PR 12.7 
 
 C(5 
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L 1
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped beh)\ 
 
 aUN.X2 1938 
 lAPR 5 19S2 
 
 7\r 
 
 Foi-iii Ii-9-5m-7,'23
 
 BRITISH WRITERS 
 ON CLASSIC LANDS
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 Demy 8vo, Cloth, 21/- net. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE STUDIED IN SIX PLAYS 
 
 " For their own interest and grace of style, these pages will be 
 grateful to even the most strictly scientific Shakespeare scholar." 
 
 Irish Times. 
 
 " Mr. Canning writes not for scholars and experts but for the 
 general reader. . . . This aim he has carried out with clearness 
 and exactitude." — Wesitninsier Gazette. 
 
 " It is refreshing to turn to a volume so sober and so sensible as 
 that by the Hon. A. S. G. Canning entitled ' Shakespeare Studied 
 in Six Plays.' " — Great Thoughts. 
 
 "This book does not call for criticism so much as appreciation, 
 and this we think it is certain to meet with." — Public Oj>inio?t. 
 
 " Exposition so sober and so earnest as that of this interesting 
 volume is valuable as a corrective as well as upon its own 
 substantial merits. " — Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Canning sedulously abstains from critical comment, and 
 there are no doubt very many even in these days of popular educa- 
 tion who need such an easy introduction to the works of our great 
 national dramatist as he has conscientiously set himself to provide." 
 
 The World. 
 
 " Lovers of Shakespeare will cordially welcome the Hon. A. S. G. 
 Canning's latest work, ' Shakespeare Studied in Six Plays.' " 
 
 Methodist Times. 
 
 " I have never met with a more painstaking and detailed method 
 of dealing with Shakespearean plays." — Lady's Picto7-ial. 
 
 " It will not be the author's fault if the book does not prove both 
 entertaining and instructive." — Cojnmonwealth. 
 
 ' ' The author has an agreeable style, knows his Shakespeare well, 
 and his running comment is always apt." — Irish Independent. 
 
 •'He deals in turn with 'Othello,' 'Macbeth,' 'King John,' 
 ' Richard II.,' ' Henry IV.,' and ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' 
 and it is only fair now that his work of interpretation in this 
 connection should be generously recognised and praised." 
 
 Standard. 
 
 " Reading ' Othello ' in Mr. Canning's book, one can almost 
 imagine oneself in the same room listening to the conversations of 
 the characters and watching the expressions on their faces." 
 
 Australasian World. 
 
 LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN.
 
 BRITISH WRITERS ON 
 CLASSIC LANDS 
 
 A LITERARY SKETCH 
 
 HON. ALBERT S. G. CANNING 
 
 tAuthor oj 
 
 •' HISTORY IN SCOTt's NOVELS," " SHAKESPEARE STUDIED 
 IN SIX PLAYS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 " Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
 shall be increased." — Daniel xii. 4. 
 
 LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN 
 ADELPHI TERRACE • MCMVII
 
 (^// rights reserved.)
 
 c \ 5 
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 ' I "HIS work is not intended for classical 
 ■^ scholars so much as for general readers, 
 to whom, I hope, it may prove useful. 
 
 A. S. G. CANNING. 
 London, 1907. 
 
 9'Vt ^^>1 7
 
 Contents 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. 
 
 9> 
 
 II. . 
 
 »5 
 
 III. 
 
 J> 
 
 IV. . 
 
 >> 
 
 V. 
 
 » 
 
 VI. . 
 
 )) 
 
 VII. 
 
 >9 
 
 VIII. . 
 
 )) 
 
 IX. 
 
 » 
 
 X. . 
 
 » 
 
 XI. 
 
 l> 
 
 XII. . 
 
 S> 
 
 XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 9 
 19 
 31 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 71 
 
 81 
 
 89 
 
 103 
 
 117 
 
 129 
 
 139 
 
 153
 
 8 
 
 British Writers 
 
 Chapter XIV. 
 
 »» 
 
 XV. 
 
 >> 
 
 XVI. 
 
 '» 
 
 XVII. . 
 
 >> 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 jj 
 
 XIX. . 
 
 1) 
 
 XX. 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXI. . 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXII. 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXIII. . 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXV. . 
 
 JJ 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 »j 
 
 XXVII. . 
 
 >i 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 163 
 
 . 213 
 
 223 
 
 . 231 
 
 241 
 . 249 
 
 • 263 
 
 273 
 
 . 281 
 
 289 
 
 Works Referred to 
 
 295
 
 CHAPTER I
 
 British Writers on Classic Lands 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DURING the last century the most celebrated 
 countries of the ancient world in Western 
 Asia, Northern Africa and South-Eastern Europe 
 have evidently been more explored, examined, and 
 written about than at any previous period ; yet 
 their elucidation owed comparatively little to the 
 natives of these interesting lands. Neither the 
 Arabs in Asia or Africa, nor the Turks or Persians, 
 or even the modern Greeks, have given much 
 assistance in the investigation of their ancestral 
 countries. This grand enterprise was chiefly, if 
 not mainly, due to the learning, energy, and 
 resources of the western European nations. It 
 was from Britain, France, Germany, and Italy 
 that industrious explorers, animated by literary in- 
 struction and strengthened by the warlike powers
 
 12 British Writers 
 
 of their rulers over sea and land, have chiefly 
 brought to light the many partly concealed wonders 
 of the ancient world, while to Spaniards and Por- 
 tuguese the discovery and conquest of the larger 
 part of America were mostly due. These last 
 two nations, however, as if exhausted or engrossed 
 by their enterprises in the New World, have left 
 both the peaceful investigation, as well as the 
 military conquest of the Old, almost entirely to 
 northern and western Europeans. The ancient 
 lands of Assyria, Egypt, and Palestine have found, 
 among many others during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the British writers, George Rawlinson and 
 Austen Layard, enthusiastic scholars, combining 
 the knowledge of classical writers with the energy 
 of enterprising travellers. These men, living for- 
 tunately in a time of prevailing Christian power 
 or influence, were thereby protected, strengthened, 
 and encouraged by their European rulers and 
 fellow-countrymen. Thus aided by such national 
 advantages these writers, as well as some sub- 
 sequent ones, were enabled to impart safely the 
 results of their efforts in works of the highest 
 antiquarian, as well as historical, value. Among 
 the most successful of British explorers and dis- 
 coverers in the last century are Rawlinson in his 
 translation of Herodotus, the great " Father of 
 History," and Layard by his discoveries in Assyria.
 
 on Classic Lands 13 
 
 Of their peculiar importance in relation to those 
 in other lands Layard observes ^ : 
 
 " Through them may be traced the origin of many arts, of 
 many mystics and symbols and of many traditions, afterwards 
 perfected and made familiar to us through the genius of the 
 Greeks. . . . We knew nothing of the civilisation of the 
 Assyrians except what could be gathered from casual notices 
 scattered through the works of the Greeks. From their evi- 
 dence, indeed, we are led to believe that the inhabitants of 
 Assyria had attained a high degree of culture at a very remote 
 period. The testimony of the Bible and the monuments of 
 the Egyptians on which the conquests of that people over 
 Asiatic nations are recorded, lead to the same conclu- 
 sion." . . . 
 
 These industrious and finally successful explorers 
 have indeed enlightened all learned Europe, but 
 especially Britain, by published accounts of their 
 antiquarian researches, which, though guided by 
 historical knowledge, were yet practically suc- 
 cessful through their country's political power and 
 far-extended influence. The two most eminent of 
 ancient Greek writers. Homer and Herodotus, the 
 poet and historian, have been, perhaps, more fully 
 examined, appreciated, and made known by British 
 writers than by those of any other nation. The 
 History of Herodotus, comparatively ignored or 
 distrusted even by his fellow-countrymen in 
 
 * " Nineveh and its Remains," by Austen Layard. Vol. ii. 
 chap. i.
 
 14 British Writers 
 
 mediaeval times, is now, through the medium of 
 translation, spread throughout the whole learned 
 world of Europe, chiefly owing to the industrious 
 efforts of accomplished and travelled Englishmen. 
 The poet Pope and the fourteenth Earl of 
 Derby have in different periods rivalled each 
 other in relative translations of Homer's " Iliad," 
 while Herodotus, long under-valued, and sometimes 
 termed the Father of Lies, rather than of History, 
 has probably been more understood and generally 
 appreciated by Europeans in the last century than 
 ever before. Rawlinson, in his learned Preface,^ 
 says of this great writer's knowledge of ancient 
 Egypt, a land now so fully open to all European 
 intercourse : — 
 
 " His knowledge is for the most part close and accurate. 
 He has not merely paid a hasty visit to the countries, but 
 has examined them leisurely and is familiar with their scenery, 
 their cities, small and large, and their various wonders, their 
 temples and their buildings, and with the manners and 
 customs of their inhabitants. The fulness and minuteness 
 of his information is even more remarkable than its wide 
 range, though it has attracted less observation. In Egypt, 
 for instance, he has not contented himself with a single 
 voyage up and down the Nile, like the modern tourist, but 
 has evidently passed months, if not years, in examining the 
 various objects of interest." 
 
 While Rawlinson thus admires and vindicates the 
 
 ' " Translation of Herodotus."
 
 on Classic Lands 15 
 
 historic merit of Herodotus, by examining the most 
 celebrated lands in Western Asia, North- Eastern 
 Africa, and South-Eastern Europe, Layard has 
 chiefly devoted himself to the study and elucida- 
 tion of the ancient Assyrian empire. He writes in 
 emphatic words well worthy the attention of his- 
 torical students ^ : — 
 
 " Although the names of Nineveh and Assyria have been 
 known to us from childhood and are connected with our 
 earliest impressions derived from Inspired Writings, it is only 
 when we ask ourselves what we really know concerning them, 
 that we discover ignorance of all that relates to their history 
 and even to their geographical position. It is, indeed, one of 
 the most remarkable facts in history, that the records of an 
 empire so renowned for its fame and civilisation should have 
 been entirely lost, and that the site of a city as eminent for its 
 extent as its splendour should for ages have been a matter of 
 doubt." 
 
 Mr. Layard, by various illustrations in his great 
 work, shows the wonderful discoveries of winged 
 bulls and human figures, some of great size, which, 
 buried for many centuries, were thus finally rescued 
 and brought to the knowledge of a learned European 
 world. Yet these discoveries, like those in Egypt, 
 were mainly effected by Europeans who, guided by 
 classic literature and inspired by its charm as well 
 as by its information, eventually succeeded in bring- 
 ing to light a knowledge of the ancient world which, 
 * Introduction, p. 20.
 
 1 6 British Writers 
 
 except in somewhat vague Scriptural records, solely 
 derived from Jewish authority or from Greek his- 
 tory and poetry, was comparatively known to few 
 during many centuries of human history. Phoenicia, 
 likewise a small country on the Syrian coast, though 
 often mentioned in ancient history, has apparently 
 owed its investigation chiefly to modern European 
 research. Rawlinson writes of this country ' : — 
 
 " In her the commercial spirit first showed itself as the 
 dominant spirit of a nation. She was the carrier between the 
 East and the West — the link that bound them together, in 
 times anterior to the first appearance of the Greeks as navi- 
 gators. No complete history of Phoenicia has come down to 
 us, nor can a continuous history be constructed." 
 
 Throughout one period, Rawlinson says, the 
 Phoenicians, " conjointly with the Jews," had 
 established factories on the Red Sea. 
 
 " Phoenicia had at this time (about 800 years B.C.) no 
 serious commercial rival, and the trade of the world was in 
 her hands." 
 
 This country was conquered first by Assyria and 
 then by Egypt, but 
 
 "as Greece rose to power and as Carthage increased in 
 importance, the sea trade of Phoenicia was greatly checked." 
 
 Rawlinson adds of the Phoenician people : 
 
 " They have a claim to be considered one of the most 
 
 * " Manual of Ancient History," part i.
 
 on Classic Lands 17 
 
 ingenious nations of antiquity, though we must not ascribe 
 to them the tirst invention of letters or the possession of any 
 remarkable artistic talent." 
 
 The comparatively short-lived importance of 
 these enterprising people present, a thorough con- 
 trast to the wonderful history of the Jews who, 
 among all nations of the most remote antiquity, 
 have preserved the most enduring interest by their 
 position and national character in the philosophical 
 history of man to the present time. They still 
 occupy, and indeed have always occupied, a 
 position distinct from all other nations in the 
 world's history. As the late learned historian. 
 Dean Milman, observes : ^ 
 
 "The history of this, perhaps the only unmingled race 
 which can boast of high antiquity, leads us through every 
 gradation of society, and brings us into contact with almost 
 every nation which commands our interest in the ancient 
 world. The migratory pastoral population of Asia, Egypt, 
 the mysterious parent of arts, science, and legislation ; the 
 Arabian Desert, the Hebrew theocracy under the form of a 
 federative agricultural republic, their kingdom powerful in 
 war and splendid in peace, Babylon in its magniiicence and 
 downfall, Grecian arts and luxury endeavouring to force an 
 unnatural reiinement within the pale of the rigid Mosaic 
 institutions, Roman arms waging an exterminating war with 
 the independence even of the smallest states ; it descends at 
 length to all the changes in the social state of the modern 
 European and Asiatic nations." 
 
 ' " History of the Jews," vol. i. 
 2
 
 1 8 British Writers 
 
 Milman, referring to the singular geographical 
 position and alleged religious preference of the Jews, 
 emphatically writes : 
 
 "In the narrow slip of land inhabited by their tribes the 
 worship of one Almighty Creator of the Universe subsists, as 
 in its only sanctuary. ... As there is but one Almighty God, 
 so there is but one people under His especial protection."
 
 CHAPTER II
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE Jews would seem from the earliest times 
 to have preserved their strictly, if not 
 exclusively, national feelings, habits, and aspira- 
 tions, with but little sympathy for or from any of 
 the more powerful or numerous nations by whom 
 they were surrounded and occasionally ruled, 
 Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had 
 in historical course conquered them for a time, 
 while they themselves seem neither to have ruled 
 or wished to rule any other nation. Though 
 apparently associated from the earliest times with 
 commercial habits or enterprises, their consequent 
 intercourse with other lands did not seem to 
 incline the Jews to cultivate, or perhaps much 
 examine, either the learning, the religion, or the 
 accomplishments even of those nations whose 
 political rule they were forced to obey. The 
 historical or political changes, therefore, in other 
 countries apparently made little, if any, difference 
 in the thoughts, feelings, or belief of this " peculiar 
 people." They seemed to have had little, if any, in-
 
 22 British Writers 
 
 terest in the wonders of ancient Assyria and Egypt, 
 or in the philosophic learning of the Greeks, or 
 in the martial and legislative superiority of the 
 Romans. On the other hand, though geographi- 
 cally placed so near those two chief nations of 
 antiquity, the Jews in their history and literature 
 were either ignored or despised by both these 
 pagan nations, while politically subjected to each 
 in historical course. On the subject of their 
 relative positions, Macaulay writes with the calm, 
 learned impartiality prevalent in Britain during 
 the last century, and which formerly might not 
 have been well understood or admired. Yet even 
 he admits or intimates that he can hardly under- 
 stand what he calls this "astonishing indifference" 
 of Greeks and Romans towards the history or 
 religion of that extraordinary nation, so long their 
 political subject and so comparatively helpless in 
 naval and military power. Yet this was the nation 
 destined to produce, apparently among its humblest 
 inhabitants, the Prophet or Moral Teacher, whose 
 enthusiastic worship was fated to finally replace 
 the time-honoured, poetical paganism of Greece 
 and Rome in almost every country, city, town, 
 and village where it had for centuries reigned 
 supreme. Macaulay, even his learned mind evi- 
 dently perplexed, says of this indifference of the 
 powerful Romans towards the subdued Jews :
 
 on Classic Lands 23 
 
 "The sacred books of the Hebrews seem to have been 
 utterly unnoticed by them. The pecuHarities of Judaism 
 and the rapid growth of Christianity, attracted their notice. 
 They made war against the Jews. They made laws against 
 the Christians. But they never opened the books of Moses. 
 When we consider what sublime poetry, what curious his- 
 tory, what striking and peculiar views of the Divine nature 
 and of the social duties of men are to be found in the Jewish 
 Scriptures, when we consider that two sects (Hebrew and 
 Christian), on which the attention of the [Roman] Govern- 
 ment was constantly fixed, appealed to those Scriptures as 
 the rule of their faith and practice, this indifference is 
 astonishing." ^ 
 
 Yet while the Jews had the "sole custody "^ of 
 the Scriptures according to their own, and also to 
 Christian, if not to Mohammedan belief, it cannot 
 be said they ever equalled either Greeks or Romans 
 in arts or accomplishments, except that of music, 
 or even in legislative capacity. Their religious 
 history alone was their peculiar, national glory. 
 Its wonderful records seem alike trusted, at least 
 in some respects, by both Christians and Moham- 
 medans. Yet their respective additions or supple- 
 ments of the Gospel and of the Koran to the 
 Old Testament, on which all three religions seem 
 to rely, remain still disavowed by the resolute, 
 morally invincible, yet subjected race who at this 
 day are, and for many centuries have been, almost 
 
 ' " Essay on History." 
 
 * Newman's " Grammar of Assent."
 
 ^4 British Writers 
 
 without exception, under the political rule of Chris- 
 tians and Mohammedans. While the ancient 
 Jewish faith, however, is in fact believed and 
 studied by Christians and Mohammedans, as the 
 foundations of their belief, the subsequent revela- 
 tions of Jesus and of Mohammed remain disowned 
 alike by them. The intellectual triumphs of pagan 
 Greece and Rome are more appreciated and care- 
 fully preserved by modern civilised nations than 
 the historical records of any other people. Greece, 
 whose intellectual glory was appreciated and ad- 
 mired by her Roman conquerors, has been specially 
 studied, praised, and illustrated in Britain during 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This 
 admiration for Greek literature by her Roman 
 rulers is generally admitted by modern writers. 
 Thus Professor Mahaffy writes : 
 
 "When the Romans suddenly found themselves a great 
 and conquering Power, when circumstances, as it were, 
 thrust upon them sovran authority, they were as inferior to 
 the East in culture as they were superior in force and arms, 
 and they knew it, . . , It was inevitable that the Romans 
 should imitate what they found and that their literature must 
 be moulded upon Greek models. . . . The purest and best 
 of the Romans were in real earnest learning from the best of 
 the Greeks that knowledge of philosophy, of history, of 
 the plastic arts, which was ultimately spread over the world 
 in Roman form." ' 
 
 "Alexander's Empire," chap. xxii.
 
 on Classic Lands 25 
 
 The poetry of Homer, the wise thoughts, reason- 
 ing, and writings of Greek philosophers, orators, 
 and statesmen, are still by learned British writers 
 declared the original or the model of sub- 
 sequent instructive European literature. The 
 extraordinary way in which civilisation, classic 
 study and knowledge, accompanying political 
 power, have been transferred in the Old World 
 from East to West has perhaps been more ably 
 or carefully examined during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury than at any previous time. Britain, France, 
 and Germany now take the lead in studying not 
 only the instructive beauties of Greece and Italy, 
 but the revealed wonders of Assyria and Egypt 
 as well as of Asia Minor and Palestine. Yet of 
 all these ancient countries Greece seems to be on 
 the whole specially admired, studied, and venerated 
 for its acknowledged great services to modern 
 European civilisation. Thus Macaulay eloquently 
 writes about ancient Greek, especially Athenian, 
 literature inspiring pagans and Romans as well 
 as modern Europeans, certainly with truth, yet 
 perhaps with some exaggeration : 
 
 " From hence have sprung directly or indirectly all the 
 noblest creations of the human intellect — the vast accom- 
 pHshments and brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering fire 
 of Juvenal, the plastic imagination of Dante, the humour of 
 Cervantes, the comprehension of Bacon, the wit of Butler,
 
 26 British Writers 
 
 the supreme and universal excellence of Shakespeare. All 
 the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power 
 in every country and in every age have been the triumphs of 
 Athens." ^ 
 
 In these admiring vrords the enthusiastic British 
 historian of the last century pronounces the intel- 
 lectual superiority of ancient Romans, mediaeval 
 Italians, Spaniards, and Englishmen to be a 
 glorious legacy bequeathed by the ancient Greeks 
 to subsequent ages and to different countries. In 
 a rather similar admiration for classic literature, 
 Milton, Pope, and Byron among the chief English 
 poets almost rival each other in evincing equal 
 enthusiasm. Milton's religious mind inclined him 
 to specially describe the glories of ancient Greece 
 and Rome as the chief vi^onders of the human 
 world, which according to the Christian Gospel 
 were shown by Satan to Jesus, with, of course, 
 only evil intent. The Christian Founder hears 
 the splendid descriptions given first of Rome and 
 then of Greece by the Enemy of mankind from 
 its creation. Satan, though dwelling on the chief 
 temporal glories of the two most distinguished 
 nations then existing, with a brilliant appreciative 
 power, concealing his implacable malevolence, can 
 have no real delight but in secretly contemplating 
 their ultimate ruin. He therefore tempts the Friend 
 
 ^ Essay on Mitford's *' History of Greece."
 
 on Classic Lands 27 
 
 of mankind by showing Him Rome at a most 
 interesting period of her wonderful history. It was 
 at the time when her grand empire, ruling all or 
 nearly all the civilised nations of the earth, was 
 herself under the tyranny of Tiberius Caesar, 
 considered by some, but not by all historians, as 
 one of the worst Roman Emperors, and who 
 evidently puzzled some of them to understand, 
 owing to various and conflicting accounts of him. 
 About this mysterious ruler Macaulay writes : 
 
 " A man singularly dark and inscrutable, whose real dis- 
 position long remained swathed up in intricate folds of 
 factitious virtues, over whose actions the hypocrisy of his 
 youth and the seclusion of his old age threw a singular 
 mystery, ... a character distinguished by courage, self- 
 command, and profound policy, yet defiled by all * th' ex- 
 travagancy and crazy ribaldry of fancy ' ; . . . conscious of 
 failing strength, raging with capricious sensuality, yet to the 
 last the keenest of observers, the most artful of dissemblers, 
 and the most terrible of masters." ' 
 
 Such was Tiberius Caesar, at least according 
 to the account of Tacitus,^ and believed by 
 
 * Macaulay's " Essay on History." 
 
 ^ " A celebrated Latin historian, born in the reign of 
 Nero. . . . The history of the reign of Tiberius is his 
 masterpiece, the deep policy, the dissimulation, and various 
 intrigues of this celebrated prince are painted with all the 
 fidelity of the historian, and Tacitus boasted in saying that he 
 neither would flatter the follies or maliciously or partially 
 represent the extravagance of the several characters he
 
 28 British Writers 
 
 Macaulay, yet this prince was the earthly 
 sovereign of Jesus and the almost despotic master 
 of Pontius Pilate, governing Judea in his name. 
 It was this Emperor, in Dean Farrar's opinion, 
 whose image on a coin was shown to Jesus by 
 some Jews when asking Him if it was right or 
 lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, and about this 
 singular event Farrar writes '^ of the coin : 
 
 " On one side were stamped the haughty, beautiful features 
 of the Emperor Tiberius, with all the wicked scorn upon his 
 lip." 
 
 The reply or advice of Jesus — 
 
 " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's " 
 
 — Farrar says conveyed the meaning that the 
 payment was 
 
 " not a voluntary gift, but a legal due, not a cheerful gift, 
 but a political necessity." 
 
 Farrar's account of the whole scene, being 
 written from an exclusively Christian stand- 
 point, lays an amount of blame on the Jews 
 for so "tempting" Him, which some honest 
 Jewish writers might firmly deny. They, not 
 
 delineated. Candour and impartiality were his standard, and 
 his claim to these essential qualifications of a historian has 
 never been disputed." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 ^ " Life of Christ."
 
 on Classic Lands 29 
 
 believing in His Divine mission, but that He was 
 perverting their nation from religious truth, en- 
 deavoured to elicit from Him some disapproval 
 of Roman rule which would justify His immediate 
 arrest, and thus prevent what they conscientiously 
 thought would be perversions from Judaism. A 
 similar course has often been subsequently adopted 
 by both Christians and Mohammedans, for the 
 sake of preserving what each has firmly believed 
 to be religious truth or even the most minute 
 points of doctrinal accuracy.
 
 CHAPTER III
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EVEN some modern Christian writers have 
 used words which might be construed as 
 justifying almost any amount of persecution. 
 Thus Carlyle writes about John Knox, who was 
 said to have approved of the murder of Cardinal 
 Beaton in Scotland,^ and to have advised the 
 most severe measures against the Scottish Roman 
 Catholics : 
 
 "We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end 
 to them in some wise way. I will not quarrel so much with 
 the way, the doing of the thing is our great concern. In 
 this sense Knox was full surely intolerant." — " Heroes and 
 Hero-worship." 
 
 These words might with equal truth vindicate 
 Torquemada in justifying the Spanish Inquisition, 
 striving to suppress what he believed heresy 
 against religious truth. The Jewish priests, there- 
 
 * " Knox himself had no hand in the murder of Beaton, 
 but he afterwards joined the assassins and assisted them," — 
 Hume's " History," chap, xxxiv. 
 
 3 «
 
 34 British Writers 
 
 fore, actuated by similar motives, desired, and 
 thought it their duty, to stop as soon as possible 
 the increasing influence of a teacher whom they, 
 without impugning His moral or personal char- 
 acter, believed was a fanciful dreamer, unable to 
 give any proof of His alleged mission, yet opposing 
 in some ways the hitherto venerated doctrines of 
 their Old Testament among their nation. Yet 
 to their disappointment, according to Christian 
 belief. He gave no encouragement to any idea of 
 revolt against the Roman Government, but on the 
 contrary, enjoined practically the duty of temporary 
 obedience at least to Tiberius Caesar, then ruling 
 Judea through his subordinate ministers, Sejanus 
 in Rome and Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. It 
 was through the influence of Sejanus that Pilate 
 governed Judea, ^ and both these Roman statesmen 
 detested the Jews.^ At this time, apparently, 
 Tiberius, his ambitious minister Sejanus, and his 
 obsequious viceroy or deputy, Pilate, in a short- 
 lived alliance together ruled Judea as a mere 
 Roman province. But this alliance between Ti- 
 berius and Sejanus was fated to have a fearful 
 end, the Emperor secretly instigating the murder 
 of his proud favourite at Rome, who he justly, 
 perhaps, feared was becoming too powerful while 
 he himself was enjoying his beautiful retirement 
 » Farrar's " Life of Christ." ^ Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 
 
 35 
 
 in the island of Caprese on the Italian coast. The 
 learned poet Milton, therefore, carefully observant 
 of Roman as well as of Jewish history, describes 
 Satan in "Paradise Regained" showing to Jesus 
 the various glories of the noble Roman Empire 
 under its evil ruler Tiberius, during the recorded 
 Temptation of Christ in the Gospel. He highly 
 praises Julius Caesar, whose glorious career and 
 somewhat recent murder were at this time in 
 Roman history doubtless generally admired and 
 deplored. Satan exclaims, therefore, in words 
 which might have delighted many young Romans, 
 but had no effect upon Jesus : 
 
 " Great Julius, who now all the world admires, 
 The more he grew in years, the more inflamed 
 With glory, wept that he had lived so long 
 Inglorious, but thou yet are not too late." 
 
 To this temptation for Jesus to rival or excel 
 Csesar in martial triumphs the Christian Founder 
 is supposed to reply in words which, though con- 
 sistent with what is termed the Christian spirit, 
 would scarcely have won the applause of many 
 subsequent Christian warriors : 
 
 " They err who count it glorious to subdue 
 By conquest far and wide, to overrun 
 Large countries, and in field great battles win. 
 Great cities by assault. What do these worthies,
 
 36 British Writers 
 
 But rob, and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave 
 Peaceable nations, neighbouring or remote. 
 
 And all the flourishing works of peace destroy. 
 Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods, 
 Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers, 
 Worshipp'd with temple, priest, and sacrifice ? 
 One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other ; 
 Till conqueror death discovers them scarce men, 
 Rolling in brutish vices, and deformed. 
 Violent or shameful death their due reward." ^ 
 
 Previous to this scene Milton ascribes noble thoughts 
 to Jesus, which He utters to Himself when alone. 
 He alludes to His recorded visit to the Temple 
 at Jerusalem when a child or boy, and where He 
 "astonished" all the assembled Jewish priests 
 by His singular wisdom. The Christian poet 
 represents Him, at this early period of His 
 human life, entertaining some desire of freeing 
 the Jews from Roman rule. This idea was finally 
 construed into an accusation of political treason 
 against the established Government by some of 
 the Jews, while it was evidently disbelieved by 
 the Roman governor, Pilate, who was chiefiy 
 interested in its truth. Yet this charge was made 
 at a tempting period of somewhat sudden degrada- 
 tion in the moral state of Rome itself, then the 
 proud, powerful mistress of all, or nearly all, the 
 civilised world. The noble and beneficent 
 * " Paradise Regained," book iii.
 
 on Classic Lands 37 
 
 Emperor, Augustus Caesar, his wise minister 
 Mecoenas, and the intellectual, refined poets, Virgil 
 and Horace, had passed away. In their place 
 lived and ruled the deceitful Emperor Tiberius 
 Caesar, his ambitious, unscrupulous ministers, 
 Sejanus and Macro, while Pontius Pilate, the 
 friend of Sejanus ^ through his short-lived influence 
 was ruling the Jews in the name of Tiberius. At 
 such a time as this, when the famed land of the 
 ancient Jewish Faith, and the home of its first 
 Prophets, was under the rule of such men, Jesus 
 is imagined by Milton to exclaim : 
 
 " O what a multitude of thoughts at once 
 Awaken'd in me swarm, while I consider 
 What from within I feel myself, and hear 
 What from without comes often to my ears, 
 Ill-sorting with my present state compared ! 
 When I was yet a child, no childish play 
 To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 
 Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
 What might be pubhc good. . . . 
 
 . . . Ere yet my age 
 Had measured twice six years, at our great feast 
 I went into the Temple, there to hear 
 The teachers of our law, and to propose 
 What might improve my knowledge or their own, 
 And was admired by all ; yet this not all 
 To which my spirit aspired ; victorious deeds 
 Flamed in my heart, heroic acts ; one while 
 To rescue Israel from Roman yoke, 
 
 ' Farrar's " Life of Christ."
 
 38 British Writers 
 
 Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth 
 Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
 Till truth were freed and equity restored ; 
 Yet held it more humane, more heavenly, first 
 By winning words to conquer willing hearts, 
 And make persuasion do the work of fear." 
 
 These last vi^ords apparently refer to the com- 
 paratively peaceful progress of Christianity 
 throughout the Roman Empire, long after the 
 public execution of its Founder, so unlike the sub- 
 sequent vi^arlike triumph of Mohammedanism. 
 Yet each religion finally and completely replaced 
 the very different paganisms of Greece and of 
 Arabia. 
 
 Milton's grand poem of " Paradise Regained," 
 though never so popular as his " Paradise Lost," 
 was known to be their author's favourite, and Dr. 
 Johnson observes in words which rather confirm 
 its historic value : 
 
 " Of ' Paradise Regained,' the general judgment seems now 
 to be right, that it is in many parts elegant and everywhere 
 instructive." ^ 
 
 Macaulay, perhaps a too enthusiastic admirer 
 of Milton, says: 
 
 " That Milton was mistaken in preferring this work to 
 ' Paradise Lost ' we readily admit. But we are sure that the 
 
 ' " Life of Milton."
 
 on Classic Lands 39 
 
 superiority of the * Paradise Lost ' to the ' Paradise Re- 
 gained' is not more decided than the superiority of the 
 ' Paradise Regained ' to every poem which has since made 
 its appearance." 
 
 The Scriptural words, ^ few yet most impressive, 
 seem the sole foundation of Milton's magnifi- 
 cent superstructure about Satan's temptation of 
 Jesus : 
 
 " The devil taketh Him into an exceeding high mountain, 
 and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them, and saith unto Him, * All these things will I 
 give Thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' " 
 
 Milton, in noble language, yet founded carefully 
 on the Scriptural intimation, writes : 
 
 " And now the Tempter thus his silence broke : 
 ' The city which thou seest no other deem 
 Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth, 
 So far renowned, and with the spoils enrich'd 
 Of nations ; there the Capitol ^ thou seest 
 Above the rest lifting his stately head 
 On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel 
 Impregnable, and there Mount Palatine, 3 
 
 ^ St. Matthew's Gospel, chap. iv. 
 
 '^ "A magnilicent temple and citadel at Rome. . . . The 
 consuls and magistrates offered sacrifices there, when they 
 first entered upon their offices, and the processions in triumph 
 were always conducted to the Capitol." — Lempriere's 
 Classical Dictionary. 
 
 3 *' A celebrated hill, the largest of the seven hills on which 
 Rome was built." — Ibid.
 
 40 British Writers 
 
 The imperial palace, compass huge, and high 
 The structure, skill of noblest architects, 
 With gilded battlements conspicuous far, 
 Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires. 
 Many a fair edifice besides, more like 
 Houses of gods, so well I have disposed 
 My aery microscope, thou mayest behold, 
 Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs, 
 Carved work, the hand of famed artificers 
 In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold. 
 Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see 
 What conflux issuing forth, or entering in, 
 Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces 
 Hasting, or on return, in robes of state ; 
 Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power. 
 Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings ; 
 Or embassies from regions far remote.' " 
 
 Milton proceeds to describe Satan as if the fiend 
 believed the proud Roman idea of ruling all 
 countries, yet only a minority of them even 
 in the ancient world was ever under Roman 
 authority : 
 
 " 'All nations now to Rome obedience pay. 
 To Rome's great Emperor, whose wide domain 
 In ample territory, wealth, and power, 
 Civility of manners, arts, and arms, 
 
 . . . thou justly may prefer 
 Before the Parthian.^ These two thrones except, 
 
 ' " A celebrated country in Asia, . . . between the Caspian 
 and Arabian seas, it even disputed the empire of the world
 
 on Classic Lands 41 
 
 The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight, 
 Shared among petty kings too far removed. 
 These having shewn thee, I have shewn thee all 
 The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory." 
 
 Then Milton, evidently sharing the now some- 
 times contradicted opinion of Tacitus about 
 Tiberius C^sar, represents Satan describing 
 Rome's condition at this time with the avowed 
 object of inducing Jesus, as if He were a young 
 patriotic Jew, to attempt freeing Judea, as well as 
 other lands, from the degrading yoke of a wicked 
 and almost despotic tyrant. He therefore proceeds, 
 thoroughly knowing all about the enmity between 
 Tiberius and Sejanus : 
 
 *' This Emperor hath no son, and now is old, 
 Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired 
 To Capreas, an island small but strong 
 On the Campanian shore, with purpose there 
 His horrid lusts in private to enjoy. 
 Committing to a wicked favourite 
 All public cares, and yet of him suspicious. 
 Hated of all and hating." 
 
 The fiend then proceeds, in a very different 
 spirit from that indicated by Goethe's account of 
 him as the mocking and sneering Mephistopheles, 
 
 with the Romans, and could never be subdued by that 
 nation." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 42 British Writers 
 
 and assumes a philanthropic tone utterly incon- 
 sistent with the supposed Father of all Evil : 
 
 "... With what ease, 
 Endued with regal virtues as thou art, 
 Appearing and beginning noble deeds, 
 Mightst thou expel this monster from his throne, 
 Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending, 
 A victor people free from servile yoke ? 
 And with my help thou mayst ; to me the power 
 Is given, and by that right I give it thee. 
 Aim therefore at no less than all the world ; 
 Aim at the highest." ^ 
 
 These grand words, expressing such noble feel- 
 ings and aspirations, though of course distrusted 
 by Jesus, might well deceive the best and wisest 
 of men. Milton's conception of Satan is thus ably 
 noticed by Sir Walter Scott,^ than whom perhaps 
 no British writer except Shakespeare better under- 
 stood human nature. Scott says, thoughtfully 
 comparing the differing ideas of Satan in the great 
 minds of the English and of the German poets : 
 
 " Goethe's conception of the character and reasoning of 
 Mephistopheles, the tempting spirit in the singular play 
 of ' Faust,' appears to me more happy than that which has 
 been formed by Byron and even than the Satan of Milton. 
 
 *' Paradise Regained," book iv. 
 Preface to ** Quentin Durward."
 
 on Classic Lands 43 
 
 These last great authors have given to the Evil Principle 
 something which elevates and dignifies his wickedness. . . . 
 The great German poet has, on the contrary, rendered his 
 seducing spirit a being who, otherwise totally unimpassioned, 
 seems only to have existed for the purpose of increasing, 
 by his persuasion and temptations, the mass of moral evil, 
 and who calls forth by his seductions those slumbering 
 passions which otherwise might have allowed the human 
 being who was the object of the Evil Spirit's operations to 
 pass the tenor of his life in tranquillity. For this purpose 
 Mephistopheles is, like Louis XI. (of France), endowed with 
 an acute and depreciating spirit of caustic wit, which is 
 employed incessantly in undervaluing and vilifying all 
 actions, the consequences of which do not lead certainly 
 and directly to self-gratification." 
 
 The grand idea of Satan tempting Jesus to 
 supplant Tiberius Caesar as Emperor of Rome 
 would likely only have occurred to a Christian 
 mind after at least some experience of the political 
 power or extension of that Faith. Yet it was 
 surely the most alluring temptation in a moral 
 sense that could be offered to any man interested 
 in the welfare and happiness of his race at this 
 period. In the awful Trial of Jesus, if such it 
 can be called, His fate seems strangely involved 
 with the political position of the Romans at this 
 eventful period of their national history. Their 
 late noble, beneficent, and deified Emperor 
 Augustus, with his gifted subjects, the wise states- 
 man Mecoenas, and the admirable poets, Horace 
 and Virgil, had all disappeared. In Rome now
 
 44 British Writers 
 
 reigned the deceitful tyrant, Tiberius Caesar, and 
 his ambitious if not unscrupulous minister Sejanus, 
 while Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, was 
 their subordinate in ruling the Jews in the name 
 of Caesar.
 
 CHAPTER IV
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE report or idea of jesus calling Himself 
 or being called King of the Jews was there- 
 fore seized on by the Jewish priests, who, thinking 
 Him a pervert from Judaism and dangerous to its 
 existence, besought, and finally almost threatened, 
 the reluctant Pilate to permit His execution. Dean 
 Farrar describes ^ the scene before Pilate with 
 Jesus before him and surrounded by accusing Jews, 
 some of whom doubtless thought they were " doing 
 God service " by destroying an eloquent or 
 attractive heretical preacher : 
 
 " If thou let this man go," shouted the mob again and 
 again, *' thou art not Caesar's friend. Every one who tries 
 to make himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." 
 
 Farrar proceeds : 
 
 " And at that dark, terrible name of Ccesar, Pilate trembled. 
 It was a name to conjure with. It mastered him. . . . He 
 thought of Tiberius, the aged, gloomy Emperor then hiding 
 
 » " Life of Christ," chap. Ix. 
 
 47
 
 48 British Writers 
 
 at Capreas, his poisonous suspicions, his sick infamies, his 
 desperate revenge. At this very time he had been maddened 
 into a yet more sanguinary and misanthropic ferocity by the 
 detected falsity and treason of his only friend and minister, 
 Sejanus, and it was to Sejanus himself that Pilate is said 
 to have ovi^ed his position. There might be secret delators 
 in that very mob. Panic-stricken the unjust judge, in 
 obedience to his ovi^n terrors, consciously betrayed the 
 innocent victim to death." 
 
 It was reserved, hovi^ever, for the sublime English 
 poet Milton to recall the Crucifixion in Satan's 
 vague prophecy many centuries after its occurrence, 
 and when the spread of Christianity had replaced 
 the pagan faith of Tiberius throughout almost 
 every province of his grand empire. The reply 
 of Jesus in Milton's words is calm, resolute, and 
 totally unimpressed by all He hears from the 
 Tempter. He firmly intimates His having power 
 to "expel" Satan himself, whom He states has 
 morally ruined Tiberius, while refusing to interfere 
 in any way with the Emperor's worldly career, 
 thus consistently adhering to His own words 
 uttered at another time : 
 
 " My kingdom is not of this world." 
 
 He therefore replies, unmoved by all He heard or 
 saw of this world's greatness : 
 
 " Nor does this grandeur and majestic show 
 Of luxury, though called magnificence,
 
 on Classic Lands 49 
 
 More than of arms before, allure mine eye, 
 Much less my mind." 
 
 Jesus, as if possessing full knowledge of the fragile 
 greatness of the Roman Empire, destined to be 
 completely destroyed by hordes of comparative 
 barbarians, though whether Milton believed that 
 Satan shared this knowledge may be doubted, 
 steadily proceeds : ^ 
 
 "... Then embassies thou shew'st 
 From nations far and nigh. What honour that, 
 But tedious waste of time to sit and hear 
 So many hollow compliments and lies, 
 Outlandish flatteries ? Then proceedst to talk 
 Of the Emperor, how easily subdued, 
 How gloriously ! I shall, thou sayst, expel 
 A brutish monster : what if I withal 
 Expel a devil who first made him such ? " 
 
 This rather sudden avowal of His own power over 
 His tempter seems hardly consistent with His 
 apparent position during this extraordinary scene. 
 But His words here and in what follows are 
 Milton's and no longer directly founded on 
 Scripture, though the poet evidently means to still 
 express its spirit. Jesus continues, according to 
 Milton, alluding to Tiberius Caesar : 
 
 " Let his tormentor Conscience find him out ; 
 For him I was not sent." 
 
 " Paradise Regained," book iv. 
 4
 
 50 British Writers 
 
 In these last words the devout Christian poet 
 apparently remembered those of Jesus : 
 
 " I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel," 
 
 indicating that His personal mission and earthly 
 life were to be exclusively among the Jews. The 
 idea of the "conscience" of Tiberius "finding him 
 out " and being his " tormentor " is clearly Milton's 
 invention and not founded on any Scriptural 
 authority. If this belief was either uttered or 
 entertained by Jesus it would surely intimate some 
 respect for the pagan faith, which could alone 
 influence Tiberius Caesar. Yet the idea is surely 
 consistent enough with a merciful Creator's rule 
 or power over mankind generally. His sole 
 omnipotent and omniscient rule, according to Jewish, 
 Christian, and Mohammedan belief, must have 
 originally ordained that all Greeks and Romans, 
 among whom were certainly some of the best and 
 wisest of men, should live in inevitable and there- 
 fore innocent ignorance of those doctrines which 
 many subsequent Jews, Christians, and Mohamme- 
 dans believed essential to the favour of their 
 common Creator. The further reply of Jesus, 
 though written by such a sincere Christian as 
 Milton, seems also unsupported by any of His 
 recorded words, in rather unjustly denouncing the
 
 on Classic Lands 51 
 
 Roman people while stating that His personal 
 mission was not to be among them : 
 
 "... Nor yet to free 
 That people, victor once, now vile and base, 
 Deservedly made vassal, who, once just, 
 Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquer'd well, 
 But governed ill the nations under yoke, 
 Peeling their provinces ; exhausted all 
 By lust and rapine ; first ambitious grown 
 Of triumph, that insulting vanity ; 
 Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured 
 Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed ; 
 Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still, 
 And from the daily scene effeminate. 
 What wise and valiant man would seek to free 
 These thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved ?" 
 
 These last words, being decidedly Milton's 
 invention, may greatly exaggerate Roman degrada- 
 tion except in the luxurious capital, and are rather 
 contradicted by the learned historian Gibbon, who 
 writes : 
 
 "The emperors, Tiberius and Claudius, suppressed the 
 dangerous power of the Druids, but the priests themselves, 
 their gods and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity 
 till the final destruction of paganism. . . . The aspiring 
 genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it 
 more prudent, as well as honourable, to adopt virtue and 
 merit for her own, wheresoever they were found, among 
 slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians." ^ 
 
 *' Decline and Fall," chap. ii.
 
 52 British Writers 
 
 The Roman rule generally, despite abuses chiefly 
 caused by the almost absolute power of occasional 
 wicked rulers, would thus seem at this period, long 
 before and long after, the most enlightened of all 
 known existing governments. ^ Yet Milton thus 
 describes Jesus chiefly dwelling on the vices of 
 Roman rule prevalent at Rome itself or in its 
 vicinity, omitting to own that throughout the vast 
 empire wise laws, when not occasionally violated by 
 the presence or example of wicked rulers, diffused 
 more religious toleration and general security than 
 were known in any other part of the world. 
 
 The characters of Tiberius and of his minister 
 Sejanus as given by Tacitus and Suetonius, 
 authorities evidently trusted by both Milton and 
 Macaulay,- are presented in dramatic form, yet 
 founded on historic record in Ben Jonson's tragedy, 
 "The Fall of Sejanus." At first Tiberius, "the 
 most artful of dissemblers," flatters his " wicked 
 favourite," whose assassination he finally instigates, 
 addressing him in words of praise and deprecating 
 his assumed modesty when the Roman Senate are 
 about erecting a statue in his honour : 
 
 " Blush not, Sejanus, thou great aid of Rome, 
 Associate of our labours, our chief helper ; 
 
 ^ Lecky's " Pagan Empire " (" European Morals "). 
 2 " Essay on History."
 
 on Classic Lands 53 
 
 Let us not force thy simple modesty 
 
 With offering at thy praise, for more we cannot, 
 
 Since there's no voice can take it. . . . 
 
 Nor let them ask the causes of our praise. 
 
 Princes have still their grounds reared with themselves, 
 
 Above the low poor flats of common men ; 
 
 And who will search the reasons of their acts, 
 
 Must stand on equal bases. Lead, away : 
 
 Our loves unto the Senate." ^ 
 
 At this period of Roman history the Emperor 
 Tiberius and his chief minister, Sejanus, alike 
 distrust and plot against each other, yet both wish 
 to please the Senate. These two unscrupulous 
 men now rule the vast empire, which in the recent 
 reien of Augfustus Caesar had been oroverned well 
 and prosperously. But Augustus and his minister 
 Mecoenas were indeed noble contrasts to their 
 dangerous successors in Roman political power. 
 The secret enmity of Tiberius and Sejanus to 
 one another they reveal to themselves, according 
 to Ben Jonson, who, like Shakespeare, seems to 
 closely follow historical information in imputing 
 words to classical personages which seem justified 
 by their actual conduct. Thus Sejanus secretly 
 avows his designs against his Sovereign, who in 
 his turn justly suspects him. In fact, both 
 sovereign and minister are about equally jealous 
 of one another ; yet unlike Tiberius, who thoroughly 
 
 ' Act I., Scene ii.
 
 54 British Writers 
 
 understands Sejanus, the latter evidently under- 
 estimates the extraordinary art and cunning of the 
 Emperor. The way in which these treacherous 
 men, now ruling Rome between them, plot against 
 each other, is much the same. Sejanus exclaims, 
 giving a sort of private lecture how to manage, 
 cajole, and deceive princes in general, while 
 evidently overrating his own abilities in performing 
 so dangerous a task : ^ 
 
 "... The way to put 
 A prince in blood, is to present the shapes 
 Of dangers greater than they are, hke late 
 Or early shadows : and, sometimes, to feign 
 Where there are none, only to make him fear ; 
 His fear will make him cruel : and once entered, 
 He doth not easily learn to stop, or spare 
 Where he may doubt. This have I made my rule, 
 To thrust Tiberius into tyranny. 
 And make him toil, to turn aside those blocks. 
 Which I alone could not remove with safety. 
 
 Work then, my art, on Caesar's fears, as they 
 On those they fear, till all my lets be cleared, 
 And he in ruins of his house, and hate 
 Of all his subjects, bury his own state ; 
 When with my peace, and safety, I will rise. 
 By making him the pubhc sacrifice." 
 
 These revealed designs of the ambitious, plotting 
 
 * Act n., Scene ii.
 
 on Classic Lands 55 
 
 statesman Sejanus well explain Milton's describing 
 the distrust of him by Tiberius in the words : 
 
 "And yet of him suspicious." 
 
 The imperial tyrant then confidentially addresses 
 another of his ministers, Macro, fated to be his 
 own slayer, whom he leaves as a spy upon Sejanus 
 in Rome while he departs for his retirement at 
 Capreae : ^ 
 
 "... We have thought on thee, 
 Amongst a field of Romans, worthiest Macro, 
 To be our eye and ear : to keep strict watch. 
 
 ... Ay 
 
 And on Sejanus ; not that we distrust 
 
 His loyalty, or do repent one grace, 
 
 Of all that heap we have conferred on him." 
 
 Tiberius continues gradually revealing his appre- 
 hensive jealousy of Sejanus : 
 
 " But greatness hath his cankers. Worms and moths 
 Breed out of too much humour, in the things 
 Which after they consume, transferring quite 
 The substance of their makers into themselves." 
 
 Then becoming more explicit and practical, the 
 crafty Emperor intimates rather than expresses 
 dangerous directions to his unscrupulous new 
 
 ^ Act III.
 
 56 British Writers 
 
 favourite how to check all suspected treason in 
 Rome : 
 
 " Here, Macro, we assign thee both to spy, 
 Inform, and chastise ; think, and use thy means. 
 Thy ministers, what, where, on whom thou wilt ; 
 Explore, plot, practise : all thou dost in this 
 Shall be, as if the Senate or the laws 
 Had given it privilege and thou thence styled 
 The saviour both of C^sar and of Rome. 
 
 Be still our loved and, shortly, honoured Macro." 
 
 Tiberius, after these words, departs to Capreae, 
 and the newly trusted Macro when alone exultingly 
 exclaims, hoping soon to supplant the suspected 
 Sejanus in all his worldly authority : 
 
 *' I will not ask why Caesar bids do this ; 
 But joy, that he bids me. It is the bliss 
 Of courts to be employed, no matter how ; 
 A prince's power makes all his actions virtue. 
 We, whom he works by, are dumb instruments. 
 To do, but not inquire : his great intents 
 Are to be served, not searched." 
 
 Evidently delighted at the prospect of future 
 power or indulgence, the wicked satellite, well 
 worthy of his master, and equally capable of 
 obeying or destroying him according to his own 
 interests, concludes :
 
 on Classic Lands 57 
 
 " If then it be the lust of Caesar's power, 
 To have raised Sejanus up, and in an hour 
 O'erturn him, tumbling down, from height of all ; 
 We are his ready engine : and his fall 
 May be our rise. It is no uncouth thing 
 To see fresh buildings from old ruins spring."
 
 CHAPTER V
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LATER on in this play of " Sejanus," the 
 short-hved triumph of the ambitious minister, 
 when thinking himself in almost absolute power 
 at Rome, is also revealed in safe soliloquy. He 
 evidently does not suspect that his absent sovereign 
 is all the time having him carefully watched while 
 himself at Capreae, there enjoying his luxurious and 
 beautiful retirement.^ Sejanus exclaims to himself 
 in joyous and probably natural excitement : - 
 
 *' Swell, swell, my joys ; and faint not to declare 
 Yourselves as ample as your causes are." 
 
 Inspired with fiery, selfish ambition, this dangerous, 
 ill-fated favourite proceeds, in Jonson's words, 
 
 ' "An island on the coast of Campania, abounding in quails 
 and famous for the residence and debaucheries of the 
 Emperor Tiberius during the seven last years of his life." 
 — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 ^ Act V. 
 
 6l
 
 62 British Writers 
 
 which yet seem to follow classic history in 
 describingr this Roman statesman : ^ 
 
 " I did not live till now : this my first hour ; 
 Wherein I see my thoughts reached by my power. 
 But this, and gripe my wishes. Great and high 
 The world knows only two, that's Rome and I. 
 My roof receives me not ; 'tis air I tread ; 
 And, at each step, I feel my advanced head 
 Knock out a star in heaven ! reared to this height, 
 All my desires seem modest, poor, and slight. 
 That did before sound impudent ; 'tis place, 
 Not blood, discerns the noble and the base." 
 
 Then the exulting Sejanus vaguely reveals his future 
 hopes and plans, which well justify the aroused 
 suspicions of his absent yet observant sovereign, by 
 asking himself : 
 
 " Is there not something more than to be Caesar ? 
 Must we rest there ? it irks t' have come so far. 
 To be so near a stay." 
 
 Towards the end of this play, which on the whole 
 certainly adheres to Roman historians, Tiberius 
 
 ^ " Tiberius, naturally fond of ease and luxury, retired to 
 Campania, leaving Sejanus at the head of the empire. This 
 was highly gratifying to the favourite, and he was now 
 without a master. Prudence and moderation might have 
 made him what he wished to be ; but Sejanus offended 
 the whole empire when he declared that he was Emperor 
 of Rome, and Tiberius only the dependent prince of the island 
 of Capreae." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 63 
 
 instigates the Senate at Rome by letter to suspect 
 Sejanus ; and at such a time and among such men 
 deep distrust of any minister by his sovereign was 
 almost sure to be fatal to the suspected statesman. 
 
 At the end of his letter — a masterpiece of crafty 
 insinuation — the absent tyrant thus partly reveals 
 his feelings, which many unscrupulous adherents 
 in Rome, well acquainted with him, thoroughly 
 understood : 
 
 " True it is, conscript fathers, that we have raised Sejanus 
 from obscure, and almost unknown gentry, to the highest 
 and most conspicuous point of greatness, and, we hope, 
 deservingly ; yet not without danger : it being a most bold 
 hazard in that sovereign who, by his particular love to one, 
 dares adventure the hatred of all his other subjects. . . . 
 We have not been covetous, honourable fathers, to change ; 
 . . . but those needful jealousies of state, that warn wiser 
 princes hourly to provide their safety, and do teach them 
 how learned a thing it is to beware of the humblest enemy." 
 
 Then Tiberius gives a sufficiently broad hint about 
 the suspected Sejanus : 
 
 " Much more of those great ones, whom their own employed 
 favours have made lit for their fears. We therefore desire, 
 that the office he holds be first seized by the Senate ; and 
 himself suspended from all exercise of place or power, but 
 till due and mature trial be made of his innocency, which 
 yet we can faintly apprehend the necessity to doubt." 
 
 He proceeds to give yet more dangerous hints
 
 64 British Writers 
 
 to the Senate while pretending to be deferential to 
 them : 
 
 " If, conscript fathers, to your more searching wisdoms, 
 there shall appear farther cause — or of farther proceeding, 
 either to seizure of lands, goods, or more — it is not our power 
 that shall limit your authority." 
 
 The Emperor then excuses his own absence from 
 Rome at this dangerous crisis, preferring his 
 delicious retreat in the lovely island of his choice, 
 while safely directing from thence all that should 
 be done to maintain his power at Rome. 
 
 " We would willingly be present with your counsels in this 
 business ; but the danger of so potent a faction, if it should 
 prove so, forbids our attempting it." 
 
 At the close of this long, extraordinary letter, 
 the artful, intriguing tyrant seems to surpass 
 himself. He suggests, or recommends, the most 
 dangerous acts without openly authorising their 
 commission, and with assumed respect for the 
 senators, on whom he wishes to devolve the apparent 
 responsibility for the performance of his secret 
 desires : 
 
 " In the meantime, it shall not be fit for us to importune 
 so judicious a Senate, who know how much they hurt 
 the innocent, that spare the guilty ; and how grateful a 
 sacrifice to the gods is the life of an ingrateful person. 
 We reflect not in this on Sejanus, (notwithstanding, if you
 
 on Classic Lands 65 
 
 keep an eye upon him— and there is Latiaris, a senator, 
 and Pinnarius Natta, two of his most trusted ministers ; and so 
 professed, whom we desire not to have apprehended,) but as 
 the necessity of the cause exacts it." 
 
 After this deceitful, dangerous letter is read 
 to the listening Senate, among whom the luckless 
 Sejanus has apparently more foes than friends, 
 Jonson describes, with a force and vividness almost 
 worthy of Shakespeare, the rage of the favourite's 
 enemies and the murderous threats of Macro, 
 eagerly obeying what he knows is the will of 
 Tiberius, while longing himself to supplant Sejanus 
 in power. The words of these different Romans, 
 though in English, seem to closely follow Roman 
 history and to faithfully represent, at least to a 
 great degree, what really happened at this terrible 
 crisis in the political history of Rome.^ Macro 
 exclaims to the Senate, in well-assumed, loyal 
 indignation against the suspected minister, soon after 
 
 ' <'The Emperor ordered him (Sejanus) to be accused 
 before the Senate. Sejanus was deserted by all his pre- 
 tended friends, as soon as by fortune ; and the man who 
 aspired to the empire, who called himself the favourite of the 
 people, was seized without resistance and the same day 
 strangled in prison, a.d. 31. His remains were exposed to 
 the fury and insolence of the populace and afterwards thrown 
 into the Tiber." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, relying 
 on the accounts of Tacitus and Suetonius.
 
 66 British Writers 
 
 the Emperor's letter is read before Sejanus himself 
 and the assembled senators : 
 
 " Wherefore, fathers, 
 Sit you amazed and silent ; and not censure 
 This wretch, who, in the hour he first rebelled 
 'Gainst Caesar's bounty, did condemn himself ? " 
 
 The many enemies of Sejanus in the Senate 
 immediately shout forth severally : 
 
 " Take him hence, 
 And all the gods guard Caesar. . . . 
 To the dungeon with him. . . . 
 
 And let an ox, 
 With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led 
 Unto the Capitol. 
 
 And sacrificed 
 To Jove, for Caesar's safety. 
 
 All our gods 
 Be present still to Caesar." 
 
 Six pagan deities are then eagerly invoked 
 by the excited Senators to protect Tiberius, whose 
 artful letter has completely succeeded in convincing 
 them of his danger : 
 
 o 
 
 "'Phoebus.' 
 
 ' Mars.' 
 
 ' Diana.' 
 
 ' Pallas.' 
 * Juno, Mercury, 
 All guard him ! '"
 
 on Classic Lands 67 
 
 while Macro, having Sejanus arrested, exclaims : 
 
 " Forth, thou prodigy of men," 
 
 and the victim is soon after slain by the infuriated 
 Roman mob. In this account Ben Jonson, like Milton 
 and Macaulay, trusts the Roman historian Tacitus, 
 though some modern writers represent Tiberius 
 Caesar more favourably. In " Paradise Regained," 
 after Satan's failure in tempting Jesus to dethrone 
 Tiberius Caesar and rule the Roman Empire, the 
 fiend turns to the more intellectual glories of 
 Greece, now a subjected Roman province like Judea, 
 though not equally despised ; obeying Tiberius, but 
 in many respects admired and appreciated by 
 her shrewd though martial Roman conquerors. 
 Pagan Greece and Rome during Milton's time, 
 as well as for many previous centuries, and even 
 to the present day, form the admired study alike 
 of antiquarians, poets, travellers, and legislators. 
 Yet while in most important branches of civilised 
 education Greece and Rome were supreme, the 
 Jews alone knew religious Truth according to their 
 own ideas, and to those of subsequent Christian 
 and Mohammedan nations. Thus Cardinal New- 
 man writes : 
 
 ..." Their country may be called the classical home of 
 the religious principle, as Greece is the home of intellectual
 
 68 British Writers 
 
 power and Rome that of political and practical wisdom." — 
 " Grammar of Assent," p. 427, 
 
 In hardly any other respect save that of religious 
 history, and perhaps knowledge of music, did the 
 Jews apparently afford much instruction to the 
 modern world, at least when compared to Greece 
 and Rome. 
 
 In the true spirit of a profound English scholar, 
 therefore, Milton makes Satan pass from describing 
 to Jesus the martial triumphs of Rome to the more 
 intellectual or peaceful glories of subjected Greece. 
 Milton's own studies at his English college ' had 
 likely imbued him and many other thoughtful 
 British students of his time with the most profound 
 admiration for these two most famous classic lands 
 of pagan Greeks and Romans. The vast empire, 
 martial renown, and legislative wisdom of the latter, 
 and the splendid poetry and grand philosophy of 
 the former, naturally enough impressed Milton's 
 learned mind as the most attractive worldly 
 temptations, mentioned somewhat vaguely in 
 Scripture, that could be offered to Jesus by the 
 Enemy of Man. The histories of Greece and 
 Rome were, indeed, usually associated together 
 in the European mind as the most valuable studies 
 bequeathed as an instructive, enlightening legacy 
 
 * Christ's College, Cambridge.
 
 on Classic Lands 69 
 
 by the wisest of men to their successors in historical 
 course. The ancient histories of Northern and 
 Western Europe, like their former religions, were 
 little studied, and they seem to have had scarcely 
 any authentic literature, save in a few vague, 
 uncertain legends or traditions. Thus Carlyle 
 writes of the former god of Northern Europe : 
 
 " Of Odin their exists no history, no document of it ; no 
 guess about it worth repeating. . . . Odin's date, adventures, 
 whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk 
 from us for ever into unknown thousands of years." ^ 
 
 But classic Greece and Rome excel all other 
 nations of antiquity in transmitting through a long 
 course of subsequent centuries their intellectual 
 triumphs to a civilised posterity, while in religious 
 truth they alike yield completely to the teachings of 
 Jewish history in the belief of the modern civilised 
 world. Yet in the palmy days of Greece and Rome 
 the faith of the Jews, a pure Deism, prevailed only 
 among that one small solitary and most exclusive 
 nation. 
 
 Milton, therefore, the accomplished Christian 
 scholar, had no hesitation in assuming that the 
 pagan lands of Greece and Rome were the chief 
 countries indicated in the Gospel, as those shown 
 to Jesus by Satan. These two famous classic lands 
 
 ^ " Heroes and. Hero-worship."
 
 70 British Writers 
 
 were naturally combined in the English poet's mind 
 as formed by his early education. He thus 
 describes the Tempter, turning the attention of 
 Jesus from the triumphant, powerful Rome of the 
 period, to the subjected, powerless, yet most artistic 
 Greece, in the noble language which Milton could 
 always command, and in which profound learning 
 and brilliant imagination are so rarely and ex- 
 quisitely blended.
 
 CHAPTER VI
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE fiend when showing Athens to Jesus, 
 uses the language of a most refined classical 
 scholar, as if trying to incline Him to admire the 
 intellectual glory of Greece, instead of the martial 
 triumphs of Rome, about which Satan perceived, 
 Jesus cared nothing : 
 
 "... Let pass, as they are transitory, 
 The kingdoms of this world ; I shall no more 
 Advise thee ; gain them as thou canst, or not." ' 
 
 Satan then refers to the early history of Jesus on 
 earth, with which he seems thoroughly acquainted : 
 
 " And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined 
 Than to a worldly crown, addicted more 
 To contemplation and profound dispute ; 
 As by that early action may be judged, 
 When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou went'st 
 Alone into the Temple, there wast found 
 Among the grave Rabbis, disputant 
 On points and questions fitting Moses' chair, 
 
 *' Paradise Regained/' book iv. 
 
 73
 
 74 British Writers 
 
 Teaching, not taught. . . . 
 
 All knowledge is not couched in Moses' law, 
 
 The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach 
 To admiration, led by nature's light " ; 
 
 As if foretelling the future triumph of Christianity 
 over the classic paganism, after its rejection in 
 Judea, Satan continues : 
 
 '* And with the Gentiles must thou converse, 
 Ruling them by persuasion as thou mean'st. 
 Without their learning, how wilt thou with them. 
 Or they with thee, hold conversation meet ? 
 How wilt thou reason with them ? how refute 
 Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes ? 
 
 Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, 
 
 Where on the -^gean shore a city stands. 
 
 Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, 
 
 Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
 
 And eloquence, native to famous wits, 
 
 Or hospitable, in her sweet recess. 
 
 City or suburban, studious walks and shades." 
 
 Milton proceeds, indulging his grand imagination 
 and classical tastes, to invest Satan with his own 
 admiration for the philosophy, accomplishments, and 
 learning of Athens, with its natural beauty, indicat- 
 ing that Jesus was likewise acquainted with them. 
 There hardly seems any Scriptural warrant for 
 these assumptions, but the enlightened Christian
 
 on Classic Lands 75 
 
 poet of the seventeenth century, as if inspired by 
 mankind's Creator in remembering the wisest men, 
 gradually disappearing in the passing centuries, 
 imagines Satan to continue, though with evil 
 intent, his beautiful description : 
 
 " See there the olive grove of Academe, 
 Plato's retirement,' u^here the Attic bird 
 Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long ; 
 There flow'ry hill Hymettus with the sound 
 Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites 
 To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls 
 His whispering stream ; within the walls then view 
 The schools of ancient sages ; his who bred 
 Great Alexander to subdue the world : == 
 Lyceum s there, and painted Stoa next. 
 There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power 
 Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit 
 By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, 
 
 ' " A celebrated philosopher at Athens. . . . When he 
 had finished his travels Plato retired to the groves of 
 Academus, in the neighbourhood of Athens, where his lectures 
 were soon attended by a crowd of learned, noble, and 
 illustrious pupils, and the philosopher, by refusing to have 
 a share in the administration of affairs, rendered his name 
 more famous and his schools more frequented." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 - " Aristotle, a famous philosopher. He was, according 
 to some, ten years preceptor to Alexander, who received his 
 instructions with much pleasure and deference." — Ibid. 
 
 3 " A celebrated place near the banks of the lUssus, in 
 Attica: it was in this pleasant and salubrious spot that 
 Aristotle taught philosophy." — Ibid.
 
 76 British Writers 
 
 ^olian charms and Dorian lyric odes, 
 And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, 
 BHnd Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd," 
 Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own." ^ 
 
 Milton here intimates the alleged admiration of 
 the Greek gods for this wonderful poem by the 
 most ancient of classic writers, and proceeds to 
 praise and exalt the Greek democratic orators and 
 champions of ancient times. In thus writing 
 Milton, himself now the old, helpless, and to some 
 extent persecuted foe of the restored British 
 monarchy, under Charles the Second, may recall 
 the vanished image of his great hero, Cromwell, 
 in his dejected mind, who certainly " wielded at 
 will " the English people in their brief triumph 
 over the alleged tyranny of a king's rule : 
 
 " Thence to the famous orators repair, 
 Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence 
 Wielded at will that fierce democraty 
 Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece, 
 To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne. 
 To sage philosophy next lend thine ear, 
 
 ^ " A celebrated Greek poet, the most ancient of all the 
 profane writers. ... He was called Melesigenes because 
 supposed to be born on the borders of the river Meles." 
 — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 " Apollo, called also Phoebus, ... As he presided over 
 poetry, he was often seen on Mount Parnassus, with the nine 
 muses." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 77 
 
 From heaven descended to the low-roof'd house 
 Of Socrates ; ' see there his tenement, 
 Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced 
 Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued forth 
 Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools 
 Of Academics old and new, with those 
 Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect 
 Epicurean, and the Stoic severe." 
 
 Satan then assuming the spirit of a sage counsellor 
 advising a future young king in preparatory study 
 for his high calling, proceeds and concludes : 
 
 " These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home, 
 Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight ; 
 These rules will render thee a king complete 
 Within thyself, much more with empire join'd." 
 
 Satan's grand idea of sovereignty here indicated, 
 extends evidendy far beyond the limited ambition 
 of becoming King of the Jews. This desire, 
 imputed to Jesus by some of that nation, wsls yet 
 quite disbelieved by their Roman governor, who 
 was, of course, most interested in its proof. 
 
 At this period Rome was at the height of 
 political authority, while Greece, whose noble litera- 
 ture, despite her subjected state, was the admired 
 
 ' " The most celebrated philosopher of all antiquity, was 
 a native of Athens, and was condemned to drink hemlock. 
 . . . Socrates was attended by a number of illustrious pupils, 
 whom he instructed by his exemplary life as well as by his 
 doctrines." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 7 8 British Writers 
 
 study of her Roman rulers, presented a compara- 
 tively happy contrast to the oppressed, or perhaps 
 rather the discontented^ Jews in their country, which 
 was then, like Greece, a mere Roman province. 
 Yet their helpless, subdued, if not despised land 
 was fated in the world's mysterious history to diffuse 
 and proclaim the prevailing religion of Europe, 
 completely replacing the imaginative and warlike 
 faiths of Jupiter and of Odin in every country. 
 The final reply to Satan which Milton imputes to 
 Jesus expresses a partiality for, or fellow-feeling 
 with the Jews, which seems to have little if any 
 historic foundation in Scripture. His supposed 
 ideas in this respect are apparently those of the 
 devout Christian poet, taught to connect the Old 
 and the New Testaments together in a common 
 and relative veneration. The most eminent 
 English Christian theologian, perhaps, of the last 
 century observes, about the apparent failure of Jesus 
 in Judea : 
 
 "He left the earth without apparently doing much for 
 the object of His coming. But when He was gone, His 
 disciples took upon themselves to go forth to preach to all 
 parts of the earth, with the object of preaching Him and 
 collecting converts in His Name. After a little while they 
 are found wonderfully to have succeeded. Large bodies 
 of men in various places are to be seen professing to be 
 His disciples, owning Him as their King, and continually 
 swelling in numbers and penetrating into the populations
 
 on Classic Lands 79 
 
 of the Roman Empire ; at length they convert the empire 
 itself. All this is historical fact." ' 
 
 Such a fact, therefore, seems hardly consistent 
 with the answer ascribed by Milton to Jesus, 
 though it may truly express the feelings or beliefs 
 of many British Christians at the poet's time. 
 
 Alluding to the wisdom, genius, or learning of 
 the classic Greeks and Romans, Jesus is supposed 
 to express a contempt, which likely many Jews 
 entertained, for all pagan nations, yet which seems 
 without any firm Scriptural evidence of His alleged 
 views. He exclaims, according to Milton : 
 
 " Alas ! what can they teach and not mislead, 
 Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, 
 
 Much of the soul they talk, but all awry, 
 
 And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves 
 
 All glory arrogate, to God give none." 
 
 He proceeds, like a patriotic Jew, of which he surely 
 gave no sign whatever, to avow feelings which, 
 perhaps, subsequent Christian scholars would think 
 were never in His mind, as if animated by the 
 national ideas, if not prejudices, of the race that 
 conscientiously rejected Him and who, in His own 
 words, believed that in slaying His believers, " they 
 were doing God a service " : 
 
 * Newman's " Grammar of Assent," p. 457.
 
 8o British Writers 
 
 " Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon 
 That pleased so well our victor's ear/ declare 
 That rather Greece these arts from us derived ; 
 111 imitated, while they loudest sing 
 The vices of their deities, and their own, 
 In fable, hymn, or song, so personating 
 Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame." 
 
 It does not, however, seem from Scripture that 
 the subjected Jews in any country ever pleased 
 their victors except by their music. In this 
 deHghtful art alone the Jews evidently excelled 
 other nations, but it can hardly be shown that they 
 ever surpassed the Greeks and Romans in any other. 
 Jesus is supposed to proceed in the same depreciat- 
 ing spirit : 
 
 " Their orators thou then extol'st, as those 
 The top of eloquence, statists indeed. 
 And lovers of their country, as may seem ; 
 But herein to our prophets far beneath, 
 As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
 The soHd rules of civil government 
 In their majestic, unaffected style. 
 Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
 In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, 
 What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so." 
 
 ' " By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when 
 we remembered thee, O Sion. . . . For they that led us 
 away captive required of us then a song and melody in our 
 heaviness." — Psa. cxxxvii.
 
 CHAPTER VII
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THESE praises of ancient Jewish laws or 
 principles are, indeed, Milton's invention, 
 without much warrant from either Scriptural or 
 profane history. The Jews surely never made a 
 nation happy, or apparently had ever the means of 
 doing so, as their own peculiar history scarcely 
 gave them the power for such a purpose. The 
 true, undeniable glory of this long-subjected race 
 was their calm, invincible heroism, proved in resist- 
 ing persecution and temptation alike, inflicted and 
 offered by pagans, Christians, and Mohammedans 
 in successive generations, through the passing 
 centuries to the present time, when in most, though 
 it is to be feared not in all Christian and Moham- 
 medan lands, they enjoy religious freedom. Yet 
 in their synagogues neither the claims of Jesus or 
 of Mohammed to mankind's belief are acknow- 
 ledged, though under their votaries it may be said 
 the whole Jewish race now exists, and has done 
 
 so for centuries. Milton, however, omits throuofh- 
 
 83
 
 84 British Writers 
 
 out this splendid scene of his poetic fancy to 
 describe those wise Roman laws on which modern 
 European legislation ^ is greatly founded in most 
 civilised countries, and which is so fully acknow- 
 ledged by the most enlightened recent historians. 
 Thus the late Mr. W. H. Lecky says : 
 
 " The Roman method of conciliation was first of all, the 
 most ample toleration of the customs, religions, and muni- 
 cipal freedom of the conquered, and then their gradual 
 admission to the privileges of the conqueror. . . . To rule 
 the nations was justly pronounced by the Roman poet the 
 supreme glory of his countrymen, and their administrative 
 genius is even now unrivalled in history." ^ 
 
 Milton proceeds to imagine and to describe 
 Satan's disappointment at his failure to arouse 
 any earthly ambition in Jesus, and to make him 
 reply in apparent mortification, yet not as yet 
 discouraged : 
 
 " Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts, 
 Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught 
 By me proposed, in life contemplative 
 Or active, tended on by glory or fame, 
 What dost thou in this world ? " 
 
 Without awaiting or receiving an answer to this 
 extraordinary question, Satan proceeds to reveal 
 the future life of Jesus in Judea at this period, as 
 
 * Blackstone's " Commentaries on English Law." 
 ■ " European Morals," chap. ii.
 
 on Classic Lands 85 
 
 if possessing prophetic knowledge. Yet without 
 any such special enlightenment it was not difficult 
 to foresee the likely fate of Him in Judea, at this 
 time placed among irritated or discontented Jewish 
 fellow-subjects and haughty, scornful Roman rulers, 
 and apparently utterly unknown to all other nations 
 in the world. The fiend continues in a spirit of 
 malignant warning, vaguely indicating his vast yet 
 strangely limited powers : 
 
 "... If I read aught in heaven, 
 Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars, 
 Voluminous, or single characters, 
 In their conjunction met, give me to spell, 
 Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate, 
 Attend thee ; scorns, reproaches, injuries, 
 Violence and stripes, and last cruel death. 
 A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, 
 Real or allegoric, I discern not." 
 
 Satan here, happily for mankind, admits his limited 
 knowledge. Throughout this awful scene, indeed, 
 he never indicates that hatred to men which in 
 all ages they have attributed to him. In the 
 German poet Goethe's tragedy of "Faust" this 
 animosity is revealed by the fiend, there called 
 Mephistopheles, when owning that he would 
 destroy all life if he could, and that it is his 
 constant desire to thus oppose and thwart its 
 Divine Creator.
 
 86 British Writers 
 
 Mephistopheles admits to Faust, in the first 
 interview with his future victim : 
 
 " I am the Spirit that evermore denies, 
 And rightly so, for all that doth arise 
 Deserves to perish — this distinctly seeing — 
 No, say I, No ! to everything that bubbles into being. 
 My proper element is what you name 
 Sin, Dissolution : in a word, the Bad." ^ 
 
 Milton's account of Satan's assumed wish for the 
 good of the Roman Empire, and detestation of its 
 evil ruler, Tiberius Caesar, while utterly inconsistent 
 with being himself the Father of Evil, so decisively 
 shown in " Faust," is yet quite in accordance with 
 his description in " Paradise Lost." Milton, in 
 fact, gives him much the same character in each 
 of his immortal poems, endowed with some noble 
 ideas of which, according to the limits of human 
 knowledge, he is incapable, and are merely the 
 invention of the poet's imaginative mind. 
 
 Satan's next temptation of Jesus is by placing 
 Him in a gloomy wilderness during a terrific stormy 
 night, exposed to the full fury of the elements, over 
 which the fiend, apparently, presides while remaining 
 near Him, though pretending to disappear : 
 
 ^ " Faust" (Tauchnitz edition).
 
 on Classic Lands 87 
 
 "... At His head 
 The Tempter watched, and soon with ugly dreams 
 Disturb'd his sleep. And either tropic now 
 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven ; the clouds 
 From many a horrid rift abortive poured 
 Fierce rain with lightning mix'd, water with fire 
 In ruin reconciled : nor slept the winds 
 Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad 
 From the four hinges of the world." ^ 
 
 Milton also describes "Infernal ghosts" and 
 " hellish furies " under Satan's order vainly trying 
 to awe or terrify Jesus, while He remained 
 
 " Unappall'd in calm and sinless peace." 
 
 A bright, calm morning is supposed to succeed this 
 terrific night, when all Nature revives, and even 
 Satan, strange to say, whom Milton often endows 
 with human feelings in both his grand poems : 
 
 " Glad would also seem 
 Of this fair change," 
 
 and addressing Jesus in apparent congratulation, 
 exclaims : 
 
 " Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God, 
 After a dismal night. I heard the wrack. 
 As earth and sky would mingle, but myself 
 Was distant." 
 
 ^ Book iv.
 
 88 British Writers 
 
 He proceeds, still trying vainly to alarm Jesus by 
 the prospect of a dreadful fate, or rather of inter- 
 mediate suffering in this world, unless He accepts 
 his aid in obtaining " Israel's sceptre," which 
 strange rank or dignity Satan still falsely imagines 
 He secretly covets. The alluring position, indeed, 
 so tempting at this special period to all patriotic 
 Jews, would seem in Satan's mind, according to 
 Milton, to involve acquisition of the vast Roman 
 Empire, of which Judea was only a small province. 
 This grand ambition, however, on the part of Jesus 
 seems quite unwarranted by Scriptural authority, 
 and probably the most bold and enterprising of 
 the Jews at this period never desired more than 
 the national independence of their own country.
 
 CHAPTER VIII
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN this imaginary scene, invented by Milton's 
 grand mind but resting on very slight Scrip- 
 tural authority or intimation, Jesus, throughout 
 supported by the secret power of the Creator, 
 contemptuously answers His tempter while alluding 
 to the fearful night that has just passed : ' 
 
 " Me worse than wet thou find'st not ; other harm 
 Those terrors, which thou speak'st of, did me none ; 
 I never fear'd they could, though noising loud 
 And threatening nigh ; what they can do as signs 
 Betokening, or ill-boding, I contemn 
 As false portents, not sent from God, but thee ; 
 Who, knowing I shall reign past thy preventing, 
 Obtrudest thy offer'd aid, that I accepting 
 At least might seem to hold all power of thee. 
 Ambitious spirit ! and would'st be thought my God ; 
 
 . . . Desist (thou art discern'd, 
 And toil'st in vain), nor me in vain molest." 
 
 At this calm defiance Satan, " now swoll'n with 
 rage," abandons his friendly pretensions, and finally 
 disclosing his evil mind, bitterly exclaims : 
 
 ^ Book iv. 
 91
 
 92 British Writers 
 
 "... By all best conjectures I collect 
 Thou art to be my fatal enemy. 
 Good reason, then, if I beforehand seek 
 To understand my adversary, who 
 And what he is ; his wisdom, power, intent ; 
 
 Therefore to know what more thou art than man, 
 Worth naming Son of God by voice from heaven, 
 Another method I must now begin."* 
 
 Satan, as his last resource, is supposed to 
 bear off Jesus to the highest pinnacle of the 
 venerated Jewish Temple at Jerusalem, which, 
 humanly speaking. He had doubtless been taught 
 from childhood to view with special love, interest, 
 and reverence. He had probably, also, often heard 
 the Roman rule blamed and bitterly complained of 
 by neighbours and fellow-countrymen as an unjust, 
 odious tyranny. Yet in this opinion of Roman 
 authority in Judea He apparendy never shared, 
 but on the contrary, showed what the Jews might 
 have thought a want of true patriotism in openly re- 
 proaching their priesthood, which could hardly have 
 been unknown to the Roman garrison of Jerusalem. 
 
 Milton then represents Satan addressing Jesus 
 almost in scorn, and as if still doubtful if He is 
 divinely protected, while eager to discover if 
 possible His real nature : 
 
 * Book iv.
 
 on Classic Lands 93 
 
 " There stand, if thou wilt stand ; to stand upright 
 Will ask thee skill ; I to thy Father's house 
 Have brought thee, and highest placed ; highest is best. 
 Now show thy progeny ; if not to stand, 
 Cast thyself down ; safely, if Son of God." 
 
 Satan proceeds to quote the precise words of the 
 Bible, thus giving good ground for Shakespeare's 
 well-known opinion, 
 
 " The Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose," ^ 
 
 and continues : 
 
 " For it is written, ' He will give command 
 Concerning thee to His angels ; in their hands 
 They shall upUft thee, lest at any time 
 Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.' " 
 
 To this last temptation, uttered by an evil spirit 
 whose arts no unassisted man could hope to resist, 
 Jesus replies decisively and with invincible courage, 
 confounding the fiend as much by His superior 
 knowledge as by His utter defiance of all human 
 
 danger : 
 
 "... * Also it is written, 
 Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood : 
 But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell. 
 
 So, struck with dread and anguish, fell the fiend, 
 And to his crew that sat consulting, brought 
 Joyless triumphals of his hoped success, 
 
 " Merchant of Venice."
 
 g^ British Writers 
 
 Ruin, desperation, and dismay, 
 
 Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God. 
 
 So Satan fell." 
 
 Milton then describes Jesus surrounded by 
 ministering angels bringing Him sustenance for 
 his human frame : 
 
 " That soon refresh'd Him wearied, and repaired 
 What hunger, if aught hunger had impair'd 
 Or thirst ; and, as He fed, angelic quires 
 Sung heavenly anthems of His victory 
 Over temptation and the Tempter proud. 
 ' Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both v^^orlds, 
 Queller of Satan ! on thy glorious vi^ork 
 Now enter, and begin to save mankind.' " 
 
 In this grand language Milton expresses the 
 fervent, firm belief of Christians, and to some 
 extent of Mohammedans, in praising the invin- 
 cible virtue of Jesus, while acknowledging His 
 moral superiority to all living at that period. 
 
 Some years after this sublime scene where Satan 
 vainly displays the attractive glories of pagan Athens 
 to Jesus, His faith was fated to be preached to a 
 pagan audience by St. Paul. Describing this 
 event, a learned theologian and historian of the 
 last century says : * 
 
 ^ Farrar's " Life of St. Paul," chap, xxvii.
 
 on Classic Lands 95 
 
 " He was standing under the blue dome of heaven, a vaster 
 and diviner temple than any which man could rear. And 
 therefore it was with the deepest seriousness, as well as with 
 the most undaunted composure, that he addressed them. 
 ' Athenians,' he said, standing forth amongst them with the 
 earnest gaze and outstretched hand which was his attitude 
 when addressing a multitude, ' I observe that in every respect 
 you are unusually religious.' Their attention would naturally 
 be won, and even a certain amount of personal kindliness 
 towards the orator be enlisted, by an exordium so courteous 
 and so entirely in accordance with the favourable testimony 
 which many writers had borne to their city as the common 
 altar and shrine of Greece. * For,' he continued, * in wander- 
 ing through your city and gazing about me on the objects of 
 your devotion, I found among them an altar, on which had 
 been carved in inscription, " To the unknown God." That, 
 then, which ye unconsciously adore, that am I declaring unto 
 you. The God who made the universe and all things in it. 
 He being the natural Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not 
 in temples made with hands, nor is He in need of anything so 
 as to receive service from human hands, seeing that He is 
 Himself the giver to all of life and breath and all things.' " 
 
 Farrar proceeds, however, to own that directly St. 
 Paul mentioned the Resurrection his heathen audi- 
 ence interrupted him with jeering mockery rather 
 than with dangerous rage, adding of the Athenians : 
 
 " They were not nearly serious enough in their own beHef, 
 nor did they consider this feeble wanderer a sufficiently 
 important person to make them care to enforce against St. 
 Paul that decree of the Areopagus ' which had brought 
 
 » " A seat of justice on a small eminence near Athens."- 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 96 
 
 British Writers 
 
 Socrates to the hemlock draught in the prison, . . . but they 
 instantly offered to the great missionary a contemptuous 
 toleration. . . . One dignified adherent, indeed, he found in 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, and one more, a woman whose 
 very name is uncertain, but at Athens he founded no Church, 
 to Athens he wrote no epistle, and in Athens, often as he 
 passed its neighbourhood, he never set foot again. . . . He 
 left Athens as he had lived in it, a despised and lonely man. 
 And yet his visit was not in vain. . . . Little did those philoso- 
 phers in their self-satisfied superiority suppose that the trivial 
 incident in which they had condescended to take part was 
 for them the beginning of the end. ... In all his seeming 
 defeats lay the germ of certain victory. He founded no 
 Church at Athens, but there a Church grew up. In the 
 next century it furnished to the cause of Christianity its 
 martyr-bishops and its eloquent apologists. In the third 
 century it flourished in peace and plenty." 
 
 Upon this subject of St. Paul at Athens a French 
 writer, M. Renan, whose works are all, or nearly all, 
 translated into English, and whose historical know- 
 ledge is indisputable, says, alluding to the scorn 
 Paul received at Athens : 
 
 " We have never seen a better example of how men of 
 mind ought to distrust themselves and to guard against laugh- 
 ing at an idea, however foolish it may seem to them. The 
 bad Greek spoken by Paul, his incessant and halting phrase- 
 ology, were not reasons for making him accredited in Athens. 
 The philosophers turned their backs disdainfully at his bar- 
 barous speech. ' He is a babbler,' said some. ' He is a 
 preacher of strange gods,' said others. No one could have 
 suspected that this babbler would one day supplant them, and 
 that four hundred and seventy-four years later their professor-
 
 on Classic Lands ^7 
 
 ships would be suppressed as useless and injurious in conse- 
 quence of the preaching of Paul. What a grand lesson! . , . 
 When philosophy declares that she will not occupy herself 
 with religion, religion responds by extinguishing her ; and 
 this is just, for philosophy is something only when she shows 
 to humanity the way, when she takes up seriously the inlinite 
 problem which is the same for all." ^ 
 
 Respecting St. Paul's great coadjutor, St. Peter, 
 Dean Milman says : 
 
 " The home of St. Peter [in Rome], from whom she claims 
 the supremacy of the Christian world, has ecHpsed that of St. 
 Paul in the Eternal City. The most splendid temple which 
 has been erected by Christian zeal, to rival or surpass the 
 proudest edifices of heathen magnificence, bears the name of 
 that apostle, while that of St. Paul rises in a remote and un- 
 wholesome suburb. ... In no part of the authentic Scripture 
 occurs the slightest allusion to the personal history of St. 
 Peter, as connected with the Western Churches. At all 
 events, the conversion of the Gentile world was the acknow- 
 ledged province of St. Paul. In that partition treaty in 
 which these two moral invaders divided the yet unconquered 
 world, the more civilised province of Greek and Roman 
 heathenism was assigned to him who was emphatically called 
 the Apostle of the Gentiles^ while the Jewish population fell 
 under the particular care of the Galilean Peter." ^ 
 
 The historian, Gibbon, who visited Rome, where 
 he conceived the idea of writing his noble history of 
 that empire's " Decline and Fall," observes with 
 
 ' Renan's " Life of St. Paul," pp. 1 12-13. 
 2 " History of Christianity." 
 
 7
 
 98 British Writers 
 
 apparent, yet perhaps not real, sarcasm about this 
 grandest of Christian churches : ^ 
 
 " If the Christian apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, could 
 return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name 
 of the deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in 
 that magnificent temple." 
 
 Then alluding to the two chief Protestant divisions 
 of Prelatists and Puritans, Gibbon proceeds in his 
 cool, reasoning style, which intensely provoked some 
 Christian readers of his period : 2 
 
 *' At Oxford or Geneva they would experience less surprise, 
 but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the cate- 
 chism of the Church and to study the orthodox commentators 
 on their own writings and the words of their master." 3 
 
 Yet few men of Gibbon's time knew better than he 
 himself that the political progress of Christianity, 
 little short of miraculous in its extent and results, 
 
 ^ " If Gibbon were writing now (1896) the tone of his 
 candid and rational inquiry would certainly be different. His 
 manner would not be that of sometimes open, sometimes 
 apparently veiled dislike, he would rather assume an attitude 
 of detachment. He would be affected by that merely his- 
 torical point of view which is a note of the present century 
 and its larger tolerances, and more than half disarmed by that 
 wide diffusion of unobtrusive scepticism among educated 
 people which seems to render offensive warfare superfluous." 
 — Professor Bury's Preface to his edition of Gibbon's " His- 
 tory." 
 
 2 '* Decline and Fall," chap. 50th. 
 
 3 Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 99 
 
 would fully explain the cause of that wonderful 
 change in the religious convictions of the majority 
 among civilised men, which the two devoted Saints 
 were fated never to behold, though they evidently 
 anticipated it, or something like it, even during 
 their temporal degradation and personal failure. 
 But the Jews even yet, though gratitude for just 
 rule in some Christian and Mohammedan countries 
 may make them rarely discuss the prevailing faiths, 
 remain, like their ancestry, firm unbelievers in 
 either of them. Among the most enlightened 
 Jews of the present time, mankind's Creator 
 seems still the special and favouring God of 
 their peculiar nation from the earliest times. The 
 extraordinary relations, however, between ruling 
 Romans and subjected Jews, so eloquently described 
 by Milton in " Paradise Regained," have supplied 
 modern Christian writers, lay and clerical, with a 
 most important subject for remark and discussion. 
 Thus an able writer, during the last years of the 
 nineteenth century, who has evidently made Jewish 
 history a special study, says : 
 
 " Give a comprehensive glance at the career of the Jews. 
 It is the marvel of history that this little people, beset and 
 despised by all the earth for ages, maintains its solidarity un- 
 impaired. Unique among all the peoples of the earth, it has 
 come undoubtedly to the present day from the most distant 
 antiquity. Forty, perhaps fifty, centuries rest upon this vener- 
 able contemporary of Egypt, Chaldea, and Troy. . . . Lan-
 
 loo British Writers 
 
 guage, literature, customs, traits of character, these, too, have 
 all survived. The Jew of New York, Chicago, St. Louis, is 
 in body and soul the Jew of London, of St. Petersburg, of 
 Constantinople, of the fenced cities of Judah in the days of 
 David." ' 
 
 Recent years prove, however, that the Jews 
 under British and Turkish rule are happier and 
 safer than under the Russian or the German, yet 
 Hosmer alludes to former Mohammedan intoler- 
 ance towards the Jews, which seems to have at 
 least comparatively ceased : 
 
 " In reality it is only at times that the outraged people has 
 received kindness at their [Mohammedan] hands, fiery 
 Mussulman intolerance bringing more often to pass a perse- 
 cution scarcely less bitter than that from Christian hands. . . . 
 Not a single Christian people has kept itself free from the 
 reproach of inhumanity towards the Jews." 
 
 It would appear from Gibbon's historic re- 
 searches that Mohammed, when he first obtained 
 power, persecuted the Arabian Jews, or at least 
 viewed them with a hatred which for many years 
 has practically ceased in most, though perhaps not 
 in all, Mohammedan countries. At his first rise 
 Mohammed forbade the previous worship of idols, 
 and human sacrifices, among whom his father, the 
 handsome Abdallah, was numbered, and had a 
 
 '' Hosmer's " Story of the Jews " (" Story of the Nations " 
 series).
 
 on Classic Lands loi 
 
 narrow escape through a ransom. Mohammed so 
 far, like Jesus, claimed the Jewish Old Testament 
 as the foundation of his new religion, and thereby 
 incurred a similar dread and enmity from Arabian 
 Jews. I Thus in the Koran the Holy Spirit is 
 represented as saying or intimating to Mohammed 
 the doctrinal connection of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments : 
 
 " We did send our apostles with manifest signs and we did 
 send down among you the Book and the balance that men 
 might stand by justice. . . . And we sent Noah and Abraham 
 and placed in their seed prophecy and the Book. . . . Then 
 we followed up their footsteps with our apostles and we 
 followed them up with Jesus, the son of Mary, and we gave 
 him the gospel and we placed in the hearts of those who 
 followed him, kindness and compassion. — The Koran, vol. ix. 
 ("Sacred Books of the East"), translated by E. H. Palmer. 
 
 Still, the Jews read with historic incredulity, yet 
 without bitterness, of Jesus and Mohammed each 
 adding what they believe to be unauthorised, 
 fanciful supplements of Gospel and Koran to their 
 one Sacred Volume.^ 
 
 ^ " Mohammed certainly wished his religion to be looked 
 upon as a further fulfilment of Christianity, just as Christi- 
 anity is the fulfilment of Judaism." — Palmer's Preface to his 
 translation of the Koran, vol. vi. (" Sacred Books of the 
 East "). 
 
 " Friedlander's *' Jewish Religion."
 
 CHAPTER IX
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE Greek or Roman paganism which Chris- 
 tianity replaced throughout Europe, and the 
 cruel idolatry which Mohammedanism replaced in 
 Arabia, were less dangerous to the Jews being 
 subjected strangers in different lands, than these 
 two powerful faiths established by alleged inspired 
 Prophets, both of whom the Jews had wished to 
 destroy. Yet at first, it would seem, Mohammed 
 was inclined to favour the Jews, with whom he 
 certainly agreed in detesting the Arabian idolatry, 
 which he was destined to almost entirely destroy 
 in Arabia during his lifetime. Gibbon says of 
 the relations between the Jews and the first 
 Mohammedans : 
 
 "The choice of Jerusalem for the first Kebla of prayer 
 discovers the early propensity of Mohammed in favour of 
 the Jews, and happy would it have been for their temporal 
 interest had they recognised in the Arabian prophet the hope 
 of Israel and the promised Messiah." ^ 
 
 » '' Decline and Fall," chap. 50th. 
 105
 
 io6 British Writers 
 
 This, however, the firm, conscientious Jews 
 would never do, yet strange to say their resolute 
 heroism in defying religious persecution and temp- 
 tation alike is hardly done moral justice to, even 
 by the liberal-minded, if not free-thinking, his- 
 torian Gibbon himself, as he proceeds : 
 
 " Their obstinacy converted his [Mohammed's] friendship 
 into perpetual hatred, with which he pursued that unfor- 
 tunate people to the last moment of his life." 
 
 Such fearless devotion in an opposed, helpless 
 race surely merits a better name than obstinacy ; 
 yet it has been the evident fate, during many 
 civilised centuries, of this morally invincible people 
 to endure persecution and legalised injustice even 
 from the votaries of a religion calling itself one 
 of mercy, a name surely owing to its Founder, 
 but for a long period disobeyed and often violated 
 by His professed followers. 
 
 The Jews, next to the Arabian idolaters, were 
 apparently Mohammed's first foes ; the fearful 
 wars between his followers with European Chris- 
 tian nations were yet to come. During his life, 
 therefore, the victorious Prophet was inclined by 
 policy, perhaps by sympathy, to prefer Christians 
 to Jews ; thus Gibbon writes : 
 
 " To his Christian subjects Mohammed readily granted the 
 security of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the
 
 on Classic Lands 107 
 
 property of their goods, and the toleration of their 
 worship." ^ 
 
 The unchangeable views of the modern Jews 
 about Christianity and Mohammedanism, under 
 whose respective votaries the whole race had been 
 subjected for centuries and still remain so, are 
 ably described by a recent Jewish writer : 2 
 
 " Mohammedans and Christians tried by all means in their 
 power to convince the Jews that the Anointed, whose advent 
 was prophesied by the [Jewish] Prophets, had already 
 appeared, the former pointing to Mohammed, the latter to 
 Jesus, as the persons realising those predictions. The 
 Biblical passages adduced as evidence prove nothing of 
 the kind." 
 
 This Jewish writer, happily free, unlike his ancestry, 
 to safely state the opinions of his co-religionists 
 without fear of legal penalty, continues in a style 
 more pleasing to philanthropists generally than to 
 Christian or Mohammedan enthusiasts : 
 
 '* In refuting arguments brought by Christians and 
 Mohammedans against Jews and Judaism and rejecting 
 the Messianic claims of Jesus and Mohammed, Jews are 
 ready to acknowledge the good work done by the religions 
 founded by these men in combating idolatry and spreading 
 civilisation." 
 
 ^ " Dechne and Fall," chap. 50th. 
 
 2 Friedlander's "Jewish Religion," pp. 225-6, pubhshed 
 1891.
 
 io8 British Writers 
 
 The late illustrious statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, 
 Lord Beaconsfield, a descendant of the Jewish race, 
 though a Christian, shows great admiration for 
 the Jews, during their historic persecutions, while 
 regretting, from rather a peculiar point of view, 
 their rejection of Christianity. In his brilliant 
 novel, "Tancred," Disraeli, under this name, 
 describes a young English nobleman visiting 
 Judea in the nineteenth century. The author 
 indicates throughout his own firm attachment to 
 the Jewish race and belief in their superiority 
 for all time to other nations, yet he himself 
 remained a Christian and devoted to the interests 
 of the British Empire, which for a time he ruled 
 with all the powers entrusted by its laws to a 
 prime minister. He shows much the same feel- 
 ing in this novel and in his subsequent biography 
 of Lord George Bentinck. Yet his peculiar views 
 seem never to have been shared by either Jews 
 or Christians. He apparently wished to associate 
 all Christian triumphs with Judaism, ^or with the 
 Jewish race, owing to the common belief of both 
 Jews and Christians in the Old Testament. Yet 
 in reality the triumph of Christianity over paganism 
 in Europe was politically disastrous, rather than 
 favourable, to the Jews for many years. ^ The be- 
 
 ' See Gibbon's " Decline and Fall " and Lecky's " Pagan 
 Empire," book iii.
 
 on Classic Lands 109 
 
 lievers in the Gospel and in the Koran oppressed 
 the Jews, who successively rejected both, with far 
 more severity than the subjected race had pre- 
 viously endured from the pagans of Europe and 
 of Arabia. Yet Disraeli writes, alluding to the 
 Emperor Titus, the most terrible political enemy 
 of the Jews : 
 
 " Titus destroyed the Temple. The reUgion of Judea has 
 in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father 
 (Vespasian) and to himself in their imperial capital, and the 
 God of Abraham and of Jacob is now worshipped before 
 every other in Rome." ^ 
 
 It would be hardly possible to prove that this 
 triumph of Christians over pagans in Rome was 
 ever rejoiced at or thought a gain by the subjected 
 Jews passing from pagan to Christian political 
 rule, but this change is evidently to Disraeli a 
 cause of exultation. He again cites the atheistical 
 revolution in France before the supremacy of 
 Napoleon the First, as if the subsequent restora- 
 tion of the Roman Catholic form of Christianity 
 was at least indirectly a triumph of or for the 
 Jewish race. He writes of Christian Europe : 
 
 " The most powerful and the most civilised of its kingdoms, 
 about to conquer the rest, shut up its churches, desecrated 
 its altars, massacred and persecuted their sacred servants, 
 
 ' " Tancred," book iii.
 
 no British Writers 
 
 and announced that the Hebrew creeds which Simon Peter 
 brought from Palestine, and which his successors revealed to 
 Clovis,^ were a mockery and a fiction. What has been the 
 result ? In every city, town, village, and hamlet of that great 
 kingdom, the divine image of the most illustrious of Hebrews 
 has been again raised, amid the homage of kneeling millions, 
 while in the heart oi its bright and witty capital the nation 
 has erected the most gorgeous of modern temples and conse- 
 crated its marble and golden walls to the name and memory 
 and celestial efficacy of a Hebrew woman." 
 
 Disraeli, in a later work, expresses his somewhat 
 original views, though probably to little purpose, 
 as few, if any, conversions from Judaism resulted : 
 
 " It is no doubt to be deplored that several millions of the 
 Jewish race should persist in believing only a part of their 
 religion." ^ 
 
 In this peculiar view of Jewish incredulity 
 Disraeli seems to somewhat resemble Mohammed. 
 The latter declares in the Koran, 3 as if antici- 
 pating the future political triumph of Christians 
 over the unfortunate race : 
 
 " O ye who believe ! be ye the helpers of God ? As Jesus, 
 son of Mary, said to the apostles, ' Who are my helpers for 
 God ? ' Said the apostles, ' We ate God's helpers ! ' And a 
 
 ^ Pagan king of France, converted to Christianity, 493. 
 " Mangnall's Questions." 
 
 2 " Life of Lord George Bentinck," chap. xxiv. 
 
 3 Volume ninth (Sacred Books of the East).
 
 on Classic Lands in 
 
 party of the children of Israel believed and a party mis- 
 believed. And we aided those who believed against their 
 enemies, and they were on the morrow superior." 
 
 Disraeli wrote his " Life of Bentinck " in 1852, but 
 despite his great talents and high position as 
 England's Prime Minister, his peculiar views from 
 a religious standpoint had little apparent effect 
 on the Jews either in the British Empire or in 
 any other part of the world. Indeed, even since 
 his time the unconverted Jews have, at least in 
 many countries, rather increased, both in number 
 and influence. Disraeli would surely not deny 
 that ancient Greece and Rome excelled in 
 philosophy, in ruling nations, and in legislation, 
 as well as in other arts and sciences, yet with a 
 partiality for his own race he may rather exag- 
 gerate their superior talent in music ; though in 
 it, and apparently it alone among refined accom- 
 plishments, the Jews seem to have excelled other 
 ancient nations. He writes, perhaps rather ignor- 
 ing many artists unconnected with the Jewish race : 
 
 "The most admirable artists of the drama have been and 
 still are of the Hebrew race, . . . the most entrancing singers 
 and dancers have been and still are sons and daughters of 
 Israel." 
 
 After stating boldly that 
 
 " the degradation of the Jewish race is alone a striking
 
 112 British Writers 
 
 proof of its excellence, for none but one of the great races 
 could have survived the trials it has endured," 
 
 he proceeds to exalt Jewish superiority in music 
 in what may be too partial a strain : 
 
 "Music seems to be the only means of creating the 
 beautiful in which we not only equal, but in all probability 
 greatly excel, the ancients. The music of modern Europe 
 ranks with the transcendent creations of human genius, the 
 poetry, the statues, the temples of Greece. It produces and 
 represents, as they did, whatever is most beautiful in the spirit 
 of man, and often expresses what is most profound. And 
 who are the great composers ? " 
 
 DisraeH finally answers his own question, in ascrib- 
 ing the chief if not the only excellence in musical 
 composition to those, like himself, of Jewish descent, 
 while not naming the many famous Italian, French, 
 and German composers who were wholly uncon- 
 nected with the Hebrew race. He proceeds with 
 patriotic pride : 
 
 " When the Russian, the Frenchman, and the Anglo-Saxon, 
 amid applauding theatres or the choral voices of solemn 
 temples, yield themselves to the full spell of a Mozart or a 
 Mendelssohn, it seems difficult to comprehend how these 
 races can reconcile it to their hearts to persecute a Jew." 
 
 Disraeli proceeds with historic truth, and in a 
 more practical spirit : 
 
 " The world has by this time discovered that it is impos- 
 sible to destroy the Jews. The attempt to extirpate them
 
 on Classic Lands 113 
 
 has been made under the most favourable auspices and on 
 the largest scale ; the most considerable means that man 
 could command have been pertinaciously applied to this 
 object for the longest period of recorded time." 
 
 In historical order Disraeli then briefly reviews the 
 various persecuting foes of his race, before, during, 
 and since the establishment of Christianity, but 
 omitting to name the Mohammedans : 
 
 " Egyptian pharaohs, Assyrian kings, Roman emperors, 
 Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic princes, and holy inquisitors 
 have alike devoted their energies to the fulfilment of their 
 common purpose. ... A curious system of degrading cus- 
 toms and debasing laws, which would have broken the heart 
 of any other people, have been tried and in vain," 
 
 and Disraeli is truly able to declare : 
 
 " The Jews after all this havoc are probably more 
 numerous at this date (1852) than they were during the reign 
 of Solomon the wise." 
 
 Yet though this wonderful race must always 
 preserve a grand position, altogether unique in 
 the history of nations, the transmitted glories of 
 the ancient Greeks and Romans chiefly occupied 
 the studious thoughts of the most distinoruished 
 
 o o 
 
 men in Britain during the last two centuries. 
 Homer's " Iliad," the most famous of Greek 
 poems, was translated by Pope in the eighteenth 
 century, and the work attracted immense attention 
 
 8
 
 114 British Writers 
 
 in the literary world. Dr. Johnson, its great 
 admirer, called the translation 
 
 " A great event in the annals of learning," * 
 
 while in the last century the fourteenth Earl of 
 Derby, then Prime Minister, rivalled, or tried to 
 rival, Pope in also translating this same master- 
 piece of poetic description. In the Preface to his 
 more literal, if less elegant translation, Lord 
 Derby observes : 
 
 *' Pope's ' Iliad,' admirable as it is, can hardly be said to 
 be Homer's 'Iliad,' " 
 
 probably meaning some graces of style wanting 
 in the grand original, as Dr. Johnson had pre- 
 viously remarked : 
 
 " I suppose many readers of the English [Pope's] ' Iliad,' 
 when they have been touched with some unexpected beauty 
 of the Hghter kind have tried to enjoy it in the original, 
 where, alas ! it was not to be found. Homer doubtless owes 
 to his translator many Ovidian ^ graces, not exactly suitable 
 to his character ; but to have added can be no great crime if 
 nothing be taken away." 3 
 
 ' " Life of Pope." 
 
 2 " Ovid, a celebrated Roman poet. . . . His poetry con- 
 tains great sweetness and elegance." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 3 Johnson's " Life of Pope."
 
 on Classic Lands 115 
 
 In comparing Lord Derby's translation with 
 Pope's, the truth of Johnson's words on the latter 
 seems evident. Lord Derby may be more true to 
 the original, but Pope, while writing in a more 
 polished style, yet may sufficiently express Homer's 
 meaning, though in a more attractive manner. 
 One remarkable instance occurs in a noble pas- 
 sage (chap, xiii.) where Neptune, the Sea-king, ^ 
 rushes over his subjected element to help the 
 besieging Greeks, with whom he takes part against 
 the unfortunate Trojans desperately defending their 
 ill-fated city. Lord Derby's version of this passage 
 gives much the same meaning as that of Pope, 
 though in plainer words, by trying to adhere closer 
 to the original : 
 
 " No careless watch the monarch Neptune kept. 
 Wondering, he viewed the battle where he sat 
 Aloft on wooded Samos ^ topmost peak, 
 Samos of Thrace. Whence Ida's 3 heights he saw 
 And Priam's 4 city and the ships of Greece. 
 Thither ascended from the sea he sat, 
 
 ^ " Neptune, a god, son of Saturn, brother to Jupiter, 
 and received as his portion the kingdom of the sea." 
 — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 = " An island in the yEgean Sea, on the coast of Asia 
 Minor." — Ibid. 
 
 3 " A celebrated mountain in the neighbourhood of Troy. 
 It was covered with green woods, and the poets say it was 
 frequented by the gods during the Trojan war." — Ibid. 
 
 4 "The last king of Troy." — Ibid.
 
 ii6 British Writers 
 
 And thence the Greeks by Trojans overborne 
 
 Pitying he saw, and deeply wrath with Jove. 
 
 Thence down the mountain's craggy side he passed 
 
 With rapid step, and as he moved along, 
 
 Beneath the immortal feet of Ocean's Lord 
 
 Quaked the huge mountain and the shadowy wood. 
 
 Three strides he took, the fourth he reached his goal, 
 
 ALgse,^ whereon the margin of the bay 
 
 His temple stood, all glittering, all of gold. 
 
 Imperishable. There arrived, he yoked 
 
 Beneath his car the brazen-footed steeds 
 
 Of swiftest flight, with manes of flowing gold, 
 
 All clad in gold ; the golden lash he grasped 
 
 Of curious work, and mounting on his car, 
 
 Skimm'd o'er the waves ; swift flew the bounding steeds, 
 
 Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray 
 
 When to the ships of Greece their Lord they bore." =^ 
 
 ^ " A town of Euboea, whence Neptune is called ^geus." 
 -Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 2 " Iliad," book xiii.
 
 CHAPTER X
 
 p 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OPE'S more eloquent version of this noble 
 passage runs thus : 
 
 " Meantime the monarch of the watery main 
 Observ'd the Thunderer (Jupiter), nor observ'd in vain. 
 In Samothracia,' on a mountain's brow, 
 Whose many woods o'erhung the depths below, 
 He sat, and round him cast his azure eyes 
 Where Ida's misty tops confus'dly rise ; 
 Below fair Ilion's ^ glittering spires were seen, 
 The crowded ships and sable seas between. 
 There, from the crystal chambers of the main 
 Emerg'd, he sat, and mourned his Argives 3 slain. 
 At Jove incens'd, with grief and fury stung, 
 Prone down the rocky steep he rush'd along. 
 
 * " An island in the ^gean Sea. ... It was distinguished 
 from the Samos which lies on the coast of Ionia by the name 
 of Samothrace." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 ^ "A citadel of Troy. It is generally taken for Troy 
 itself."— Ibid. 
 
 3 "The word is indiscriminately applied to all the in- 
 habitants of Greece." — Ibid. 
 
 "9
 
 I20 British Writers 
 
 Fierce as he pass'd the lofty mountains nod, 
 
 The forests shake, earth trembled as he trod 
 
 And felt the footsteps of the immortal god ; 
 
 From realm to realm three ample strides he took, 
 
 And at the fourth the distant -^gae shook. 
 
 Far in the bay his shining palace stands, 
 
 Eternal frame, not rais'd by mortal hands. 
 
 This having reached, his brass-hoofd steeds he reins, 
 
 Fleet as the winds and deck'd with golden manes ; 
 
 Refulgent arms his mighty limbs infold, 
 
 Immortal arms of adamant and gold. 
 
 He mounts his car, the golden scourge applies ; 
 
 He sits superior, and the chariot flies ; 
 
 His whirling wheels the glossy surface sweep, 
 
 Th' enormous monsters rolling o'er the deep 
 
 Gambol around him on the watery way, 
 
 And heavy whales in awkward measures play ; 
 
 The sea, subsiding, spreads a level plain, 
 
 Exults, and owns the monarch of the main ; 
 
 The parting waves before his coursers fly. 
 
 The wondering waters leave his axle dry." ^ 
 
 Pope's beautiful language in this noble passage 
 apparently confirms Johnson's words. The poet 
 presents really the same ideas as in Lord Derby's 
 translation, though less literally, and many readers 
 will probably agree with Johnson's views, before 
 quoted, on the subject of Pope's merit as a trans- 
 lator. 
 
 ' " The bold invention by which the gods take sides in the 
 War of Troy ... is not a flight of imagination only. The 
 partisanship of the respective deities this way and that is 
 evidently dictated by sympathies of race." — Gladstone's 
 " Juventus Mundi."
 
 on Classic Lands I2i 
 
 The splendid genius of Homer seems to have 
 specially interested rival British statesmen of the 
 last century. About the same time that Lord 
 Derby's translation of the ** Iliad " appeared, Mr. 
 Gladstone produced his learned works on Homer 
 and the Homeric Age, and the " Juventus Mundi," 
 or Youth of the World, which last work, though 
 bearing such a comprehensive title, deals chiefly 
 with ancient Greece. Mr. Gladstone's admiration 
 for Homer, though more of a practical or political 
 nature, is quite as profound as that of any 
 other English writer, yet expressed in a less 
 enthusiastic style than that of Macaulay. His 
 personal knowledge of the British nation renders 
 some of his remarks equally interesting and 
 instructive. 
 
 He writes : 
 
 " The poems of Homer are the seed-plot of what is best 
 and soundest in the Greek pohtics of the historic period. 
 Nor are we, the moderns, and, as I think, the British in 
 particular, without a special relation to the subject. In part 
 we owe to these ancient societies a debt. In part we may 
 trace with reasonable pleasure an original similitude between 
 the Homeric picture and the best ideas of our European and 
 our British ancestry. What are those ideas ? Among the 
 soundest of them we reckon the power of opinion and 
 persuasion as opposed to force ; the sense of responsibility in 
 governing men, the hatred not only of tyranny, but of all 
 unlimited power, . . . the reconciliation and harmony 
 between the spirit of freedom on the one hand, the spirit
 
 122 British Writers 
 
 of order and reverence on the other, and a practical beh'ef in 
 right as relative and in duty as reciprocal. Out of these 
 elements, whether in ancient or in modern times, great 
 governments have been made." ^ 
 
 Both Mr. Gladstone's w^orks alike try to exalt 
 the literary fame of the Greeks, Homer especially, 
 in the estimation of modern British readers. Their 
 well-merited admiration for this illustrious states- 
 man naturally induced them to study with 
 additional interest those noble works which, sur- 
 viving all the changes of recorded time, this 
 eminent scholar thoughtfully recalls to public 
 attention, amid all the absorbing excitement and 
 fatigue of British political life, constant exertion, 
 and official responsibility. Yet Mr. Gladstone's 
 even more literary contemporary. Lord Macaulay, 
 who if not himself the greatest was surely among 
 the greatest of British scholars in the nineteenth 
 century, has likely been still more successful in 
 vindicating classic literature by his brilliantly 
 attractive style, united to immense learning. He 
 tried to revive or inspire in British minds the most 
 ardent admiration as well as comprehension of the 
 classic literature of Greece and Rome, which he 
 himself enjoyed with sincere and avowed en- 
 thusiasm. His delight in its study when allied 
 to his vast information and wonderfully retentive 
 
 * " Juventus Mundi," chap. xi.
 
 on Classic Lands 123 
 
 memory had the rare good fortune of making his 
 views, even on profound subjects, almost equally- 
 interesting and instructive. Some years before he 
 wrote his great work on British history, he seemed 
 to almost anticipate his own future success as a 
 historian, by eloquently describing what such a 
 writer should be, and of this description he finally 
 proved himself almost the embodiment. He 
 writes : ^ 
 
 " The perfect historian is he in whose work the character 
 and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no 
 fact, he attributes no expression to his characters which is 
 not authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious 
 selection, rejection, and arrangement he gives to truth those 
 attractions which have been usurped by fiction." 
 
 Macaulay's avowed liking for scholastic education 
 and delightful recollections even of school life, 
 though quite sincere, might almost seem written at 
 the direction of some arbitrary teacher, forcing, like 
 Mr. Squeers in " Nicholas Nickleby," his helpless 
 pupils to write home their love for their school and 
 its instructions. For Macaulay, an accomplished 
 man of the world, mixing in political and fashion- 
 able society, yet casts a loving eye on a time of 
 life which has often left on other celebrated men a 
 very different impression of the past. 
 
 * ** Essay on History."
 
 124 British Writers 
 
 In praise of classic studies he writes enthusiasti- 
 cally : I 
 
 "The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined 
 within no limits except those which separate civilised from 
 savage man. Their works are the common property of every 
 polished nation. They have furnished subjects for the 
 painter and models for the poet." 
 
 He then proceeds to joyfully recall, in the words 
 of a thoroughly successful and likely a deservingly 
 rewarded pupil, certain school memories with feelings 
 which, it may be feared, represent those of a decided 
 if not small minority : ^ 
 
 " In the minds of the educated classes throughout Europe 
 their names are indissolubly associated with the endearing 
 recollections of childhood." 
 
 Some readers might here expect to find games, 
 amusements, lively friends, or happy homes 
 enumerated, but no : the future historian proceeds 
 to thus describe his early delights : 
 
 "The old schoolroom, the dog-eared grammar, the first 
 prize — the tears so often shed and so quickly dried." 
 
 Again, when describing Greek literature, though 
 
 » " Essay on the Athenian Orators." =" Ibid.
 
 on 
 
 Classic Lands 125 
 
 chiefly that of Athens,^ he writes with the eloquent, 
 yet earnest enthusiasm which seems his rather 
 particular characteristic : 
 
 " Who shall say how many thousands have been made 
 wiser, happier, and better by those pursuits in which she 
 [Greece] has taught mankind to engage, to how many the 
 studies which took their rise from her have been w^ealth 
 in poverty — liberty in bondage — health in sickness — society 
 in soUtude ? Her power is indeed manifested at the 
 bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of 
 philosophy." 
 
 Then, with perhaps slightly exaggerated eloquence, 
 the accomplished British scholar, probably the 
 credit and delight of his school instructors, adds 
 this emphatic reflection : 
 
 '' Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain — 
 wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakeful- 
 ness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long 
 sleep — there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal 
 influence of Athens." 
 
 In this noble passage, however, Macaulay's 
 enthusiasm, or personal taste, may ascribe too 
 much value or importance to Greek literature, 
 considering how many eminent, virtuous, and gifted 
 men in various countries were blessings to their 
 
 » Essay on Mitford's " History of Greece."
 
 126 British Writers 
 
 race, yet who never had the least chance of 
 knowing anything about it. His eloquent language 
 here is clearly that of a highly educated, appreciat- 
 ing student, a pupil indeed after a zealous tutor's 
 own heart, one whose individual tastes, cordially 
 and rarely enjoying his educational training, made 
 him perhaps the most brilliant or successful scholar 
 in Britain in the nineteenth century. Inspired with 
 classic ideas and ardent love of literature, Macaulay 
 poetically expresses his feelings in noble verses 
 written after his own defeat at a parliamentary 
 election for Edinburgh. In these he turns his 
 disappointed, if not mortified mind, to Literature for 
 consolation, while attributing to it in elegant poetry 
 the same power of relief to unhappy persons in 
 past history that he himself evidently found in 
 its comforting influence. He imagines the Spirit 
 of Literature appearing to him and promising, in 
 a vision, the consolation she had previously ad- 
 ministered to others, and which she now invites 
 him to accept. This fanciful yet wise counsel the 
 future historian practically followed years after 
 this imaginary vision, and he produced a " History 
 of Britain " which, despite some errors and occasional 
 partiality or hero-worship, took its place among 
 the most brilliant and standard specimens of 
 English literature in the last century. This sup- 
 posed Fairy Queen of Literature thus alike advises
 
 on Classic Lands 127 
 
 and consoles the defeated candidate for what are 
 called parliamentary honours : ^ 
 
 " Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme, 
 The nether sphere the fleeting hour resign, 
 Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream, 
 Mine all the past and all the future mine. 
 Fortune, that lays in sport the mighty low 
 Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth, 
 Shall leave untouch'd the gifts which I bestow, 
 The sense of beauty and the thirst of truth." 
 
 She then recalls two great Englishmen of Queen 
 Elizabeth's and James the First's times, who 
 during disgrace and imprisonment alike found 
 real relief in the gifts of her peculiar power : 
 
 " In the dark hour of shame I deigned to stand, 
 Before the frowning peers at Bacon's side." 
 
 From these words Macaulay may have had in his 
 mind "The Advancement of Learning," "The 
 Wisdom of the Ancients," and other Essays of this 
 great English writer, which, despite his political 
 disgrace, succeeded in establishing his lasting fame. 
 The yet more pathetic case of Bacon's brilliant 
 contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh, writing his 
 " History of the World " in a London prison shordy 
 before execution, and whose accomplished mind 
 
 ' " Miscellaneous Writings," vol. ii.
 
 128 British Writers 
 
 always loved classic wisdom, the Fairy Queen thus 
 mentions : 
 
 " I brought the wise and brave of ancient days 
 To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone." 
 
 Then, recalling Milton's lofty mind reverting to 
 Scripture history during his last years of blindness 
 and political danger : 
 
 " I lighted Milton's darkness with the blaze 
 Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne." 
 
 Finally, in firm assurance of practical comfort during 
 all the trials of life, irrespective of friends, health, 
 or country, the Spirit of Literature concludes : 
 
 " No, when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow, 
 When weary soul and wasting body pine 
 Thine am I still in danger, sickness, sorrow, 
 In conflict, obloquy, want, exile, thine." 
 
 " Amidst the din of all things fell and vile, 
 Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, 
 Remember me ; and, with an unforced smile. 
 See riches, baubles, flatterers pass away. 
 Yes, they will pass away ; nor deem it strange 
 They come and go as comes and goes the sea. 
 And let them come and go : thou through all change 
 Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me."
 
 CHAPTER XI
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IT seems evident that love of classic literature 
 chiefly inspired Macaulay when writing these 
 lines, from all he reveals of his personal taste and 
 feelings. He thus even admits loss of temper on 
 the subject of Greek literature when examining 
 Mitford's " Grecian History " : 
 
 " Of the indifference of Mr. Mitford on this subject I will 
 not speak, for I cannot speak with patience." 
 
 Then, in the true spirit of a literary enthusiast, 
 Macaulay proceeds : 
 
 " It is a subject on which I love to forget the accuracy of 
 a judge in the veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude 
 of a child," 
 
 eloquently continuing : 
 
 " From hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the 
 noblest creations of the human intellect." 
 
 Thus wrote the distinguished British historian in 
 
 1824, when attributing, perhaps more in the spirit 
 
 131
 
 132 British Writers 
 
 of " a worshipper " than of " a judge," all subsequent 
 literary excellence to Greek origin or foundation. 
 Shakespeare, whose unrivalled mind seems to 
 acquire more and more admiration through the 
 progress of time, and who Macaulay himself de- 
 clares to have had neither equal nor second,^ 
 wrote, and apparently knew little about ancient 
 Greece. His Greek plays, " Troilus and Cressida" 
 and " Timon of Athens," are surely inferior to his 
 Roman and English ones; indeed, Macaulay admits 
 
 " that of all Shakespeare's classical plays, ' Troilus and 
 Cressida ' is commonly considered the most incorrect," ^ 
 
 while thoughtfully adding — 
 
 " yet it seems to us infinitely more correct, in the sound 
 sense of the term, than what are called the most correct plays 
 of the most correct dramatist." 
 
 Upon the grand subject of Shakespeare's in- 
 creasing fame. Dr. Johnson in the eighteenth 
 and Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth centuries, 
 despite their differing opinions on many subjects, 
 unite in expressing much the same on this. Johnson 
 writes : 
 
 " It is proper to inquire by what peculiarities of excellence 
 Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his country- 
 
 ^ Essay on Madame D'Arblay, 
 
 ^ Essay on Moore's " Life of Byron."
 
 on Classic Lands 133 
 
 men. . . . Shakespeare is, above all writers, the poet of 
 nature, the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror 
 of manners and of life." 
 
 Referring to Shakespeare's description of classical 
 personages, Johnson emphatically says : 
 
 " Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over 
 accident. ... His story requires Romans or kings, but he 
 thinks only on men," 
 
 and Johnson further remarks, in his forcible style, 
 
 " The stream of Time, which is continually washing the 
 dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the 
 adamant of Shakespeare." ' 
 
 Herbert Spencer, in practical confirmation of 
 Johnson's words, writes, more than a hundred 
 years later : 
 
 " Shakespeare during the present (nineteenth) century has 
 been continually rising, until now his position is so high 
 that criticism is practically paralysed, and Societies occupy 
 themselves with the minutias of his sentences." = 
 
 Shakespeare, in his remarkable Prologue to the 
 Greek play of " Troilus and Cressida," briefly yet 
 expressively reveals admiration for the grand 
 subject of the siege of Troy, about which he had, 
 
 * Preface to " Shakespeare." 
 
 2 " Facts and Comments," published 1892.
 
 134 British Writers 
 
 apparently, read or knew little, except In extracts 
 from classic history or from vague allusions, inferior 
 in truth or merit, to the grand English translations 
 of later times. The speaker of this Prologue is 
 supposed to address a London theatrical audience, 
 and was evidently clad in armour, and thus prepares 
 his English audience for what they are to see and 
 hear : 
 
 " In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece 
 The princes orgulous,' their high blood chaf'd, 
 Have to the port of Athens sent their ships, 
 Fraught with the ministers and instruments 
 Of cruel war : . . . 
 
 . . . and their vow is made 
 To ransack Troy ; within whose strong immures 
 The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen, 
 With wanton Paris sleeps ; and that's the quarrel. 
 
 . . . Now on Dardan plains 
 The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch 
 Their brave pavilions. . . . 
 
 Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits 
 On one and other side, Trojan and Greek, 
 Sets all on hazard : and hither am I come 
 A prologue arm'd,^ but not in confidence 
 
 ' '^ Haughty." — Staunton's notes. 
 
 2 " From this it appears that the speaker of the Prologue, 
 instead of wearing the customary black cloak, was dressed 
 in armour. — Staunton's notes to his illustrated edition.
 
 on Classic Lands 135 
 
 Of author's pen or actor's voice ; but suited 
 
 In like conditions as our argument, 
 
 To tell you, fair beholders, that our play 
 
 Leaps o'er the vaunt ^ and firstlings of those broils, 
 
 Beginning in the middle ; starting thence away, 
 
 To what may be digested in a play." 
 
 This classic drama, though not, perhaps, of high 
 interest or correctness in itself, yet contains many 
 grand passages likely better known to and remem- 
 bered by intelligent readers than the actual events 
 it describes. Shakespeare selects the two wise 
 Greek leaders, old Nestor and the younger Ulysses, 
 to express in noble English his own imperishable 
 thoughts of practical wisdom. In this he so far 
 follows classic history by representing these two 
 chiefs as among, if not above, the wisest of their 
 period, while ascribing to them views and senti- 
 ments, which supposing they had never uttered 
 them, they would probably have admired and 
 sanctioned. The spirit of their remarks, however, 
 on the absolute necessity of maintaining law and 
 order seems well worthy of a loyal or timid subject 
 of Shakespeare's almost despotic sovereign, Queen 
 Elizabeth. Though it remains, and likely must 
 always remain, doubtful if she heard the words of 
 her wonderful subject, it might surely be safely 
 assumed she would have highly approved of them 
 
 ^ " The van, the foregoing." — Staunton's notes.
 
 136 
 
 British Writers 
 
 either from interest or conviction. Yet some 
 absolute rulers mio"ht wish to extend their meaning; 
 far beyond the poet's intention ; for Shakespeare 
 was evidently too sincere a friend to mankind 
 generally to advocate or justify anything resem- 
 bling tyranny. Nestor, apparently deprecating 
 rivalry for power, and advising the supremacy of 
 the most able men commanding either on sea or 
 land, exclaims, addressing his fellow-Greek leaders 
 in an attractive though metaphorical style : 
 
 "... In the reproof of chance, 
 Lies the true proof of men : ^ the sea being smooth, 
 How many shallow bauble boats dare sail 
 Upon her patient breast, making their way 
 With those of noble bulk ! 
 But let the ruffian Boreas ^ once enrage 
 The gentle Thetis,3 and, anon, behold 
 The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut 
 Bounding between the two moist elements, 
 
 . . . where's then the saucy boat, 
 Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now 
 Co-rivall'd greatness ? either to harbour fled, 
 Or made a toast for Neptune." 
 
 ^ " Shakespeare's account of Nestor's oratorical power 
 and beauty quite agrees with Mr. Gladstone's opinion of 
 Homer's version : ' Nestor's tones of happy and benevolent 
 egotism flow sweeter than a stream of honey. ' " — " Juventus 
 Mundi," chap. xi. 
 
 2 "The north wind." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 3 " One of the sea deities." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 137 
 
 Ulysses, in a similar spirit to the older chief, 
 exclaims also to their kino- Ao-amemnon and their 
 fellow-leaders, in words which really apply to most 
 if not to all countries, people, and times at special 
 periods of their national history, and which might 
 well apply to the endangered though preserved 
 authority of Queen Elizabeth and James the First : 
 
 " The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre 
 Observe degree, priority, and place, 
 Insisture, course, proportion, season, form. 
 Office and custom, in all line of order : 
 And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, 
 In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd 
 Amidst the other ; whose med'cinable eye 
 Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil. 
 And posts, like the commandment of a king, 
 Sans check, to good and bad." ^ 
 
 Then Shakespeare describing, if not perhaps rather 
 exaggerating, the dangers of revolution to the human 
 world at large, proceeds, apparently meaning or 
 
 ^ *' The Homeric Greeks are in the main a people of 
 warm affections and high honour, commonly tender, never 
 morbid ; they respect the weak and helpless ; they hold 
 authority in reverence. . . . Distinctions of class are re- 
 cognised, but they are mild and genial ; there is no 
 arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the other. 
 Reverence is paid to those in authority, and yet the Greek 
 thinks in the spirit and moves in the sphere of habitual 
 freedom." — Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi," chap. x.
 
 138 British Writers 
 
 including rebellion among subjects, while naming 
 the stars and the elements : 
 
 "... But when the planets, 
 In evil mixture, to disorder wander. 
 What plagues, and what portents ! what mutiny ! 
 What raging of the sea ! shaking of earth ! 
 Commotion in the winds ! frights, changes, horrors. 
 Divert and crack, rend and deracinate ^ 
 The unity and married calm of states 
 Quite from their fixture." ^ 
 
 An English writer thus addressing fellow-country- 
 men would have likely gratified such sovereigns as 
 Elizabeth and James the First, in whose reigns 
 Shakespeare lived. For though their reigns were 
 in the end successful, they were alike endangered 
 by many foes, avowed and secret, with whose 
 designs, if not characters, the cotemporary poet 
 must to some extent have been acquainted. 
 
 ' Pluck up by the roots. 
 
 2 " Troilus and Cressida," Act I.
 
 CHAPTER XII
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 YET Shakespeare, though often mentioning 
 Greek names and historic events, even in 
 his EngHsh plays, apparently took less interest in or 
 knew less about the Greeks than he did about the 
 Romans. In his Greek play, " Timon of Athens," 
 the illustrious general Alcibiades, pleading vainly 
 for a friend's life, quarrels with his Athenian rulers 
 and paymasters, the Senate at Athens. When 
 they, refusing his request, banish him on pain of 
 death, their ill-requited champion turns against 
 them, rather in the style of Cromwell when appeal- 
 ing to his victorious, devoted army to support him 
 against the English Parliament, hitherto his ac- 
 knowledged rulers, but who he considered became 
 unfair, or ungrateful to him and to his soldiery, to 
 whom the Parliament owed its authority. Alci- 
 biades, on hearing his sentence, exclaims with 
 defiance : 
 
 " Banish me ! 
 Banish your dotage ; banish usury, 
 That makes the Senate ugly." 
 141
 
 142 British Writers 
 
 One of the Senators, evidently voicing and 
 representing the others, sternly replies : 
 
 " If, after two days' shine, Athens contain thee, 
 Attend our weightier judgment. And, not to swell our spirit, 
 He shall be executed presently." " 
 
 The Senators depart, and the irritated general 
 exclaims when alone, revealing his design of usurp- 
 ing supreme power in words Avhich to modern 
 readers may rather recall the spirit not only of 
 Cromwell, but of the two Napoleons, finally in- 
 ducing their armies to place themselves in supreme 
 authority. He exclaims to himself in moody 
 indignation : 
 
 " I have kept back their foes. 
 
 Is this the balsam, that the usuring Senate 
 Pours into captains' wounds ? " 
 
 In rising, dangerous anger he proceeds : 
 
 *' Banishment ! 
 It comes not ill ; I hate not to be banish'd ; 
 It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury, 
 That I may strike at Athens." 
 
 Then Alcibiades intimates his determined reso- 
 lution in decisive words worthy of Cromwell him- 
 self, these two generals, the Greek and the 
 
 ^ "Timon of Athens," Act III.
 
 on Classic Lands 143 
 
 Englishman, being alike the glory of their trium- 
 phant forces, whom they attached devotedly to 
 themselves alone : 
 
 "I'll cheer up 
 My discontented troops, and lay for hearts. 
 
 Soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods." 
 
 His complete though rather brief triumph over 
 his former Athenian masters soon follows, but after 
 its commencement Shakespeare pursues Greek 
 history no further. 
 
 In his Roman plays Shakespeare, while en- 
 dowing historic personages with his own grand 
 language, yet adheres closely to historic record. 
 In comparing, for instance, the assassination of 
 Julius Csesar by Roman conspirators in dramatic 
 form with its prose description in Plutarch, ^ their 
 faithful resemblance is sufficiently evident. Had 
 the fatal deed been seen by eye-witnesses they 
 could hardly describe it with more truth to nature. 
 Plutarch writes of this terrible scene in the 
 Capitol : 
 
 " When Cassar entered, the Senate stood up to show their 
 respect for him, . . . some came about his chair and stood 
 
 ^ " A Greek distinguished for his learning and virtue. . . . 
 The most esteemed of his works are his Lives of illustrious 
 men." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 144 British Writers 
 
 behind it, others met him, pretending to add their petitions 
 to those of TilUus Cimber, on behalf of his brother who was 
 in exile, and they followed him with their joint supplications 
 till he came to his seat. . . . He refused to comply with their 
 requests, and upon their urging him further, began to re- 
 proach them severally for their importunities, when Tillius, 
 laying hold of his robe with both his hands, pulled it down 
 from his neck, which was the signal for the assault. . . . 
 Which way soever he turned he met with blows, and saw 
 their swords levelled at his face and eyes, and was encom- 
 passed, like a wild beast in the toils, on every side." ^ 
 
 Shakespeare, In his dramatic version, makes 
 Csesar thus answer the conspirators now requesting 
 the pardon of PubHus Cimber, and secretly resolved 
 to slay him in case of his expected refusal. Caesar 
 thus speaks in Shakespeare's noble English, yet 
 truly expressing his real feelings, as far as ascertain- 
 able from historical record. Caesar, evidently believ- 
 ing it wrong to pardon Cimber, replies : 
 
 " I am constant as the northern star, 
 Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality 
 There is no fellow in the firmament." 
 
 He then makes a grand comparison, proudly 
 identifying himself, as the supreme ruler of Rome, 
 with the reisrnino^ Sun of Nature. He thus rouses 
 the murderous fury of the republican enthusiasts 
 
 ' Plutarch's " Life of Julius C^sar."
 
 on Classic Lands 145 
 
 around him, of whose fatal design he has no idea. 
 He therefore haughtily replies, as if in fearless 
 majesty or almost absolute power : 
 
 " The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks, 
 They are all fire, and every one doth shine ; 
 But there's but one in all doth hold his place : 
 So, in the world, 'tis furnish'd well with men, 
 And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive ; 
 Yet in the number I do know but one 
 That unassailable holds on his rank, 
 Unshak'd of motion : and that I am he, 
 Let me a little show it, even in this. 
 That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd, 
 And constant do remain to keep him so." 
 
 Caesar is then in the play, as in history, imme- 
 diately stabbed to death by the enraged conspira- 
 tors, Brutus inflicting the last wound, and to whom 
 Caesar exclaims in historic words : 
 
 " Et tu. Brute ! S ^— Then fall, Cassar ! " 
 
 These last words, addressed to the young repub- 
 lican enthusiast by Caesar, between whom there 
 had hitherto been a mutual friendship, are also 
 
 ' Caesar made him one of his most faithful friends. He 
 (Brutus), however, forgot the favour, because Caesar aspired 
 to tyranny. He conspired with many of the most illustrious 
 citizens of Rome against the tyrant, and stabbed him." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 » "And you, Brutus !" 
 
 10
 
 146 British Writers 
 
 recorded by Suetonius,^ whom Shakespeare here 
 follows, and evidently the share he represents 
 Brutus taking in Caesar's assassination is strictly 
 historical. Nor is it likely for an ardent, impet- 
 uous young republican in those fierce days to hear 
 Caesar's proud words without deep exasperation. 
 Despite Caesar's heroic achievements and wise 
 rule, his words, like his real actions, denoted a 
 man bent on obtaining absolute power, and who, if 
 once that system could be justified, seemed in 
 almost every respect well worthy of it. Of this 
 wonderful man, almost equally celebrated as a 
 warrior and as a ruler, Bacon writes, with his 
 usual calm judgment : - 
 
 " He was a man of unruly passions and desires, but ex- 
 tremely clear and settled in his judgment and understanding ; 
 as appears by his ready address to extricate himself both in 
 action and discourse, for no man ever resolved quicker or 
 spoke clearer. But his will and appetite were restless and 
 ever launched out beyond his acquisitions, yet the transitions 
 of his actions were not rash, but well concerted, for he always 
 brought his undertakings to complete and perfect periods. 
 ... He was, without dispute, a man of a great and noble 
 soul, though rather bent upon procuring his own private 
 advantage than good to the pubHc. . . . He was constant, 
 singularly beneficent, and indulgent in his friendships." 
 
 ^ " A Latin historian. Suetonius, in his Lives (of the 
 Caesars), is praised for his impartiality and correctness." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 Essay on Julius Caesar.
 
 on Classic Lands 147 
 
 Bacon proceeds to describe a man likely, if not 
 certain, to make himself a complete despot, as the 
 conspirators apprehended, but which his artful 
 adherent, Mark Antony, ably strove to deny : 
 
 " As he was both by nature and habit led, not to be eminent 
 among great men, but to command among inferiors, he made 
 friends of mean and industrious persons, to whom he alone 
 gave law." 
 
 This system of despotism by a Ruler's assuming 
 sole supreme power was apparently desired and 
 to some extent carried out by the late French 
 Emperor, Napoleon the Third, in his triumph over 
 the French Republicans who had made him their 
 President. In his " Life of Julius Caesar," whom 
 he seems to take for his own model — at least, in 
 some respects — he emphatically writes : 
 
 " When extraordinary facts attest an eminent genius, what 
 is more contrary to good sense than to ascribe to him all the 
 passions and sentiments of mediocrity ! What more erro- 
 neous than not to recognise the pre-eminence of those 
 privileged beings who appear in history from time to time 
 like luminous beacons, dissipating the darkness of their 
 epoch and throwing light into the future, . . ■. When 
 Providence raises up such men as Caesar and Napoleon [his 
 uncle], it is to trace out to peoples the path they ought to 
 follow ; to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era, and 
 to accomplish in a few years the labour of many centuries.
 
 14^ British Writers 
 
 Happy the people who comprehend and follow them ! Woe 
 to those who misunderstand and combat them ! " ' 
 
 Louis Napoleon's rise from President to Emperor 
 of France through the arrest and imprisonment of 
 all the allied leaders against him, is thus described 
 by Sir Archibald Alison, who seems on the whole 
 to rather favour what some others call Napoleon 
 the Third's unjust usurpation over those who had 
 peacefully elected him as President of their 
 Republic : 
 
 "The police and military were entirely at the devotion of 
 the President, and executed energetically all the orders which 
 they received. Before the morning of December 2, 1851, the 
 whole leaders of all the coalesced parties were arrested, the 
 most of them in their beds, and safely lodged in prison. . . . 
 The Empire was in reality established on that day. ... It 
 only remained to see how the revolution was to be received 
 by the inhabitants of France when they came to give their 
 votes in the electoral districts. The results exceeded the 
 most sanguine hopes of the President and his friends. . . . 
 By an overwhelming majority France closed the convulsions 
 of the revolution by a military despotism based on universal 
 suffrage." ^ 
 
 The two celebrated speeches of Brutus and of 
 Mark Antony,3 the former vindicating himself for 
 
 ^ Preface to " Life of Julius Csesar." 
 
 ^ AUson's " History of Europe " (1859), from the fall of 
 Napoleon to the accession of Louis Napoleon. 
 3 " In his public character Antony was brave and coura-
 
 on Classic Lands 149 
 
 his part in Caesar's death, the latter, with consum- 
 mate art, rousing his Roman audience to avenge it, 
 are both recorded by Plutarch, but in comparatively 
 brief, prosaic style. Shakespeare's genius seems 
 in these famous instances to have caught the spirit 
 of the classic orators, while ascribing to them a 
 power of eloquence and beauty in expressions of 
 his own. Plutarch calmly writes that Brutus and 
 his fellow-conspirator, Cassius, differed whether 
 Antony should be also slain or not with Caesar : 
 
 " Which Brutus would not consent to, insisting that an 
 action undertaken in defence of right and the laws must be 
 maintained unsullied and pure of injustice." 
 
 Shakespeare attributed more eloquent words to 
 Brutus, yet expressing the same sentiments with 
 a beauty entirely his own. Cassius proposes : 
 
 " Let Antony and Caesar fall together." 
 
 Brutus replies, little knowing the real character 
 of the brave yet astute Antony : 
 
 *' Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, 
 To cut the head off, and then hack the limbs, 
 Like wrath in death, and envy ^ afterwards ; 
 
 geous, but with the intrepidity of Caesar he possessed all his 
 voluptuous inclinations." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 ' *' Envy in this place, as usual, means hatred." — Staunton's 
 notes to " Shakespeare."
 
 150 British Writers 
 
 For Antony is but a limb of Caesar : 
 
 Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius, 
 
 And, for Mark Antony, think not of him ; 
 For he can do no more than Caesar's arm 
 When Caesar's head is off." 
 
 Cassius, who in this case certainly knows human 
 nature better than Brutus, distrustfully replies : 
 
 ''Yet I fear him ; 
 For in the engrafted love he bears to Caesar, — " 
 
 The sentimental or imaginative Brutus here 
 interrupts his unscrupulous ally : 
 
 " Alas ! good Cassius, do not think of him : 
 If he love Caesar, all that he can do 
 Is to himself take thought,' and die for Caesar." 
 
 In describing Brutus's speech in the Forum ^ to 
 the Romans, trying to justify Caesar's murder, 
 Plutarch writes : 
 
 " And a multitude being gathered together, Brutus made 
 an oration to them very popular and proper, for the state 
 that affairs were then in." 
 
 ' " Abandon himself to grief." — Staunton's notes. 
 
 2 " Many places have the name of Forum, where the 
 Praetor held his Court of Justice." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 151 
 
 While Shakespeare makes him deliver a grand 
 speech to the same effect, beginning : 
 
 " Romans, countrymen, and lovers ! Hear me for my 
 cause ; and be silent, that you may hear : believe me for 
 mine honour ; and have respect to mine honour that you may 
 believe. ... If there be any^in this assembly, any dear friend 
 of Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus's love to C^sar was no 
 less than his. If, then, that friend demand why Brutus rose 
 against Caesar, this is my answer : not that I loved Caesar 
 less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar 
 were living, and die all slaves ; than that Csesar were dead, 
 to live all free men ? " 
 
 Without awaiting answer to this difficult or per- 
 plexing question, Brutus proceeds, in Shakespeare's 
 words, though apparently in accord with the 
 character of this young Roman : 
 
 " As Caesar loved me, I weep for him ; as he was fortunate, 
 I rejoice at it ; as he was valiant, I honour him : but, as he 
 was ambitious, I slew him : there is tears for his love ; joy 
 for his fortune ; honour for his valour ; and death for his 
 ambition." 
 
 Plutarch records that the listening Romans 
 
 " applauded his speech and cried out to him to come down ; 
 they all took confidence and descended into the Forum. . . . 
 Many of the most eminent persons attending Brutus con- 
 ducted him in the midst of them, with great honour, from the 
 Capitol, and placed him in the rostra."
 
 152 British Writers 
 
 Shakespeare makes the crowd exclaim : 
 
 " Live, Brutus, live, live ! 
 Bring him with triumph home unto his house. 
 Give him a statue with his ancestors," &c. 
 
 In comparing Plutarch's prosaic account of Mark 
 Antony's speech to that of Shakespeare over the 
 body of Caesar, the poet's adherence to historic 
 facts, v^^hile adorning rather than disguising them 
 by his splendid language, is strikingly evident.
 
 CHAPTER XIII

 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LUTARCH, in rather dry, precise style, 
 
 says : ^ 
 
 " When the body was brought forth into the Forum, 
 Antony, as the custom was, making a funeral oration in the 
 praise of Caesar, and, finding the multitude moved with his 
 speech passing into the pathetic tone, unfolded the bloody 
 garment of Caesar, showed them in how many places it was 
 pierced and the number of his wounds." 
 
 Antony, in Shakespeare's words, then makes his 
 extraordinary speech, gradually working up his 
 Roman hearers to fury against the assassins, by 
 whose leave he was addressing them. Without 
 at first showing the least excitement, he patheti- 
 cally praises the slain Csesar for his brilliant 
 services and benefits to the Roman people, even 
 appealing to their avarice or love of money : 
 
 " He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 
 Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill : 
 Did this in Caesar seem ambitious ? 
 
 Life of Marcus Brutus." 
 155
 
 156 British Writers 
 
 When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept : 
 
 Ambition should be made of sterner stuff : 
 
 Yet Brutus says he was ambitious ; 
 
 And Brutus is an honourable man. 
 
 You all did see that on the Lupercal ' 
 
 I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 
 
 Which he did thrice refuse : was this ambition ? " 
 
 Antony, by slow degrees 
 *' passing into the pathetic," 
 
 as Plutarch says, proceeds according to Shakes- 
 peare : 
 
 " You all did love him once, not without cause : 
 What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him ? 
 O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts. 
 And men have lost their reason ! Bear with me ; 
 My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 
 And I must pause till it come back to me. 
 
 But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar, 
 . . . Tis his will." 
 
 Before reading it, Antony, as Plutarch records, then 
 showed Caesar's fatal wounds to the assembled 
 crowd, and in Shakespeare's words exclaims, though 
 he could hardly have known the minute particulars 
 
 ' " A place where festivals were yearly celebrated." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 157 
 
 he names unless secretly informed by some eye- 
 witness : 
 
 " Look ! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through : 
 See what a rent the envious Casca made : 
 Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd, 
 
 This was the most unkindest cut of all ; 
 For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, 
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, 
 Quite vanquished him : then burst his mighty heart, 
 And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 
 
 . . . great Caesar fell, 
 O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 
 Then I, and you, and all of us fell down. 
 Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us." 
 
 Then again, piteously asking his hearers to view 
 Caesar s wounds, Antony proceeds : 
 
 "... Look you here ! 
 Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors." 
 
 Plutarch writes, after Antony's words, 
 
 " Now there was nothing to be seen but confusion ; some 
 cried out to kill the murderers," 
 
 and Shakespeare makes the Roman mob call out 
 in vehement sorrow : 
 
 " O piteous spectacle ! 
 O noble Caesar ! 
 O woful day ! 
 O traitors, villains !
 
 158 British Writers 
 
 We will be revenged : seek — burn — fire — kill — slay — let 
 not a traitor live ! " " 
 
 Antony then, according to both Plutarch and 
 Shakespeare, proclaims Caesar's will to the Roman 
 people, leaving them all 
 
 " his walks, his private arbours," 
 and 
 
 " new planted orchards," 
 
 to them and to their heirs for ever. This will, 
 thougrh it migfht not have contained all that Shake- 
 speare mentions, completely turns the public feeling 
 against the conspirators, according to both the 
 classic biographer and the English poet. 
 
 In his Roman play of " Coriolanus," Shake- 
 speare's adherence to classic history is equally clear. 
 This Roman hero and champion, ungratefully 
 banished by his fellow-countrymen, when about in 
 revenge to attack Rome is met by his mother, the 
 stern yet noble Volumnia, who, interceding for 
 Rome, in Plutarch's words : 
 
 " Threw herself down at his feet, as did also his wife and 
 children, upon which Marcius (Coriolanus) crying out, 'O 
 mother, what is it you have done to me ? ' raised her up 
 from the ground, and, pressing her right hand with more than 
 ordinary vehemence, ' You have gained a victory,' said he, 
 
 " Julius Caesar," Act III.
 
 on Classic Lands 159 
 
 * fortunate enough for the Romans, but destructive to your 
 son, whom you, though none else, could have defeated.' " 
 
 He here foresees that his Volscian allies ^ will 
 never forgive him for sparing Rome, against which 
 he was leading them, and he was slain by them 
 soon after the scene with his Roman relatives. 
 
 But Shakespeare ascribes his own grand words 
 to the unfortunate Roman hero at this awful crisis 
 of his public and private history — words which may, 
 indeed, truly express his real feelings, but for their 
 selection Shakespeare is responsible : 
 
 " O, mother, mother ! 
 What have you done ? Behold ! the heavens do ope, 
 The gods look down, and this unnatural scene 
 They laugh at. O, my mother ! mother ! O ! 
 You have won a happy victory for Rome, 
 But for your son — believe it, O, beHeve it — 
 Most dangerously you have with him prevailed, 
 If not most mortal to him. But let it come." ^ 
 
 In the magnificent play of " Antony and 
 Cleopatra " Shakespeare also closely follows 
 history and recorded facts. For instance, the 
 learned Plutarch, describing the many accomplish- 
 ments and charms of Cleopatra, writes with more 
 
 ^ "Volsci. A people of Latium . . . and in the time of 
 the (Roman) republic they became formidable enemies." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 " Coriolanus," Act V,
 
 i6o British Writers 
 
 enthusiasm and perhaps exaggeration than usual 
 with him : 
 
 "The contact of her presence if you Hved with her was 
 irresistible, the attraction of her person, joining with the 
 charm of her conversation and the character that attended 
 all she did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure 
 merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an 
 instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language 
 to another ; so that there were few of the barbarian nations 
 that she answered by an interpreter, to most of them she 
 spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes,^ Hebrews, 
 Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and others whose 
 languages she had learnt." ^ 
 
 Shakespeare, as if having this account in his 
 mind, makes the enamoured Antony say to her, 
 during their occasional brief quarrels : 
 
 " Fie, wrangling queen ! 
 Whom every thing becomes — to chide, to laugh. 
 To weep ; whose every passion fully strives 
 To make itself, in thee, fair and admir'd ! " 3 
 
 Yet Antony, as if at times knowing and dreading 
 the fascinating arts of this extraordinary woman, 
 exclaims, evidently from his heart, to his adherent 
 Enobarbus, who apparently understands Cleopatra 
 better than any one else does : 
 
 ' "A people of Ethiopia who dwelt in caves." — Lem- 
 priere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 ' Plutarch's " Life of Antony." 3 Act I.
 
 on Classic Lands i6i 
 
 " She is cunning past man's thought. 
 
 Would I had never seen her ! " 
 
 To this revelation of regret Enobarbus replies : 
 
 " O sir, you had then left unseen a marvellous piece of 
 work ; which not to have been blessed withal, would have 
 discredited your travel." 
 
 Later in the play, confirming Plutarch's account 
 the shrevi^d Enobarbus describing Cleopatra to 
 Mecaenas, the Roman adherent of young Octavius, 
 the future Emperor of Rome, says : 
 
 " Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety : other women cloy, 
 The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
 Where most she satisfies : for vilest ' things 
 Become themselves in her." 
 
 Even in comparatively trifling details Shake- 
 speare would seem to follow in this grand play 
 especially all the information derivable from history. 
 Thus Plutarch gravely writes : ^ 
 
 " It would be trifling without end to be particular in his 
 [Antonys] follies, but his fishing must not be forgotten. He 
 went out one day to angle with Cleopatra, and, being so un- 
 fortunate as to catch nothing in the presence of his mistress, 
 
 ' Commonest. 
 ^ " Life of Antony." 
 II
 
 1 62 British Writers 
 
 he gave secret orders to the fisherman to dive under water 
 and put fishes that had been ah'eady taken upon his hooks, 
 and these he drew so fast that the Egyptian perceived it. 
 But feigning great admiration, she told everybody how 
 dexterous Antony was." 
 
 Shakespeare, as if mindful of this story, makes 
 Cleopatra's obsequious if not frightened female 
 attendant, Charmian, recall it to her mistress during 
 Antony's absence from Egypt, exclaiming : ^ 
 
 " 'Twas merry when 
 You wager'd on your anghng ; when your diver 
 Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he 
 With fervency drew up." 
 
 Cleopatra then recalling her complete power over 
 
 the absent Roman warrior, replies in triumphant 
 
 recollection : 
 
 " That time !— O times !— 
 I laugh'd him out of patience ; and that night 
 I laugh'd him into patience ; and next morn, 
 Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed ; 
 Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst 
 I wore his sword Philippan." "^ 
 
 » " Antony and Cleopatra," Act II. 
 
 2 ** The sword so named after the great battle at Phihppi " 
 (Staunton's notes). ** A town of Macedonia, celebrated for 
 two battles between Augustus (Octavius) and Antony (allies), 
 and the republican forces of Brutus and Cassius, in which 
 the former obtained the victory." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary.
 
 CHAPTER XIV
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IN comparing Shakespeare's classic plays with 
 their historic origins or foundation, consider- 
 ing the poet's dramatic style and grand language, 
 Johnson's words comparing Pope's translation of 
 Homer with the original, may perhaps be applicable 
 to Shakespeare's English versions : 
 
 " To have added surely can be no great crime, if nothing 
 be taken away. Elegance is surely to be desired, if it be not 
 gained at the expense of dignity." ^ 
 
 Yet in both these cases, like that of Walter Scott 
 in his historical novels, the feelings and spirit 
 of the times portrayed seem carefully studied, 
 owing to that profound knowledge of human nature 
 which both the British poet and the subsequent 
 British novelist possessed to an unrivalled degree. 
 As Macaulay says, when comparing Shakespeare's 
 classic plays with those of the French poet Racine : 
 
 " Life of Pope." 
 
 Its
 
 I 
 
 1 66 British Writers 
 
 " We are sure that the Greeks of Shakespeare bear a far 
 greater resemblance than the Greeks of Racine to the real 
 Greeks who besieged Troy, and for this reason : that the 
 Greeks of Shakespeare are human beings, and the Greeks of 
 Racine mere words printed in capitals at the head of 
 paragraphs of declamation." 
 
 In likewise comparing Scott's superiority to the 
 learned Addison in knowledge of human nature, 
 Macaulay proceeds : ^ 
 
 " No man can possibly think that the Romans of Addison 
 resemble the real Romans so closely as the moss-troopers of 
 Scott resemble the real moss-troopers. Wat Tinlinn and 
 William of Deloraine are not, it is true, persons of so much 
 dignity as Cato. But the dignity of the persons represented 
 has as little to do with the correctness of poetry, as with the 
 correctness of painting." 
 
 Then the able future historian adds, with not 
 ill-natured yet keen sarcasm : 
 
 '' We prefer a gipsy by Reynolds to His Majesty's head on 
 a sign-post, and a Borderer by Scott to a senator by 
 Addison." 
 
 The extraordinary and keen interest with which 
 classic history has inspired modern European 
 writers, and the British especially, survived the 
 lapse of centuries, yet next to Pope's brilliant trans- 
 lation of Homer, perhaps no British writer has so 
 
 » Essay on Moore's " Life of Byron."
 
 on Classic Lands 167 
 
 warmly expressed admiration for Greece, or with 
 such mingled beauty, taste, and poetic charm, as 
 Lord Byron in the earlier part of the last century. 
 This brilliant British poet and the learned British 
 historian, Macaulay, despite their very different 
 characters, talents, and objects, met, as it were, 
 on common ground when mentioning or recalling 
 ancient Greece. Byron's interest in it, although 
 largely founded on its ancient fame, was yet 
 apparently still more aroused by its picturesque 
 scenery and the sad position of its inhabitants, 
 under the oppressive rule of the Turks, both of 
 which, as an observant traveller, he saw around 
 him. Macaulay's love for Greece seems to arise 
 chiefly by recalling the glories of her ancient days. 
 These two brilliantly gifted men, who alike excelled 
 in delighting their readers through the different 
 mediums of attractive poetry and eloquent history, 
 inspired and maintained British interest in Greece 
 probably more than any other European writers 
 ever did or tried to do. Its nearer neighbours, 
 Italians, Austrians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards, 
 scarcely showed the same interest in either ancient 
 or modern Greece as was displayed by these 
 writers from " The remote barbarian Isle." ^ 
 Macaulay thus warmly describes Byron's practical 
 sympathy for the Greeks of his time, who, shortly 
 ' Bulwer Lytton's " Last Days of Pompeii."
 
 m 
 
 1 68 British Writers 
 
 before his death, had plunged into their heroic 
 revolt against the Turks, which although nearly 
 crushed, at last succeeded through European 
 assistance : 
 
 " A Nation once the first among the Nations, eminent in 
 knowledge, pre-eminent in military glory, the cradle of 
 philosophy, of eloquence, and of the fine arts, had been for 
 ages bowed down under a cruel yoke. . . . On a sudden 
 these degraded people had risen on their oppressors. ... As 
 a man of letters. Lord Byron could not but be interested 
 in the event of this contest. ... To Greece he was attached 
 by peculiar ties. He had, when young, resided in that 
 country. Much of his most splendid and most popular 
 poetry had been inspired by its scenery and by its history 
 Sick of inaction, degraded in his own eyes by his private 
 vices and literary failures, pining for untried excitement and 
 honourable distinction, he carried his exhausted body and 
 his wounded spirit to the Grecian camp." 
 
 It was the fate of Greece, after enduring Roman 
 and Venetian rule, to fall under that of Turkish 
 Mohammedans, who to the present time retain 
 a large but diminished part under their dominion. 
 Yet the most famed part, including the cities of 
 Athens, Sparta, and Corinth, after a heroic revolu- 
 tion from 1824 to 1827, with the aid of the English, 
 French, and Russian navies threw off the Turkish 
 yoke and established a small independent kingdom 
 with Athens for its capital. This kingdom has 
 been since ruled by a Bavarian and a Danish
 
 on Classic Lands 169 
 
 sovereign, while the rest of Greece remains under 
 the Turks. It so remains, apparently, by not only 
 the consent but the wish of the Christian Powers, 
 either through jealousy of each other, or wishing 
 not to offend the Mohammedans generally, who in 
 parts of Asia and Africa obey French, British, 
 and Russian rule, and seem on the whole loyal 
 to Christian rulers. Yet while these three 
 Powers now seem to practically prefer Turkish 
 authority over many Christian subjects to allowing 
 each other to rule them, such purely political ideas 
 had no friend in the accomplished, imaginative 
 Byron. He visited Greece during the beginning 
 of the Greek revolt in the earlier part of the 
 nineteenth century. His refined mind being well 
 stored with the beauties of ancient Greek literature, 
 his classical education had taught him to view 
 it with much the same admiration as Pope likely 
 felt when translating the " Iliad," and subsequently 
 as Macaulay expresses when mentioning Greek 
 history. In Byron's poetic mind the remote period 
 of ancient Greek fame reappeared while travelling 
 in modern Greece, oppressed by and hating 
 Turkish rule. Yet this illustrious land of antiquity 
 had hitherto not produced men of sufficient talent 
 or genius to arouse it from its degradation, or to 
 recall by word or deed its long-departed fame, 
 while its grand recollections never left Byron's
 
 I JO British Writers 
 
 mind. In him, even when amid proud, overruling 
 Turks, or complaining, discontented Greek subjects, 
 the spirit of long vanished Greek poets, sages, and 
 warriors seems to arouse some of their departed 
 energy. 
 
 His enthusiasm thus enabled him, through his 
 poetic genius, to arouse his powerful but distant 
 fellow-countrymen to practically come to the rescue 
 of the remote posterity of a famous nation, 
 immortal indeed in its intellectual past, but in 
 his time a helpless victim of Mohammedan political 
 rule. Yet the Turks certainly find some able 
 defenders even among Christian writers. Their 
 remarkable race, usually surrounded by foes rather 
 than allies, has for centuries ruled some of the 
 most famous lands of antiquity — Greece, Syria, 
 Asia Minor, and Egypt — and still retains some 
 authority over all except Southern Greece and 
 some Greek islands. The celebrated city of 
 Constantinople is still the constant residence of 
 the Turkish Sultan. Its grand church. Saint 
 Sophia, or Church of the Holy Wisdom, formerly 
 a Christian church is now a Mohammedan mosque, 
 where its Turkish sovereign often pays his 
 devotions. The Turks themselves are at present 
 friendly rather than hostile to the European 
 Christian Powers, and their national character 
 is thus ably reviewed by a distinguished British
 
 on Classic Lands 171 
 
 historian, writing in the middle and latter part 
 of the last century : 
 
 ''The character of the Turks taken as individuals, has 
 many estimable qualities which have gone far to counteract 
 the disastrous effects of their system of government. . . . 
 They have left the labours of the soil, the cares of commerce, 
 to the Armenians and the islanders (Greeks) of the 
 Archipelago. . . . They deem the wielding of the sword or 
 managing a steed the only honourable occupation. . . . 
 Fearless, honest, and trustworthy, their word is their bond. 
 Inactivity is their great characteristic, repose their enjoy- 
 ment. . . . To sit on a carpet, smoke a scented pipe, and 
 gaze under shade on the dancing of the sunbeams on the 
 waves of the Bosphorus ^ is their supreme enjoyment." ^ 
 
 Byron was evidently no admirer of the Turks. 
 He poetically deplored all he saw or heard of 
 their rule in Greece, and wrote as if addressing 
 the spirit of ancient Greece, though by writing 
 in eloquent English he virtually appealed to his 
 own strong, free nation in her behalf, and in words 
 of peculiarly attractive power : 3 
 
 " Fair Greece, sad relic of departed worth, 
 Immortal though no more, though fallen, great." 
 
 Then, as if deploring the absence of Greek leaders 
 
 ' "Two narrow straits situate at the confines of Europe 
 and Asia." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 Alison's " History of Europe," chap. xiii. 
 
 3 " Childe Harold," canto ii.
 
 172 British Writers 
 
 of ability, though some certainly appeared during 
 their finally successful revolution against the 
 Turks, he writes : 
 
 " Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth 
 And long accustom'd bondage uncreate. 
 
 Nor rise thy sons, but idle rail in vain 
 Trembhng beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, 
 From birth till death enslaved ; in word, in deed, un- 
 mann'd," 
 
 Surveying the remaining beauty of the oppressed 
 land, he continues, trying to arouse or encourage 
 a spirit of revolt : 
 
 " In all save form alone how chang'd, and who 
 That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, 
 Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew 
 With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty." 
 
 Then emphatically addressing the Greeks now in 
 revolt or in its contemplation, Byron, with more 
 poetical beauty than political knowledge or fore- 
 sight, as the future of Greece happily proved, 
 writes with eager yet ignorant enthusiasm : 
 
 " Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not 
 Who would be free themselves must strike the blow ? 
 By their right arms the conquest must be wrought."
 
 on Classic Lands 173 
 
 He then asks and answers a question himself, 
 but his answer was nobly contradicted a few 
 years after it was written : 
 
 " Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye ? No." 
 
 For some few years after beheld '* the Gaul and 
 the Muscovite " united with the English making 
 war with the Turks, and thus freeing the Greeks 
 from their yoke when their revolution was on 
 the point of being quelled by allied Turks and 
 Egyptians. " 
 
 This joint European interference resulted in 
 the established freedom of Southern Greece with 
 many of its islands, since which it remains an 
 independent kingdom, and is now under a Danish 
 monarch. The "right arms" of the poor, out- 
 numbered Greeks were indeed near utter extermi- 
 nation, when they were unexpectedly freed by the 
 sea victory of Navarino,^ the British fleet being 
 allied with the French and Russians against the 
 Turks, now aided by their Egyptian tributaries 
 headed by Ibrahim Pasha, son of the Pasha of 
 Egypt. The defeat of the Mohammedans was 
 complete, yet the Turks complained that they had 
 given no offence to any of the allied European 
 
 * Alison's *' History of Europe," vol. iii. 
 ' 1827.
 
 174 British Writers 
 
 Powers. They had, however, to retire completely 
 from the contest, just as they were on the point 
 of quelling the Greek insurrection, and thus the 
 destiny of the liberated land was left to the decision 
 of Britain, France, and Russia. 
 
 ■^1
 
 CHAPTER XV
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 YET the gifted English poet was fated to die 
 in Greece, shortly before its final emancipa- 
 tion.^ Byron's beautiful lines, therefore, continued 
 to mournfully recall the past fame of Greece, while 
 he was denied in this world knowing of her complete 
 deliverance from the Turkish tyranny he had so 
 eloquently denounced. In the true spirit of an 
 appreciating British scholar and in words which 
 modern Greeks might admire, though but partly 
 understand, and would likely be totally incompre- 
 hensible to most if not to all Turks, Byron wrote, 
 still dwelling on his beloved vanished past : 
 
 " And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, 
 Land of lost gods and godlike men art thou ! 
 Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, 
 Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now ; 
 Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, 
 Commingling slowly with heroic earth, 
 Broke by the share of every rustic plough : 
 So perish monuments of mortal birth." 
 
 ■ April, 1824. Alison's '' History of Europe." 
 
 12 W
 
 178 British Writers 
 
 Then he adds a beautiful tribute to the immortal 
 value of transmitted wisdom : 
 
 " So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth." 
 
 He proceeds, poetically describing those imperishable 
 charms of external nature in Greece, which his 
 observant mind recognised as having escaped 
 the destructive course of a disastrous religious and 
 political history : 
 
 ** Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild, 
 
 Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled.' 
 
 Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,^ 
 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare ; 
 Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair." 
 
 Again, when recalling the beauties of classic 
 Greek literature, probably well taught and explained 
 to him by English instructors, Byron, the travelling 
 scholar, in a spirit rather like Macaulay, writes 
 with a learned enthusiasm and love for his earliest 
 
 ' " Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. . . . The actions of 
 Minerva are numerous as well as the kindness by which she 
 endeared herself to mankind." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 3 " Apollo, son of Jupiter, is often confounded with the Sun." 
 —Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 179 
 
 classical education that would have delighted Scott's 
 worthy tutor, Dominie Sampson : ^ 
 
 " Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground ; 
 No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, 
 But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, 
 And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, 
 Till the sense aches with gazing to behold 
 The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon." 
 
 While the varied charms and intellectual grandeur 
 of ancient Greece have so delighted British poets, 
 historians, and travellers, its Roman conqueror and 
 successor has evidently been pre-eminently famous 
 for her more practical or lasting benefits to mankind 
 generally. Gibbon, who devoted the powers of 
 his shrewd, exact, comprehensive mind to the 
 profound study of the Roman character as well 
 as of the Roman Empire, of which he wrote the 
 unrivalled History, writes calmly and with perfect 
 truth : 2 
 
 " It is not alone by the rapidity or extent of conquest that 
 we should estimate the greatness of Rome. The sovereign of 
 the Russian deserts commands a larger portion of the globe. 
 . . . But the firm edifice of Roman power was raised and 
 preserved by the wisdom of ages. The obedient provinces of 
 Trajan and the Antonines were united by laws and adorned 
 
 ' " Guy Mannering." 
 
 = " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. ii.
 
 i8o British Writers 
 
 by arts. They might occasionally suffer by the partial abuse 
 of delegated authority ; but the general principle of govern- 
 ment was wise and simple and beneficent. . . . The policy of the 
 Emperors and the Senate, as far as it concerned religion, was 
 happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened and 
 by the habits of the superstitious part of their subjects. The 
 various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman 
 world were all considered by the people as equally true, by 
 the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as 
 equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual 
 indulgence, but even religious concord." 
 
 Gibbon carefully proceeds, describing the position of 
 the Roman Empire in its state of religious peace 
 as evidently a contrast to that of Christian and of 
 Mohammedan countries during part of the Middle 
 Ages : 
 
 " The superstition of the people was not embittered by any 
 mixture of theological rancour ; nor was it confined by the 
 chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, 
 though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with 
 implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, 
 gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular 
 disorder, or a distant journey perpetually disposed him to 
 multiply the articles of his belief and to enlarge the Hst of his 
 protectors. The thin texture of the pagan mythology was 
 interwoven with various but not discordant materials." 
 
 The historian proceeds as if inspired or surrounded 
 by some of the pagan poets and philosophers, 
 eloquently advocating their fanciful, interesting 
 faith :
 
 on Classic Lands i8i 
 
 " As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had 
 lived, or who had died for the benefit of their country, were 
 exalted to a state of power and immortality, it was universally 
 confessed that they deserved if not the adoration, at least the 
 reverence of mankind. The deities of a thousand groves and 
 a thousand streams possessed in peace their local and re- 
 spective influence, nor could the Roman who deprecated the 
 wrath of the Tiber deride the Egyptian who presented his 
 offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. The visible 
 powers of Nature, the planets, and the elements, were the 
 same throughout the universe. The invisible governors of 
 the moral world were inevitably cast in a similar mould of 
 fiction and allegory. Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its 
 divine representative ; every art and profession its patron." 
 
 Gibbons proceeds about the general religious 
 toleration and concord throughout the Roman 
 Empire, despite its almost despotic, and occasionally 
 tyrannical, political rule : 
 
 *' Such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations 
 were less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance 
 of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the 
 barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily 
 persuaded themselves that under various names and with 
 various ceremonies, they adored the same deities. The 
 elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful and almost 
 regular form to the polytheism of the ancient world. . . . 
 The public authority was everywhere exercised by the 
 ministers of the Senate and of the emperors, and that authority 
 was absolute and without control. But the same salutary 
 maxims of government which had secured the peace and 
 obedience of Italy were extended to the most distant 
 conquests. A nation of Romans was gradually formed in 
 the provinces, by the double expedient of introducing
 
 1 82 British Writers 
 
 colonies and of admitting the most faithful and deserving 
 of the provincials to the freedom of Rome. ' Wheresoever 
 the Roman conquers he inhabits ' is a very just observation 
 of Seneca/ confirmed by history and experience." 
 
 Later in the same chapter Gibbon says : 
 
 " It is a just though trite observation that victorious Rome 
 was herself subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal 
 writers who still command the admiration of modern Europe,^' 
 soon became the favourite object of study and imitation in 
 Italy and the western provinces." 3 
 
 ' " The ill-fated, philosophical teacher of the young Roman 
 Emperor Nero, and who was forced to commit suicide by the 
 order of his Imperial pupil." — Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, 
 also Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 Gibbon wrote his History between the years 1776-1788. 
 (" Student's English Literature.") From the subsequent 
 writings of Byron, Gladstone, Lord Derby, Macaulay, Bulwer 
 Lytton, Lecky, &c., the " admiration " Gibbon names seems 
 to have since increased, rather than diminished, amongst 
 influential as well as amongst learned Englishmen. 
 
 3 " DecUne and Fall," chap. ii.
 
 CHAPTER XVI
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE interesting part which the pagan deities 
 were believed to take in the wars of men, 
 and the opposite sides they favoured, are con- 
 sistently recorded by both the grand classic poets, 
 Homer the Greek and Virgil the Italian. The 
 latter, living in the happy and glorious reign of 
 Augustus Csesar, wrote, perhaps, partly to gratify 
 his Roman sovereign and fellow-countrymen re- 
 presenting a band of Trojan fugitives escaping 
 from their destroyed capital under command ot 
 the gallant ^neas, as the original ancestry of 
 the Romans destined by the gods to become 
 the rulers, yet not the oppressors, of their Greek 
 conquerors. While Homer has described Neptune 
 favouring the victorious Greeks in the '* Iliad," 
 Virgil in his turn describes the opposing influences 
 of the two rival goddesses, Juno and Venus, 
 in the " ^neid," the former favouring the 
 Greeks and the latter the unfortunate Trojans. 
 
 Juno, as if apprehending the future triumph of the 
 
 185
 
 1 86 British Writers 
 
 latter, now sailing in the Mediterranean, seeking 
 a refuge, entreats yEolus, King of the Winds, to 
 destroy the wandering fleet. Virgil's noble poem 
 found an able English translator in the poet 
 Dryden, whose rendering Dr. Johnson carefully 
 compares to Pope's rendering of Homer's " Iliad." 
 He writes about Dryden's works with the profound 
 interest of a learned scholar : 
 
 " The expectation of his work was undoubtedly great ; the 
 nation considered its honour as interested in the event. . . . 
 the hopes of the public were not disappointed. ' He pro- 
 duced,' says Pope, ' the most noble and spirited translation 
 I know in any language.' " 
 
 " It certainly excelled whatever had appeared in English, 
 and appears to have satisfied his friends and for the most 
 part to have silenced his enemies." ^ 
 
 In his " Life of Pope " Johnson makes the follow- 
 ing able, picturesque comparison between these 
 two eminent English translators of the Greek 
 "Iliad" and the Latin "^neid": 
 
 '' Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid, Pope is always 
 smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural 
 field, rising into inequalities and diversified by the varied 
 exuberance of abundant vegetation. Pope's is a velvet lawn, 
 mown by the scythe and levelled by the roller." 
 
 Virgil, in Dryden's version, thus represents the 
 ^ " Life of Dryden."
 
 on Classic Lands 187 
 
 vindictive Queen Juno addressing the King of the 
 Winds, but, fortunately for the Trojans, without 
 the knowledge or sanction of the supreme 
 Jupiter : 
 
 " O ^olus ! For to thee, the King of Heav'n, 
 The power of tempests and of winds has giv'n ; 
 Thy force alone their fury can restrain 
 And smooth the waves, or swell the troubl'd main." 
 
 After thus soliciting the god, Juno practically 
 reveals her meaning and hatred of the Trojans : 
 
 " A race of wandering slaves, abhorr'd by me. 
 With prosperous passage, cut the Tuscan Sea ; 
 To fruitful Italy their course they steer, 
 And for their vanquish'd gods design new temples there." 
 
 She then adjures him fiercely to destroy them, 
 promising him those singular bribes or rewards 
 believed so acceptable even to the heathen deities 
 from their devout suppliants : 
 
 " Raise all thy winds, with might involve the skies, 
 Sink or disperse my fatal enemies. 
 Twice seven the charming daughters of the main 
 Around my person wait and bear my train ; 
 Succeed my wish and second my design, 
 The fairest Deiopeia shall be thine." 
 
 To these tempting words ^Eolus answers com- 
 pliantly, with evident respect for Juno, as being 
 the wife of the ruling Jupiter :
 
 1 88 British Writers 
 
 U } 
 
 Tis yours, O Queen, to will 
 The work which duty binds me to fulfil : 
 These airy kingdoms and this wide command 
 Are all the presents of your bounteous hand, 
 Yours is my sovereign's grace, and as your guest 
 I sit with gods at their celestial feast. 
 Raise tempests at your pleasure, or subdue, 
 Dispose of empire which I hold from you." 
 
 He accordingly rouses his obeying winds, and a 
 terrific sea storm ensues at his command ; when 
 Neptune the Sea-king, who, though favouring the 
 Greeks in the "Iliad" is now apparently tempted by 
 jealousy of y^olus to favour or pity the Trojan 
 fugitives, hears the tempest, and angrily rebukes 
 the winds for thus disturbing his special kingdom 
 of the sea : 
 
 " Displeas'd, and fearing for his wat'ry reign, 
 He rear'd his awful head above the main ; 
 Serene in majesty then rolled his eyes 
 Around the space of earth, and seas and skies ; 
 He saw the Trojan fleet dispers'd, distress'd. 
 By stormy winds and wintry Heav'n oppress'd." 
 
 He then summons Eurus ^ and the western blast: 
 
 " And first an angry glance on both he cast. 
 Then thus rebuk'd : ' Audacious winds ! from whence 
 This bold attempt, this rebel insolence ? 
 
 <( ( 
 
 Eurus.' A wind blowing from the eastern parts of the 
 world." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 189 
 
 Is it for you to ravage seas and lands 
 Unauthoris'd by my supreme command, 
 To raise such mountains on the troubl'd main ? 
 Whom I ' " 
 
 Neptune here pauses in making an apparent threat, 
 and resumes practically : 
 
 " * But first 'tis fit the billows to restrain, 
 And then you shall be taught obedience to my reign.' " 
 
 Neptune then sends off the rebuked winds to 
 their king .^olus, with reproaches for interfering 
 with his subjected sea, exclaiming in majestic 
 anger : 
 
 " ' Hence to your lord my royal mandate bear ; 
 The realms of ocean and the fields of air 
 Are mine, not his : by fatal lot to me 
 The liquid empire fell, and trident of the sea, 
 His pow'r to hollow caverns is confin'd. 
 There let him reign the jailor of the wind.' 
 
 He spoke, and while he spoke he smooth'd the sea, 
 Dispell'd the darkness, and restor'd the day. 
 Cymothoe,' Triton,^ and the Sea-green train 
 
 ^ *' One of the Nereids. . . . nymphs of the sea, . . . 
 Their duty was to attend upon the more powerful deities of 
 the sea and to be subservient to the will of Neptune. . . . 
 They are represented as young and handsome virgins, sitting 
 on dolphins and holding Neptune's trident in their hands, 
 or sometimes garlands of flowers." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 2 '* A sea deity, son of Neptune." — Ibid.
 
 190 British Writers 
 
 Of beauteous nymphs, the daughters of the main, 
 
 Clear from the rocks the vessel with their hands ; 
 
 The god himself with ready trident stands, 
 
 And opes the deep and spreads the moving sands, 
 
 Then heaves them off the sholes where'er he guides 
 
 His finny coursers, and in triumph rides, 
 
 The waves unruffle and the sea subsides." 
 
 Virgil then indulges in a practical human com- 
 parison thus rendered by Dryden. It might 
 almost recall some riotous parliamentary elections 
 especially in Ireland, even at the present time : 
 
 " As when in tumults rise th' ignoble crowd 
 Mad are their motions and their tongues are loud. 
 And stones and brands in rattling vollies fly, 
 And all the rustic arms that fury can supply. 
 If then some grave and pious man appear 
 They hush their noise and lend a list'ning ear ; 
 He soothes with sober words their angry mood 
 And quenches their innate desire of blood: 
 So when the Father of the flood appears, 
 And o'er the seas his sov'reign trident rears, 
 Their fury falls ; he skims the liquid plains 
 High on his chariot, and with loosen'd reins 
 Majestic moves along, and awful peace maintains." ^ 
 
 Neptune's prompt calming of the tempestuous 
 sea now enables the Trojan fugitives to pursue 
 their voyage in safety : 
 
 '' ^neid," book i. 
 
 ..J,
 
 on Classic Lands 191 
 
 " The weary Trojans ply their shatter'd oars 
 To nearest land, and make the Libyan shores,' ' ^ 
 
 The sea-king, by his last words and orders, has 
 thus rather changed in his sympathies from those 
 he expressed in Homer's " I Had," when aiding the 
 Greeks, as he now practically rescues their 
 defeated, flying foes. The Trojans, however, have, 
 fortunately, a yet more powerful friend in Venus, 
 the goddess of beauty, who appeals on their behalf 
 during their perilous voyage to the supreme 
 Jupiter. Venus, the mother of the Trojan chief 
 v^neas by the Greek Anchises,^ thus reverently, 
 beseeches the sublime and almost omnipotent 
 deity : 
 
 " O King of Gods and Men, whose awful hand 
 Disperses thunder on the seas and land, 
 Disposing all with absolute command, 
 How could my pious son thy pow'r incense, 
 Or what, alas ! is vanish'd Troy's offence ? 
 Our hope of Italy not only lost 
 On various seas, by various tempests tost, 
 But shut from every shore and barr'd from every coast." 
 
 ' " A name given to Africa." — Lempriere's Classical Dic- 
 tionary. 
 
 2 " He was of such a beautiful complexion that Venus 
 came down from heaven on mount Ida, in the form of a 
 nymph, to enjoy his company." — Ibid.
 
 i()2 British Writers 
 
 Venus then reminds Jupiter of his promise, 
 pleasing indeed to the Roman world of Virgil's 
 time to admire and believe : 
 
 '' You promis'd once a progeny divine 
 Of Romans rising from the Trojan line 
 In after-times should hold the world in awe, 
 And to the land and ocean give the law. 
 How is your doom revers'd which eas'd my care ? 
 When Troy was ruin'd in that cruel war ? 
 Then Fates to Fates I could oppose ; but now 
 When Fortune still pursues her former blow 
 What can I hope ? What worse can still succeed, 
 What end of labours has your will decreed ? " 
 
 Jupiter, in answering yet more of her pathetic 
 pleading, is thus described by the pagan poet, whose 
 own reverent words indicate a believer in his divine 
 power : 
 
 "To whom the Father of th' immortal race, 
 Smiling with that serene, indulgent face 
 With which he drives the clouds and clears the skies, 
 First gave a holy kiss, then thus replies." 
 
 His answer is indeed a grand foreshadowing 
 of the future power and glory of the Romans, 
 which subsequent history fully verified. 
 
 Jupiter's reply to Venus foretells in noble 
 language the future triumphant rise of Rome to be 
 finally accomplished by the descendants of those 
 Trojan fugitives whom he now protects from Juno's
 
 on Classic Lands 193 
 
 enmity ; and, doubtless to the thankful delight of 
 Venus, says : 
 
 " Daughter, dismiss thy fears to thy desire, 
 The Fates of thine are iix'd and stand entire ; 
 Thou shalt behold thy wish'd Lavinian walls * 
 And ripe for heav'n when Fate ^neas calls, 
 Then shalt thou bear him up sublime to me. 
 No councils have revers'd my firm decree." 
 
 ' " Lavinium, a town of Italy built by vEneas, and called 
 by that name in honour of Lavinia, the founder's wife." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 13
 
 CHAPTER XVII
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IT is said that Virgil, shortly before his death, 
 wished his splendid poem to be destroyed, but 
 the Emperor Augustus, one of the best, if not the 
 very best of all the Roman sovereigns, had it pre- 
 served, and it has certainly formed ever since a 
 beautiful poetic accompaniment to the recorded 
 facts of Roman history. ^ Jupiter clearly predicts 
 the future Roman power in words which recorded 
 history has fully confirmed, and with part of which 
 Virgil was doubtless acquainted when writing in the 
 glorious and happy reign of Augustus : 
 
 " The subject world shall Rome's dominion own 
 And prostrate shall adore the Nation of the Gown." 
 
 » " The ' ^neid ' was begun, as some suppose, at the 
 particular request of Augustus, and the poet visibly described 
 in the pious and benevolent character of his hero the amiable 
 qualities of his Imperial patron, . . . He ordered, as his last 
 will, his unfinished poem to be burnt. These last injunctions 
 were disobeyed, and, according to the words of an ancient
 
 19^ British Writers 
 
 Virgil, ascribing to Jupiter his grand prophecy 
 of Roman greatness, proceeds in words specially- 
 gratifying to his sovereign, Augustus: 
 
 " An age is ripening in revolving Fate 
 When Rome shall overturn the Grecian state. 
 
 Then Caesar, from the Julian stock shall rise, 
 Whose empire ocean and whose fame the skies 
 Alone shall bound." 
 
 This practical exaggeration about the extent of the 
 Roman Empire which, in its best days, never com- 
 prised the whole even of the limited world then 
 known, seems the favourite idea of many Roman 
 writers. Yet this belief of universal Roman 
 dominion seems to have been specially prevalent 
 during the peaceful and prosperous reign of 
 Augustus Csesar. As a recent English theological 
 writer observes : 
 
 " The estabhshment of the Augustan monarchy, expressing 
 the material and moral unity of so many climes and nations, 
 penetrated the Roman mind still more deeply with a sense of 
 the vastness of the national power and the boundless extent 
 of its dominion. . . . A'glance on the map of the world, as it 
 is known in our own times, will suffice to reduce these vaunts 
 
 poet, Augustus saved his favourite Troy from a second 
 conflagration." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 199 
 
 to their proper limits. ... It will be fairer, however, to 
 measure the ideas of the Romans by the knowledge they 
 themselves possessed ; though, judged even by this test, the 
 extravagance of their notions will stand reproved." ^ 
 
 The same proud idea is indicated in the well- 
 known Imperial decree in the Bible, which Augustus 
 issued — 
 
 " That all the world should be taxed." 
 
 This order must have been sent forth about the time 
 that Virgil was writing these lines. Yet at that 
 period all Northern and part of Central Europe, 
 Northern and Eastern Asia, and the West and 
 South of Africa, were alike beyond the limit of 
 Roman rule, if not beyond that of Roman know- 
 ledge. Virgil, however, probably sincerely admiring 
 his powerful and, in many respects, benevolent 
 sovereign, again thus alludes to him by describing 
 Jupiter, continuing in his praise about his vast 
 dominions : 
 
 " Whom fraught with Eastern spoils 
 Our heaven, the just reward of human toils, 
 Securely shall repay with rites divine, 
 And incense shall ascend before his sacred shrine." 
 
 ' Merivale's " Romans under the Empire," chap, xxxviii. 
 He wrote this work between 1850-62.
 
 200 British Writers 
 
 These words clearly predict the future exaltation 
 of Augustus to the position of a god by his grateful 
 subjects, whom he seems by most accounts to have 
 ruled with admirable success, wisdom, and true 
 glory. As Merivale observes of Augustus : ^ 
 
 "His intellect expanded with his fortunes, and his soul 
 grew with his intellect. The Emperor was not less mag- 
 nanimous than he was magnificent. With the world at his 
 feet he began to conceive the real grandeur of his position ; 
 he learnt to comprehend the manifold variety of the interests 
 subjected to him, he rose to a sense of the awful mission 
 imposed upon him." 
 
 Virgil, well knowing the peaceful inclination of 
 his great sovereign, proceeds in words which he 
 might know would specially please him, attributing 
 them to Jupiter, truly prophesying Roman happiness 
 under his reign : 
 
 " Then dire debate and impious war shall cease, 
 And the stern age be softened into peace, 
 Then banish'd Faith shall once again return, 
 And Vestal fires in hallowed temples burn,=^ 
 
 ' " Romans under the Empire," chap, xxxix. 
 
 ^ " The employment of the Vestals (priestesses among the 
 Romans) was to take care that the sacred fire of Vesta (a 
 goddess, sister to Ceres and Juno) was not extinguished, for 
 if it ever happened it was deemed the prognostic of great 
 calamities to the State." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 201 
 
 And Remus' with Quirinus^ shall sustain 
 
 The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain." 
 
 Shakespeare evidently takes much the same view 
 of Augustus Csesar who, when young, was termed 
 Octavius, as the loyal Latin poet does during that 
 Emperor's middle age or declining years. The 
 English poet, consistently with practical history, 
 makes him exclaim on the day of the decisive battle 
 of Actium when, by the defeat of Antony, he became 
 sole ruler of the vast Roman Empire : 
 
 " The time of universal peace is near : 
 Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nook'd world 
 Shall bear the olive freely." 3 
 
 Yet these noble, comprehensive words can only 
 mean the limited territory under Roman dominion, 
 which, however, during his reign enjoyed, as he 
 expected and intended, unusual and prosperous 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Bacon's emphatic account of this illustrious 
 Emperor fully agrees with Shakespeare's, and 
 
 ^ The twin brother of Romulus. 
 
 ^ '' * Quirinus.' This name was given to Romulus when he 
 had been made a god by his superstitious subjects, . . . and 
 it is not to be wondered that he received such distinguished 
 honours when the Romans considered him as the founder 
 of their city and empire." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 3 " Antony and Cleopatra," Act IV.
 
 202 British Writers 
 
 apparently confirms the long previous praises 
 bestowed on him by his devoted poetical, as well 
 as political subject, Virgil : 
 
 " If ever mortal had a grand, serene, well regulated mind it 
 was Augustus Czesar, as appears by the heroical actions of his 
 early youth. . . . Augustus, sober and mindful of his mortality, 
 seemed to have thoroughly weighed his ends and laid them 
 down in admirable order. Hence in his youth he affected 
 power ; in his middle age dignity ; in his decHne of life 
 pleasure ; and in his old age fame and the good of posterity." ' 
 
 The extraordinary success and practical enlighten- 
 ment of the Roman Empire, at least during the 
 reigns of its best rulers, have been most carefully 
 studied and explained by a recent British historian, 
 Mr. Lecky, who writes : 
 
 "TravelHng had become more easy, and perhaps more 
 frequent, than it has been at any other period before the 
 nineteenth century. The subjection of the whole civilised 
 world to a single rule removed the chief obstacles to locomo- 
 tion. Magnificent roads, which modern nations have rarely 
 rivalled and never surpassed, intersected the entire empire, 
 and relays of post-horses enabled the voyager to proceed with 
 an astonishing rapidity. . . . The European shores of the 
 Mediterranean and the port of Alexandria ^ were thronged 
 
 ^ " Essay on Augustus." 
 
 2 "A grand and extensive city, built, 332 e.g., on the 
 western side of the Delta by Alexander (the Great). The 
 illustrious founder intended it not only for the capital of
 
 on Classic Lands 203 
 
 with vessels. Romans traversed the whole extent of the 
 empire on political, military, or commercial errands, or in 
 search of health, or knowledge, or pleasure. The entrancing 
 beauties of Como and of Tempe, the soft winters of Sicily, 
 the artistic wonders and historic recollections of Athens and 
 of the Nile attracted their thousands, while Roman luxury 
 needed the products of the remotest lands, and the demand 
 for animals for the amphitheatre spread Roman enterprise 
 into the wildest deserts. In the capital, the toleration 
 accorded to different creeds was such that the city soon 
 became a miniature of the world. Almost every variety of 
 charlatanism and of belief displayed itself unchecked, and 
 boasted its train of proselytes. Foreign ideas were in every 
 form in the ascendant. Greece, which had presided over the 
 intellectual development of Rome, acquired a new influence 
 under the favouring policy of Hadrian,^ and Greek became 
 the language of some of the later, as it had been of the 
 earHest, writers. Egyptian religion and philosophies excited 
 the wildest enthusiasm. As early as the reign of Augustus 
 there were many thousand of Jewish residents at Rome, and 
 their manners and creed spread widely among the people." ^ 
 
 Egypt but of his immense conquests, and the commercial 
 advantages which its situation commanded continued to 
 improve from the time of Alexander till the invasion of the 
 Saracens in the seventh century." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 ^ " The fifteenth Emperor of Rome. In the beginning of 
 his reign he followed the virtues of his adopted father and 
 predecessor, Trajan." — Ibid. 
 
 ' Lecky's " European Morals," vol. i.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE superiority of Roman legislative rule, 
 especially under the Emperors, apparently 
 accompanied its authority both at home and abroad, 
 and has been thus acknowledged by able English 
 lawyers of the eighteenth century : 
 
 " The mercantile law (in Britain) is deducible in great 
 part from the Imperial code of Rome. It is chiefly conver- 
 sant with personal property, the laws regulating which are 
 to be looked for in those of Rome." ' 
 
 In perhaps no other history has the intellectual 
 and practical progress of mankind been so remark- 
 able or so consistent as in that of the pagan 
 Romans. Gibbon at some length examines the 
 value and excellence of Roman, laws especially 
 those under the Emperor Justinian,^ one of the 
 wisest or most practical of the Emperors , and of 
 whom he says : 
 
 * Blackstone's " Commentaries," chap. Hi. 
 
 * '' Decline and Fall," chap. xliv. 
 
 207
 
 2o8 British Writers 
 
 *' Under his reign and by hiS'care the civil jurisprudence 
 was digested in the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects, 
 and the Institutes ; the public reason of the Romans has 
 been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic insti- 
 tutions of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command 
 the respect or obedience of independent nations." 
 
 The learned historian here makes an instructive 
 reflection, showing not only his own good sense 
 but also his fervent interest in all connected with 
 Roman history : 
 
 "Wise or fortunate is the prince who connects his own 
 reputation with the honour and interest of a perpetual order 
 of men. The defence 'of their founder is the iirst cause 
 which in every age has exercised the zeal and industry of the 
 civilians. . . . The idolatry of love has provoked, as it usually 
 happens, the rancour of opposition ; the character of Justinian 
 has been exposed to the blind vehemence of flattery and 
 invective." 
 
 Gibbon proceeds to allude to his own personal 
 feeling and sense of duty as a historian, which he 
 seldom does, and his words, therefore, may be of 
 the more value and interest : 
 
 " Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and 
 candour of history, and directed by the most temperate and 
 skilful guides." 
 
 Here Gibbon gives a short list of trusted 
 authorities, and continues :
 
 on Classic Lands 209 
 
 " I enter with just diffidence on the subject of civil law, 
 which has exhausted so many learned Hves and clothed the 
 walls of such spacious libraries. . . . The laws of a nation 
 form the most instructive portion of its history." ' 
 
 And later on in the same chapter Gibbon shrewdly 
 observes : 
 
 " The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and 
 experience, and the advantage both of method and materials 
 is naturally assumed by the most recent authors." 
 
 Thus in imaginative poetry, in martial history, 
 and in legal study the greatness of the Romans 
 has been acknowledged by the ablest of civilised 
 writers, and in an earlier chapter Gibbon emphati- 
 cally says : ^ 
 
 " The celebrated ' Institutes ' of Justinian are addressed 
 to the youth of his dominions who had devoted themselves 
 to the study of Roman jurisprudence, and the sovereign 
 condescends to animate their diligence by the assurance that 
 their skill and ability would in time be rewarded by an 
 adequate share in the government. . . . After a regular 
 course of education, which lasted live years, the students 
 dispersed themselves through the provinces in search of 
 fortune and honours, nor could they want an inexhaustible 
 supply of business in a great empire, already corrupted by 
 the multiplicity of laws, of arts, and of vices." 
 
 ' '' Decline and Fall," chap. xliv. 
 » Ibid., chap. xvii. 
 14
 
 2IO British Writers 
 
 Gibbon's following account of some Roman lawyers 
 may, perhaps, remind modern British readers of some 
 recent representatives of their own nation's class, as 
 described by Dickens in " Pickwick " and in " Bleak 
 House." These English lawyers would seem 
 rather founded on classical examples invented and 
 confirmed by Dickens's personal knowledge and 
 brilliant imagination ; Gibbon proceeds with cool 
 discernment : ^ 
 
 '* The honour of a liberal profession has indeed been vindi- 
 cated by ancient and modern advocates who have filled the 
 most important stations with pure integrity and consummate 
 wisdom, but in the decline of Roman jurisprudence the 
 ordinary promotion of lawyers was pregnant with mischief 
 and disgrace. . . . Some of them procured admittance into 
 families for the purpose of fomenting differences, of en- 
 couraging suits and of preparing a harvest of gain for 
 themselves or their brethren. Others, recluse in their cham- 
 bers, maintained the dignity of legal professors by furnishing 
 a rich client with subtleties to confound the plainest truth 
 and with arguments to colour the most unjustifiable pretensions. 
 The splendid and popular class was composed of the advo- 
 cates who filled the forum with the sound of their turgid 
 and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of fame and justice, they 
 are described, for the most part, as ignorant and rapacious 
 guides, who conducted their clients through a maze of 
 expense, of delay, and of disappointment ; from whence, 
 after a tedious series of years, they were at length dismissed 
 when their patience and fortune were almost exhausted." 
 
 * Chap. xvii.
 
 on Classic Lands 2 1 1 
 
 Gibbon, when concluding his learned History, 
 impressively writes : 
 
 " Of every reader the attention will be excited by a History 
 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the greatest 
 and perhaps the most awful scene in the history of mankind. 
 The various causes and progressive effects are connected with 
 many of the events most interesting in human annals ; the 
 artful policy of the Csesars, who long maintained the fame and 
 image of a free republic ; the disorders of military despotism ; 
 the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity ; the founda- 
 tion of Constantinople ; the division of the monarchy ; the 
 invasion and settlements of the barbarians of Germany and 
 Scythia ; the institutions of the civil law (of Rome) ; the 
 character and religion of Mohammed ; the temporal sove- 
 reignty of the Popes ; the restoration and decay of the 
 Western Empire of Charlemagne ; the crusades of the Latins 
 in the East ; the conquests of the Saracens and Turks, the 
 ruin of the Greek Empire ; the state and revolution of Rome 
 in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance 
 and variety of his subjects, but, while he is conscious of 
 his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency 
 of his own materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol 
 that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused 
 and exercised nearly twenty years of my life." 
 
 This " deficiency " in historical or geographical 
 materials of which Gibbon here complains has, 
 indeed, been vastly and wonderfully supplied by 
 recent discovery and research, throughout classic 
 countries since his time. Yet despite such dis- 
 advantages as Gibbon's candour or modesty admits, 
 no similar general History of the eventful times
 
 212 British Writers 
 
 and interestinof lands which he describes has 
 appeared hitherto which has actually surpassed 
 or diminished the paramount value of his standard 
 work. It is still, and may long continue, a most 
 precious book of reference and varied information 
 to all historical students, on the Continent as well 
 as in Britain, Yet while poets, antiquarians, and 
 historians study classic times with unfailing interest, 
 the genius, enterprise, and curiosity of British 
 novelists and travellers have been, perhaps, more 
 generally directed to them during the last most 
 eventful century than ever before. Upon this subject 
 its distinguished statesmen, Disraeli,^ Gladstone,^ 
 and the fourteenth Earl of Derby,3 expressed nearly 
 as much interest, if not the same knowledge, as 
 the late eminent historians. Lord Macaulay and 
 Mr. Lecky. They all have dwelt with evident 
 interest and pleasure on ancient Greece, Rome, 
 and in Disraeli's case, Judea, while some co- 
 temporary British novelists and travellers have 
 likewise written about them with likely more know- 
 ledge and careful study than were ever attainable 
 before. 
 
 ' Chap. xxiv. in " Life of Bentinck," and " Tancred." 
 
 2 " Homer and the Homeric Age," and " Juventus Mundi." 
 
 3 Translation of the " Iliad."
 
 CHAPTER XIX
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT may be regretted that Sir Walter Scott never 
 wrote any of his instructive novels about classic 
 times, though often briefly alluding to their history 
 and fame. To his romantic mind the period of the 
 Crusades, of European chivalry, in the Middle 
 Ages and in later times, and above all the historical 
 events of his beloved Scotland, were the most 
 delightful subjects to recall in thought and to 
 illustrate by description. He travelled but little, 
 while his chief thoughts as well as best works were 
 mostly devoted to his own country's social, religious, 
 and political history ; yet in his English historical 
 novel of *' Kenilworth " he describes a scene which, 
 briefly representing the differing styles of ancient 
 historic nations, proves his attentive accuracy in 
 their picturesque delineation. He describes a scene 
 in Kenilworth Castle during Queen Elizabeth's 
 historic visit there, when four bands, both in 
 singing and dancing, represented ^ 
 
 Chap, xxxvii. 
 
 215
 
 2i6 British Writers 
 
 " the various nations by which England had at different 
 periods been occupied. The aboriginal Britons, who first 
 entered, were ushered in by two ancient Druids/ whose 
 hoary hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak and who 
 bore in their hands branches of mistletoe. The masque- 
 raders who followed these venerable figures were suc- 
 ceeded by two bards arrayed in white, bearing harps, which 
 they occasionally touched, singing at the same time." 
 
 Scott then, with picturesque truth, describes the 
 Romans succeeding the ancient Britons in political 
 rule over England : 
 
 *' The sons of Rome, who came to civilise as well as to 
 conquer, were next produced before the princely assembly, 
 and the manager of the revels had correctly imitated the 
 high crest and military habits of that celebrated people, 
 accommodating them with the light yet strong buckler and 
 the short two-edged sword, the use of which had made them 
 victors of the world. The Roman eagles were borne before 
 them by two standard-bearers, who recited a hymn to Mars, 
 and the classical warriors followed with the grave and 
 haughty step of men who aspired to universal conquest." 
 
 The Saxons and Normans, as the subsequent 
 conquerors of England, are then described, in both 
 of whom Scott took great interest, especially in his 
 novel of " Ivanhoe." On the other hand, Macaulay 
 rarely shows much interest or admiration for either 
 
 ^ " The ministers of religion among the ancient Gauls 
 and Britons." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 217 
 
 of these nations during the Middle Ages. His 
 accompHshed, instructive mind loves to dwell alter- 
 nately on the intellectual beauties of classic times, 
 and on the most recent improvements in British, 
 social, and political history. He seems, moreover, 
 unlike Scott, to take little if any interest in Scottish 
 history or historical characters. In his beautiful 
 •'Lays of Ancient Rome" this eminent scholar 
 shows an ardent, keen appreciation of classic 
 times and literature rarely equalled among British 
 writers. His poetical expressions may well ac- 
 company and illustrate Gibbon's and Lecky's 
 historic descriptions of this most glorious and 
 successful of pagan empires. Macaulay thus 
 represents the Trojan Capys, who " came with 
 ^neas into Italy," ^ prophecy the future glory 
 of the Roman Empire at a supposed banquet in 
 the Capitol : 
 
 '' In the hall-gate sate Capys, 
 Capys, the sightless seer ; 
 From head to foot he trembled 
 As Romulus drew near." 
 
 Then, addressing the future founder of Rome : 
 
 '* ^ From sunrise unto sunset 
 
 All earth shall hear thy fame : 
 
 ^ Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 2i8 British Writers 
 
 A glorious city shalt thou build 
 And name it by thy name. ' " 
 
 Alluding to the hardy, martial nature of the 
 Romans, so different from some luxurious or 
 effeminate nations of the time : 
 
 " Leave to the soft Campanian ' 
 
 His baths and his perfumes ; 
 Leave to the sordid race of Tyre 
 
 Their dyeing vats and looms ; 
 Leave to the sons of Carthage ^ 
 
 The rudder and the oar " ; 
 
 then alluding to the artistic superiority of the 
 Greeks, though fated to become Roman subjects : 
 
 " Leave to the Greek, his marble Nymphs 
 And scrolls of wordy lore." 
 
 Then proudly praising the martial glory of the 
 Romans, to whom nearly all nations yielded : 
 
 " Thine, Roman, is the pilum, 
 Roman, the sword is thine, 
 The even trench, the bristling mound, 
 The legion's ordered line ; 
 
 ' " A country of Italy, of which Capua was the capital." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 " A celebrated city of Africa, the rival of Rome. It 
 maintained three famous wars against Rome, in the third of 
 which Carthage was totally destroyed." — Ibid. 
 
 {'■'■ 
 
 i"
 
 on Classic Lands 219 
 
 And thine the wheels of triumph, 
 
 Which with their laurelled train 
 Move slowly up the shouting streets 
 
 To Jove's eternal fane." 
 
 The prophet then confidently foresees Roman 
 triumph over both Eastern and Western Europe, 
 Gaul, and Greece : 
 
 "The Gaul shall come against thee 
 
 From the land of snow and night, 
 Thou shalt give his fair-haired armies 
 
 To the raven and the kite. 
 The Greek shall come against thee 
 
 The conqueror of the East. 
 Beside him stalks to battle 
 
 The huge earth-shaking beast, 
 The beast on whom the castle 
 
 With all its guards doth stand, 
 The beast who hath between his eyes 
 
 The serpent for a hand." 
 
 Macaulay observes about " the earth-shaking 
 beast " : ^ 
 
 " The elephants, when the surprise caused by their first 
 appearance was over, could cause no disorder in the steady 
 yet flexible battalions of Rome. . . . But now, for the first 
 time, the riches of Asia and the arts of Greece adorned a 
 Roman pageant. Plate, fine stuffs, costly furniture, rare 
 animals, exquisite paintings and sculptures, formed part of 
 the procession." 
 
 Preface to the " Prophecy of Capys."
 
 2 20 British Writers 
 
 He concludes his beautiful, picturesque account of 
 Capys's prophecy in words rather resembling Virgil 
 in eager exultation about future Roman greatness 
 and vast extent of power, throughout, perhaps, the 
 finest parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa : 
 
 " Blest and thrice blest the Roman 
 Who sees Rome's brightest day 
 Who sees that long, victorious pomp 
 Wind down the Sacred Way. 
 
 Then where o'er two bright havens, 
 
 The towers of Corinth ^ frown, 
 Where the gigantic King of Day 
 
 On his own Rhodes looks down,= 
 Where soft Orontes 3 murmurs 
 
 Beneath the laurel shades, 
 Where Nile reflects the endless length 
 
 Of dark-red colonnades. 
 
 Where fur-clad hunters wander 
 
 Amidst the northern ice, 
 Where through the sand of morning-land 
 
 The camel bears the spice, 
 
 ^ " An ancient city of Greece . . . totally destroyed by 
 the Roman consul 146 B.C." — Lempriere's Classical Dic- 
 tionary. 
 
 2 " Colossus, a celebrated brazen image at Rhodes, which 
 passed for one of the seven wonders of the world." — 
 Ibid. 
 
 3 " A river of Syria, falling, after a rapid and troubled 
 course, into the Mediterranean." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 22 1 
 
 Where Atlas ^ flings his shadow 
 
 Far o'er the western foam 
 Shall be great fear on all who hear 
 
 The mighty name of Rome." 
 
 ' " This mountain, which runs across the deserts of Africa 
 east and west, is so high that the ancients have imagined 
 that the heavens rested on its top." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary.
 
 CHAPTER XX
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 ANOTHER brilliant British contemporary 
 writer, Mr. Kinglake, who about the 
 middle of the last century visited Greece, Syria, 
 and Egypt, expresses an admiration for classic 
 lands and writings almost equal to that of Macaulay, 
 yet in a less historical spirit. Though a wonder- 
 fully observant and entertaining traveller, eagerly 
 noticing all he saw around him, he yet found evident 
 delight in recalling his former classic studies, though 
 apart from school teachings, whose recollection has 
 produced such opposite results in British scholars, 
 he thus writes : * 
 
 " I too loved Homer. . . . True it is that the Greek was 
 ingeniously rendered into English — the English of Pope — but 
 not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from 
 the fire of Homer's battles. But the * Iliad,' Hne by Une, I 
 clasped it to my brain with reverence as well as love. . . . 
 
 ^ " Eothen," chap, iv., signifying " From the East." — 
 Author's Preface. 
 
 IS »s
 
 2 26 British Writers 
 
 There was a preface or dissertation printed in type still more 
 majestic than the rest of the book ; this I read, but not till my 
 enthusiasm for the ' Iliad ' had already run high. The writer, 
 compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of the 
 Ancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the * Iliad ' 
 was all in all to the human race — that it was history, poetry, 
 revelation — that the works of men's hands were folly and 
 vanity and would pass away like the dreams of a child, 
 but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for ever 
 and ever."' 
 
 When in Egypt this enthusiastic writer says 
 about the Pyramids : ^ 
 
 " Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the 
 forms of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now as I approached 
 them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture 
 before me, and yet the old shapes were there : there was no 
 change, they were just as I had always known them. I 
 straightened myself in my stirrups and strived to persuade 
 my understanding that this was real Egypt. . . . Yet it was 
 not till I came to the base of the Great Pyramid that reality 
 began to weigh upon my mind. . . . When I came and trod 
 and touched with my hands and climbed, in order that by 
 climbing I might come to the top of one single stone ; then 
 almost suddenly a cold sense and understanding of the 
 Pyramid's enormity came down, overcasting my brain." 
 
 ' " Homerus, a celebrated Greek poet, the most ancient 
 of all the profane writers. The age in which he lived is not 
 known. In his two celebrated poems, the 'Iliad' and the 
 ' Odyssey,' Homer had displayed the most consummate know- 
 ledge of human nature." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 " Chap. xix.
 
 on Classic Lands 227 
 
 The sight of these wonderful Pyramids impresses 
 Mr. Kinglake's mind with the following reflec- 
 tions. He shows neither the historic knowledge of 
 Macaulay nor does he indulge in the romantic fancy 
 of Bulwer Lytton, yet his thoughts are evidently 
 those of a most observant enlightened Englishman 
 of the nineteenth century : 
 
 " And Time, too, the remoteness of its origin no less than 
 the enormity of its proportions, screens an Egyptian pyramid 
 from the easy and familiar contact of our modern minds. At 
 its base the common earth ends, and all above is a world — 
 one not created by God — not seeming to be made by men's 
 hands, but rather the sheer giant work of some old dismal 
 age, weighing down this younger planet. Fine sayings ! But 
 the truth seems to be, after all, that the Pyramids are quite of 
 this world, and they were piled up into the air for the reahsa- 
 tion of some kingly crotchets about immortality, some priestly 
 longing for burial fees, and that as for the building, they were 
 built, like coral rocks, by swarms of insects, by swarms of poor 
 Egyptians who were not only the abject tools and slaves of 
 power, but also ate onions for the reward of their immortal 
 labours. ' The Pyramids are quite of this world." 
 
 ' Mr. Kinglake here alludes to Herodotus who, writing on 
 Egypt, says: "There is an inscription in Egyptian characters 
 on the Pyramid which records the quantity of radishes, onions, 
 and garlic consumed by the labourers who constructed it, and 
 I perfectly well remember that the interpreter who read the 
 writing to me, said that the money expended in this way was 
 1,600 talents of silver." — Rawlinson's " Herodotus," vol. ii. 
 chap. cxxv.
 
 2 28 British Writers 
 
 Mr. Kinglake proceeds to relate a rather startling 
 personal anecdote, perhaps as a warning to other 
 Egyptian travellers : 
 
 " I of course ascended the summit of the Great Pyramid and 
 also explored its chambers. . . . There were a number of 
 Arabs hanging about in its neighbourhood. . . . Their sheik 
 was with them. . . . There was also present an ill-looking 
 fellow in a soldier's uniform. This man, on my departure, 
 claimed a reward on the ground that he had maintained order 
 and decorum among the Arabs. His claim was not considered 
 vaUd by my dragoman and was rejected accordingly. My 
 donkey-boys afterwards said they overheard this fellow propose 
 to the sheik to put me to death while I was in the interior of 
 the Great Pyramid and to share with him the booty. Fancy 
 a struggle for Ufe in one of those burial chambers with acres 
 and acres of sohd masonry between oneself and the daylight ! 
 I felt exceedingly glad that I had not made the rascal a pre- 
 sent." 
 
 Mr. Kinglake further makes the following impres- 
 sive remarks, suggested to his mind by the sight of 
 the greatest of remaining Egyptian wonders : 
 
 "And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful 
 than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely 
 Sphynx. ... In one regard the stone idol bears awful 
 semblance of Deity . . . unchangefulness in the midst of 
 change, the same seeming will and intent for ever and ever 
 inexorable ! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and 
 Egyptian kings — upon Greek and Romans, upon Arab and 
 Ottoman conquerors — upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern 
 Empire — upon battle and pestilence . . . upon all, and more,
 
 on Classic Lands 229 
 
 this unworldly Sphynx has watched and watched like a Provi- 
 dence, with the same earnest eyes and the same sad, tranquil 
 mien . . . and we — we shall die and Islam will wither away : 
 and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved India, 
 will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the 
 seats of the Faithful, and still that sleeping rock will be watch- 
 ing and watching the works of the new busy race, with those 
 same sad, earnest eyes and the same tranquil mien everlasting. 
 You dare not mock at the Sphynx."
 
 !'
 
 CHAPTER XXI
 
 ■1
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 KINGLAKE'S and Macaulay's gifted literary 
 contemporary, Sir Edward Bulwer, first Lord 
 Lytton, shared to some extent both the chivalrous 
 and classic tastes of Walter Scott and of Macaulay 
 in some of his brilliant romances. In his historic 
 novel, '* The Last Days of Pompeii," especially, this 
 highly accomplished scholar, inspired, like Macaulay, 
 with an almost enthusiastic love for classic times 
 and writings, says in his Preface,^ evidently 
 preferring them to the Middle Ages, which Scott 
 delighted to describe or allude to : 
 
 " With the classical age we have no household and familiar 
 associations. The creed of that departed religion, the 
 customs of the departed civilisation, present little that is 
 attractive or sacred to our northern imaginations ; they are 
 rendered yet more trite to us by the scholastic pedantry which 
 first acquainted us with their nature, and linked with the 
 recollection of studies which were imposed as a labour and 
 not cultivated as a delight. . . . The date of my story is that 
 of the short reign of Titus, when Rome was at its proudest and 
 most gigantic eminence of luxury and power." 
 
 Written 1834. 
 233
 
 234 British Writers 
 
 Bulwer Lytton, in his Preface to a later edition,' 
 writes alluding to the success of his classical novel : 
 
 " Writing the work almost on the spot and amidst a 
 population that still preserve a strong family likeness to their 
 classic forefathers, I could scarcely fail to catch something 
 of those living colours, which mere book study alone would 
 not have sufficed to bestow ; it is, I suppose, to this accidental 
 advantage that this work is principally indebted, for a 
 greater popularity than has hitherto attended the attempts of 
 scholars to create an interest by fictitious narrative in the 
 manners and persons of a classic age." 
 
 While describing, in remarkably elegant English, 
 fanciful characters involved with historic and 
 imaginary events, Bulwer Lytton probably presents, 
 owing to his scholastic taste and knowledge, a 
 tolerably true picture of the classic city of Pompeii 
 before and during its awful destruction by earth- 
 quake. He writes with all the glowing, picturesque 
 interest of an accomplished scholar, loving to recall 
 his favourite classic times to himself and to his 
 readers : ^ 
 
 " It was early noon, and the forum was crowded alike 
 with the busy and the idle. As at Paris at this day, so at 
 that time in the cities of Italy, men lived almost entirely 
 out of doors ; the public buildings, the forum, the porticos. 
 
 ' 1850. 
 
 =* Book iii. chap. i.
 
 on Classic Lands 235 
 
 the baths, the temples themselves, might be considered their 
 real homes ; it was no wonder that they decorated gorgeously 
 the favourite places of resort ; they felt for them a sort of 
 domestic affection as well as a public pride. And animated 
 indeed was the aspect of the forum of Pompeii at this time ! 
 Along its bi-oad pavement, composed of large flags of marble, 
 were assembled various groups, conversing in energetic 
 fashion, which appropriates a gesture to every word, and 
 which is still the characteristic of the people of the South. 
 Here in seven stalls on one side the colonnade sat the 
 money-changers with their glittering heaps before them 
 and merchants and seamen in various costumes crowding 
 round their stalls. On one side several men in long togas 
 were seen bustling up to a stately edifice where the 
 magistrates administered justice ; there were the lawyers, 
 active, chattering, joking, and punning, as you may find them 
 at this day in Westminster. In the centre of the space 
 pedestals supported several statues, of which the most 
 remarkable was the stately form of Cicero. " ^ 
 
 Bulwer Lytton's lively description of the ill-fated 
 city extends through some chapters of this 
 attractive work ; but the fatal earthquake, one of 
 the most momentous events, perhaps, in European 
 history, he describes with rare graphic power at 
 the end of his novel, is apparently much founded 
 on recorded facts, though involved with imaginary 
 
 * " A Roman senator. The learning and the ability which 
 he possessed have been the admiration of every age and 
 country, and his style has always been accounted as the 
 true standard of pure Latinity." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary.
 
 236 
 
 British Writers 
 
 personages and incidents. The novelist's account, 
 however, is so brilliant and vivid that an extract 
 may be given as proof of the admiring interest of 
 this accomplished English writer in detailing classic 
 events and of his pictorial genius in their 
 description : ^ 
 
 " Suddenly the place became lighted with an intense and 
 lurid glare. Bright and gigantic through the darkness, which 
 closed around it like the walls of hell, the mountain shone 
 a pile of fire ! Its summits seemed riven in two ; or rather 
 above its surface there seemed to rise two monster shapes, 
 each confronting each, as Demons contending for a World. 
 These were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, which lighted 
 up the whole atmosphere far and wide, but below the nether 
 part of the mountain was still dark and shrouded, save in 
 three places, adown which flowed serpentine and irregular 
 rivers of the molten lava." 
 
 Bulwer here gives an explanatory note, showing 
 the accurate interest he took in the historical subject 
 of his novel : 
 
 " Various theories as to the exact mode by which Pompeii 
 was destroyed have been invented by the ingenious. I have 
 adopted that which is the most generally received, and which, 
 upon inspecting the strata, appears the only one admissible 
 by common-sense, namely, a destruction by showers of ashes 
 
 * Chap. viii. vol. ii.
 
 on Classic Lands 237 
 
 and boiling water, mingled with frequent irruptions of large 
 stones, and aided by partial convulsions of the earth."* 
 
 The final conclusion of this awful earthquake 
 Bulwer describes in his usual pictorial style, while 
 evidently adhering to actual recorded facts : 
 
 " The ground shook with a convulsion that cast all around 
 upon its surface. A simultaneous crash resounded through 
 the city, as down toppled many a roof and pillar ! The 
 lightning, as if caught by the metal, hngered an instant on 
 the Imperial statue — then shivered bronze and column ! 
 Down fell the ruin, echoing along the street and riving the 
 solid pavement where it crashed." 
 
 At the end of the novel Bulwer invents an 
 eloquent letter, written after the earthquake from 
 a young Greek Christian in Athens to an Italian 
 friend named Sallust. It fervently expresses an 
 admiration, like that of Byron and Macaulay, for the 
 intellectual glories of Greece : 
 
 " You request me to visit you at Rome ; no, Sallust, come 
 rather to me at Athens ! I have forsworn the Imperial city, 
 its nightly tumult and hollow joys. In my own land hence- 
 forth I dwell for ever. The ghost of our departed greatness 
 
 » " Pompeii, a town of Campania, was partly demolished by 
 an earthquake a.d. 63 and afterwards rebuilt. Sixteen years 
 after it was swallowed up by another earthquake, which 
 accompanied one of the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. 
 Herculaneum in its neighbourhood shared the same fate. 
 The people of the town were then assembled in a theatre
 
 238 
 
 British Writers 
 
 is dearer to me than the gaudy life of your loud prosperity. 
 There is a charm to me which no other spot can supply 
 in the porticos hallowed still by holy and venerable shades. 
 In the olive groves of Ilyssus I still hear the voice of poetry, 
 . . . you smile at my enthusiasm, Sallust ! better be hopeful 
 in chains than resigned to their glitter. You tell me you are 
 sure that I cannot enjoy life in these melancholy haunts of a 
 fallen majesty. You dwell with rapture on the Roman 
 splendours and the luxuries of the Imperial Court. My 
 Sallust — ' non sum qualis eram ' — I am not what I was ! The 
 events of my life have sobered the bounding blood of my 
 youth. My health has never quite recovered its wonted 
 elasticity ere it felt the pangs of disease and languished in 
 the damps of a criminal's dungeon. My mind has never 
 shaken off the dark shadow of the Last Days of Pompeii. . . . 
 Visit me then, Sallust ; bring with you the learned scrolls of 
 Epicurus,^ Pythagoras,^ Diogenes ; 3 arm yourself for defeat, 
 and let us midst the groves of Academus,* dispute under 
 
 where public spectacles were exhibited." — Lempriere's 
 Classical Dictionary. 
 
 ' " A celebrated (Greek) philosopher. . . . He taught that 
 the happiness of mankind consisted in pleasure . . . from 
 the enjoyments of the mind and the sweets of virtue." — 
 Ibid. 
 
 ^ " A celebrated philosopher born at Samos. . . . Admired 
 for his venerable aspect. . . . His voice was harmonious, his 
 eloquence persuasive." — Ibid. 
 
 3 "A celebrated Cynic philosopher. A sect famous for 
 their contempt of riches. . . . Alexander the Great, asked 
 Diogenes if there was anything in which he could gratify or 
 oblige him. ' Get out of my sunshine,' was the only 
 answer the philosopher gave." — Ibid. 
 
 4 " A place near Athens, surrounded with high trees and 
 adorned with spacious covered walks." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 239 
 
 a surer guide than any granted to our fathers on the mighty 
 problem of the true end of Hfe and the nature of the soul. 
 . . . The sunlight quivers over Hymettus/ and along my 
 garden I hear the hum of the summer bees. Am I happy, 
 ask you ? Oh, what can Rome give me equal to what I 
 possess at Athens ? . . . fair though in mourning — mother of 
 the poets and the Wisdom of the World." 
 
 ^ " A mountain about two miles from Athens, still famous 
 for its bees." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 i6
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MACAU LAY, so eminent as essayist and 
 historian, but who never wrote a romance, 
 expresses in a beautiful essay an admiration for 
 ancient Athens similar to that which Bulwer 
 Lytton intimates through the powerful medium of 
 imaginary persons. Macaulay's admiration, how- 
 ever, is evidently that of a future historian, as 
 well as of the appreciative classical scholar. No 
 sentimental love-story seems to occur to him. He 
 invokes the historic past as a living reality. The 
 real persons and the actual historic events recur to 
 his studious yet brilliant mind with all the vivid 
 force and interest of actual existences. He there- 
 fore recalls Athens with evident delight as its noble 
 past history is again recalled to his enlightened, 
 thoughtful mind : » 
 
 " Let us for a moment transport ourselves in thought to 
 that glorious city. Let us imagine that we are entering 
 
 » " Essay on the Athenian Orators." 
 
 243
 
 244 British Writers 
 
 its gates, at the time of its power and glory. A crowd is 
 assembled round a portico. All are gazing with delight at 
 the entablature ; for Phidias * is putting up the frieze. We 
 turn into another street : a rhapsodist is reciting there ; men, 
 women, and children are thronging around him, the tears 
 are running down their cheeks ; their eyes are fixed, their 
 very breath is still, for he is telling how Priam = fell at the 
 feet of Achilles.3 We enter the public place ; there is a ring 
 of youths, all leaning forward with sparkling eyes and 
 gestures of expectation. Socrates is pitted against the 
 famous Atheist from Ionia, and has just brought him to a 
 contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald 
 is crying ' Room for the Prytanes ! ' ■* The general assembly 
 is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side. 
 Proclamation is made : ' Who wishes to speak ? ' There 
 is a shout and clapping of hands. Pericles is mounting 
 the stand.5 Then for a play of Sophocles ^ and away to 
 sup with Aspasia." ^ 
 
 Macaulay, evidently delighted with the ideas 
 inspired by his brilliant fancy, and as if these 
 
 ^ " A celebrated statuary of Athens. . . . The statute he 
 made of Jupiter has passed for one of the wonders of the 
 world." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 ^ " The last king of Troy."— Ibid. 
 
 3 " The bravest of all the Greeks in the Trojan War."— Ibid. 
 
 4 " Magistrates at Athens who presided over the Senate." 
 —Ibid. 
 
 s " An Athenian of a noble family. . . . The Athenians 
 were so pleased with his eloquence that they compared 
 it to thunder and lightning." — Ibid. 
 
 ^ " A celebrated tragic poet of Athens." — Ibid. 
 
 7 *' Famous for her personal charms and elegance. She 
 came to Athens, where she taught eloquence." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 245 
 
 bright classic scenes were only just vanishing, 
 adds with regretful enthusiasm : 
 
 " I know of no modern university which has so excellent 
 a system of education." 
 
 While Kinglake, Macaulay, and Bulwer Lytton 
 in prose and verse vie with one another in 
 reverential admiration for classic scenes, per- 
 sonages, and history, their two British contemporary 
 novelists, Dickens and Thackeray, alike evince 
 very different feelings when visiting the classic 
 lands of antiquity. Yet all these eminent English- 
 men had been educated about the same period 
 according to the modern British and Christian 
 system, though in very differing degrees of 
 educational attainment. But the impressions 
 produced on their youthful minds by a similar 
 education, at least in its chief principles, show an 
 interesting and a rather amusing contrast. 
 Thackeray, the witty, comic, sarcastic novelist, 
 visited Athens in 1844, about twelve years after 
 Bulwer Lytton's half-classic, half-sentimental novel 
 about Pompeii was written. He admits, with his 
 usual witty frankness, which renders his novels 
 as amusing as instructive : 
 
 " Not feeling any enthusiasm myself about Athens, my
 
 246 
 
 British Writers 
 
 bounden duty, of course, is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily 
 at all who have." * 
 
 Then, apparently alluding to his own London 
 life or experiences, he writes rather ridiculing 
 classic enthusiasm, as if asking himself questions 
 while appealing to his readers in self-defence : 
 
 " What business has a lawyer who was in Pump Court this 
 day three weeks, and whose common reading is law reports 
 or the newspaper, to pretend to fall in love for the Long 
 Vacation with mere poetry, of which I swear a great deal 
 is very doubtful, and to get up an enthusiasm quite foreign 
 to his nature and usual calling in life. . . . What is the 
 reason that blundering Yorkshire squires, young dandies 
 from Corfu regiments,^ jolly sailors from ships in the harbour, 
 and yellow old Indians from Bundelcund, should think 
 proper to be enthusiastic about a country of which they 
 know nothing . . . because certain characters lived in it 
 two thousand four hundred years ago ? What have 
 these people in common with Pericles, what have these 
 ladies in common with Aspasia (O fie) ? Of the race of 
 Englishmen who come wandering about the tomb of 
 Socrates do you think the majority would not have voted 
 to hemlock him ? Yes, for the very same superstition 
 which leads men by the nose now, drove them onward in 
 the days when the lowly husband of Xantippes died for 
 
 ' " A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo," chap. v. 
 
 = At the time Thackeray wrote this the island of Corfu, 
 since given over to the Kingdom of Greece, was under 
 British rule. 
 
 3 " The wife of Socrates, remarkable for her ill-humour and 
 peevish disposition. . . . One day, not satisfied with using
 
 on Classic Lands 247 
 
 daring to think simply and to speak the truth. I know of 
 no quality more magnificent in fools than their faith, that 
 perfect consciousness, that they are doing virtuous and 
 meritorious actions when they are performing acts of folly, 
 murdering Socrates or pelting Aristides ' with holy oyster- 
 shells, all for Virtue's sake ; and a History of Dullness in all 
 ages of the world is a book which a philosopher would 
 surely be hanged, but as certainly blessed, for writing." 
 
 Here Thackeray reveals his private or personal 
 reasons for comparative indifference to or ignorance 
 of the classic works of antiquity. Though educated 
 at Cambridge like Bulwer Lytton and Macaulay, 
 probably studying much the same books selected 
 for British education about the same period, his 
 remembrances of classic learning were indeed not 
 only widely different from but almost opposite to 
 theirs. What Macaulay affectionately calls " the 
 endearing recollections of childhood," including 
 " the old schoolroom," "the dog-eared grammar," 
 and "the tears so quickly shed and so quickly 
 dried," 2 revive totally different feelings in the 
 mind of his, contemporary British novelist, who, 
 
 the most bitter invectives, she emptied a vessel of water on 
 his head, upon which the philosopher coolly observed, ' After 
 thunder there generally follows rain.'" — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 » A celebrated Athenian whose great temperance and 
 virtue procured him the surname of J^ust." — Ibid. 
 
 " " Essay on the Athenian Orators."
 
 248 
 
 British Writers 
 
 in a style both sad and regretful, thus recalls in 
 vindication of his own dislike to, or ignorance of, 
 classic literature, the misery of his own school 
 life: 
 
 " If Papa and Mama (honour be to them !) had not followed 
 the faith of their fathers and thought proper to send away 
 their only beloved son (afterwards to be celebrated under the 
 name of Titmarsh) into ten years' banishment of infernal 
 misery, tyranny, annoyance ; to give over the fresh feelings of 
 the heart of the little Michael Angelo to the discipline of 
 vulgar bullies, who, in order to lead tender young children 
 to the Temple of Learning (as they do in the spelHng-books), 
 drive them on with clenched fists and low abuse ; if they 
 fainted revive them with a thump or assailed them with 
 a curse ; if they were miserable, consoled them with a brutal 
 jeer." 
 
 Thackeray repeats with regretful, yet rather 
 comic lamentation : 
 
 " If, I say, my dear parents, instead of giving me the 
 inestimable benefit of a ten years' classical education had 
 kept me at home with my dear thirteen sisters, it is prob- 
 able I should have liked this country of Attica, in sight of 
 the blue waters of which the present pathetic letter is 
 written, but I was made so miserable in youth by a 
 classical education that all connected with it is disagreeable 
 in my eyes, and I have the same recollection of Greek in 
 youth that I have of castor-oil."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 YET despite these depressing remembrances, 
 Thackeray's wit and comic power make him 
 render even their description interesting, if not 
 amusing. Thus it may be an improving as well 
 as interesting study to compare the different im- 
 pressions a very similar classical education, pursued 
 at the same College and at nearly the same period, 
 produced on the young minds of these eminent 
 British writers of the nineteenth century. 
 Thackeray, as if believing it a sort of duty to 
 admire and praise the ancient Greeks while visiting 
 their land, invents an amusing talk between himself 
 and the Greek Muse, who, offended at his neglect 
 of her, now appears to reproach him for it. But 
 Thackeray, apparently, is never able to rid his too 
 retentive memory of gloomy school recollections. 
 Without in the least sharing the ardent enthusiasm 
 of Byron, the learned brilliancy of Macaulay, or the 
 vivid fancy of Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray sadly 
 disappoints the Greek Muse, hitherto accustomed
 
 252 British Writers 
 
 to so much varied yet sincere admiration from 
 appreciating British travellers. 
 
 Accordingly this eminent novelist, though no 
 lover of the classics, writes in his customary, 
 sensible, lively style, which so distinguished him 
 in literary estimation : 
 
 " So in coming in sight of the promontory of Sunium,^ where 
 the Greek Muse, in an awful vision, came to me and said in 
 a patronising way : ' Why, my dear ' (she always, the old 
 spinster, adopts this high and mighty tone) — * Why, my dear, 
 are you not charmed to be in this famous neighbourhood, in 
 this land of poets and heroes, of whose history your classical 
 education ought to have made you a master ? If it did not 
 you have wofuUy neglected your opportunities, and your dear 
 parents have wasted their money in sending you to school.' " 
 
 To this admittedly just reproach Thackeray makes 
 a reply, which, perhaps, might have somewhat 
 irritated Byron, Bulwer Lytton, and Macaulay. 
 Yet it would likely express the feelings of some, 
 if not of a majority, of British scholars on the 
 trying subject of their former classical studies. 
 Accordingly Thackeray answers the Greek Muse 
 with his sardonic, vigorous mind evidently full of 
 odious school remembrances : 
 
 ^ "A promontory of Attica about forty-five miles distant 
 from the Piraeus — a celebrated harbour at Athens, about 
 three miles distant from the city." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary.
 
 on Classic Lands 253 
 
 " Madam, your company in youth was made so laboriously 
 disagreeable to me, that I can't at present reconcile myself 
 to you in age. I read your poets, but it was in fear and 
 trembling, and a cold sweat is but an ill accompaniment to 
 poetry. 1 blundered through your histories, but history is 
 so dull (saving your presence) of herself, that when the 
 brutal dullness of a schoolmaster is superadded to her own 
 slow conversation the union becomes intolerable ; hence 
 I have not the slightest pleasure in renewing my acquaintance 
 with a lady who has been the source of so much bodily and 
 mental discomfort to me." 
 
 Thackeray here explains to general readers, as 
 if anticipating and wishing to deprecate their 
 disappointment : 
 
 "To make a long story short, I am anxious to apologise 
 for the want of enthusiasm in the classical line, and to excuse 
 an ignorance which is of the most undeniable sort." 
 
 In describing Constantinople, however, Thackeray 
 seems to shov^^ more interest and admiration than 
 for any other place he saw during his Eastern tour. 
 This magnificent and most picturesque of capital 
 cities, so long the object of contention between 
 Christians and Mohammedans, and whose singular 
 position still causes constant political anxiety in 
 parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, is described at 
 length, and with close attention, in Gibbon's History. 
 It may be interesting to compare the accounts 
 of this splendid city given by the learned historian
 
 2 54 British Writers 
 
 of the eighteenth century with that of the popular 
 novelist of the nineteenth. Gibbon writes : ^ 
 
 " The harbour of Constantinople obtained in a very remote 
 period the denomination of the Golden Horn. The curve 
 which it describes might be compared to the horn of a stag, 
 or, as it should seem with more propriety, to that of an ox. 
 The epithet of golden was expressive of the riches which 
 every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the 
 secure and capacious port of Constantinople. . . . When the 
 passages of the straits were thrown open for trade they 
 alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the 
 north and south of the Euxine ^ and of the Mediterranean. 
 Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests 
 of Germany and Scythia 3 . . . whatsoever was manufactured 
 by the skill of Europe or Asia, the corn of Egypt and the 
 gems and spices of the farthest India were brought by the 
 varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which for 
 many ages attracted the commerce of the ancient world." 
 
 Gibbon adds, explaining the choice of the Roman 
 Emperor, Constantine, in selecting this city for 
 his capital : 
 
 " The prospect of beauty, of safety, and of wealth united 
 in a single spot was sufficient to justify the choice of 
 
 ' " Decline and Fall," chap. xvii. 
 
 2 " A sea between Europe and Asia. It is now called the 
 Black Sea, from the thick, dark fogs which cover it." — Lem- 
 priere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 3 "A large country situated in the most northern parts of 
 Europe and Asia." — Ibid.
 
 on Classic Lands 255 
 
 Constantine, . . . We should deviate from the design of this 
 history if we attempted minutely to describe the different 
 buildings or quarters of the city. It may be sufficient to 
 observe that whatever could adorn the dignity of a great 
 capital or contribute to the benefit or pleasure of its 
 numerous inhabitants was contained within the walls of 
 Constantinople."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 17

 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE calm, learned historian hardly avoids 
 enthusiasm in describingr the lastingr and 
 material advantages of this splendid city as an 
 empire's capital. But Thackeray, the imaginative 
 novelist whose observant mind often recurs to his 
 London life and experiences, after stating that a 
 white fog disappeared as his vessel advanced 
 towards the Golden Horn, adds also, with an 
 admiration not usual with him : 
 
 " There the fog cleared off, as it were, by flakes, and as you 
 see gauze curtains Hfted away one by one before a great fairy 
 scene at the theatre. This will give idea enough of the fog ; 
 the difficulty is to describe the scene afterwards, which was 
 in truth the great fairy scene, than which it is impossible 
 to conceive anything more brilliant and magnificent." 
 
 Again Thackeray's London life supplies him with 
 lively ideas and recollections, which perhaps might 
 hardly occur to many profound classic scholars, 
 who prefer to revive the past rather than to recall 
 the present. He continues : 
 
 3S9
 
 26o British Writers 
 
 '^ I can't go to any more romantic place than Drury Lane 
 (theatre), such as we used to see it in our youth when to our 
 sight the grand last pictures of the melodrama or pantomime 
 were as magnificent as any objects of nature we have seen 
 with maturer eyes. Well, the view of Constantinople is 
 as fine as any of Stanfield's best theatrical pictures, seen at 
 the best period of youth when fancy had all the bloom 
 in her — when all the heroines who danced before the 
 scene appeared as ravishing beauties. . . . The enjoyments 
 of boyish fancy are the most intense and delicious in the 
 world. Stansfield's panorama used to be the realisation of 
 the most intense youthful fancy ; I puzzle my brains, and find 
 no better likeness for the place." 
 
 Thackeray makes scarcely any allusion to the 
 ancient history of Byzantium, Constantinople's 
 former name in pagan days, or to its Mohammedan 
 conqueror, Mohammed the Second, or to its grand 
 Church of St. Sophia, or the " Holy Wisdom," or 
 to its ofallant but ill-fated Greek defenders. 
 
 Again this able, gifted London writer, recalling 
 the theatrical delights of his younger days in the 
 English capital, proceeds : 
 
 '* The view of Constantinople resembles the ne plus ultra of 
 a Stansfield diorama, with a glorious accompaniment of music, 
 spangled houris, warriors, and winding processions feasting 
 the eye and the soul with light, splendour, and harmony." 
 
 Thackeray then addresses his readers generally, 
 which he rarely does in words, showing the power- 
 ful impression Constantinople's peculiar charm pro-
 
 on 
 
 Classic Lands 261 
 
 duced on his original and vigorous, yet by no means 
 classical, mind : 
 
 " If you were never in this way during your youth ravished 
 at the play-house, of course the whole comparison is useless 
 and you have no idea from this description of the effect which 
 Constantinople produces on the mind. But if you were never 
 affected by a theatre, no words can work upon your fancy." 
 
 Thackeray's accounts of Jerusalem and the Holy 
 Land show less of his peculiar genius than his 
 amusing allusions to the ancient reproachful Greek 
 Muse at Athens, or his gorgeous picturesque 
 description of Constantinople. His description of 
 the effect Jerusalem produced on his mind is too 
 hopelessly gloomy and depressing to be either 
 pleasing or perhaps very instructive reading, and to 
 a theological mind might seem rather superficial. 
 He writes : 
 
 " I made many walks round the city to Olivet and Bethany 
 to the tombs of the kings and the fountains sacred in story 
 ... A landscape unspeakably ghastly and desolate meets the 
 eye wherever you wander round about the city. The place 
 seems quite adapted to the events which are recorded in the 
 Hebrew histories. It and they, as it seems to me, can never 
 be regarded without terror. Fear and blood, crime and 
 punishment, follow from page to page in frightful succession. 
 There is not a spot at which you look but some violent 
 deed has been done there, some massacre has been com- 
 mitted, some victim has been murdered, some idol has been 
 worshipped with bloody and dreadful rites."
 
 262 British Writers 
 
 A yet more recent English visitor to Jerusalem, 
 (in 1858), the late Dean Stanley of Westminster, 
 writes on this subject with a more patient and 
 reflecting spirit. This enlightened Christian theo- 
 logian is here on his own ground, as it were, and 
 writes on the desolate aspect of Judea with more 
 thought and greater power of reflection : 
 
 "All this renders the Holy Land the fitting cradle for a 
 religion which expressed itself not through the voices of 
 rustling forests, or the clefts of mysterious precipices, but 
 through the souls and hearts of men ; which was destined 
 to have no home on earth, least of all in its own birthplace ; 
 which has attained its full dimensions only in proportion as 
 it has travelled further from its original source to the daily 
 life and homes of nations as far removed from Palestine 
 in thought and feeling as they are in climate and latitude." ' 
 
 Again Dean Stanley writes of modern Jerusalem 
 with more deep thought and sound religious 
 philosophy than Thackeray is likely capable of, as 
 the subject is less suited to the eminent novelist : 
 
 " So far as localities have any concern with religion it 
 is well to feel that Christianity, even in its first origin, was 
 nurtured in no romantic scenery ; that the discourses in the 
 walks to and from Bethany and in earlier times the Psalms 
 and Prophecies of David and Isaiah, were not, as in Greece, 
 the offspring of oracular cliffs and grottos, but the simple 
 outpouring of souls which thought of nothing but God 
 and man." 
 
 ' " Sinai and Palestine/' chap. ii.
 
 CHAPTER XXV
 
 m
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WHEN visiting Egypt Thackeray expresses 
 much the same amusing indifference or 
 ignorance of its ancient wonders as he owns about 
 those in Greece. Yet this singular country still 
 retains some information for all interested in 
 historical inquiry or instruction. But it is for 
 the living world around him to which Thackeray, 
 whether in fiction or in travel, nearly always directs 
 his rare and most entertaining powers. In com- 
 paring the words of Gibbon and of Thackeray 
 about the wonders of antiquity, the differing tastes 
 as well as talents of these two eminent Englishmen, 
 historian and novelist, are instructively revealed to 
 a readinor world. The former writes on the 
 
 o 
 
 wonderful Egyptian Pyramids with grave, serious 
 reflection : 
 
 *' The art of man is able to construct monuments far more 
 permanent than the narrow span of his own existence ; yet 
 these monuments, hke himself, are perishable and frail and in 
 the boundless annals of time his life and his labours must 
 equally be measured as a fleeting moment. ... As the 
 
 265
 
 266 British Writers 
 
 wonders of ancient days the Pyramids attracted the curiosity 
 of the ancients : a hundred generations the leaves of autumn 
 have dropped into the grave and after the fall of the 
 Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Cassars and Caliphs, the same 
 Pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the 
 Nile." ^ 
 
 But Thackeray vindicates himself in much the 
 same witty style as before, from the apparently 
 expected reproaches or angry disappointment of 
 the British reading public about his ignorance of, 
 or indifference to, subjects of classic interest. He 
 writes in his characteristic, lively manner about his 
 troublesome yet amusing visit with fellow- 
 travellers, and amongst begging Arabs, to these 
 wonderful Pyramids : 
 
 " It was nothing but joking and laughter, bullying of 
 guides, shouting for interpreters, quarrelling about sixpences. 
 We were acting a farce with the Pyramids for the scene. 
 There they rose up, enormous under our eyes, and the most 
 absurd trivial things were going on under their shadow. The 
 sublime has disappeared, vast as they were. . . . Every 
 traveller must go through all sorts of chaffering and bargain- 
 ing and paltry experiences at this spot. You look up the 
 tremendous steps, with a score of savage ruffians bellowing 
 round you. . . . Forwards ! Up with you ! It must be done. 
 Six Arabs are behind you, who won't let you escape if you 
 would. The importunity of these ruffians is a ludicrous 
 annoyance to which a traveller must submit. For two miles 
 before you reach the Pyramids they seize on you and never 
 
 ' " Decline and Fall," chap Ixxi.
 
 on Classic Lands 267 
 
 cease howling. Five or six of them pounce upon one victim, 
 and never leave him until they have carried him up and 
 down." 
 
 After describing yet more the troubles of this 
 visit, which probably recent visitors to Egypt 
 would likely find diminished, if not vanished 
 altogether, owing to increased and increasing 
 European intercourse, Thackeray proceeds as if 
 answering some disappointed readers awaiting him 
 in England : 
 
 '^ And this is all you have to tell about the Pyramids ? Oh ! 
 for shame ! Not a compliment to their age and size ? Not 
 a big phrase — not a rapture ? Do you mean to say that you 
 had no feeling of respect and awe ? Try, man, and build up 
 a monument of words as lofty as they are — they whom 
 imber edax ' and aquilo impotens ^ and the flight of ages have 
 not been able to destroy." 
 
 To these expected reproaches, perhaps natural 
 enough for some learned minds to express, as 
 Thackeray's shrewdness anticipated, the great 
 novelist replies with mingled wit and truth worthy 
 of the future author of "Vanity Fair," disclaiming 
 what he thinks himself unfitted to attempt, yet 
 briefly intimating his own rare and peculiar 
 genius : 
 
 ' " Consuming rain." — Riddle's Dictionary. 
 
 2 " The north wind." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 268 British Writers 
 
 " No : be that work for great geniuses, great painters, 
 great poets ! This quill was never made to take such flights ; 
 it comes of the wing of a humble domestic bird, who walks a 
 common, who talks a great deal." 
 
 Here Thackeray briefly admits his sarcastic 
 powers : 
 
 " (and hisses sometimes) who can't fly far or high, and 
 drops always very quickly, and whose unromantic end is, 
 to be laid on a Michaelmas or Christmas table, and there 
 to be discussed for half an hour — let us hope with some 
 relish." 
 
 He wrote thus in 1844, returning to England to 
 write in 1847-8 his masterpiece, "Vanity Fair." 
 This famous novel was an acknowledged triumph 
 of his sarcastic "hissing," chiefly about London 
 society early in the last century. He hardly again 
 alludes in any of his works to classic subjects 
 or to his Eastern journey. His great English 
 contemporary novelist, Charles Dickens, also shows 
 a rather similar indifference to ancient classic 
 history in his interesting sketch of his foreign 
 journey, " Pictures from Italy," written in 1844. 
 
 In it this truly philanthropic writer, who has done 
 so much in his delightful fictions to amuse and to 
 improve English fellow - countrymen, is chiefly 
 occupied in making shrewd, practical remarks on 
 the Italy he finds of his own day. His wonderfully 
 keen, observant mind evidently takes far more
 
 on Classic Lands 269 
 
 lively interest in all he sees and hears around him 
 than in fancifully recalling, like Byron, Bulwer 
 Lytton, and Macaulay, the glories of the remote 
 past even in its most famous scenes. Yet when 
 he very rarely does so his bright, intelligent mind 
 makes the few thoughts he expresses of peculiar 
 interest. At Rome the Coliseum greatly attracted 
 him, about which Gibbon wrote : ^ 
 
 '* The amphitheatre of Titus,^ which has obtained the name 
 of the Cohseum either from its magnitude, or from Nero's 
 colossal statue ; an edifice, had it been left to time and nature, 
 which might perhaps have claimed an eternal duration. . . . 
 The Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with awe and 
 admiration by the pilgrims of the north, and their rude 
 enthusiasm broke forth in a sublime, proverbial expression, 
 which is recorded in the eighth century in the fragments 
 of The Venerable Bede,3 ' As long as the Coliseum stands, 
 Rome shall stand ; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall ; 
 when Rome falls, the world will fall.' " 
 
 On the fearful human combats which formed a 
 Roman public amusement in this terrible arena, 
 Byron wrote some of his finest lines : 
 
 ' " Decline and Fall," chap Ixxi. 
 
 ^ '' No Roman emperor was ever more generous and mag- 
 nificent than Titus." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 3 '' Born in the bishopric of Durham 673, died 735. He 
 was a monk of very superior learning for the times, and wrote 
 an ecclesiastical history of Britain."—" Mangnall's Ques- 
 tions."
 
 270 British Writers 
 
 " And here the buzz of eager nations ran, 
 In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause, 
 As man was slaughter'd by his fellow-man. 
 And wherefore slaughter'd ? wherefore, but because 
 Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, 
 And the imperial pleasure." ^ 
 
 After the profound and brilliant words of the 
 great English historian, and of the great English 
 poets, those of the illustrious English novelist on 
 the same subject may seem the more interesting. 
 Dickens writes in his usual observant style on 
 personally visiting the Coliseum, and as if trying 
 to restrain his powerful imagination while briefly 
 recalling historic scenes or events : 
 
 " It is no fiction, but simple, plain, honest truth to say, so 
 suggestive and distinct is it at this hour, that for a moment 
 actually in passing in — they who will may have the whole 
 great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of 
 eager faces staring down into the arena and such a whirl of 
 strife and blood and dust going on there as no language can 
 describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desola- 
 tion strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a 
 softened sorrow, and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so 
 moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately con- 
 nected with his own affections and afflictions." 
 
 Dickens, evidently gazing at this wonderful 
 edifice, the relic of a long- vanished time of triumph, 
 excitement, and ferocity, yet which was once 
 enjoyed or patronised by some of the most 
 
 ^ " Childe Harold," canto iv.
 
 on Classic Lands 271 
 
 intellectual men, writes in his picturesque, attractive 
 style, sure to claim the attention of most readers : 
 
 " To see it crumbling there an inch a year, its walls and 
 arches overgrown with green, its corridors open to the day, 
 the long grass growing in its porches, young trees of yester- 
 day springing upon its ragged parapets and bearing fruit . . . 
 to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth and the peaceful 
 Cross planted in the centre, to climb into its upper halls and 
 look down on ruin, ruin, ruin all about it, the triumphal 
 arches of Constantine,' Septimus Severus,^ of Titus ; the 
 Roman Foiiam, the palaces of the Cassai^s, the temples of the 
 old religion fallen down and gone, is to see the ghost of old 
 Rome, wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground 
 on which its people trod." 
 
 Dickens, though not much of a classic scholar, 
 is so much impressed at this sight of the ruined 
 Coliseum that he emphatically writes, in a manner 
 not very usual with him : 
 
 *' It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most 
 solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight conceivable. Never 
 in its bloodiest prime can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, 
 full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one 
 heart, as it must move all who look upon it now — a min, God 
 be thanked, a ruin." 
 
 ^ " He became a convert to Christianity and sole Emperor. 
 He founded a city where old Byzantium formerly stood and 
 called it by his own name, Constantinople." — Lempriere's 
 Classical Dictionary. 
 
 2 " So much admired for his military talents, that some 
 have called him the most warlike of the Roman Emperors." — 
 Ibid.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 DICKENS rarely alludes to historic events or 
 characters in his interesting fictitious works. 
 In surveying Rome and Italy generally it was 
 their condition as he saw them that chiefly en- 
 grossed his ever observant mind. But for Lord 
 Byron, the sight of the old capital of the civilised 
 world made his poetic spirit in a few words recall 
 its astounding greatness : its fame first as the 
 capital of a pagan empire ruling near and distant 
 nations, and then its extraordinary change from 
 political to religious supremacy over a Christian 
 world. Rome thus practically seemed to exchange 
 political for religious authority over the civilised 
 world for a long period. Even since the Protestant 
 Reformation it may yet be called the chief Christian 
 city, or rather the city to which the majority of 
 Christians pay a spiritual obedience. Byron, with 
 these vast historical Roman changes inspiring his 
 accomplished, brilliant mind, thus in verse reviews 
 them : 
 
 a75
 
 276 
 
 British Writers 
 
 " Rome — Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, 
 In the same dust and blackness, and we pass 
 The skeleton of her Titanic ' form, 
 
 Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. 
 
 Mother of Arts ! as once of Arms ; thy hand 
 Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ; 
 Parent of our Religion ! whom the wide 
 Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven ! " ^ 
 
 Dickens, contemplating the ruined Coliseum in 
 the thoughtful spirit of a philanthropic inquirer, 
 proceeds : 
 
 " As it tops the other ruins, standing there, a mountain 
 among graves, so do its ancient influences outlive all other 
 remnants of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, 
 in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman people." 
 
 Dickens continues, it may be hoped indulging 
 his lively fancy somewhat erroneously, as nothing 
 in Rome — which since he wrote has become the 
 peaceful capital of Italy seems to justify or in 
 any way prove his opinion : 
 
 ''The ItaUan face changes as the visitor approaches the 
 city, its beauty becomes devilish, and there is scarcely one 
 countenance in a hundred, among the common people in the 
 streets, that would not be at home and happy in a renovated 
 Coliseum to-morrow. Here was Rome indeed at last, and 
 
 ^ "The Titans were all of a gigantic stature and with 
 proportionate strength." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary. 
 ^ " Childe Harold," canto iv.
 
 on Classic Lands 277 
 
 such a Rome as no one can imagine in its full and awful 
 grandeur ! We wandered out upon the Appian Way, and 
 then went on through miles of ruined tombs and broken 
 walls . . . past the Circus ^ of Romulus, where the course 
 of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, and 
 spectators are yet as plainly to be seen as in the old time. 
 . . . Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and 
 beautiful clusters of arches, broken temples, broken tombs. 
 A desert of decay, sombre and desolate beyond all expression, 
 and with a history in every stone that strews the ground." 
 
 Later on Dickens thus describes the impression 
 Rome, or rather its immediate neighbourhood, 
 made on his rarely observant mind, comparing 
 them with what he had previously seen during his 
 tour in the American United States : 
 
 " The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direction, 
 where it was most level, reminded me of an American 
 prairie." 
 
 Here his thoughtful mind asks a natural and 
 interesting question, involving historic com- 
 parison : 
 
 " But what is the solitude of a region where men have 
 never dwelt, to that of a desert where mighty men have left 
 their footprints in the earth from which they have vanished?" 
 
 His humane spirit was ever aiding and abetting 
 in word, thought, and deed the improvement and 
 
 ' " A large and elegant building at Rome, where plays and 
 shows were exhibited." — Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 278 British Writers 
 
 happiness of his fellow-men living around him. 
 Dickens was, therefore, apparently so deeply im- 
 pressed with the former cruelty of the Romans, 
 especially in their proud, luxurious capital when 
 under their worst rulers, that he may hardly enough 
 remember their beneficent rule throughout their 
 vast empire generally. Even the charge of 
 relentless severity, often truly brought against 
 them, may not have been always justifiable. 
 Thus, in the great orator, Cicero's celebrated 
 speech, praising their great general Pompey,i that 
 warrior's humanity is reckoned by his eloquent 
 advocate as among his virtues, and it is doubtful if 
 many subsequent Christian generals could have laid 
 claim to it with equal justice. Cicero declares, 
 and apparently with historic truth, of Pompey's 
 merciful use of power : "His humanity is such that 
 it is difficult to say whether the enemy feared his 
 valour more when fighting against him, or loved 
 his mildness more when they had been conquered 
 by him." 2 From historic evidence it would seem 
 that the principles of Roman government varied 
 greatly, not only according to the characters of 
 
 * "Pompey was kind and clement to the conquered 
 and generous to his captives." — Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary. 
 
 ^ " Cicero's Oration in Defence of the Manilian Law " 
 (Bohn's edition).
 
 on Classic Lands 279 
 
 different rulers, but were practically often more 
 humane and just towards subjects at a distance 
 from the capital than towards those living in it 
 or in its neighbourhood. At the close of his 
 interesting sketch Dickens writes in his usual 
 hopeful style, preferring the present to the past, 
 and the future to the present : 
 
 *' Let us not remember Italy the less regardfuUy because 
 in every fragment of her fallen temples and every stone of 
 her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the 
 lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that 
 the world is in all great essentials better, gentler, more 
 forbearing and more hopeful as it rolls."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 DICKENS'S opinion of the dull or repelling 
 way in which the lessons of antiquity are, or 
 were, often taught in English schools, agrees with 
 that of his literary friend and contemporary, Bulwer 
 Lytton. The latter's regretful statement about the 
 repulsive " scholastic pedantry " of some school- 
 masters in teaching their unlucky pupils is most 
 amusingly exposed by Dickens in his admirable 
 novel, " Dombey and Son/' In this story a 
 pompous, yet evidently learned, well-educated 
 schoolmaster, Dr. Blimber, punishes a luckless 
 pupil for coughing and choking at dinner, thereby 
 interrupting the Doctor's classical, though not to 
 many people very interesting or instructive, 
 remarks. Addressing his timid usher, Mr. Feeder 
 specially, yet really speaking to all the pupils, while 
 they are at dinner, and, of course, requiring their 
 silent attention to all he says, their formal preceptor 
 gravely begins : 
 
 '' ' It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder, that the Romans ' At 
 
 the mention of this terrible people, their implacable enemies, 
 
 283
 
 284 
 
 British Writers 
 
 every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the Doctor 
 with the assumption of the deepest interest. One of the 
 number, who happened to be drinking, and who caught 
 the Doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of his 
 tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for some 
 moments, and in the sequel ruined Dr. Blimber's point. 
 * It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder,' said the Doctor, beginning 
 again slowly, ' that the Romans, in those gorgeous and 
 profuse entertainments of which we read in the days of the 
 emperors, when luxury had attained a height unknown before 
 or since, and when whole provinces were ravaged to supply 
 the splendid means of one imperial banquet.' Here the 
 offender, who had been swelling and straining and waiting in 
 vain for a full stop, broke out violently. 
 
 " ' Johnson,' said Mr. Feeder, in a low, reproachful voice, 
 ' take some water. ' 
 
 " The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the 
 water was brought, and then resumed : 
 
 " ' And when, Mr. Feeder ' 
 
 " But Mr. Feeder, who saw that Johnson must break out 
 again, and who knew that the Doctor would never come to 
 a period before the young gentlemen until he had finished all 
 he meant to say, couldn't keep his eye off Johnson, and thus 
 was caught in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who 
 consequently stopped. 
 
 '' ' I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mr. Feeder, reddening. * I 
 beg your pardon. Dr. Blimber.' 
 
 *' ' And when,' said the Doctor, raising his voice, ' when, 
 sir, we read, and have no occasion to doubt, incredible as it 
 may appear to the vulgar of our time — the brother of Vitellius ' 
 
 J " His food was of the most rare and exquisite nature ; 
 the deserts of Libya, the shores of Spain, and the waters of 
 the Carpathian Sea were diligently searched to supply the 
 table of the Emperor. The most celebrated of his feasts
 
 on Classic Lands 285 
 
 prepared for him a feast in which were served of fish two 
 
 thousand dishes ' 'Take some water, Johnson — dishes, 
 
 sir,' said Mr. Feeder. ' Of various sort of fowl, five thousand 
 
 dishes ' ' Or try a crust of bread,' said Mr. Feeder. 
 
 ' And one dish,' pursued the Doctor, raising his voice still 
 higher as he looked round the table, ' called, from its enormous 
 dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other 
 
 costly ingredients, of the brains of pheasants ' ' Ow, 
 
 ow, ow ' (from Johnson). ' Woodcocks.' ' Ow, ow, ow.' 
 ' The sounds of the fish called scari.' ' You'll burst some 
 vessel in your head,' said Mr. Feeder ; ' you had better let it 
 come.' ' And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the 
 Carpathian Sea,' pursued the Doctor in his severest voice. 
 * When we read of costly entertainments such as these, and 
 
 still remember that we have a Titus ' 'What would 
 
 your mother's feeHngs be if you died of apoplexy ? ' said Mr. 
 
 Feeder. ' A Domitian ' ' And you're blue, you know,' 
 
 said Mr. Feeder." 
 
 But ignoring this timid usher's evident sympathy 
 for the poor coughing Johnson, the imperious if 
 not unfeeUng old pedant proceeds, making a Hst 
 of the worst among the Roman emperors, knowing 
 he is quite master of the present situation, yet 
 with Httie, if any, practical idea of giving real 
 information. 
 
 " * A Nero, a Tiberius, a Cahgula, a Heliogabalus, and 
 many more,' pursued the Doctor, 'it is, Mr. Feeder, if 
 you are doing me the honour to attend — remarkable, 
 
 was that with which he was treated by his brother Lucius." — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 2 86 British Writers 
 
 VERY remarkable, sir.' But Johnson, unable to suppress it 
 any longer, burst at that moment into such an overwhelm- 
 ing fit of coughing, that although both his immediate 
 neighbours thumped him on the back, and Mr. Feeder 
 himself held a glass of water to his lips and the butler 
 walked him up and down several times between his own 
 chair and the sideboard like a sentry, it was full five minutes 
 before he was moderately composed. Then there was a 
 profound silence. ' Gentlemen,' said the Doctor, ' rise for 
 grace. . . . Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow morning 
 before breakfast, without book and from the Greek Testa- 
 ment, the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians. We will 
 resume our studies, Mr. Feeder, in half an hour.' The young 
 gentlemen bowed and withdrew." ^ 
 
 " Dombey and Son" was written in 1848, about 
 two years after the "Pictures from Italy." 2 Though 
 Dickens's bright, cheerful wit makes the above scene 
 amusingly comic, thoughtful people interested in 
 education may well hope that the charms of classic 
 genius and wisdom are now seldom rendered dull, 
 wearisome, and practically useless by such a formal 
 stupid instructor as Dr. Blimber. He is, apparently, 
 a correct classic scholar, but his pompous vanity or 
 selfishness would surely make his learning repelling, 
 rather than attractive or pleasing, to any of his 
 pupils. His wife, Mrs. Blimber, Dickens writes, 
 "was not learned herself, but she pretended to be, 
 and that did quite as well." When alluding to little 
 
 ^ " Dombey and Son," chap. xii. 
 2 a Student's English Literature."
 
 on Classic Lands 287 
 
 Paul Dombey's becoming her husband's pupil, she 
 exclaims " with uplifted eyes " to the child's pompous 
 father, Mr. Dombey : 
 
 " Like a bee, sir, about to plunge into a garden of the 
 choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for the first time : Virgil, 
 Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a world of 
 honey have we here." 
 
 She proceeds, though likely knowing little of what 
 she is talking about, making no quotation and 
 showing little real knowledge of the splendid orator 
 she pretends to admire : 
 
 " Really, if I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, 
 and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum ' (beau- 
 tiful Tusculum), I could have died contented." 
 
 Dickens sarcastically adds : 
 
 "A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious that Mr. 
 Dombey half believed this was exactly his case, and even Mrs. 
 Pipchin, who was not, as we have seen, of an accommodating 
 disposition generally, gave utterance to a little sound 
 between a groan and a sigh, as if she would have said that 
 nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting consolation." 
 
 Despite their pedantry, however, the Blimbers 
 are certainly an improvement on the cruel, ignorant 
 
 ' " A country house of Cicero, near Tusculum, where, 
 among other books, he composed his ' Questions.' " — 
 Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.
 
 288 British Writers 
 
 Squeerses,' whom Dickens had described many 
 years before. Yet that such repelling teachers, to 
 some extent resembling either the Blimbers or the 
 Squeerses, were only too common in England is 
 likely, if not certain, from the descriptive knowledge 
 of such men as Dickens and Thackeray. Dickens, 
 describing Dr. Blimber's system of classical educa- 
 tion, apparently from personal knowledge, or relying 
 on true information, writes : 
 
 " Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually 
 took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the 
 cares of the world on his head in three months . . . and at 
 the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclu- 
 sion, from which he never afterwards departed, that all the 
 fancies of the poets and lessons of the sages were a mere 
 collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning 
 in the world." ^ 
 
 ^' Nicholas Nickleby." 
 
 " Dombey and Son," chap. xi.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 19
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BOTH Dickens and Thackeray had been appar- 
 ently alike disgusted with some systems of 
 classical teaching, considering how little their 
 gifted, superior minds examined or appreciated 
 the original beauties of classic literature. This 
 grand subject of mental interest, however, 
 eminently succeeded in always charming the great 
 yet very different minds of their distinguished 
 British contemporaries, the Earl of Derby, Glad- 
 stone, Bulwer Lytton, and Macaulay, and to an 
 extent which would have likely gratified even the 
 greatest classic writers themselves. It is hardly 
 likely, indeed, that many young Greeks or young 
 Romans, at the time of the great classic writers, 
 would have admired them with more genuine 
 enthusiasm than these British students, though 
 living in that " isle," which, according to Bulwer 
 Lytton : 
 
 " The imperial Roman shivered when he named," ' 
 
 * " Last Days of Pompeii." 
 
 291
 
 292 British Writers 
 
 In fact the real delight of so many eminent 
 Englishmen, especially during the last century, 
 in classic works, produced on them a very different 
 effect from what Walter Scott describes its having 
 on the dreamy nature of the worthy tutor 
 Dominie Sampson.^ In his peculiar case love 
 for classic study makes him utterly unfit for the 
 practical business of life, and that this unfitness 
 is frequently the result of absorbing, enthusiastic 
 literary taste, is often acknowledged. The peculiar 
 excellence of the illustrious British scholars above 
 mentioned seems to be, that while fully appreciating 
 the talents, merit, and character of those living 
 in a remote period, they themselves were never- 
 theless the deserving and popular objects of 
 admiration among men of their own time and 
 living around them. It may be hoped, though 
 perhaps hardly to be generally expected, that 
 their views on classic education may greatly aid 
 in making it as delightful to many less gifted 
 readers than themselves. In reviewing the recent 
 progress of classic study in its historical diffusion 
 from South-eastern Europe, Western Asia, and 
 North-eastern Africa chiefly to European Western 
 lands, the British, the French, and the Germans 
 seem its most successful promoters. Were the 
 classical sages of antiquity to revive, they would 
 I " Guy Mannering."
 
 on Classic Lands 293 
 
 apparently find far more in common with Western 
 Europeans than with the modern inhabitants of 
 the famed countries of their pagan ancestry. It 
 would surely seem, from the connected evidence 
 of ancient, mediaeval, and modern history, that 
 the last century has beheld, more than any other 
 in the same space of time, the practical success 
 of British writers in examining, translating, and 
 explaining the long concealed or comparatively 
 little known wonders of classic lands. 
 
 Amidst the vast and extraordinary changes 
 during the eventful nineteenth century the merit 
 of classical literature seems to have increased 
 rather than diminished in the estimation of the 
 most enlightened modern European nations. Its 
 study has, indeed, often wearied, if not repelled, 
 students at schools and colleges, yet it has 
 especially during the last century, attracted states- 
 men, poets, and travellers, who, while influencing 
 or enjoying present times, find in their classical 
 studies a charm and interest independent of all 
 other pleasures or occupations. 
 
 THE END.
 
 WORKS REFERRED TO 
 
 Alison, Sir Archibald 
 ^acon, Lord 
 
 Bede, The Venerable 
 Blackstone . 
 Bury, Professor 
 Byron, Lord 
 Carlyle, Thomas 
 Derby, Earl of 
 Dickens, Charles 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin 
 
 Dryden, John 
 Farrar, Dean 
 
 Friedlander . 
 Gibbon, Edward . 
 
 Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E. 
 Goethe . . . . 
 Hosmer . . . . 
 
 Hume 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel . 
 
 Jonson, Ben. 
 
 History of Europe. 
 
 Essay on Julius Ccesar. 
 
 Essay on Augustus Caesar. 
 
 Fragments. 
 
 Commentaries on English Law. 
 
 Preface to Gibbon's History. 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 Heroes and Hero-worship. 
 
 Translation of Homer's " Iliad." 
 
 Pictures from Italy. 
 
 Dombey and Son. 
 
 Life of Lord George Bentinck. 
 
 Tancred. 
 
 Translation of Virgil's ".^neid." 
 
 Life of Christ. 
 
 Life of St. Paul. 
 
 The Jewish Religion. 
 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 
 Empire. 
 Juventus Mundi. 
 Faust. 
 
 History of the Jews. 
 History of England. 
 Lives of the Poets. 
 Preface to Shakespeare. 
 The Fall of Sejanus. 
 295
 
 296 
 
 British Writers 
 
 Kinglake, A. W. 
 
 Layard, Austen 
 Lecky, W. H. 
 Lempriere . 
 Macaulay, Lord 
 
 Mahaffy, Professor 
 Mangnall, Richmal 
 Merivale, Rev. Charles 
 Milman, Dean 
 
 Milton, John 
 Mohammed, the Prophet 
 
 Napoleon III., Emperor 
 
 Newman, Cardinal 
 
 Plutarch 
 
 Pope, Alexander . 
 
 Rawlinson, George 
 
 Renan, Ernest 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter. 
 
 Shakespeare, WiHiam . 
 
 Shaw, Thomas . 
 Stanley, Dean 
 Thackeray, William 
 
 Eothen. 
 
 Nineveh and its Remains. 
 
 European Morals. 
 
 Classical Dictionary. 
 
 Essays. 
 
 Miscellaneous Writings. 
 
 Lays of Ancient Rome. 
 
 Alexander's Empire. 
 
 Questions. 
 
 The Romans under the Empire. 
 
 History of the Jews. 
 
 History of Christianity. 
 
 Paradise Regained. 
 
 Koran. 
 
 Sacred Books of the East. 
 
 Life of Julius Caesar. 
 
 Grammar of Assent. 
 
 Lives of Illustrious Men. 
 
 Translation of Homer's *' Iliad." 
 
 Translation of Herodotus. 
 
 Manual of Ancient History. 
 
 Life of Christ. 
 
 Life of St. Paul. 
 
 Qugntin Durward. 
 
 Kenil worth. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 Coriolanus. 
 
 Julius Caesar. 
 
 Student's English Literature. 
 
 Travels in Syria and Palestine. 
 
 Journey from Cornhill to Cairo. 
 
 IJNWIN BROTHERS, LTD., THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
 
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