix 

were  from  withiii,  and  independent  of  conventional 
models,  point  him  out  as  a  member  of  that  new  aristo- 
cracy of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  that  optimacy 
of  passion  and  genius  (if  we  may  revive  an  obsolete 
word  to  express  a  new  shade  of  meaning)  which  is 
coming  into  existence  as  a  cosmopolitan  gentility 
among  the  confused  and  fading  class -distinctions  of 
the  past.  And,  further,  we  may  observe  in  him  the 
reaction  of  Art  against  Materialism,  which  becomes 
more  marked  as  the  dominant  tone  of  science  grows 
more  soulless  and  severe.  The  instincts  which  make 
other  men  Catholics,  Ritualists,  Hegelians,  have  com- 
pelled him,  too,  to  seek  "  the  meaning  of  aU  things 
that  are"  elsewhere  than  in  the  behaviour  of  ether  and 
atoms,  though  we  can  track  his  revelation  to  no  sourct 
more  explicit  than  the  look  in  a  woman's  eyes. 

But  if  we  ask — and  it  was  one  of  the  questions 
with  which  we  started  —  what  encouragement  the 
moralist  can  iiud  in  this  counter- wave  of  art  and 
mysticism  which  meets  the  materialistic  tide,  there  is 
no  certain  or  easy  answer.  The  one  view  of  life  seems 
as  powerless  as  the  other  to  supply  that  antique  and 
manly  virtue  which  civilisation  tends  to  undermine  by 
the  lessening  effort  that  it  exacts  of  men,  the  increas- 
ing enjoyment  that  it  offers  to  them.  "  Time  has 
run  back  and  fetched  the  age  of  gold,"  in  the  sense 
that  the  opulent  can  now  take  life  as  easily  as  it  was 
taken  in  Paradise ;  and  Eossetti's  poems,  placed  beside 
Sidney's  or  Lovelace's,  seem  the  expression  of  a  century 


IX.]    ROSSETTI  AND  THE  RELIGION  OF  BEAUTY.     559 

which  is  refining  itself  into  quietism  and  mellowing 
into  decay. 

Yet  thus  much  we  may  safely  affirm,  that  if  we 
contrast  .Testheticism  with  pure  hedonism — the  pursuit 
of  pleasure  through  art  with  the  pursuit  of  pleasure 
simply  as  pleasure — the  one  has  a  tendency  to  quicken 
and  exalt,  as  the  other  to  deaden  and  vulgarise, 
the  emotions  and  appetencies  of  man.  If  only  the 
artist  can  keep  clear  of  the  sensual  selfishness  which 
will,  in  its  turn,  degrade  the  art  which  yields  to  it ;  if 
only  he  can  worship  beauty  with  a  strong  and  single 
heart,  his  emotional  nature  will  acquire  a  grace  and 
elevation  which  are  not,  indeed,  identical  with  the 
elevation  of  virtue,  the  grace  of  holiness,  hut  which 
are  none  the  less  a  priceless  enrichment  of  the  com- 
plex life  of  man.  Rossetti  could  never  have  summoned 
us  to  the  clear  heights  of  Wordsworth's  Laodamia. 
Yet  who  can  read  the  Hoiise  of  Life  and  not  feel  that 
the  poet  has  known  Love  as  Love  caa  be — not  an 
enjoyment  only  or  a  triumph,  but  a  worship  and  a 
regeneration  ;  Love  not  fleeting  nor  changeful,  but 
"  far  above  all  passionate  winds  of  welcome  and  fare- 
well;" Love  offering  to  the  soul  no  mere  excitation  and 
by-play,  but  "a  heavenly  solstice,  hushed  and  halcyon;" 
Love  whose  "  hours  elect  in  choral  consonancy  "  bear 
with  them  nothing  that  is  vain  or  vulgar,  common  or 
unclean.  He  must  have  felt  as  no  passing  tragedy 
the  long  ache  of  parted  pain,  "  the  ground-whirl  of  the 
perished  leaves  of  hope,"  "  the  sunset's  desolate  dis- 


560  MODERN  ESSAYS.  [ix. 

array,"  the  fruitless  striving  "to  wrest  a  bond  from  night's 
inveteracy,"  to  behold  "tov  once,  for  once  alone,"  the 
unforgotten  eyes  re-risen  from  the  dark  of  death. 

Love,  as  Plato  said,  is  the  epfirjvevov  kul  Siairop- 
dfievov,  "  the  interpreter  and  mediator  "  between  things 
human  and  things  divine  ;  and  it  may  be  to  Love  that 
we  must  look  to  teach  the  worshipper  of  Beauty  that 
the  highest  things  are  also  the  loveliest,  and  that  the 
strongest  of  moral  agencies  is  also  the  most  pervading 
and  keenest  joy.  Art  and  Eeligion,  which  no  compres- 
sion could  amalgamate,  may  by  Love  be  expanded  and 
interfused ;  and  thus  the  poet  may  not  err  so  wholly 
who  seeks  in  a  woman's  eyes  "  the  meaning  of  all 
things  that  are  ;"  and  "  the  soul's  sphere  of  infinite 
images  "  may  not  be  a  mere  prismatic  fringe  to  reality, 
but  rather  those  images  may  be  as  dark  rays  made 
visible  by  passing  through  the  medium  of  a  mind 
which  is  fitted  to  refract  and  reflect  them. 

A  faint,  a  fitful  reflex  !  Whether  it  be  from  light  of 
sun  or  of  moon,  sole  repercussum  aut  radiantis  imagine 
lunae, —  the  glimmer  of  a  vivifying  or  of  a  phantom 
day  —  may  scarcely  be  for  us  to  know.  But  never 
yet  has  the  universe  been  proved  smaller  than  the  con- 
ceptions of  man,  whose  farthest,  deepest  speculation 
has  only  found  within  him  yet  profounder  abysses, — 
without,  a  more  unfathomable  heaven. 


NOTES. 


Note  A. 

Since  the  publication  of  the  first  edition  of  these  Essays,  an 
admirable  study  of  French  versification  has  appeared  from  the 
pen  of  M.  Guyau,  in  the  Revue  Philosophique  for  1884,  under 
the  title  of  '  L'Esth^tique  du  vers  Moderae.'  This  paper,  far 
more  philosophical  than  any  French  writings  on  the  subject 
which  I  had  previously  seen,  suggests  much  which  might  be 
added  to  my  discussion,  did  space  permit.  Fortunately,  however, 
so  far  as  my  own  remarks  go,  they  are  thoroughly  in  accordance 
with  M.  Guyau's  more  authoritative  opinion. 

1886. 

Note  R 

The  letters  of  George  Eliot  which  have  recently  been  given 
to  the  world  confirm  the  view  above  expressed  as  to  the  pre- 
dominance in  her  of  the  ethical  impulse.  Not  even  the  one 
grave  moral  mistake  into  which  a  wave  of  theoretical  opinion 
rather  than  of  personal  passion  carried  her,  can  seriously  interfere 
with  the  impression  which  the  records  of  her  whole  life  produce, 
— -the  picture  of  untiring  self-improvement,  of  strenuous  well- 
doing. The  letters  are  as  far  removed  as  possible  from  either 
the  recklessness  or  the  self-absorption  which  sometimes  accom- 
pany imaginative  genius.  Rather  we  find  a  temper  as  of  one 
resolved  to  treat  the  whole  of  life  scientifically,  and  not  en 
amvateur, — a  voice  whose  stern  self-communings  seem  overheard 
in  the  heart's  secret  chamber,  and  bid  us  to  redeem  the  time 
because  the  days  are  evil. 

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■^^"^  Essays  classical  &  modern