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FRENCH, GERMAN AND ITALIAN 
 ESSAYISTS 
 
 INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SKETCHES 
 
 WITH A SPECIAL INT-RODUCTION BY 
 CHAUNCEY C. STARKWEATHER, A.B., LL.B. 
 
 REVISED EDITlpN; «; i \' 
 
 THE 
 
 '>yx(>)x:o)-ja')Xi>m 
 
 
Copyright, 1900, 
 By the colonial PRESS. 
 
 HUtRY MORSE STtrHEM* 
 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE Spirit of the French race and language lends itself 
 naturally to the essay. Ever appreciative of style and 
 form, ever alert with raillery and badinage, ever keen 
 with critical acumen, there is no people with whom the essay 
 should rather flourish. In fact, whatever kind of prose com- 
 position the Frenchman may try, it may be said that he cannot 
 keep from essay-writing. Into the novel, the treatise, the his- 
 tory, the essay is interjected. The Frenchman lives in an art 
 atmosphere ; if he be not an artist he must perforce be a critic. 
 Oftentimes he is both, for it is not disputed that one may be an 
 artist in criticism. The plastic sense, the poetry of color and 
 tone, is in the very air the Frenchman breathes from birth. If 
 not creative, he must be appreciative. And does not the whole 
 nation pride itself on its logic? If not logical, the Frenchman --7 
 is nothing. And this sense of close and accurate argument and 
 inevitable inference is the basic quality of his caustic irony, his 
 withering sarcasm, his matchless innuendo, his smiling but inex- 
 orable reductio ad absurdum. It is quite natural, then, that the 
 father of the modern essay should have been a Frenchman. To 
 speak of the great Montaigne with any degree of adequacy a 
 volume would be required. We can only note a few of his 
 characteristics, and briefly hint at his influence on the world of 
 letters. The unity of his desultoriness lies in the spirit and "^ 
 treatment, and, again, in that he is always concerned in the por- 
 trayal or discussion of the nature of man. He will always re- 
 main popular because he is so human. Theoretically a radical, 
 he was satisfied to let things rest pretty much as they were. He 
 did not preach a great reform, but inculcated a cheerful and 
 grateful resignation to the asperites of life and the irresistible- 
 ness of death. He taught the dignity of good-sense. In his 
 grand confessional the loquacious egotist talks about himself, 
 
 iii 
 
 514974 
 
iv SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 and the world has not yet tired of Hstening. What a revelation 
 was his good-natured gossip, what a charm of carefully con- 
 cealed art, lightly facile, playful, amiable, learned and well-bred. 
 " What do I know? " was his motto.- Posterity has answered: 
 You knew how to be interesting. For that we have made you 
 immortal. 
 
 To the writers of the French language his value is incalculable. 
 In the history of the development of style his works are of the 
 highest importance, ranging, with complete mastery, from the 
 quizzically trivial to the height of sustained eloquence. He is 
 easily at the head of all the French writers of his century. 
 
 When enjoying his " great picture gallery " we may exclaim 
 with Madame de Sevigne : ** Oh, what an amiable man! What 
 good company he is! He is my old friend, but he is always 
 new." 
 
 While we may well have an affection for Montaigne we can 
 have only an admiration for Voltaire. Harsh have been the 
 epithets applied to him by his own countrymen. One French 
 critic has called him an " ape of genius, sent as the devil's mis- 
 sionary to man." Another, with equal politeness, describes him 
 as " a unique man to whom hell has given all its powers." In 
 him we miss the sweet serenity of Montaigne, and the genial 
 amiability of character and tone. Voltaire was a " lord of irony," 
 bitter and caustic. His imprisonment in the Bastile and his 
 exile did not sweeten his temper, nor did the burning of some of 
 his books by the pubHc executioner. And yet he was the most 
 complete representative of the French mind of his time. His 
 scope was universal — a model of simplicity in his letters, and just 
 as a literary critic, indefatigable in every field, and the acknowl- 
 edged leader of public opinion. His activity was ceaseless. He 
 was orthodox, he even built a church, but was an enemy of intol- 
 erance. He believed in God, but fought against certain abuses 
 of the Church. In affairs of the State, and also as a literary 
 critic, Voltaire was a conservative. His mind was a microcosm 
 of the eightenth century. 
 
 To French literature Rousseau brought a love of nature and a 
 hatred of society. Quarrelling with all his friends, he quarrelled 
 with society too. He led the great revolt of the individual. He 
 was the " emancipator of the ego." As an attorney for the in- 
 dividual he framed an indictment of civiHzation. He was the 
 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION v 
 
 great idealist, brooding and dreaming over the wrongs of the 
 people. The Revolutionists were his disciples. The skins of 
 those who ridiculed his works " went to bind the second edi- 
 tion." His hope was to regenerate humanity; he was the seer" 
 and prophet of popular emancipation. His " Emile " overturned 
 the educational ideas of France. Education became less arti- 
 ficial and more natural. He preached the gospel of reform. 
 Voltaire sneered at him, but the Revolution obeyed him, going 
 too far in its frenzied zeal. But the resultant of modern reform 
 was suggested by Rousseau, and his soul " goes marching on." 
 
 In the one hundred works of fiction written by Honore de 
 Balzac he showed himself to be the Shakespeare of the French / 
 novelists. Humanity is his topic, and he is an " anatomist of. 
 passion," looking upon life as^ gigantic comedy. From the! 
 darkness of his novels come refulgent lessons of virtue. Hisj 
 satire was somewhat heavy, as he took himself too seriously to! 
 rely upon the lighter graces of wit and sprightliness. The two 
 thousand personages in his works portray the conflict of classes ! 
 between the old and the new regimes. 
 
 Victor Hugo's work illumines half a century. He was the 
 leader of the Romantic school, a writer of limitless imagination 
 and great will power. Were this the place in which to speak of 
 his verse we might demonstrate that he was the greatest lyrical 
 poet of France. His great novels were prose epics. Into these 
 he introduced chapters which were really essays on a variety of 
 subjects. He was one of the founders of the " Conservateur 
 Litteraire." How interesting must have been those literary 
 " reunions " at which he met De Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, the two 
 Deschamps, de Musset, and Dumas, where the new ideas of 
 the leader were promulgated. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve was the first scientific and universal critic, n 
 Year after year, in the columns of the " Constitutionnel " and the 
 " Moniteur," he continued to attract the attention of the whole 
 literary world. His theories of criticism were broad and sound, 
 •founded on a wide study of literature, taking account of the 
 object which the author had in mind, and studying the writer 
 both personally and in relation with his other works. His taste 
 was well-nigh flawless. 
 
 The German mind has always loved cloudland. It has loved 
 to soar in the lofty realms of philosophical and psychological 
 
vi SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 speculation. Philosophers with " theories of vigor and rigor " 
 have risen and flourished. Accurate scholarship and wide re- 
 search have marked German thinkers and teachers. In poetry 
 Goethe and Schiller attained the highest rank of creative genius, 
 and Germany has never lacked songsters. Her novelists have 
 had a vast influence. In science and medicine she is well at the 
 fore. It has been said that the form of the essay was not con- 
 genial to German thought, that in German hands the essay 
 turned out to be a treatise, rock-ribbed with scholarship and 
 heavy with pedagogic didacticism. But while we may miss 
 some of the more engaging characteristics of the English essay, 
 in its best examples, we find in the German a compensating 
 depth of feeling and sympathetic human interest and sincerity. 
 Let us look for a moment at some of the traits of the essayists 
 whom we here introduce. As the Thirty Years' War had re- 
 tarded the growth of culture for more than a century, so the 
 Seven Years' War gave the German literature ideas of unity and 
 nationalization. 
 
 Western Europe was far ahead when Lessing and Wieland 
 stepped into the breach. After Luther, Lessing was Germany's 
 first great individuality. He taught Germany that she might 
 have a literature of her own apart from slavish imitation and all- 
 pervading foreign influence. He helped to create the golden 
 age of German literature. What great names are those of three 
 generations of German culture which must be bracketed with 
 his ! And by them all was Lessing's influence felt. From Anac- 
 reontics and war-songs and prose fables Lessing turned to criti- 
 cism, amusing and instructing Berlin by conversational and 
 witty attacks on the bad taste then prevalent. He redeemed the 
 drama by a play constructed according to his new theories of the 
 stage. In his famous Laocoon, opposing Winckelmann, he 
 taught the proper limitation of the several arts of poetry, paint- 
 ing and sculpture. His dramatic criticisms, continued during 
 two years at Hamburg, were of great value. He deemed the 
 drama the highest form of poetry, attacking the false methods of 
 the French school of tragedy and praising Sophocles and 
 Shakespeare. He broke the bonds of the pseudo-classical. Al- 
 though brilliant, caustic and destructive, he was also positive and 
 constructive. If he attacked false theories he supplied new and 
 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 true ones, in their place. He was a revolutionary force in art 
 and criticism. 
 
 Wieland did not reject the airs and graces of the French 
 school, but proved that they could be quite at home in good 
 German. Intent upon amusing, he sought to attract by urban- 
 ity and a happy and polished style. He displayed a remarkable 
 versatility. One field was not enough for him; he cultivated 
 many. And in them all he reaped a smiling harvest. From 
 grave to gay and back again he wandered, expounding, review- 
 ing, creating. Although coquetting with the French influence 
 in letters, he was mindful of the English too. His translation of 
 Shakespeare gave great impetus to the growth of the purer and 
 simpleiT English tendencies. As a critic Wieland was virtually 
 a dictator and his opinion had all the weight of a decree. The 
 matchless " Oberon " won all hearts, and by this epic he estab- 
 lished his supremacy forever. In his forty-two volumes one 
 may cull the flowers of rhetoric, one may learn of the evolution 
 of true criticism and may gain visions of the mountain-tops 
 of art. 
 
 Herder taught the unity of all mankind. He set forth in per- 
 suading argument the correlation of human forces, and the 
 organic growth in literature, science and art. He emphasized 
 the value of popular song and the worth of the poet as reflecting 
 the life of humanity. He followed at first in the revolutionary 
 path of the great Rousseau. He sang and preached the brother- 
 hood of a man. He not only influenced to a great degree his 
 famous contemporaries, but also he has left his impress on the 
 literature and thought of succeeding generations. 
 
 Herder had two pupils, Goethe and Schiller. These names 
 are household words. Prolific as each of these immortals was, 
 more has been written about them than they ever wrote about 
 anything. Wiseacres have " peeped and botanized," pedants 
 have oracularly analyzed, critics have viewed and reviewed. It 
 is as if one should try to put the Andes or the Himalayas under 
 a microscope, as if one should try to catch the roar of Niagara 
 in a phonograph. Goethe and Schiller: they stand side by side, 
 great beacon-lights of German poesy. And not German poesy 
 alone. They are Titans of world-genius, crowned kings of uni- 
 versal literature, known to every schoolboy and poet and philos- 
 opher of two continents. Safe in the heart of humanity, the 
 
viii SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 ages will be their heirs. They are on the heights with Homer 
 and Sophocles, Milton and Shakespeare, '' like gods together," 
 treasured by mankind. 
 
 Richter was an idyllic sentimentalist in sixty-five volumes! 
 He was enlivened with satirical humor and had great warmth of 
 heart, paving the way in his writing for the Romantic school. 
 
 August Wilhelm Von Schlegel was remarkable for his studies 
 in foreign hterature, for his translation of Shakespeare, and for 
 his eminence as a critic. He appreciated the value and advo- 
 cated the spread of the Greek and English influence in letters. 
 
 The great pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer was the exponent 
 of a gloomy Buddhism. His sombre philosophy reacted upon 
 his own life and was a part of it. How lonely and dismal he 
 became! — viewing everybody with suspicion, the very embodi- 
 ment and apostle of discouragement and despair. 
 
 The laughing, suffering, jeering, amiable, witty, caustic Heine 
 is always a captivating study. Fond of travel, yet condemned 
 to years upon a mattress grave, his mind was ever alert. If you 
 are a German you will find German humor in his works; if a 
 Frenchman, you will discover the flashes of French wit. How- 
 ever local his reference may be he is at the same time universal, 
 a true cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world. It is this spirit of 
 genuineness and universality about him which makes him ap- 
 preciated in translations, always fatal to the mediocre and the 
 banal. ' His haunting lyrics linger in the memory and are popu- 
 lar wherever German song is known. 
 
 ^rA^aMAjUULU'\!7. •^^^SX/tcLXIOL^^Lt 
 
 v^C^j^cc^Aje^ 
 
CHOICE EXAMPLES OF BOOK ILLUMINATION. 
 
 Fac-similes from Illuminated Manuscripts and Illustrated Books 
 of Early Date. 
 
 THE ALMIGHTY ORDAINING THE CREATION, 
 
 Miniature from the Clermont Bible, written about i^jo. 
 
 The art of miniature-painting, or illuminating manuscripts, reached its fullest 
 perfection in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in France and Italy. The 
 French style, with its Gothic motif, is well illustrated in this medallion from the 
 Clermont Bible. It possesses all the fine symmetry, rich yet sober color, and 
 animation of the fourteenth-century Gothic artist, while it is not only strictly eccle- 
 siastical, but devotional and theological in design. It embodies the idea that the 
 Creator ordained the Church before the foundation of the world. The orb of the 
 world held by the Divine figure is surmounted by a cross, and contains the outline 
 of a church building. The four evangelists are figured in the comers of the square. 
 The freedom of the drawing, and the arrangement of the draperies show a great 
 advance beyond the hieratic stiffness of the Byzantine artist. The use of the two 
 tints in the dividing lines of the picture points to the French character of the work, 
 while the delicate insertions of gold-leaf and the elaborate tracery of the two back- 
 grounds exhibit a perfection of skill which belongs only to the best age of illumina- 
 tive art. Nothing can be more exquisitely harmonious than the color arrangement 
 of the whole panel— one of the choicest examples of pictorial art in this depart- 
 ment. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne i 
 
 ^ Of Pedantry 3 
 
 •^ ^ -Of -Frienxtshlp 17 
 
 Of Solitude 33 
 
 ^ Of Books 47 
 
 gj^Cruelty 63 
 
 Of Repentance .*-. 79 
 
 Of the Inconvenience of Greatness 95 
 
 Of Managing the Will loi 
 
 Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) 125 
 
 ^ Of Ceremonies 127 
 
 •/ On Cromwell 129 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau 135 
 
 The People 137 
 
 GOTTHOLD EpHRAIM LeSSING I45 
 
 Aristotle and Tragedy 147 
 
 Christopher Martin Wieland .* 179 
 
 Philosophy Considered as the Art of Life and Healing Art 
 
 of the Soul 181 
 
 On the Relation of the Agreeable and the Beautiful to the 
 
 Useful 187 
 
 JOHANN KaSPAR LAVATER IQS 
 
 On the Nature of Man 197 
 
 Of the Truth of Physiognomy 203 
 
 JoHANN Gottfried von Herder 211 
 
 Tithon and Aurora 213 
 
 JoHANN Wolfgang von Goethe 229 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield 231 
 
 Friedrich von Schiller v. 253 
 
 Upon Naive and Sentimental Poetry 255 
 
 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 279 
 
 On Consolation 281 
 
 August Wilhelm von Schlegel 285 
 
 Sophocles 287 
 
 Arthur Schopenhauer 291 
 
 On Authorship and Style 293 
 
 Giacomo Leopardi 313 
 
 The Academy of Syllographs 31S 
 
 ix 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 HoNORE DE Balzac 319 
 
 About Catherine De Medici 321 
 
 Heinrich Heine 355 
 
 Don Quixote 357 
 
 Victor Hugo 377 
 
 Funeral of Napoleon 379 
 
 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve 401 
 
 Alfred de Musset 403 
 
 Rabelais 415 
 
 Balzac 429 
 
 Montaigne 445 
 
 Giuseppe Mazzini 461 
 
 Byron and Goethe 463 
 
 Joseph Ernest Renan 483 
 
 The Poetry of the Celtic Races 485 
 
 Camille Flammarion S3I 
 
 The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds 533 
 
 The Contemplation of the Heavens 541 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Photogravure from the original painting 
 The Almighty Ordaining the Creation . . . viii 
 
 Fac-simile Illumination of the Fourteenth Century 
 
 Early Venetian Printing 134 
 
 Fac-simile of a page from Appian's Roman History 
 
 The Boec des Gulden Throens 284 
 
 Fac-simile example of Printing and Engraving in the Fifteenth Century 
 
 Early Venetian Printing 354 
 
 Fac-simile of a Page from Jenson's Bible 
 
OF PEDANTRY 
 
 OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 OF SOLITUDE 
 
 OF BOOKS 
 
 OF CRUELTY 
 
 OF REPENTANCE 
 
 OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS 
 
 OF MANAGING THE WILL 
 
 BY 
 
 MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE 
 
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE 
 
 1533— 1592 
 
 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born at his paternal home of 
 Montaigne, in Perigord, France, in 1533. His father, a somewhat 
 ecc,entric nobleman, had his son instructed in Latin as the language 
 of his every-day life and conversation, and it was no doubt partly 
 owJC;5 to this circumstance that he subsequently developed that rare 
 tastr: for the Latin poets and deep appreciation of Latin thought and 
 cultu.te whkh mark his essays, and which led Sainte-Beuve to call 
 hirb'the French Horace. Educated at the College de Guienne, at 
 Bo'rcleaux, under some of the most famous scholars of his time, and 
 trained in the study of the law, Montaigne's youth and early manhood 
 were pasHed in the court, the camp, and the council chamber, in a 
 life bf pleps'ure and adventure similar to that of most )'oung noblemen 
 of ^his day. It was during this period that Montaigne acquired that 
 wi^C' exp^^dence with life and deep insight into human nature that 
 give to his« >£ssays much of their enduring value and charm. 
 
 h\ 1571,- .when thirty-eight years of age, Montaigne abruptly quitted 
 these scenes and retired to his estates, devoting the remainder of his 
 lift' to' study and literature. The death of his friend, Etienne de la 
 Boetie, an ardent young nobleman of his own age and similar tastes, 
 to whom he was devotedly attached, was one of the leading reasons 
 for this retirement, and his first care was to edit the works of his 
 deceased friend. In the midst of the terrible scenes that followed the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, Montaigne lived quietly at home in 
 his chateau, having, as he himself said, " no other guard or sentinel 
 than the stars." In 1580 he published the first two books of his "Es- 
 says." The most noteworthy essays in these first books are those en- 
 titled : " Of Pedantry," " Of Friendship," " Of Solitude," " Of Books," 
 and "Of Cruelty," all of which are given here. From 1581 to 1585 
 Montaigne held the important position of mayor of Bordeaux, and 
 during this period he frequently acted as mediator between the con- 
 tending factions. In 1588 a fifth edition of the " Essays " was pub- 
 lished, to which Montaigne added a third book containing a smaller 
 number of essays than the two earlier books, but of a higher order and 
 displaying greater care. His essays entitled " Of Repentance," " Of 
 Managing the Will," " Of the Inconvenience of Greatness," first ap- 
 peared in that volume. His death occurred in 1592. 
 
 Montaigne's style reflects the Gascon origin of the man. It is 
 fresh, racy, discursive, at times garrulous, but withal simple, direct, 
 manly, genuine. Egotistic to a degree paralleled by no other writer 
 in literature, Montaigne's essays give us the man himself. When the 
 King of France met Montaigne after the publication of the first two 
 books he told the author that he liked his essays. " Then, sire," he 
 replied, "you will like me; I am my essays." Though Montaigne's 
 style was influential in the development of French prose, it was his 
 method and manner of thinking that constitute his chief contribution 
 to literature. Prior to Montaigne the essay had no recognized place 
 in literature, and to him more than any other writer must be given 
 the credit of creating this most charming, useful form of literary ex- 
 pression. Few writers have enjoyed a greater or more distinguished 
 following than Montaigne. Emerson said : " This book of Montaigne 
 the world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues, and printing 
 seventy-five editions of it in Europe ; and that, too, a circulation some- 
 what chosen, namely among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of the 
 world, and men of wit and generosity." 
 
OF PEDANTRY 
 
 I WAS often, when a boy, wonderfully concerned to see, in 
 the Italian farces, a pedant always brought in for the 
 fool of the play, and that the title of magister was in no 
 greater reverence among us: for being delivered up to their 
 tuition, what could I do less than be jealous of their honor and 
 reputation? I sought, indeed, to excuse them by the natural 
 incompatibility between the vulgar sort and men of a finer 
 thread, both in judgment and knowledge, forasmuch as they 
 go a quite contrary way to one another ; but in this, the thing 
 I most stumbled at was, that the finest gentlemen were those 
 who most despised them ; witness our famous poet Du Bellay : 
 
 " Mais je hay par sur tout un sgavotr pedantesque." 
 
 And 'twas so in former times ; for Plutarch says that Greek 
 and Scholar were terms of reproach and contempt among the 
 Romans. But since, with the better experience of age, I find 
 they had very great reason so to do, and that " magis magnos 
 cleric OS non sunt magis magnos sapient es." ^ But whence it 
 should come to pass, that a mind enriched with the knowledge 
 of so many things should not become more quick and 
 sprightly, and that a gross and vulgar understanding should 
 lodge within it, without correcting and improving itself, all the 
 discourses and judgments of the greatest minds the world ever 
 had, I am yet to seek. To admit so many foreign conceptions, 
 so great and so high fancies, it is necessary (as a young lady, 
 one of the greatest princesses of the kingdom, said to me once, 
 speaking of a certain person) that a man's own brain must be 
 crowded and squeezed together into a less compass, to make 
 room for the others ; I should be apt to conclude, that as plants 
 are suffocated and drowned with too much nourishment, and 
 
 *" Of all things I hate pedantic learn- est men." — A proverb given inRabelais's 
 ing."— Du Bellay. " Gargantua, i. 39. 
 
 * " The greatest clerks are not the wis- 
 
4 MONTAIGNE 
 
 lamps with too much oil, so with too much study and matter 
 is the active part of -the understanding which, being embar- 
 rassed, and confounded with a great diversity of things, loses 
 the force and power to disengage itself, and, by the pressure 
 of this weight, is bowed, subjected, and doubled up. But it is 
 quite otherwise; for our soul stretches and dilates itself pro- 
 portionably as it fills ; and in the examples of elder times, we 
 see, quite contrary, men very proper for public business, great 
 captains, and great statesmen, very learned withal. 
 
 And, as to the philosophers, a sort of men remote from all 
 public affairs, they have been sometimes also despised by the 
 comic liberty of their times ; their opinions and manners mak- 
 ing them appear to men of another sort ridiculous. Would 
 you make them judges of a lawsuit, of the actions of men? 
 they are ready to take it upon them, and straight begin to ex- 
 amine if there be life, if there be motion, if man be any other 
 than an ox ; what it is to do and to suffer ? what animals, law 
 and justice are? Do they speak of the magistrate, or to him, 
 'tis with a rude, irreverent, and indecent liberty. Do they hear 
 their prince, or a king commended, they make no more of him 
 than of a shepherd, goatherd, or neatherd: a lazy Corydon, 
 occupied in milking and shearing his herds and flocks, but 
 more rudely and harshly than the herd or shepherd himself. 
 Do you repute any man the greater for being lord of two thou- 
 sand acres of land ? they laugh at such a pitiful pittance, as lay- 
 ing claim themselves to the whole world for their possession. 
 Do you boast of your nobility, as being descended from seven 
 rich successive ancestors? they look upon you with an eye of 
 contempt, as men who have not a right idea of the universal 
 image of nature, and that do not consider how many prede- 
 cessors every one of us has had, rich, poor, kings, slaves, 
 Greeks, and barbarians ; and though you were the fiftieth de- 
 scendant from Hercules, they look upon it as a great vanity, 
 so highly to value this, which is only a gift of fortune. And 
 'twas so the vulgar sort contemned them, as men ignorant of 
 the most elementary and ordinary things; as presumptuous 
 and insolent. 
 
 But this Platonic picture is far different from that these 
 pedants are presented by. Those were envied for raising 
 themselves above the common sort, for despising the ordinary 
 
OF PEDANTRY 5 
 
 actions and offices of life, for having assumed a particular and 
 inimitable way of living, and for using a certain method of 
 high-flight and obsolete language, quite different from the or- 
 dinary way of speaking: but these are contemned as being as 
 much below the usual form, as incapable of public employ- 
 ment, as leading a life and conforming themselves to the mean 
 and vile manners of the vulgar : 
 
 " Odi homines zgnava opera, philosopha sententza." ' 
 
 For what concerns the philosophers, as I have said, if they 
 were great in science, they were yet much greater in action. 
 And, as it is said of the geometrician of Syracuse,* who haying 
 been disturbed from his contemplation to put some of his skill 
 in practice for the defence of his country, that he suddenly 
 set on foot dreadful and prodigious engines, that wrought ef- 
 fects beyond all human expectation; himself, notwithstanding, 
 disdaining all this handiwork, and thinking in this he had 
 played the mere mechanic, and violated the dignity of his art, 
 of which these performances of his he accounted but trivial 
 experiments and playthings : so they, whenever they have been 
 put upon the proof of action, have been seen to fly to so high a 
 pitch as made it very well appear their souls were marvellously 
 elevated, and enriched by the knowledge of things. But some 
 of them, seeing the reins of government in the hands of in- 
 capable men, have avoided all management of political affairs ; 
 and he who demanded of Crates, how long it was necessary to 
 philosophize, received this answer : " Till our armies are no 
 more commanded by fools." ^ Heraclitus resigned the roy- 
 alty to his brother ; and, to the Ephesians, who reproached him 
 that he spent his time in playing with children before the tem- 
 ple : " Is it not better," said he, " to do so than to sit at the 
 helm of affairs in your company?"^ Others having their 
 imagination advanced above the world and fortune, have 
 looked upon the tribunals of justice, and even the thrones of 
 kings, as paltry and contemptible; insomuch, that Emped- 
 ocles refused the royalty that the Agrigentines offered to 
 him.'' Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains 
 
 ' " I hate men who jabber about phil- ^ Diogenes Laertius, vi. 92. 
 
 osophy, but do nothing."— Pacuvius, ap. « Idem, ix. 63. 
 
 GelHum, xiii. 8. 7 Idem, Empedocles, viii. 63. 
 
 * Archimedes. 
 
6 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and care men put themselves to to become rich, was answered 
 by one in the company, that he did Hke the fox, who found 
 fault with what he could not obtain. Whereupon, he had a 
 mind, for the jest's sake, to show them to the contrary; and 
 having, for this occasion, made a muster of all his wits, wholly 
 to employ them in the service of profit and gain, he set a traffic 
 on foot, which in one year brought him in so great riches, that 
 the most experienced in that trade could hardly in their whole 
 lives, with all their industry, have raked so much together.* 
 That which Aristotle reports of some who called both him and 
 Anaxagoras, and others of their profession, wise but not 
 prudent, in not applying their study to more profitable things 
 — though I do not well digest this verbal distinction — that will 
 not, however, serve to excuse my pedants, for to see the low 
 and necessitous fortune wherewith they are content, we have 
 rather reason to pronounce that they are neither wise nor 
 prudent. 
 
 But letting this first reason alone, I think it better to say 
 that this evil proceeds from their applying themselves the 
 wrong way to the study of the sciences; and that, after the 
 manner we are instructed, it is no wonder if neither the scholars 
 nor the masters become, though more learned, ever the wiser, 
 or more able. In plain truth, the cares and expense our 
 parents are at in our education, point at nothing but to furnish 
 our heads with knowledge ; but not a word of judgment and 
 virtue. Cry out, of one that passes by, to the people : " Oh, 
 what a learned man ! " and of another, " Oh, what a good 
 man ! " ^ they will not fail to turn their eyes, and address their 
 respect to the former. There should then be a third crier, 
 " Oh, the blockheads ! " Men are apt presently to inquire, 
 does such a one understand Greek or Latin? Is he a poet? 
 or does he write in prose? But whether he be grown better 
 or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern, these 
 are never thought of. We should rather examine, who is bet- 
 ter learned, than who is more learned. 
 
 We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience 
 and the understanding unfurnished and void. , Like birds who 
 fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, 
 
 sDiosrenes Laertius, Thales, i. 26; Cic- » Translated from Seneca, " Epistolae 
 
 cro, " De Divinatione," i. 49. ad Lucilium," 88. 
 
OF PEDANTRY 7 
 
 without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our 
 pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, 
 and hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute 
 it abroad. And here I cannot but smile to think how I have 
 paid myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, 
 who myself am so manifest an example ; for, do I not the same 
 thing throughout almost this whole composition? I go here 
 and there, culling out of several books the sentences that best 
 please me, not to keep them (for I have no memory to retain 
 them in), but to transplant them into this; where, to say the 
 truth, they are no more mine than in their first places. We 
 are, I conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not 
 at all in what is past, no more than in that which is to come. 
 But the worst on't is, their scholars and pupils are no better 
 nourished by this kind of inspiration ; and it makes no deeper 
 impression upon them, but passes from hand to hand, only to 
 make a show, to be tolerable company, and to tell pretty stories, 
 like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use or value but 
 to reckon with, or to set up at cards. " Apud alios loqui didi- 
 cerunt, non ipsi secum." ^^ " Non est loqiiendum, sed gubernan- 
 dnm."^^ Nature, to show that there is nothing barbarous where 
 she has the sole conduct, oftentimes, in nations where art has 
 the least to do, causes productions of wit, such as may rival 
 the greatest effects of art whatever. In relation to what I am 
 now speaking of, the Gascon proverb, derived from a corn- 
 pipe, is very quaint and subtle. " Bouha prou bouha, mas a 
 remuda lous dits qu'em." ^^ We can say : Cicero says thus ; 
 these were the manners of Plato ; these are the very words of 
 Aristotle ; but what do we say ourselves ? What do we judge? 
 A parrot would say as much as that. 
 
 And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome,^* 
 who had been solicitous, with very great expense, to procure 
 men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whom he had 
 always attending his person, to the end, that when among his 
 friends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject what- 
 soever, they might supply his place, and be ready to prompt 
 
 1" " They have learned to speak from ^^ «* You may blow till your eyes start 
 
 others, not from themselves." — Cicero, out; but if once you offer to stir your 
 
 " Tusc. Quse.," v. 36. fingers, it is all over." 
 
 ^^ " Speaking is not so necessary as ^^ Calvisius Sabinus; Seneca, " Epis- 
 
 governing." — Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lu- tolae ad Lucilium," 27. 
 cilium," 108. 
 
8 MONTAIGNE 
 
 him, one with a sentence of Seneca, another with a verse of 
 Homer, and so forth, everyone according to his talent ; and he 
 fancied this knowledge to be his own, because it was in the 
 heads of those who Hved upon his bounty; as they, also, do 
 whose learning consists in having noble libraries. I know 
 one, who, when I question him what he knows, he presently 
 calls for a book to show me, and dares not venture to tell me 
 so much as that he has boils on his back, till first he has con- 
 sulted his dictionary, what boils and backs are. 
 
 We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; 
 which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make it 
 our own. We are in this very like him who, having need of 
 fire, went to a neighbor's house to fetch it, and finding a very 
 good one there, sat down to warm himself without remember- 
 ing to carry any with him home.^* What good does it do 
 us to have the stomach full of meat if it do not digest, if it be 
 not incorporated with us, if it does not nourish and support 
 us? Can we imagine that Lucullus, whom letters, without 
 any manner of experience, made so great a captain, learned to 
 be so after this perfunctory manner ?^^ We suffer ourselves 
 to lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of another that we 
 destroy our own strength and vigor. Would I fortify myself 
 against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca : 
 would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I borrow 
 it from Cicero. I might have found it in myself, had I been 
 trained to make use of my own reason. I do not Hke this 
 relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could 
 become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be 
 wise but by his own wisdom. 
 
 Mi<r& ffoipurriiv, Strrts ovx aury tro^s.^^ 
 
 Whence Ennius, " Nequidquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi 
 prodesse non quiret" ^^ 
 
 "Si cupidus, si 
 VanuSy et Euganea quantumvis tnollior agna. " " 
 
 " Plutarch, " How a Man should Lis- " " That wise man knows nothing, 
 ten." • who cannot profit himself by his wis- 
 h's Cicero, "Acad.," ii. i, dom."— Cicero, " De Offic," iii. 15. 
 *' " I hate the wise man, who in his ^^ " jf he be grasping, or a boaster, or 
 own concern is not wise." — Euripides, softer than an Euganean lamb." — Juve- 
 ap. Cicero, " Ep. Fam.," xiii. 15. nal, " Satires," viii. 14. 
 
OF PEDANTRY 9 
 
 " Non enim paranda nobis solum, sed fruenda sapientia 
 est:' ^« 
 
 Dionysius ^^ laughed at the grammarians, who cudgelled 
 their brains to inquire into the miseries of Ulysses, and were 
 ignorant of their own; at musicians, who were so exact in 
 tuning their instruments, and never tuned their manners; at 
 orators, who made it a study to declare what is justice, but 
 never took care to do it. If the mind be not better disposed, 
 if the judgment be no better settled, I had much rather my 
 scholar had spent his time at tennis, for, at least, his body would 
 by that means be in better exercise and breath. Do but ob- 
 serve him when he comes back from school, after fifteen or 
 sixteen years that he has been there, there is nothing so unfit 
 for employment ; all you shall "find he has got, is, that his Latin 
 and Greek have only made him a greater coxcomb than when 
 he went from home. He should bring back his soul replete 
 with good literature, and he brings it only swelled and puffed 
 up with vain and empty shreds and patches of learning; and 
 has really nothing more in him than he had before.^^ 
 
 These pedants of ours, as Plato says of the Sophists, their 
 cousins-german, are, of all men, they who most pretend to be 
 useful to mankind, and who alone, of all men, not only do not 
 better and improve that which is committed to them, as a car- 
 penter or a mason would do, but make them much worse, and 
 make us pay them for making them worse, to boot. If the 
 rule which Protagoras proposed to his pupils were followed — 
 either that they should give him his own demand, or make af- 
 fidavit upon oath in the temple how much they valued the 
 profit they had received under his tuition, and satisfy him ac- 
 cordingly — my pedagogues would find themselves sorely 
 gravelled, if they were to be judged by the affidavits of my ex- 
 perience. Our common Perigordian patois very pleasantly 
 calls these pretenders to learning, lettre-ferits, as a man should 
 say, letter-marked — men on whom letters have been stamped 
 by the blow of a mallet. And, in truth, for the most part, they 
 appear to be deprived even of common-sense ; for you see the 
 husbandman and the cobbler go simply and fairly about their 
 business, speaking only of what they know and understand ; 
 
 *f " For wisdom is not only to be ac- ^o j^ ^^^^ not Dionysius. but Diogenes 
 
 quired, but to be utilized." — Cicero, the cvnic. Diogenes Laertius, vi. 27. 
 * De Finib.," i. i. 21 piato, " Protagoras." 
 
lo MONTAIGNE 
 
 whereas these fellows, to make parade and to get opinion, mus- 
 tering this ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on the 
 superficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing and en- 
 tangling themselves in their own nonsense. They speak fine 
 words sometimes, 'tis true, but let somebody that is wiser apply 
 them. They are wonderfully well acquainted with Galen, but 
 not at all with the disease of the patient; they have already 
 deafened you with a long ribble-row of laws, but understand 
 nothing of the case in hand ; they have the theory of all things, 
 let who will put it in practice. 
 
 I have sat by, when a friend of mine, in my own house, for 
 sport's sake has with one of these fellows counterfeited a jargon 
 of Galimatias, patched up of phrases without head or tail, say- 
 ing that he interlarded here and there some terms that had 
 relation to their dispute, and held the coxcomb in play a whole 
 afternoon together, who all the while thought he had answered 
 pertinently and learnedly to all his objections; and yet this 
 was a man of letters, and reputation, and a fine gentleman of 
 the long robe. 
 
 '* Vos, O patricius sanguis, quos vivere par est 
 Occipiti ccBCOypasticcs occur rite sannce" ^^ 
 
 Whosoever shall narrowly pry into and thoroughly sift this 
 sort of people, wherewith the world is so pestered, will, as I 
 have done, find, that for the most part, they neither understand 
 others, nor themselves: and that their memories are full 
 enough, but the judgment totally void and empty; some ex- 
 cepted, whose own nature has of itself formed them into better 
 fashion. As I have observed, for example, in Adrian Turne- 
 bus, who having never made other profession than that of mere 
 learning only, and in that, in my opinion, he was the greatest 
 man that has been these thousand years, had nothing at all 
 in him of the pedant, but the wearing of his gown, and a little 
 exterior fashion, that could not be civilized to courtier ways, 
 which in themselves are nothing. I hate our people, who can 
 worse endure an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind, 
 and take their measure by the leg a man makes, by his be- 
 havior, and so much as the very fashion of his boots, what kind 
 
 22 " O you, of patrician blood, whose at you from behind." — Persius, " ,Sat- 
 fortune it is to live without eyes in the ires," i. 6i. 
 back of your head, beware of grimaces 
 
OF PEDANTRY n 
 
 of man he is. For within there was not a more poHshed soul 
 upon earth. I have often purposely put him upon arguments 
 quite wide of his profession, wherein I found he had so clear 
 an insight, so quick an apprehension, so solid a judgment, that 
 a man would have thought he had never practised any other 
 thing but arms, and been all his life employed in affairs of state. 
 These are great and vigorous natures, 
 
 " Quels arte benigna 
 Et meliore luto finxit prcBCordia Titan." "^^ 
 
 that can keep themselves upright in despite of a pedantic edu- 
 cation. But it is not enough that our education does not spoil 
 us ; it must, moreover, alter us for the better. 
 
 Some of our parliaments^ when they are to admit officers, 
 examine only their learning ; to which some of the others also 
 add the trial of understanding, by asking their judgment of 
 some case in law ; of these the latter, methinks, proceed with 
 the better method ; for although both are necessary, and that 
 it is very requisite they should be defective in neither, yet, in 
 truth, knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment ; 
 the last may make shift without the other, but the other never 
 without this. For as the Greek verse says : 
 
 'fls ovih\v 7} ixddr](ris 'fjv fi^ yovs Traprj. 
 
 Would to God that, for the good of our judicature, these 
 societies were as well furnished with understanding and con- 
 science as they are with knowledge. " Non vitce, sed scoIcb 
 discimusf ^^ We are not to tie learning to the soul, but to 
 work and incorporate them together; not to tincture it only, 
 but to give it a thorough and perfect die ; which, if it will not 
 take color* and meliorate its imperfect state, it were without 
 question better to let it alone. Tis a dangerous weapon, that 
 will hinder and wound its master, if put into an awkward and 
 unskilful hand : " Ut fuerit melius non didicisse." ^® 
 
 And this, peradventure, is the reason why neither we nor 
 theology require much learning in women ; and that Francis, 
 
 23 " Whom beniffn Titan (Promethe- of our future life, but only for the 
 
 us) has framed of better clay."— Juve- school."— Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucil- 
 
 nal, xiv. 34. ium." 106. 
 
 2* " To what use serves learning, if the ^e «< c;^ ^hat it were better never to 
 
 understanding be away? "— Apud Sto- have learned at all."— Cicero, " Tus. 
 
 boeus, tit. iii. p. 37 (1609). Quaes.," ii. 4. 
 
 25 " We do not study for the service 
 
 rJX 24 
 
12 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Duke of Brittany, son of John V, one talking with him about 
 his marriage with Isabella the daughter of Scotland, and add- 
 ing that she was homely bred, and without any manner of 
 learning, made answer, that he liked her the better, and that 
 a woman was wife enough if she could distinguish her hus- 
 band's shirt from his doublet.^^ So that it is no great wonder, 
 as they make of it, that our ancestors had letters in no greater 
 esteem, and that even to this day, they are but rarely met with 
 in the principal councils of princes ; and if the end and design 
 of acquiring riches, which is the only thing we propose to our- 
 selves, by the means of law, physic, pedantry, and even divinity 
 itself, did not uphold and keep them in credit, you would, with- 
 out doubt, see them in as pitiful a condition as ever. And 
 what loss would this be, if they neither instruct us to think well 
 nor to do well ? " Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desund." ^® 
 All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science 
 of goodness. 
 
 But the reason I glanced upon but now, may it not also 
 hence proceed, that, our studies in France having almost no 
 other aim but profit, except as to those who, by nature born to 
 offices and employments rather of glory than gain, addict them- 
 selves to letters, if at all, only for so short a time (being taken 
 from their studies before they can come to have any taste of 
 them, to a profession that has nothing to do with books), there 
 ordinarily remain no others to apply themselves wholly to 
 learning but people of mean condition, who in that only seek 
 the means to live ; and by such people, whose souls are, both by 
 nature and by domestic education and example, of the basest 
 alloy, the fruits of knowledge are immaturely gathered and ill 
 digested, and delivered to their recipients quite another thing. 
 For it is not for knowledge to enlighten a soul that is dark of 
 itself, nor to make a blind man see. Her business is not to 
 find a man's eyes, but to guide, govern and direct them, pro- 
 vided he have sound feet and straight legs to go upon. Knowl- 
 
 ** " Nos peres sur ce point etoient bien ^s Seneca, " Epistolse ad Lucilium," 
 
 pens senses, 95. " Since the savans have made their 
 
 Qui disoient qu'une femme en sait appearance among us, the good people 
 
 toujours assez, have become eclipsed." — Rousseau, 
 
 Quand la capacite de son esprit se " Discours sur les Lettres." 
 
 hausse 
 A connoitre un pourpoint d'avec un 
 haut-de-chausse." 
 — Moliere, " Femmes Savantes." 
 
 act ii. sc. 7. 
 
OF PEDANTRY 13 
 
 edge is an excellent drug, but no drug has virtue enough to 
 preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be 
 tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep. Such a one may- 
 have a sight clear enough who looks asquint, and consequently 
 sees what is good, but does not follow it, and sees knowledge, 
 but makes no use of it. Plato's principal institution in his 
 " Republic " is to fit his citizens with employments suitable to 
 their nature. Nature can do all, and does all. Cripples are 
 very unfit for exercises of the body, and lame souls for exer- 
 cises of the mind. Degenerate and vulgar souls are unworthy 
 of philosophy. If we see a shoemaker with his shoes out at 
 the toes, we say, 'tis no wonder ; for, commonly, none go worse 
 shod than they. In like manner, experience often presents us 
 a physician worse physicked, a divine less reformed, and (con- 
 stantly) a scholar of less sufficiency, than other people. 
 
 Old Aristo of Chios had reason to say that philosophers did 
 their auditors harm, forasmuch as most of the souls of those 
 that heard them were not capable of making benefit of instruc- 
 tions, which, if not applied to good, would certainly be applied 
 to ill: "acTGjTou? ex Aristippi acerbos ex Zenonis schola ex- 
 ire." 2» 
 
 In the excellent institution that Xenophon attributes to the 
 Persians, we find that they taught their children virtue, as other 
 nations do letters. Plato tells us that the eldest son in their 
 royal succession was thus brought up ; so soon as he was born 
 he was delivered, not to women, but to eunuchs of the greatest 
 authority about their kings for their virtue, whose charge it 
 was to keep his body healthful and in good plight ; and after 
 he came to seven years of age, to teach him to ride and go 
 a-hunting. When he arrived at fourteen he was transferred 
 into the hands of four, the wisest, the most just, the most tem- 
 perate, and most valiant of the nation ; of whom the first was 
 to instruct him in religion, the second to be always upright and 
 sincere, the third to conquer his appetites and desires, and the 
 fourth to despise all danger. 
 
 'Tis a thing worthy of very great consideration, that in that 
 excellent, and, in truth, for its perfection, prodigious form of 
 civil regimen set down by Lycurgus, though so solicitous of 
 
 2» " They proceed licentious out of the the school of Zeno."— Cicero, " De 
 school of Aristippus, but bitter out of Natura Deor.," iii. 31. 
 
14 MONTAIGNE 
 
 the education of children, as a thing of the greatest concern, 
 and even in the very seat of the Muses, he should make so little 
 mention of learning ; as if that generous youth, disdaining all 
 other subjection but that of virtue, ought to be supplied, in- 
 stead of tutors to read to them arts and sciences, with such 
 masters as should only instruct them in valor, prudence, and 
 justice ; an example that Plato has followed in his laws. The 
 manner of their discipline was to propound to them questions 
 in judgment upon men and their actions; and if they com- 
 mended or condemned this or that person or fact, they were 
 to give a reason for so doing; by which means they at once 
 sharpened their understanding, and learned what was right. 
 Astyages, in Xenophon,^^ asks Cyrus to give an account of 
 his last lesson ; and thus it was, " A great boy in our school, 
 having a little short cassock, by force took a longer coat from 
 another that was not so tall as he, and gave him his own in ex- 
 change ; whereupon I, being appointed judge of the contro- 
 versy, gave judgment, that I thought it best each should keep 
 the coat he had, for that they both of them were better fitted 
 with that of one another than with their own ; upon which my 
 master told me I had done ill, in that I had only considered 
 the fitness of the garments, whereas I ought to have considered 
 the justice of the thing, which required that no one should have 
 anything forcibly taken from him that is his own." And 
 Cyrus adds that he was whipped for his pains, as we are in our 
 villages for forgetting the first aorist of rvwrco. 
 
 My pedant must make me a very learned oration, in genere 
 demonstrativo, before he can persuade me that his school is like 
 unto that. They knew how to go the readiest way to work ; 
 and seeing that science, when most rightly applied and best 
 understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral hon- 
 esty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate 
 their children with the knowledge of efifects, and to instruct 
 them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, 
 in lively forming and moulding them ; not only by words and 
 precepts, but chiefly by works and examples; to the end it 
 might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but its complexion 
 and habit : not an acquisition, but a natural possession. One, 
 speaking to this purpose, asked AgesIIaus what he thought most 
 
 *> Xenophon, " Cyropaedia," i. 3. 
 
OF PEDANTRY 15 
 
 proper for boys to learn. " What they ought to ao wnen they 
 come to be men," said he.^^ It is no wonder, if such an insti- 
 tution produced so admirable effects. 
 
 They used to go^ it is said, to the other cities of Greece, to 
 inquire out rhetoricians, painters, and musicians, but to Lace- 
 dsemon for legislators, magistrates, and generals of armies; 
 at Athens they learned to speak well : here to do well ; there 
 to disengage themselves from a sophistical argument, and to 
 unravel the imposture of captious syllogisms; here to evade 
 the habits and allurements of pleasure, and with a noble pleas- 
 ure and resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune and 
 death ; those cudgelled their brains about words, these made 
 it their business to inquire into things; there was an eternal 
 babble of the tongue, here a continual exercise of the soul. 
 And therefore it is nothing sfrange if, when Antipater de- 
 manded of them fifty children for hostages, they made answer, 
 quite contrary to what we should do, that they would rather 
 give him twice as many full-grown men, so much did they 
 value the loss of their country's education. When Agesilaus 
 courted Xenophon to send his children to Sparta to be bred, 
 " it is not," said he, " there to learn logic or rhetoric, but to be 
 instructed in the noblest of all sciences, namely, the science to 
 obey, and to command." ^^ 
 
 It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his manner, rallying 
 Hippias,^^ who recounts to him what a world of money he has 
 got, especially in certain little villages of Sicily, by teaching 
 school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta. " What a 
 sottish and stupid people," says Socrates, " are they, without 
 sense or understanding, that make no account either of gram- 
 mar or poetry, and only busy themselves in studying the gene- 
 alogies and successions of their kings, the foundations, rises, 
 and declensions of states, and such tales of a tub ! " After 
 which, having made Hippias from one step to another ac- 
 knowledge the excellency of their form of public administra- 
 tion, and the felicity and virtue of their private life, he leaves 
 him to guess at the conclusion he makes of the inutilities of 
 his pedantic arts. 
 
 Examples have demonstrated to us, that in military affairs, 
 
 «* Plutarch. "Apothegms of the Lace- '2 p] starch. "Life of Agesilaus," c. 7. 
 
 daemonians." Rousseau adopts the ^ Plato, " Hippias Major." 
 expression in his " Discours sur les 
 Lettres." 
 
l6 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and all others of the like active nature, the study of sciences 
 more softens and untempers the courages of men than it in 
 any way fortifies and excites them. The most potent empire, 
 that at this day appears to be in the whole world, is that of 
 the Turks, a people equally inured to the estimation of arms 
 and the contempt of letters. I find Rome was more valiant 
 before she grew so learned. The most warlike nations at this 
 time in being are the most rude and ignorant ; the Scythians, 
 the Parthians, Tamerlane, serve for sufficient proof of this. 
 When the Goths overran Greece, the only thing that preserved 
 all the libraries from the fire was, that some one possessed 
 them with an opinion, that they were to leave this kind of fur- 
 niture entire to the enemy, as being most proper to divert them 
 from the exercise of arms, and to fix them to a lazy and 
 sedentary Hfe. When our King Charles VIII, almost with- 
 out striking a blow, saw himself possessed of the kingdom of 
 Naples and a considerable part of Tuscany, the nobles about 
 him attributed this unexpected facility of conquest to this, that 
 the princes and nobles of Italy, more studied to render them- 
 selves ingenious and learned than vigorous and warlike. 
 
Of FRIENDSHIP 
 
 HAVING considered the proceedings of a painter that 
 serves me, I had a mind to imitate his way. He 
 chooses the fairest place and middle of ariy wall, or 
 panel, wherein to draw a picture, which he finishes with his 
 utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with 
 grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace 
 but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance 
 of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scrib- 
 ble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of 
 various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than 
 accidental order, coherence, or proportion ? 
 
 ^* Desznit in piscein mulier , for7nosa siiperne"^ 
 
 In this second part I go hand in hand with my painter ; but 
 fall very short of him in the first and the better, my power of 
 handling not being such, that I dare to offer at a rich piece, 
 finely polished, and set off according to art. I have therefore 
 thought fit to borrow one of Estienne de la Boetie, and such 
 a one as shall honor and adorn all the rest of my work — 
 namely, a discourse that he called Voluntary Servitude ; but, 
 since, those who did not know him have properly enough 
 called it '' Le Contre Un." He wrote in his youth ^ by way 
 of essay, in honor of liberty against tyrants ; and it has since 
 run through the hands of men of great learning and judg- 
 ment, not without singular and merited commendation ; for it 
 is finely written, and as full as anything can possibly be. And 
 yet one may confidently say it is far short of what he was able 
 to do ; and if in that more mature age, wherein I had the hap- 
 piness to know him, he had taken a design like this of mine, 
 to commit his thoughts to writing, we should have seen a 
 
 ^ " A fair woman in her unper form 2 «' ^^t being as vet eighteen years 
 
 terminates in a fish's tail."— Horace, old." — Edition of 1588. 
 '* Ars Poetica," v. 4. 
 
 2 17 
 
i8 MONTAIGNE 
 
 great many rare things, and such as would have gone very near 
 to have rivalled the b.est writings of antiquity: for in natural 
 parts especially, I know no man comparable to him. But he 
 has left nothing behind him, save this treatise only (and that, 
 too, by chance, for I believe he never saw it after it first went 
 out of his hands), and some observations upon that edict of 
 January,^ made famous by our civil wars, which also shall else- 
 where, peradventure, find a place. These were all I could 
 recover of his remains, I to whom, with so affectionate a re- 
 membrance, upon his death-bed, he by his last will bequeathed 
 his library and papers, the little book of his works only ex- 
 cepted, which I committed to the press.* And this particular 
 obligation I have to this treatise of his, that it was the occasion 
 of my first coming acquainted with him ; for it was showed to 
 me long before I had the good fortune to know him ; and gave 
 me the first knowledge of his name, proving the first cause 
 and foundation of a friendship which we afterward improved 
 and maintained, so long as God was pleased to continue us 
 together, so perfect, inviolate, and entire, that certainly the 
 like is hardly to be found in story, and among the men of this 
 age there is no sign nor trace of any such thing in use ; so 
 much concurrence is required to the building of such a one, 
 that 'tis much, if fortune bring it but once to pass in three 
 ages. 
 
 There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have 
 inclined us as to society; and Aristotle says,^ that the good 
 legislators had more respect to friendship than to justice. 
 Now the most supreme point of its perfection is this : for, gen- 
 erally, all those that pleasure, profit, public or private interest 
 create and nourish, are so much the less beautiful and gen- 
 erous, and so much the less friendships, by how much they 
 mix another cause, and design, and fruit in friendship, than 
 itself. Neither do the four ancient kinds, natural, social, hos- 
 pitable, venerian, either separately or jointly, make up a true 
 and perfect friendship. 
 
 That of children to parents is rather respect: friendship is 
 nourished by communication, which cannot, by reason of the 
 great disparity, between these, but would rather perhaps of- 
 
 s January, 1562, which grranted to the ♦ Pnris. 1571, chez Frederic Morel. 
 
 Huguenots the public exercise of their ^ " Moral, ad Nicomac," viii. 
 
 religion. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP ig 
 
 fend the duties of nature ; for neither are all the secret thoughts 
 of fathers fit to be communicated to children, lest it begat an 
 indecent familiarity between them ; nor can the advices and 
 reproofs, which is one of the principal offices of friendship, be 
 properly performed by the son to the father. There are some 
 countries where 'twas the custom for children to kill their 
 fathers ; and others, where the fathers killed their children, to 
 avoid their being an impediment one to another in life ; and 
 naturally the expectations of the one depend upon the ruin of 
 the other. There have been great philosophers who have 
 made nothing of this tie of nature, as Aristippus for one, who * 
 being pressed home about the affection he owed to his chil- 
 dren, as being come out of him, presently fell to spit, saying, 
 that this also came out of him, and that we also breed worms 
 and lice; and that other, that Plutarch endeavored to recon- 
 cile to his brother -^ " I make never the more account of him," 
 said he, " for coming out of the same womb." This name of 
 brother does indeed carry with it a fine and delectable sound, 
 and for that reason, he and I called one another brothers, but 
 the complication of interest, the division of estates, and that 
 the wealth of the one should be the poverty of the other, 
 strangely relax and weaken the fraternal tie: brothers pursu- 
 ing their fortune and advancement by the same path, 'tis hardly 
 possible, but they must of necessity often jostle and hinder 
 one another. Besides, why is it necessary that the correspond- 
 ence of manners, parts, and incHnations, which begets the true 
 and perfect friendships, should always meet in these relations ? 
 The father and the son may be of quite contrary humors, and 
 so of brothers : he is my son, he is my brother ; but he is pas- 
 sionate, ill-natured, or a fool. And moreover, by how much 
 these are friendships that the law and natural obligation im- 
 pose upon us, so much less is there of our own choice and 
 voluntary freedom ; whereas that voluntary liberty of ours 
 has no production more promptly and properly its own than 
 affection and friendship. Not that I have not in my own per- 
 son experimented all that can possibly be expected of that 
 kind, having had the best and most indulgent father, even to 
 his extreme old age, that ever was, and who was himself de- 
 
 • Diogenes Laertius, ii. 31. ' " On Brotherly Love,** c. 4. 
 
20 MONTAIGNE 
 
 scended from a family for many generations famous and ex- 
 emplary for brotherly concord. 
 
 " Et ipse 
 Notus infratres animi paterni^" * 
 
 "We are not here to bring the love we bear to women, though 
 it be an act of our own choice, into comparison ; nor rank it 
 with the others. The fire of this, I confess, 
 
 " Neque enim est dea nescia no sir i 
 QucB dulcem cur is miscet atnaritiem."* 
 
 is more active, more eager, and more sharp: but withal, 'tis 
 more precipitant, fickle, moving, and inconstant ; a fever sub- 
 ject to intermissions and paroxysms, that has seized but on 
 one part of us. Whereas in friendship, 'tis a general and uni- 
 versal fire, but temperate and equal, a constant established 
 heat, all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or roughness. 
 Moreover, in love, 'tis no other than frantic desire for that 
 which flies from us : 
 
 " Come segue la lepre il cacciatore 
 Alfreddo, al caldo, alia montagnay al lito ; 
 Ne pill Vestima poi che presa vede ; 
 E sol dietro a chifugge affretta il piede : " '" 
 
 SO soon as it enters into the terms of friendship, that is to say, 
 into a concurrence of desires, it vanishes and is gone, fruition 
 destroys it, as having only a fleshly end, and such a one as is 
 subject to satiety. Friendship, on the contrary, is enjoyed 
 proportionably as it is desired ; and only grows up, is nour- 
 ished and improves by enjoyment, as being of itself spiritual, 
 and the soul growing still more refined by practice. Under 
 this perfect friendship, the other fleeting affections have in my 
 younger years found some place in me, to say nothing of him, 
 who himself so confesses but too much in his verses ; so that 
 I had both these passions, but always so, that I could myself 
 well enough distinguish them, and never in any degree of com- 
 
 8 " And I myself noted for paternal ^" " As the hunter pursues the hare, 
 
 love toward my brothers." — Horace, through cold and heat, over hill and 
 
 " Odes," ii. 2, 6. dale, but, so soon as it is taken, no lon- 
 
 » " Nor is the goddess unknown to ger cares for it, and only delights in 
 
 me, who mixes a pleasing sorrow with chasing that which flees from him." — 
 
 my love's flame." — Catullus, Ixviii. 17. Ariosto, x. 7. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 21 
 
 parison with one another; the first maintaining its flight in 
 so lofty and so brave a place, as with disdain to look down, and 
 see the other flying at a far humbler pitch below. 
 
 As concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the 
 entrance into which only is free, but the continuance in it forced 
 and compulsory, having another dependence than that of our 
 own free-will, and a bargain commonly contracted to other 
 ends, there almost always happens a thousand intricacies in it 
 to unravel, enough to break the thread and to divert the cur- 
 rent of a lively affection : whereas friendship has no manner of 
 business or traffic with aught but itself. Moreover, to say 
 truth, the ordinary talent of women is not such as is sufficient 
 to maintain the conference and communication required to the 
 support of this sacred tie ; nor do they appear to be endued 
 with constancy of mind to sustain the pinch of so hard and 
 durable a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there could 
 be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted where not 
 only the souls might have this entire fruition, but the bodies 
 also might share in the alliance, and a man be engaged 
 throughout, the friendship would certainly be more full and 
 perfect ; but it is without example that this sex has ever yet 
 arrived at such perfection ; and by the common consent of the 
 ancient schools, it is wholly rejected from it. 
 
 That other Grecian license is justly abhorred by our man- 
 ners ; which also, from having, according to their practice, a 
 so necessary disparity of age and difference of offices between 
 the lovers, answered no more to the perfect union and har- 
 mony that we here require, that the other: "Quis est enim iste 
 amor amicitice? Cur neque deform em adolescentem quisquam 
 amat, neque formosum senemf ^^ Neither will that very 
 picture that the Academy presents of it, as I conceive, con- 
 tradict me, when I say that this first fury inspired by the son 
 of Venus into the heart of the lover, upon sight of the flower 
 and prime of a springing and blossoming youth, to which they 
 allow all the insolent and passionate efforts that an im- 
 moderate ardor can produce, was simply founded upon exter- 
 nal beauty, the false image of corporal generation ; for it could 
 not ground this love upon the soul, the sight of which as yet 
 
 ^} " For what is that love of friend- youth, or a comely old man? "—Cicero, 
 ship? why does no one love a deformed Tusc. Quaes.," iv. 33. 
 
2 2 MONTAIGNE 
 
 lay concealed, was but now springing, and not of maturity to 
 blossom : that this fury, if it seized upon a low spirit, the means 
 by which it preferred its suit were rich presents, favor in ad- 
 vancement to dignities, and such trumpery, which they by no 
 means approve: if on a more generous soul, the pursuit was 
 suitably generous, by philosophical instructions, precepts to 
 revere religion, to obey the laws, to die for the good of one's 
 country; by examples of valor, prudence, and justice, the 
 lover studying to render himself acceptable by the grace and 
 beauty of his soul, that of his body being long since faded and 
 decayed, hoping by this mental society to establish a more 
 firm and lasting contract. When this courtship came to effect 
 in due season (for that which they do not require in the lover, 
 namely, leisure and discretion in his pursuit, they strictly re- 
 quire in the person loved, forasmuch as he is to judge of an 
 internal beauty, of difficult knowledge and abstruse discovery), 
 then there sprung in the person loved the desire of a spiritual 
 conception by the mediation of a spiritual beauty. This was 
 the principal ; the corporeal, an accidental and secondary mat- 
 ter : quite the contrary as to the lover. For this reason they 
 prefer the person beloved, maintaining that the gods in like 
 manner preferred him too, and very much blame the poet 
 ^schylus for having, in the loves for Achilles and Patroclus, 
 given the lover's part to Achilles, who was in the first flower 
 and pubescency of his youth, and the handsomest of all the 
 Greeks. After this general community, the sovereign and 
 most worthy part presiding and governing, and performing 
 its proper offices, they say, that thence great utility was de- 
 rived, both by private and public concerns : that it constituted 
 the force and power of the countries where it prevailed, and 
 the chief est security of liberty and justice. Of which the 
 salutary loves of Harmonius and Aristogiton are instances. 
 And therefore it is that they called it sacred and divine, and 
 conceive that nothing but the violence of tyrants and the base- 
 ness of the common people are inimical to it. Finally, all that 
 can be said in favor of the Academy is, that it was a love which 
 ended in friendship, which well enough agrees with the Stoical 
 definition of love : " Amorem conatiim esse amicitice faciendce ex 
 piilchritudinis specie," ^^ 
 
 12 " Love is a desire of contracting the object." — Cicero, " Tusc. Quaes.," 
 friendship arising from the beauty of vi. 34. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 23 
 
 I return to my own more just and true description. " Om- 
 nino amiciticB, corroboratis jam coniirmatisquej et ingeniis, et 
 cetatihuSj judicandoe sunt/' ^^ For the rest, what we commonly 
 call friends and friendships, are nothing but acquaintances and 
 familiarities, either occasionally contracted or upon some de- 
 sign, by means of which there happens some little intercourse 
 between our souls. But in the friendship I speak of, they mix 
 and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixt- 
 ure, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were 
 first conjoined. If a man should importune me to give a rea- 
 son why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed 
 than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I. 
 There is, beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what 
 inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union. We 
 sought one another long before we met, and by the characters 
 we heard of one another, which wrought upon our affections 
 more than, in reason, mere reports should do; I think 'twas 
 by some secret appointment of heaven. We embraced in our 
 names ; and at our first meeting, which was accidentally at a 
 great city entertainment, we found ourselves so mutually taken 
 with one another, so acquainted, and so endeared between our- 
 selves, that from thenceforward nothing was so near to us as 
 one another. He wrote an excellent Latin satire, since printed, 
 wherein he excuses the precipitation of our intelligence, so 
 suddenly come to perfection, saying, that destined to have so 
 short a continuance, as begun so late (for we were both full- 
 grown men, and he some years the older), there was no time 
 to lose, nor were we tied to conform to the example of those 
 slow and regular friendships that require so many precau- 
 tions of long preliminary conversation. This has no other 
 idea than that of itself, and can only refer to itself : this is no 
 one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a 
 thousand ; 'tis I know not what quintessence of all this mixt- 
 ure, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose 
 itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it 
 back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose 
 itself in mine. I may truly say lose, reserving nothing to our- 
 selves, that was either his or mine.^* 
 
 1' " Those are only to be reputed " All this relates to Estienne de la 
 
 friendships, that are fortified and con- Boetie. 
 firmed by judprment and length of 
 time." — Cicero, " De Amicitia," c. 20. 
 
24 MONTAIGNE 
 
 When Laelius,^'^ in the presence of the Roman consuls, who 
 after they had sentenced Tiberius Gracchus, prosecuted all 
 those who had had any familiarity with him also, came to ask 
 Caius Blosius, who was his chiefest friend, how much he would 
 have done for him, and that he made answer : " All things." 
 " How ! All things ! " said Laelius. " And what if he had com- 
 manded you to fire our temples ? " " He would never have 
 commanded me that," replied Blosius. " But what if he 
 had ? " said Laelius. " I would have obeyed him," said the 
 other. If he was so perfect a friend to Gracchus, as the his- 
 tories report him to have been, there was yet no necessity of 
 offending the consuls by such a bold confession, though he 
 might still have retained the assurance he had of Gracchus's 
 disposition. However, those who accuse this answer as se- 
 ditious do not well understand the mystery; nor presuppose, 
 as it was true, that he had Gracchus's will in his sleeve, both 
 by the power of a friend, and the perfect knowledge he had of 
 the man: they were more friends than citizens, more friends 
 to one another than either friends or enemies to their country, 
 or than friends to ambition and innovation ; having absolutely 
 given up themselves to one another, either held absolutely the 
 reins of the other's inclination ; and suppose all this guided by 
 virtue, and all this by the conduct of reason, which also with- 
 out these it had not been possible to do, Blosius's answer was 
 such as it ought to be. If any of their actions flew off the 
 handle, they were neither (according to my measure of friend- 
 ship) friends to one another, nor to themselves. As to the 
 rest, this answer carries no worse sound than mine would do 
 to one that should ask me : " If your will should command 
 you to kill your daughter, would you do it ? " and that I should 
 make answer, that I would ; for this expresses no consent to 
 such an act, forasmuch as I do not in the least suspect my 
 own will, and as little that of such a friend. 'Tis not in the 
 power of all the eloquence in the world, to dispossess me of 
 the certainty I have of the intentions and resolutions of my 
 friend : nay, no one action of his, what face soever it might 
 bear, could be presented to me, of which I could not pres- 
 ently, and at first sight, find out the moving cause. Our souls 
 had drawn so unanimously together, they had considered each 
 
 }^ ^icero. " De Amicitia," c. ii. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 25 
 
 other with so ardent an affection, and with the like affection 
 laid open the very bottom of our hearts to one another's view, 
 that I not only knew his as well as my own ; but should cer- 
 tainly in any concern of mine have trusted my interest much 
 more willingly with him than with myself. 
 
 Let no one, therefore, rank other common friendships with 
 such a one as this. I have had as much experience of these 
 as another, and of the most perfect of their kind : but I do not 
 advise that any should confound the rules of the one and the 
 other, for they would find themselves much deceived. In those 
 other ordinary friendships, you are to walk with bridle in your 
 hand, with prudence and circumspection, for in them the knot 
 is not so sure, that a man may not half suspect it will slip. 
 " Love him," said Chilo,^^ *' so, as if you were one day to hate 
 him ; and hate him so, as you were one day to love him." This 
 precept, though abominable in the sovereign and perfect 
 friendship I speak of, is nevertheless very sound, as to the prac- 
 tice of the ordinary and customary ones, and to which the 
 saying that Aristotle had so frequent in his mouth, " O my 
 friends, there is no friend ; "^"^ may very fitly be applied. In 
 this noble commerce, good offices, presents, and benefits, by 
 which other friendships are supported and maintained, do not 
 deserve so much as to be mentioned; and the reason is the 
 concurrence of our wills ; for as the kindness I have for myself 
 receives no increase for anything I relieve myself withal in 
 time of need (whatever the Stoics say), and as I do not find 
 myself obliged to myself for any service I do myself: so the 
 union of such friends, being truly perfect, deprives them of all 
 idea of such duties, and makes them loathe and banish from 
 their conversation these words of division and distinction, 
 benefit, obligation, acknowledgment, entreaty, thanks, and the 
 like. All things, wills, thoughts, opinions, goods, wives, chil- 
 dren, honors, and lives, being in effect common between them, 
 and that absolute concurrence of affections being no other 
 than one soul in two bodies (according to that very proper 
 definition of Aristotle),^^ they can neither lend nor give any- 
 thing to one another. This is the reason why the law-givers, 
 to honor marriage with some resemblance of this divine alli- 
 ance, interdict all gifts between man and wife; inferring by 
 
 " Aulus Gellius, i. 3. " Diogenes Laertius, v. 21. " Idem, v. 20. 
 
26 MONTAIGNE 
 
 that, that all should belong to each of them, and that they have 
 nothing to divide or to give to each other. 
 
 If, in the friendship of which I speak, one could give to the 
 other, the receiver of the benefit would be the man that obliged 
 his friend ; for each of them contending, and above all things 
 studying how to be useful to the other, he that administers the 
 occasion is the liberal man, in giving his friend the satisfaction 
 of doing that toward him which, above all things, he most 
 desires. When the philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he 
 used to say ^^ that he redemanded it of his friends, not that he 
 demanded it. And to let you see the practical working of 
 this, I will here produce an ancient and singular example ; ^^ 
 Eudamidas, a Corinthian, had two friends, Charixenus, a Syci- 
 onian, and Areteus, a Corinthian ; this man coming to die, 
 being poor, and his two friends rich, he made his will after this 
 manner: ** I bequeath to Areteus the maintenance of my 
 mother, to support and provide for her in her old age ; and to 
 Charixenus I bequeath the care of marrying my daughter, and 
 to give her as good a portion as he is able ; and in case one of 
 these chance to die, I hereby substitute the survivor in his 
 place." They who first saw this will made themselves very 
 merry at the contents : but the legatees being made acquainted 
 with it, accepted it with very great content ; and one of them, 
 Charixenus, dying within five days after, and Areteus, by that 
 means, having the charge of both duties devolved solely to 
 him, he nourished the old woman with very great care and 
 tenderness, and of five talents he had in estate, he gave two 
 and a half in marriage with an only daughter he had of his 
 own, and two and a half in marriage with the daughter of 
 Eudamidas, and in one and the same day solemnized both 
 their nuptials. 
 
 This example is very full, if one thing were not to be ob- 
 jected, namely, the multitude of friends : for the perfect friend- 
 ship I speak of is indivisible ; each one gives himself so entirely 
 to his friend that he has nothing left to distribute to others: 
 on the contrary, is sorry that he is not double, treble, or quad- 
 ruple, and that he has not many souls, and many wills, to con- 
 fer them all upon this one object. Common friendships will 
 admit of division ; one may love the beauty of this person, the 
 
 *' Diogenes Laertius, vi. 46. ^ From the " Toxaris " of Lucian, c. 22. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 27 
 
 good-humor of that, the liberaHty of a third, the paternal affec- 
 tion of a fourth, the fraternal love of a fifth, and so of the rest : 
 but this friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there 
 rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, cannot possibly 
 admit of a rival. If two at the same time should call to you 
 for succor, to which of them would you run? Should they 
 require of you contrary offices, how could you serve them 
 both ? Should one commit a thing to your silence, that it were 
 of importance to the other to know, how would you disengage 
 yourself? A unique and particular friendship dissolves all 
 other obHgations whatsoever: the secret I have sworn not to 
 reveal to any other, I may without perjury communicate to 
 him who is not another, but myself. 'Tis miracle enough cer- 
 tainly, for a man to double himself; and those that talk of 
 tripling, talk they know not of what. Nothing is extreme, 
 that has its Hke ; and he who shall suppose, that of two, I love 
 one as much as the other, that they mutually love one another 
 too, and love me as much as I love them, multiplies into a 
 confraternity the most single of units, and whereof, moreover, 
 one alone is the hardest thing in the world to find. The rest 
 of this story suits very well with what I was saying, for Eudam- 
 idas, as a bounty and favor, bequeaths to his friends a legacy 
 of employing themselves in his necessity ; he leaves them heirs 
 to this liberality of his, which consists in giving them the op- 
 portunity of conferring a benefit upon him ; and doubtless, the 
 force of friendship is more eminently apparent in this act of 
 his, than in that of Areteus. In short, these are effects not to 
 be imagined nor comprehended by such as have not experi- 
 ence of them, and which make me infinitely honor and admire 
 the answer of that young soldier to Cyrus, by whom being 
 asked how much he would take for a horse with which he had 
 won the prize of a race, and whether he would exchange 
 him for a kingdom, " No, truly, sir," said he, " but I would 
 give him with all my heart, to get thereby a true friend, could 
 I find out any man worthy of that alliance." ^^ He did not 
 say ill in saying, " could I find : " for, though one may almost 
 everywhere meet with men sufficiently qualified for a super- 
 ficial acquaintance, yet in this, where a man is to deal from the 
 very bottom of his heart, without any manner of reservation, 
 
 ** Xenophon, " Cyropsedia," viii. 3. 
 
28 MONTAIGNE 
 
 it will be requisite that all the wards and springs be truly 
 wrought, and perfectly sure. 
 
 In confederations that hold but by one end, we are only to 
 provide against the imperfections that particularly concern 
 that end. It can be of no importance to me of what religion 
 my physician and my lawyer is ; this consideration has nothing 
 in common with the offices of friendship which they owe me ; 
 and I am of the same indifference in the domestic acquaintance 
 my servants must necessarily contract with me. I never in- 
 quire, when I am to take a footman, if he be chaste, but if he 
 be diligent ; and am not solicitous if my muleteer be given to 
 gaming, as if he be strong and able; or if my cook be a 
 swearer, if he be a good cook. I do not take upon me to direct 
 what other men should do in the government of their fam- 
 ilies (there are plenty that meddle enough with that), but only 
 give an account of my method in my own. 
 
 ** Mthi sic usus est : tibu ut opus est facto, face'' " 
 
 For table talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the 
 learned and the grave; in love, beauty before goodness; in 
 common discourse, the ablest speaker, whether or no there be 
 sincerity in the case. And, as he that was found astride upon 
 a hobby-horse, playing with his children, entreated the person 
 who had surprised him in that posture to say nothing of it till 
 himself came to be a father,^* supposing that the fondness that 
 would then possess his own soul would render him a fairer 
 judge of such an action ; so I, also, could wish to speak to such 
 as have had experience of what I say : though, knowing how 
 remote a thing such a friendship is from the common prac- 
 tice, and how rarely it is to be found, I despair of meeting with 
 any such judge. For even these discourses left us by antiq- 
 uity upon this subject seem to me flat and poor, in compari- 
 son of the sense I have of it, and in this particular, the effects 
 surpass even the precepts of philosophy : 
 
 '^ Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amzco." '* 
 
 22 "This has been my way; as for ^"V^hWt I have sense left to me, 
 
 you, do as you think fit."— Terence, there will never be anything more ac- 
 
 Heaut.," i. i, 28. ceptable to me than an agreeable 
 
 *• Plutarch, " Life of Agesilaus," c. 9. friend."— Horace, " Satires," i. 5, 44. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 2^ 
 
 The ancient Menander declared him to be h^ppy that had 
 had the good fortune to meet with but the shadow of a friend :^^ 
 and doubtless he had good reason to say so, especially if he 
 spoke by experience ; for in good earnest, if I compare all the 
 rest of my life, though, thanks be to God, I have passed my 
 time pleasantly enough, and at my ease, and the loss of such 
 a friend excepted, free from any grievous affliction, and in great 
 tranquillity of mind, having been contented with my natural 
 and original commodities, without being solicitous after oth- 
 ers ; if I should compare it all, I say, with the four years I had 
 the happiness to enjoy the sweet societ)^ of this excellent man, 
 'tis nothing but smoke, an obscure and tedious night. From 
 the day that I lost him, 
 
 ** Quern semper acerbum. 
 Semper Honoratum (sic di, voluisiis) habebo" ^' 
 
 I have only led a languishing life ; and the very pleasures that 
 present themselves to me, instead of administering anything 
 of consolation, double my affliction for his loss. We were 
 halves throughout, and to that degree, that methinks, by out- 
 living him, I defraud him of his part. 
 
 "Nec/as esse ulla me voluptate hie frui 
 Decreviy tantisper dum ille abest mens par ticeps"^'' 
 
 I was so grown and accustomed to be always his double in all 
 places and in all things, that methinks I am no more than half 
 of myself. 
 
 "Jlla7n mecE si partem animce tulit 
 
 Maturior vis, quid moror altera ? 
 
 Nee earus cegue, nee superstes 
 
 Integer ? Ille dies utramque 
 Duxit ruinam." "^^ 
 
 There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not 
 miss him ; as I know that he would have missed me : for as he 
 
 26 Plutarch, " On Brotherly Love," shared in all pleasures, is away."— Ter- 
 
 «. 3. ence, " Heaut.," i. i, 97. 
 
 2« " A day to me forever sad, forever 28 •« jf that half of my soul were 
 
 sacred, so have you willed, ye gods." — snatched away from me by an untimely 
 
 '" ^neid," v. 49. stroke, why should the other stay? That 
 
 '"• " T have determined that it will which remains will not be equally dear, 
 
 •never be right for me to enjoy any will not be a whole: the same day will 
 
 pleasure, so long as he, with whom I involve the destruction of both." — Hor- 
 ace, " Odes," ii. 17, 5. 
 
30 MONTAIGNE 
 
 surpassed me by infinite degrees in virtue and all other accom- 
 plishments, so he also did in the duties of friendship. 
 
 "Quts desiderio sit pudor, aut modus 
 Tarn cari capitis f " "' 
 
 "O misero frater adempte mihz ! 
 Omnia tecum tma perierunt gaudia nostra, 
 
 Quce tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor. 
 Tm meuy tu moriens fregisti com7Jioda, frater ; 
 Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta ani?na : 
 Cujus ego inter itu tota de jnente fugavi 
 
 HcEC studiay atque omnes delicias animi. 
 Alloquar ? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem ? 
 
 Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior^ 
 Aspiciam posthac ? at certe semper a?nabo." ^° 
 
 But let us hear a boy of sixteen speak.^^ 
 
 Because I have found that that work has been since brought 
 out, and with a mischievous design, by those who aim at dis- 
 turbing and changing the condition of our government, with- 
 out troubling themselves to think whether they are likely to 
 improve it: and because they have mixed up his work with 
 some of their own performance, I have refrained from inserting 
 it here. But that the memory of the author may not be in- 
 jured, nor suflfer with such as could not come near hand to be 
 acquainted with his principles, I here give them to understand 
 that it was written by him in his boyhood, and that by way of 
 exercise only, as a common theme that has been tumbled and 
 tossed by a thousand writers. I make no question but that he 
 
 2»" What shame can there be, or meas- famous edict of January," of which 
 
 ure, in lamenting so dear a friend? "— mention has already been made in the 
 
 Horace, " Odes," i. 24, i. present edition. The edition of 1580, 
 
 30 " O brother, taken from me miser- however, and the variorum edition of 
 able, with thee, all our joys have van- Louandre, which has been here adopted, 
 ished, those joys which, in thy life, thy indicate no particular work; but the 
 dear love nourished. I)ying, thou, my edition of 1580 has it " this boy of eigh- 
 brother, hast destroyed all my happi- teen years ' (which was the age at 
 ness. My whole soul is buried with which La Boetie wrote his " Servitude 
 thee. Thou dead, I have bidden adieu Volontaire "), and speaks of " a boy of 
 to the muses, to all the studies which sixteen " as occurring only in the corn- 
 charmed my mind. No more can I mon editions, and it would seem tol- 
 speak to thee; no more hear thy voice. erably clear that this more important 
 Never again shall I see thee, O brother work was, in fact, the production to 
 dearer to me than life. Naught re- which Montaigne refers, and that the 
 mains, but that I love thee while life proper reading of the text should be 
 shall endure." — Catullus, Ixviii., 20; " eighteen years." What the boy spoke 
 Ixv. 9. is not, however, given by Montaigne, 
 
 81 In Cotton's translation, the work and for the reason furnished in the en- 
 referred to is " those memoirs upon the suing sentence. 
 
OF FRIENDSHIP 31 
 
 himself believed what he wrote, being so conscientious that 
 he would not so much as lie in jest: and I moreover know, 
 that could it have been in his own choice, he had rather have 
 been born at Venice than at Sarlac, and he had reason. But 
 he had another maxim sovereignly imprinted in his soul, very 
 religiously to obey and submit to the laws under which he was 
 born. There never was a better citizen, more affectionate to 
 his country; nor a greater enemy to all the commotions and 
 innovations of his time: so that he would much rather have 
 employed his talent to the extinguishing of those civil flames, 
 than have added any fuel to them ; he had a mind fashioned 
 to the model of better ages. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 
 
 LET us pretermit that long comparison between the active 
 and the solitary life; and as for the fine saying with 
 which ambition and avarice palliate their vices, that we 
 are not born for ourselves but for the public/ let us boldly ap- 
 peal to those who ate in public affairs ; let them lay their hands 
 upon their hearts, and then say whether, on the contrary, they 
 do not rather aspire to titles and offices and that tumult of the 
 world to make their private advantage at the public expense. 
 The corrupt ways by which in this our time they arrive at the 
 height to which their ambitions aspire, manifestly enough de- 
 clare that their ends cannot be very good. Let us tell Ambition, 
 that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude ; for what 
 does she so much avoid as society? What does she so much 
 seek as elbow-room? A man may do well or ill everywhere: 
 but if what Bias says be true,^ that the greatest part is the worse 
 part, or what the preacher says: there is not one good of a 
 thousand ; 
 
 **Rari quippe bonz : numero vix sunt totidem quot 
 Thebarum portcB, vel divitis ostza Nilz\^^ ^ 
 
 the contagion is very dangerous in the crowd. A man must 
 either imitate the vicious or hate them: both are dangerous 
 things, either to resemble them because they are many or to 
 hate many because they are unresembling to ourselves.* Mer- 
 chants who go to sea are in the right, when they are cautious 
 that those who embark with them in the same bottom be neither 
 dissolute blasphemers nor vicious other ways, looking upon such 
 society as unfortunate. And therefore it was that Bias pleas- 
 antly said to some, who being with him in a dangerous storm 
 implored the assistance of the gods : " Peace, speak softly," 
 said he, " that they may not know you are here in my company."* 
 
 ^ This is the eulogium passed by Lu- gates to Thebes, or mouths to the Nile." 
 
 can on Cato of Utica, ii. 383. — Juvenal, " Satires," xiii. 26. 
 
 2 Diogenes Laertius, in vita. * Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 7. 
 
 ^ " Good men are scarce: we could ^Diogenes Laertius, in vita, 
 hardly reckon up as many as there are 
 
 3 33 
 
34 MONTAIGNE 
 
 And of more pressing example, Albuquerque, viceroy in the 
 Indies for Emmanuel, King of Portugal, in an extreme peril of 
 shipwreck took a young boy upon his shoulders, for this only 
 end that, in the society of their common danger, his innocence 
 might serve to protect him, and to recommend him to the di- 
 vine favor, that they might get safe to shore. Tis not that a 
 wise man may not live everywhere content, and be alone in the 
 very crowd of a palace : but if it be left to his own choice, the 
 schoolman will tell you that he should fly the very sight of the 
 crowd : he will endure it, if need be ; but if it be referred to 
 him, he will choose to be alone. He cannot think himself suffi- 
 ciently rid of vice, if he must yet contend with it in other men. 
 Charondas punished those as evil men who were convicted of 
 keeping ill company.® There is nothing so unsociable and so- 
 ciable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature. And 
 Antisthenes, in my opinion did not give him a satisfactory 
 answer, who reproached him with frequenting ill company, by 
 saying that the physicians lived well enough among the sick -J 
 for if they contribute to the health of the sick, no doubt but by 
 the contagion, continual sight of, and familiarity with diseases, 
 they must of necessity impair their own. 
 
 Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and 
 at one's ease : but men do not always take the right way. They 
 often think they have totally taken leave of all business, when 
 they have only exchanged one employment for another: there 
 is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole 
 kingdom. Whenever the mind is perplexed it is in an entire 
 disorder, and domestic employments are not less troublesome 
 for being less important. Moreover, for having shaken oflF 
 the court and the exchange, we have not taken leave of the 
 principal vexations of life : 
 
 *^ Ratio et prudent ia cur as, 
 Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert ; " ' 
 
 ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires, do 
 
 not leave us because we forsake our native country : 
 
 ''Et 
 Post equitetn sedet atra cur a : " " 
 
 • Diodorus Siculus, xii. 4. ocean, banish care."— Horace, " Ep.," 
 "* Diogenes Laertius, " Life of Antis- i. 2. 
 
 thenes." ' " Black care sits behind the horse- 
 
 * " Reason and prudence, not a place man." — Horace, *' Odes," iii. i, 40. 
 with a commanding view of the great 
 
OF SOLITUDE 35 
 
 they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools ; 
 nor deserts, nor caves, hair shirts, nor fasts, can disengage us 
 from them: 
 
 *^Hceret later i let halts arundo" ** 
 
 One telling Socrates, that such a one was nothing improved 
 by his travels : *' I very well believe it," said he, " for he took 
 himself along with him." ^^ 
 
 ''^ Quid terras alio calentes 
 Sole mutamus ? patrice quis exsul 
 Se quoquefugit?" " 
 
 If a man do not first discharge both himself and his mind of 
 the burden with which he finds -himself oppressed, motion will 
 but make it press the harder and sit the heavier, as the lading 
 of a ship is of less encumbrance when fast and bestowed in a 
 settled posture. You do a sick man more harm than good in 
 removing him from place to place ; you fix and establish the dis- 
 ease by motion, as stakes sink deeper and more firmly into the 
 earth by being moved up and down in the place where they are 
 designed to stand. Therefore, it is not enough to get remote 
 from the public; 'tis not enough to shift the soil only; a man 
 must flee from the popular conditions that have taken possession 
 of his soul, he must sequester and come again to himself. 
 
 *'Rupijam vincula, die as : 
 Nam luctata canis noduin arripit ; attamen Hit. 
 Quujn fugit,a collo trahitur pars lo?iga catena." " 
 
 We still carry our fetters along with us. 'Tis not an absolute 
 liberty ; we yet cast back a look upon what we have left behind 
 us ; the fancy is still full of it : 
 
 ^^ Nisi purgatum est pectus, quce pralia nobis 
 Atque pericula tunc ingratis insinuandum f 
 QuantcB conscindunt hominem cuppedinis acres 
 Sollicitum curce ? quantique perinde timores ? 
 
 1" " The fatal shaft sticks in the flee from himself? "—Horace, " Odes," 
 
 wounded side."—" ^neid," iv. 73. ii. 16, 18. 
 
 ^' Seneca, " Epistolse ad Lucilium," " " You say, perhaps, you have brok- 
 
 104. en your chain: the dog who after long 
 
 12 " Why do we seek climates warmed efforts has broken his chain, still in his 
 
 by another sun? Who is the man that flight drags a heavy portion of it after 
 
 by fleeing from his country, can also him." — Persius, " Satires," v. 158. 
 
36 MONTAIGNE 
 
 Quidve superbia, spurcitia, ac petulantiuy quantas 
 Efficiunt eludes t quid luxus, desidiesque f " " 
 
 Our disease lies in the mind, which cannot escape from itself ; 
 
 "In culpa est animus^ qui se non effugit unquaniy' '^ 
 
 and therefore is to be called home and confined within itself: 
 that is the true solitude, and that may be enjoyed even in popu- 
 lous cities and the courts of kings, though more commodiously 
 apart. 
 
 Now, since we will attempt to live alone, and to waive all 
 manner of conversation among men, let us so order it that our 
 content may depend wholly upon ourselves ; let us dissolve all 
 obligations that ally us to others ; let us obtain this from our- 
 selves, that we may live alone in good earnest, and live at our 
 ease, too. 
 
 Stilpo having escaped from the fire that consumed the city 
 where he lived, and wherein he had lost his wife, children, goods, 
 and all that ever he was master of, Demetrius Poliorcetes seeing 
 him, in so great a ruin of his country, appear with a serene 
 and undisturbed countenance, asked him if he had received no 
 loss? To which he made answer, no; and that, thanks be to 
 God, nothing was lost of his.^* This also was the meaning 
 of the philosopher Antisthenes, when he pleasantly said, that 
 " men should furnish themselves with such things as would 
 float, and might with the owner escape the storm ; " ^^ and cer- 
 tainly a wise man never loses anything if he have himself. When 
 the city of Nola was ruined by the barbarians, Paulinus, who 
 was bishop of that place, having there lost all he had, and him- 
 self a prisoner, prayed after this manner : " O Lord, defend 
 me from being sensible of this loss; for Thou knowest they 
 have yet touched nothing of that which is mine." ^* The riches 
 that made him rich, and the goods that made him good, were 
 still kept entire. This it is to make choice of treasures that can 
 secure themselves from plunder and violence, and to hide them 
 
 ""But unless the mind is purified, evils arise from luxury and sloth!"— 
 
 what internal combats and dangers Lucretius, v. 4. 
 
 must we incur in spite of all our ef- ^^ Horace, *' Ep.," i. 14, 13. The cita- 
 forts! How many bitter anxieties, how tion is translated in the preceding pas- 
 many terrors, follow upon unregulated sage. 
 
 {)assion! What destruction befalls us " Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 7. 
 
 rem pride, lust, petulant anger! What " Diogenes Laertius, vi. 6. 
 
 i« St. Augustin, " De Civit. Dei," i. 10. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 37 
 
 in such a place into which no one can enter, and that is not to 
 be betrayed by any but ourselves. Wives, children, and goods 
 must be had, and especially health, by him that can get it ; but 
 we are not so to set our hearts upon them that our happiness 
 must have its dependence upon them ; we must reserve a back- 
 shop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our 
 true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat. And in this we 
 must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and 
 so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be ad- 
 mitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, 
 children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end, that when it 
 shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be 
 no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in it- 
 self, that will be company; that has herewithal to attack and 
 to defend, to receive and to give : let us not then fear in this 
 solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity. 
 
 **/« solis sis tibi turba locis" ^' 
 
 Virtue is satisfied with herself, without discipline, without 
 words, without effects. In our ordinary actions there is not 
 one of a thousand that concerns ourselves. He that thou seest 
 scrambling up the ruins of that wall, furious and transported, 
 against whom so many arquebuse-shots are levelled ; and that 
 other all over scars, pale, and fainting with hunger, and yet 
 resolved rather to die than to open the gates to him ; dost thou 
 think that these men are there upon their own account ? No ; 
 peradventure in the behalf of one whom they never saw and 
 who never concerns himself for their pains and danger, but 
 lies wallowing the while in sloth and pleasure; this other 
 slavering, blear-eyed, slovenly fellow, that thou seest come out 
 of his study after midnight, dost thou think he has been tumbling 
 over books, to learn how to become a better man, wiser, and 
 more content? No such matter; he will there end his days, 
 but he will teach posterity the measure of Plautus verses and 
 the true orthography of a Latin word. Who is it that does 
 not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very 
 life for reputation and glory, the most useless, frivolous, and 
 false coin that passes current among us ? Our own death does 
 
 " " In solitude, be company for thyself."— Tib uUus, vi. 13, 12. 
 
38 MONTAIGNE 
 
 not sufficiently terrify and trouble us ; let us, moreover, charge 
 ourselves with those of our wives, children, and family: our 
 own affairs do not afford us anxiety enough ; let us undertake 
 those of our neighbors and friends, still more to break our 
 brains and torment us. 
 
 " Vah / quemquamne hominem in animum instituere^ aut 
 Par are, quod sit cariuSy quam ipse est sibi f " "'* 
 
 Solitude seems to me to wear the best favor, in such as have 
 already employed their most active and flourishing age in the 
 world's service; after the example of Thales. We have lived 
 enough for others, let us at least live out the small remnant of 
 life for ourselves; let us now call in our thoughts and inten- 
 tions to ourselves, and to our own ease and repose. Tis no 
 light thing to make a sure retreat ; it will be enough for us to 
 do without mixing other enterprises. Since God gives us 
 leisure to order our removal, let us make ready, truss our bag- 
 gage, take leave betimes of the company, and disentangle our- 
 selves from those violent importunities that engage us elsewhere 
 and separate us from ourselves. 
 
 We must break the knot of our obligations, how strong so- 
 ever, and hereafter love this or that, but espouse nothing, but 
 ourselves: that is to say, let the remainder be our own, but 
 not so joined and so close as not to be forced away without 
 flaying us or tearing out part of our whole. The greatest thing 
 in the world is for a man to know that he is his own. 'Tis 
 time to wean ourselves from society, when we can no longer 
 add anything to it ; he who is not in a condition to lend must 
 forbid himself to borrow. Our forces begin to fail us : let us 
 call them in and concentrate them in and for ourselves. He 
 that can cast off within himself and resolve the offices of friend- 
 ship and company, let him do it. In this decay of nature which 
 renders him useless, burdensome, and importunate to others, 
 let him take care not to be useless, burdensome and importu- 
 nate to himself. Let him soothe and caress himself, and above 
 all things be sure to govern himself with reverence to his reason 
 and conscience to that degree as to be ashamed to make a false 
 step in their presence. '' Rarum est enim, ut satis se quisque 
 
 2° " Ah, can any man discover or devise anything dearer than he is to him- 
 self? "—Terence, "Adel.," i. I, 13. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 39 
 
 vereatiir." ^^ Socrates ^^ says that boys are to cause them- 
 selves to be instructed, men to exercise themselves in well-doing, 
 and old men to retire from all civil and military employments, 
 living at their ov^n discretion, without the obligation to any 
 office. There are some complexions more proper for these 
 precepts of retirement than others. Such as are of a soft and 
 dull apprehension, and of a tender will and affection not readily 
 to be subdued or employed, whereof I am one, both by natural 
 condition and by reflection, will sooner incline to this advice, 
 than active and busy souls, which embrace all, engage in all, 
 are hot upon everything, which offer, present, and give them- 
 selves up to every occasion. We are to use these accidental 
 and extraneous commodities, so far as they are pleasant to us, 
 but by no means to lay our principal foundation there ; 'tis no 
 true one : neither nature nor reason allows it so to be. Why 
 therefore should we, contrary to their laws, enslave our own 
 contentment to the power of another? To anticipate also the 
 accidents of fortune, to deprive ourselves of the conveniences 
 we have in our own power, as several have dome upon the ac- 
 count of devotion, and some philosophers by reasoning; to be 
 one's own servant, to lie hard, to put out our own eyes, to throw 
 our wealth into the river, to seek out grief ; these, by the misery 
 of this life, aiming at bliss in another ; those, by laying them- 
 selves low to avoid the danger of falling: all such are acts of 
 an excessive virtue. The stoutest and most resolute natures 
 render even their hiding away glorious and exemplary : 
 
 *^Tuta et parvula laudo, 
 Quum res deficzunf, satis inter viliafortis : 
 Verum ; ^bi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem 
 Hos sapere, et solos aio bene vivere, quorum 
 Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villisy "^^ 
 
 A great deal less would serve my turn well enough. 'Tis 
 enough for me, under fortune's favor, to prepare myself for 
 her disgrace, and, being at my ease, to represent to myself, as 
 far as my imagination can stretch, the ill to come ; as we do at 
 
 21 " For 'tis rarely seen that men have tie: when things turn round, then I 
 respect and reverence enough for them- change my note, and say that none are 
 selves." — Ouintilian, x. 7. wise or know how to live, but those 
 
 22 Stobaeus, " Serm." xli. who have plenty of money to lay out 
 
 23 " When I run short, I laud a hum- in shining villas." — Horace, " Ep.," i. 
 ble and safe condition, content with lit- 15, 42. 
 
40 MONTAIGNE 
 
 jousts and tiltings, where we counterfeit war in the greatest 
 calm of peace. I do not think Arcesilaus, the philosopher, the 
 less temperate and virtuous for knowing that he made use of 
 gold and silver vessels, when the condition of his fortune al- 
 lowed him so to do;^* I have indeed a better opinion of him, 
 than if he had denied himself what he used with liberality and 
 moderation. I see the utmost limits of natural necessity : and 
 considering a poor man begging at my door, ofttimes more 
 jocund and more healthy than I myself am, I put myself into his 
 place, and attempt to dress my mind after his mode ; and run- 
 ning, in like manner, over other examples, though I fancy death, 
 poverty, contempt, and sickness treading on my heels, I easily 
 resolve not to be affrighted, forasmuch as a less than I takes 
 them with so much patience ; and am not willing to believe that 
 a less understanding can do more than a greater, or that the 
 effects of precept cannot arrive to as great a height as those of 
 custom. And knowing of how uncertain duration these ac- 
 cidental conveniences are, I never forget, in the height of all my 
 enjoyments, to make it my chiefest prayer to Almighty God, 
 that he will please to render me content with myself and the 
 condition wherein I am. I see young men of gay disposi- 
 tions, who nevertheless keep a mass of pills in their trunk at 
 home, to take when they've got a cold, which they fear so much 
 the less, because they think they have remedy at hand. Every- 
 one should do in like manner, and, moreover, if they find them- 
 selves subject to some more violent disease, should furnish 
 themselves with such medicines as may numb and stupefy the 
 part. 
 
 The employment a man should choose for §uch a life, ought 
 neither to be laborious nor an unpleasing one ; otherwise 'tis to 
 no purpose at all to be retired. And this depends upon every- 
 one's liking and humor. Mine has no manner of complacency 
 for husbandry ; and such as love it ought to apply themselves 
 to it with moderation. 
 
 " Conentur sibi res, non se submitter e rebus .'^ '* 
 
 Husbandry is otherwise a very servile employment, as Sallust 
 calls it f^ though some parts of it are more excusable than the 
 
 2* Diogenes Laertius, iv. 38. 19, whose text, however, is, " Et mihi 
 
 25 " Endeavor to make circumstances res, non me rebus, subjungere conor " 
 
 subject to me, and not me subject to 20 Catiline, c. 4. 
 
 circumstances." — Horace, " Ep.," i. i. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 41 
 
 rest, as the care of gardens, which Xenophon attributes to 
 Cyrus -p and a mean may be found out between the sordid and 
 low application, so full of perpetual solicitude, which is seen 
 in men who make it their entire business and study, and the 
 stupid and extreme negligence, letting all things go at random, 
 which we see in others : 
 
 *^ Democriti pecus edit agellos 
 Cultaque, dum peregre est animus sine corpore velox" '* 
 
 But let us hear what advice the younger Pliny ^^ gives his friend 
 Caninius Rufus upon the subject of solitude : " I advise thee, 
 in the full and plentiful retirement wherein thou art, to leave to 
 thy hinds the care of thy husbandry, and to addict thyself to the 
 study of letters, to extract from thence something that may be 
 entirely and absolutely thine own." By which he means repu- 
 tation ; like Cicero, who says, that he would employ his solitude 
 and retirement from public affairs, to acquire by his writings 
 an immortal life.^* 
 
 " Usque adeone 
 Scire tuum, nihil est, nisi te scire hoc, sciat alter f " ^^ 
 
 It appears to be reason, when a man talks of retiring from the 
 world, that he should look quite out of himself. These do it but 
 by halves : they design well enough for themselves when they 
 shall be no more in it; but still they pretend to extract the 
 fruits of that design from the world, when absent from it, by a 
 ridiculous contradiction. 
 
 The imagination of those who seek solitude upon the account 
 of devotion, filling their hopes and courage with certainty of 
 divine promises in the other life, is much more rationally 
 founded. They propose to themselves God, an infinite object 
 in goodness and power ; the soul has there wherewithal, at full 
 liberty, to satiate her desires : afflictions and sufferings turn to 
 their advantage, being undergone for the acquisition of eternal 
 health and joy ; death is to be wished and longed for, where it 
 is the passage to so perfect a condition; the asperity of the 
 rules they impose upon themselves is immediately softened by 
 
 ^ " Economics," iv. 20. 29 " Ep.," i. 3. 
 
 2* " Democritus's cattle eat his corn ^ Cicero, " Orator.," c. 43. 
 
 and spoil his fields, while his mind ^i " jg gH thy learning nothing, unless 
 
 ranges abroad without the body." — Hor- another knows that thou knowest? " — 
 
 ace, " Ep.," i. 12. Persius, " Satires," i. 23. 
 
42 MONTAIGNE 
 
 custom, and all their carnal appetites baffled and subdued, by 
 refusing to humor and feed them, these being only supported 
 by use and exercise. This sole end therefore of another happy 
 and immortal life is that, which really merits that we should 
 abandon the pleasures and conveniences of this; and he who 
 can really and constantly inflame his soul with the ardor of this 
 vivid faith and hope erects for himself in solitude a more 
 voluptuous and delicious life than any other sort of living what- 
 ever. 
 
 Neither the end then nor the means of this advice,^^ pleases 
 me, for we often fall out of the frying-pan into the fire. This ^* 
 book employment is as painful as any other, and as great an 
 enemy to health, which ought to be the first thing considered ; 
 neither ought a man to be allured with the pleasure of it, which 
 is the same that destroys the frugal, the avaricious, the voluptu- 
 ous, and the ambitious man. The sages give us caution enough 
 to beware the treachery of our desires, and to distinguish true 
 and entire pleasures from such as are mixed and complicated 
 with greater pain. For the most of our pleasures, say they, 
 wheedle and caress only to strangle us, like those thieves the 
 Egyptians called Philistae ; if the headache should come before 
 drunkenness, we should have a care of drinking too much : but 
 pleasure, to deceive us, marches before and conceals her train. 
 Books are pleasant, but if, by being overstudious, we impair 
 our health and spoil our good-humor, the best pieces we have, 
 let us give it over ; I, for my part, am one of those who think 
 that no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss. 
 As men who have long felt themselves weakened by indisposi- 
 tion give themselves up at last to the mercy of medicine and 
 submit to certain rules of living, which they are for the future 
 never to transgress ; so he who retires, weary of, and disgusted 
 with the common way of living, ought to model this new one he 
 enters into by the rules of reason, and to institute and establish 
 it by premeditation and reflection. He ought to have taken 
 leave of all sorts of labor, what advantage soever it may promise, 
 and generally to have shaken off all those passions which disturb 
 
 '2 Of Pliny to Rufus. And a man should not suffer himselfe 
 
 " " This plodding occupation of to be inveagled by the pleasure he 
 
 bookes is as painfull as any other, and takes in them." — Florio, edit. 1613, 
 
 as great an enemie vnto health, which p. 122. 
 
 ought principally to be considered. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 43 
 
 the tranquillity of body and soul, and then choose the way that 
 best suits with his own humor : 
 
 ^* Unusquisque sua noverit ire via" ^* 
 
 In husbandry, study, hunting, and all other exercises, men are 
 to proceed to the utmost limits of pleasure, but must take heed 
 of engaging further, where trouble begins to mix with it. We 
 are to reserve so much employment only as is necessary to keep 
 us in breath and defend us from the inconveniences that the 
 other extreme of a dull and stupid laziness brings along with 
 it. There are sterile knotty sciences, chiefly hammered out for 
 the crowd; let such be left to them who are engaged in the 
 world's service. I for my part care for no other books, but 
 either such as are pleasant and easy, to amuse me, or those that 
 comfort and instruct me how to regulate my life and death : 
 
 ^^ Taciturn sylvas inter reptare salubres^ 
 Curantem, quidquid dignum sapienti bonoque est."^^ 
 
 Wiser men, having great force and vigor of soul, may propose 
 to themselves a rest wholly spiritual : but for me, who have a 
 very ordinary soul, it is very necessary to support myself with 
 bodily conveniences ; and age having of late deprived me of those 
 pleasures that were more acceptable to me, I instruct and whet 
 my appetite to those that remain, but more suitable to this other 
 season. We ought to hold with all our force, both of hands and 
 teeth, the use of the pleasures of life that our years, one after 
 another, snatch away from us. 
 
 ''Carpamus dulcia ; nostrum cst^ 
 Quod vivis : cinis, et manes y etfabulafies." '• 
 
 Now, as to the end that Pliny and Cicero propose to us, of 
 glory: 'tis infinitely wide of my account. Ambition is of all 
 others the most contrary humor to solitude; glory and repose 
 are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same 
 place. For so much as I understand, these have only their 
 
 '* Propertius, lib. ii. 25, 38. Montaigne ^e " Lgj- ^g pluck life's sweets, 'tis for 
 
 translates the passage in the preceding them we live: by and by we shall be 
 
 paragraph, ashes, a ghost, a mere subject of talk." 
 
 ^ " Silently meditating in the healthy — Persius, " Satires," v. 151. 
 groves, what best becomes a wise and 
 honest man." — Horace, " Ep.," i. 4. 
 
44 MONTAIGNE 
 
 arms and legs disengaged from the crowd : their soul and in- 
 tention remain engaged behind more than ever: 
 
 " Tun'y vetule^ auriculis alienis colligis escas f " '' 
 
 they have only retired to take a better leap, and by a stronger 
 motion to give a brisker charge into the crowd. Will you see 
 how they shoot short? Let us put into the counterpoise the 
 advice of two philosophers,^® of two very different sects, writ- 
 ing, the one to Idomeneus, the other to Lucilius, their friends, 
 to retire into solitude from worldly honors and affairs. " You 
 have," say they, " hitherto lived swimming and floating : come 
 now, and die in the harbor ; you have given the first part of your 
 life to the light, give what remains to the shade. It is impossi- 
 ble to give over business, if you do not also quit the fruit; 
 therefore disengage yourselves from all concern of name and 
 glory; *tis to be feared the lustre of your former actions will 
 give you but too much light, and follow you into your most 
 private retreat. Quit with other pleasures that which pro- 
 ceeds from the approbation of another man: and as to your 
 knowledge and parts, never concern yourselves ; they will not 
 lose their effect if yourselves be the better for them. Remem- 
 ber him, who being asked why he took so much pains in an 
 art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons.' * A 
 few are enough for me,' replied he ; * I have enough with one, 
 I have enough with never a one.' ^® He said true ; you and a 
 companion are theatre enough to one another, or you to your- 
 self. Let the people be to you one, and be you one to the whole 
 people.*** 'Tis an unworthy ambition to think to derive glory 
 from a man's sloth and privacy : you are to do like the beasts 
 of chase, who efface the track at the entrance into their den.** 
 You are no more to concern yourself how the world talks of 
 you, but how you are to talk to yourself. Retire yourself into 
 yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself: 
 it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you can- 
 not govern yourself.*^ A man may miscarry alone as well as 
 
 •♦ " Dost thou, old man, collect food to Idomeneus, differing from that given 
 
 for others' ears? " — Persius, " Satires," by Diogenes Laertius. 
 
 i, 22. '" Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 7. 
 
 8* Epicurus and Seneca. See Seneca, *° Idem, " Ep.," 7, ascribes these 
 
 " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 21, who cites words to Democritus. 
 
 a passage from the letter of Epicurus " Idem, " Ep.," 68. 
 
 *2 Idem, " Ep.," 25. 
 
OF SOLITUDE 45 
 
 in company. Till you have rendered yourself one before whom 
 you dare not trip, and till you have a bashfulness and respect 
 for yourself, ' Obversentur species honestce animo/ '^^ present 
 continually to your imagination Cato, Phocion, and Aristides, 
 in whose presence the fools themselves will hide their faults, and 
 make them controllers of all your intentions ; should these de- 
 viate from virtue, your respect to those will set you right ; they 
 will keep you in the way to be contented with yourself; to 
 borrow nothing of any other but yourself ; to stay and fix your 
 soul in certain and limited thoughts, wherein she may please 
 herself, and having understood the true and real goods, which 
 men the more enjoy the more they understand, to rest satisfied, 
 without desire of prolongation of life or name." This is the 
 precept of the true and natural pjiilosophy, not of a boasting and 
 prating philosophy, such as that of the two former.** 
 
 *8 " Let just and honest things be " Pliny the younger and Cicero, 
 
 ever present to the mind." — Cicero, 
 " Tusc. Quaes.," ii. 22. 
 
OF BOOKS 
 
 I MAKE no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things 
 that are much better and more truly handled by those 
 who are masters of the trade. You have here purely an 
 essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired; and 
 whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any 
 sort get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to 
 become responsible to another ior my writings, who am not so 
 to myself, nor satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of 
 knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found ; there is 
 nothing I so little profess. These are fancies of my own, by 
 which I do not pretend to discover things but to lay open myself ; 
 they may, peradventure, one day be known to me, or have 
 formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me 
 in place where they have been explained ; but I have utterly for- 
 gotten it ; and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no 
 retention; so that I can promise no certainty, more than to 
 make known to what point the knowledge I now have has 
 risen. Therefore, let none lay stress upon the matter I write, 
 but upon my method in writing it. Let them observe, in what 
 I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to 
 raise or help the invention, which is always my own: For I 
 make others say for me, not before but after me, what either for 
 want of language or want of sense, I cannot myself so well 
 express. I do not number my borrowings, I weigh them : and 
 had I designed to raise their value by number, I had made them 
 twice as many; they are all, or within a very few, so famed 
 and ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves suf- 
 ficiently to tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. 
 In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into 
 my own soil, and confound them among my own, I purposely 
 conceal the author, to awe the temerity of those precipitate 
 censors who fall upon all sorts of writings, particularly the late 
 ones, of men yet living, and in the vulgar tongue which puts 
 
 47 
 
48 MONTAIGNE 
 
 everyone into a capacity of criticising and which seem to con- 
 vict the conception and design as vulgar also. I will have them 
 give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca when 
 they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness 
 under these great reputations. I shall love anyone that can 
 unplume me, that is, by clearness of understanding and judg- 
 ment, and by the sole distinction of the force and beauty of the 
 discourse. For I who, for want of memory, am at every turn 
 at a loss to pick them out of their national livery, am yet wise 
 enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my 
 soil is incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I 
 there find growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth 
 are not worth any one of them. For this, indeed, I hold myself 
 responsible ; if I get in my own way ; if there be any vanity and 
 defect in my writings which I do not of myself perceive nor 
 can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for many 
 faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in 
 not being able to discern them when, by another laid open to 
 us. Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment, and 
 judgment also without them; but the confession of ignorance 
 is one of the finest and surest testimonies of judgment that I 
 know. I have no other officer to put my writings in rank and 
 file, but only fortune. As things come into my head, I heap 
 them one upon another ; sometimes they advance in whole bod- 
 ies; sometimes in single file. I would that everyone should 
 see my natural and ordinary pace, irregular as it is; I suffer* 
 myself to jog on at my own rate. Neither are these subjects 
 which a man is not permitted to be ignorant in, or casually and 
 at a venture, to discourse of. I could wish to have a more 
 perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it 
 costs. My design is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the 
 remainder of my life ; there is nothing that I will cudgel my 
 brains about ; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever. 
 
 I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an 
 honest diversion ; or, if I study, 'tis for no other science than 
 what treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how 
 to die and how to live well. 
 
 *'Has mezH ad metas sudet oportet equusV ' 
 * " My horse must be trained to this course."— Propertius, iv. i, 70. 
 
OF BOOKS 49 
 
 I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my 
 reading; after a charge or two, I give them over. Should I 
 insist upon them, I should both lose myself and time; for I 
 have an impatient understanding, that must be satisfied at 
 first ; what I do not discern at once is, by persistence, rendered 
 more obscure. I do nothing without gayety; continuation, 
 and a too obstinate endeavor, darkens, stupefies, and tires my 
 judgment. My sight is confounded and dissipated with por- 
 ing; I must withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new at- 
 tempts; just as to judge rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we 
 are taught to pass the eye lightly over it, and again to run it 
 over at several sudden and reiterated glances. If one book 
 do not please me, I take another ; and never meddle with any, 
 but at such times as I am weary ^of doing nothing. I care not 
 much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger ; 
 neither do I converse much with Greek authors, because my 
 judgment cannot do its work with imperfect intelligence of the 
 material.^ 
 
 Among books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boc- 
 caccio's '' Decameron," Rabelais, and the '' Basia " of Jo- 
 hannes Secundus (^f those may be ranged under the title) are 
 worth reading for amusement. As to Amadis, and such kind 
 of stuff, they had not credit to take me, so much as in my 
 childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or 
 rashly, that this old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer 
 tickled with Ariosto, no, nor with Ovid; his facility and in- 
 ventions with which I was formerly so ravished, are now of 
 no more relish, and I can hardly have the patience to read 
 them. I speak my opinion freely of all things, even of those 
 that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive 
 to be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction. And, accordingly, 
 the judgment I deliver is to show the measure of my own 
 sight, and not of the things I make so bold to criticise. When 
 I find myself disgusted with Plato's " Axiochus,"^ as with a 
 work, with due respect to such an author be it spoken, without 
 force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not so arrogant 
 as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments 
 
 2 Montaigne refers to his imperfect attributed by some to -^schines the So- 
 
 knowledge of the Greek language. cratic, and by others to Xenocrates of 
 
 ^ The *' Axiochus " is not by Plato, Chalcedon. — Le Clerc. 
 as Diogenes Laertius admitted. It is 
 
50 MONTAIGNE 
 
 of antiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and 
 with whom it is rather content to err ; in such a case, it con- 
 demns itself either to stop at the outward bark, not being able 
 to penetrate to the heart, or to consider it by some false light. 
 It is content with only securing itself from trouble and dis- 
 order; as to its own weakness, it frankly acknowledges and 
 confesses it. It thinks it gives a just interpretation to the ap- 
 pearances by its conceptions presented to it ; but they are weak 
 and imperfect. Most of the fables of TEsop have diverse senses 
 and meanings of which the mythologists chose some one that 
 quadrates well to the fable ; but, for the most part, 'tis but the 
 first face that presents itself, and is superficial only ; there yet 
 remain others more vivid, essential, and profound, into which 
 they have not been able to penetrate ; and just so 'tis with me. 
 But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always 
 thought that, in poesy, Vergil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace 
 by many degrees excel the rest; and signally, Vergil in his 
 " Georgics," which I look upon as the most accomplished piece 
 in poetry ; and in comparison of which a man may easily dis- 
 cern that there are some places in his " ^neid " to which 
 the author would have given a little more of the file, had he 
 had leisure : and the fifth book of his " ^neid " seems to me 
 the most perfect. I also love Lucan, and willingly read him, 
 not so much of his style, as for his own worth, and the truth 
 and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for Terence, 
 that model of the refined elegancies and grace of the Latin 
 tongue, I find him admirable in his vivid representation of our 
 manners and the movements of the soul; our actions throw 
 me at every turn, upon him ; and I cannot read him so often 
 that I do not still discover some new grace and beauty. Such 
 as lived near Vergil's time were scandalized that some should 
 compare him with Lucretius. I am, I confess, of opinion that 
 the comparison is, in truth, very unequal ; a belief that, never- 
 theless, I have much ado to assure myself in, when I come 
 upon some excellent passage in Lucretius. But if they were 
 so angry at this comparison, what would they say to the brutish 
 and barbarous stupidity of those who, nowadays, compare him 
 with Ariosto? Would not Ariosto himself say 
 **0 seclnm insipiens et inficetum ! "* 
 *"0 stupid and tasteless age! " — Catullus, xliii. 8. 
 
OF BOOKS 
 
 51 
 
 I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with those 
 who compared Plautus with Terence, though much nearer 
 the mark, than Lucretius with Vergil. It makes much for the 
 estimation and preference of Terence that the father of Roman 
 eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class, in his 
 mouth ; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets ^ 
 has passed upon his companion. I have often observed that 
 those of our times who take upon them to write comedies (in 
 imitation of the Italians, who are happy enough in that way of 
 writing), take three or four plots of those of Plautus or Ter- 
 ence to make one of their own, and crowd five or six of Boc- 
 caccio's novels into one single comedy. That which makes 
 them so load themselves with matter is the diffidence they have 
 of being able to support themselves with their own strength. 
 They must find out something to lean to ; and not having of 
 their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the 
 story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise 
 with my author; the elegance and perfection of his way of 
 speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined 
 grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us : he is so 
 pleasant throughout, 
 
 ^'Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni" ' 
 
 and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget those 
 of his fable. This same consideration carries me further: I 
 observe that the best of the ancient poets have avoided affecta- 
 tion and the hunting after, not only fantastic Spanish and 
 Petrarchal elevations, but even the softer and more gentle 
 touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy. And 
 yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the 
 ancients, and that does not incomparably more admire the 
 equal polish, and that perpetual sweetness and flourishing 
 beauty of Catullus's epigrams, than all the stings with which 
 Martial arms the tails of his. This is by the same reason that 
 I gave before, and as Martial says of himself : " Minus illi in- 
 genio lahoranduni fuit, in cujus locum materia successerat." '' 
 The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, 
 
 •^ Horace, " Ars Poetica," 279. do that the subject itself supplied what 
 
 " " Liquid, and like a crystal stream." was necessary.— Martial, praef. ad lib. 
 
 —Horace, " Ep.," ii. 2, 120. viii. 
 ' " He had all the less for his wit to 
 
52 MONTAIGNE 
 
 make themselves sufficiently felt ; they have matter enough of 
 laughter throughout, they need not tickle themselves ; the oth- 
 ers have need of foreign assistance ; as they have the less wit 
 they must have the more body ; they mount on horseback, be- 
 cause they are not able to stand on their own legs. As in our 
 balls, those mean fellows who teach to dance, not being able 
 to represent the presence and dignity of our noblesse are fain 
 to put themselves forward with dangerous jumping, and other 
 strange motions and tumblers' tricks; and the ladies are less 
 put to it in dances, where there are various coupees changes, 
 and quick motions of body, than in some other of a more sedate 
 kind, where they are only to move a natural pace, and to repre- 
 sent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seen 
 good drolls, when in their own every-day clothes, and with the 
 same face they always wear, give us all the pleasure of their 
 art, when their apprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of 
 perfection, are fain to meal their faces, put themselves into 
 ridiculous disguises, and make a hundred grotesque faces to 
 give us whereat to laugh. This conception of mine is nowhere 
 more demonstrable than in comparing the " ^neid " with 
 " Orlando Furioso ; " of which we see the first, by dint of wing, 
 flying in a brave and lofty place, and always following his 
 point; the latter, fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as 
 from branch to branch, not daring to trust his wings but in 
 very short flights, and perching at every turn, lest his breath 
 and strength should fail ; 
 
 "Excursusque breves tentat,^*^ 
 
 These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that 
 best please me. 
 
 As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little 
 /more profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to 
 / marshal my opinions and conditions, the books that serve me 
 / to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has been translated into 
 [ French, and Seneca. Both of these have this notable conven- 
 ience suited to my humor, that the knowledge I there seek is 
 discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require from me any 
 trouble of reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are 
 the minor works of the first and the epistles of the latter, which 
 
 8 " Making short runs."— Vergil, " Georgics," iv. 194. 
 
OF BOOKS 53 
 
 are the best and most profiting of all their writings. 'Tis no 
 great attempt to take one of them in hand, and I give over at 
 pleasure; for they have no sequence or dependence upon one 
 another. These authors, for the most part, concur in useful 
 and true opinions; and there is this parallel between them, 
 that fortune brought them into the world about the same cen- 
 tury: they were both tutors to two Roman emperors: both 
 sought out from foreign countries: both rich and both great 
 men. Their instruction is the cream of philosophy, and de- 
 livered after a plain and pertinent manner. Plutarch is more 
 uniform and constant; Seneca more various and waving: the 
 last toiled and bent his whole strength to fortify virtue against 
 weakness, fear, and vicious appetites; the other seems more 
 to slight their power, and to disdain to alter his pace and to 
 stand upon his guard. Plutarch's opinions are Platonic, 
 gentle, and accommodated to civil society; those of the other 
 are Stoical and Epicurean, more remote from the common 
 use, but, in my opinion, more individually commodious and 
 more firm. Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of 
 the emperors of his time, and only seems; for I take it for 
 certain that he speaks against his judgment when he condemns 
 the action of the generous murderers of Caesar. Plutarch is 
 frank throughout: Seneca abounds with brisk pouches and 
 sallies; Plutarch with things that heat and move you more; 
 this contents and pays you better: he guides us, the other 
 pushes us on. 
 
 As to Cicero, those of his works that are most useful to my 
 design are they that treat of philosophy, especially moral. But 
 boldly to confess the truth (for since one has passed the bar- 
 riers of impudence, off with the bridle), his way of writing, and 
 that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very 
 tedious: for his prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymolo- 
 gies take up the greatest part of his work: whatever there is 
 of life and marrow is smothered and lost in the long prepara- 
 tion. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a 
 great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have thence ex- 
 tracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing 
 but wind : for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve 
 to his purpose, and to the reasons that properly help to form 
 the knot I seek. For me, who only desire to become more 
 
 r 
 
54 MONTAIGNE 
 
 wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical and Aristo- 
 telian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would have a man 
 begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what 
 death and pleasure are ; let no man give himself the trouble to 
 anatomize them to me. I look for good and solid reasons, at 
 the first dash, to instruct me how to stand their shock, for 
 which purpose neither grammatical subtleties nor the quaint 
 contexture of words and argumentations are of any use at all. 
 I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of 
 the redoubt; his languish about the subject; they are proper 
 for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have 
 leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, time 
 enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is neces- 
 sary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a 
 desire to gain over, right or wrong, to children and common 
 people, to whom a man must say all, and see what will come 
 of it. I would not have an author make it his business to ren- 
 der me attentive : or that he should cry out fifty times OyeZy as 
 the heralds do. The Romans, in their religious exercises, be- 
 gan with Hoc age: as we in ours do with Sursum corda; these 
 are so many words lost to me : I come already fully prepared 
 from my chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no 
 sauce ; I eat the meat raw, so that, instead of whetting my ap- 
 petite by these preparatives, they tire and pall it. Will the 
 license of the time excuse my sacrilegious boldness if I censure 
 the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and heavy, too much 
 stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a man, 
 who had so many better things, to say, in so many long and 
 needless preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will bet- 
 ter excuse me in that I understand not Greek so well as to 
 discern the beauty of his language. I generally choose books 
 that use sciences, not such as only lead to them. The two first, 
 and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc age; they 
 will have to do with men already instructed ; or if they have, 
 'tis a substantial Hoc age, and that has a body by itself. I also 
 delight in reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only because 
 they contain a great deal of the history and aflFairs of his time, 
 but much more because I therein discover much of his own 
 private humors ; for I have a singular curiosity, as I have said 
 elsewhere, to pry into the souls and the natural and true opin- 
 
OF BOOKS 55 
 
 ions of the authors with whom I converse. A man may in- 
 deed judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor of them- 
 selves, by the writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the 
 world. I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the 
 treatise Brutus wrote upon virtue, for it is well to learn the 
 theory from those who best know the practice. But seeing 
 the matter preached and the preacher are different things, I 
 would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch as in a book of his 
 own. I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the 
 conference he had in his tent with some particular friends of 
 his the night before a battle, than of the harangue he made the 
 next day to his army; and of what he did in his closet and 
 his chamber, than what he did in the public square and in the 
 Senate. As to Cicero, I am oi the common opinion that, 
 learning excepted, he had no great natural excellence. He 
 was a good citizen, of an afifable nature, as all fat, heavy men, 
 such as he was, usually are ; but given to ease, and had, in 
 truth, a mighty share of vanity and ambition. Neither do I 
 know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be pub- 
 lished ; 'tis no great imperfection to make ill verses, but it is 
 an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his 
 verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his 
 eloquence, that is totally out of all comparison, and I believe 
 it will never be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled 
 his father in nothing but in name, while commanding in Asia, 
 had several strangers one day at his table, and among the rest, 
 Cestius seated at the lower end, as men often intrude to the 
 open tables of the great. Cicero asked one of his people who 
 that man was, who presently told him his name ; but he, as one 
 who had his thoughts taken up with something else, and who 
 had forgotten the answer made him, asking three or four times, 
 over and over again, the same question, the fellow, to deliver 
 himself from so many answers and to make him know him by 
 some particular circumstance : " 'Tis that Cestius," said he, 
 " of whom it was told you, that he makes no great acccount of 
 your father's eloquence in comparison of his own." At which 
 Cicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded poor Cestius pres- 
 ently to be seized, and caused him to be very well whipped in 
 his own presence f a very discourteous entertainer ! Yet even 
 
 • Seneca, " Suasor," 8. 
 
56 MONTAIGNE 
 
 among those, who, all things considered, have reputed his elo- 
 quence incomparable, there have been some, who have not 
 stuck to observe some faults in it; as that great Brutus, his 
 friend, for example, who said it was a broken and feeble elo- 
 quence, fractam et elumhem}^ The orators also, nearest to 
 the age wherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had 
 of a certain long cadence in his periods, and particularly took 
 notice of these words, esse videatur, which he there so often 
 makes use of.^^ For my part, I more approve of a shorter 
 style, and that comes more roundly oflf. He does, though, 
 sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but 'tis very 
 seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage : " Ego 
 vero me minus diu senem mallem, quam esse senem antequam 
 essem" ^^ 
 
 The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant and 
 easy, and where man, in general, the knowledge of whom I 
 hunt after, appears more vividly and entire than anywhere 
 else :^^ the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross 
 and piecemeal, the diversity of means by which he is united 
 and knit, and the accidents that threaten him. Now those that 
 write lives, by reason they insist more upon counsels than 
 events, more upon what sallies from within, than upon what 
 happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and, 
 therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. I am 
 very sorry we have not a dozen Laertii,^* or that he was not 
 further extended; for I am equally curious to know the lives 
 and fortunes of these great instructors of the world, as to know 
 the diversities of their doctrines and opinions. In this kind 
 of study of histories, a man must tumble over, without distinc- 
 tion, all sorts of authors, old and new, French or foreign, there 
 to know the things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, 
 in my opinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the 
 knowledge of the history only, but for himself, so great an 
 txcellence and perfection he has above all the rest, though 
 Sallust be one of the number. In earnest, I read this author 
 with more reverence and respect than is usually allowed to 
 
 ""> Tacitus, " De Oratoribus," c. i8. the right ball, at tennis, being that 
 
 " Idem, Ibid., c. 23. which, coming to the player from the 
 
 ** " I had rather be old a brief time, right hand, is much easier played with." 
 
 than be old before old age." — Cicero, — Coste. 
 
 " De Senectute," c. 10. " Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the 
 
 " *' The easiest of my amusements, lives of the philosophers. 
 
OF BOOKS 5^ 
 
 human writings ; one while considering him in his person, by 
 his actions and miraculous greatness, and another in the purity 
 and inimitable polish of his language, wherein he not only 
 excels all other historians, as Cicero confesses,^^ but, perad- 
 venture, even Cicero himself ; speaking of his enemies with so 
 much sincerity in his judgment, that, the false colors with 
 which he strives to palliate his evil cause, and the ordure of 
 his pestilent ambition excepted, I think there is no fault to be 
 objected against him, saving this, that he speaks too sparingly 
 of himself, seeing so many great things could not have been 
 performed under his conduct, but that his own personal acts 
 must necessarily have had a greater share in them than he 
 attributes to them. 
 
 I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the higher 
 order. The simple, who have nothing of their own to mix 
 with it, and who only make it their business to collect all that 
 comes to their knowledge, and faithfully to record all things, 
 without choice or discrimination, leave to us the entire judg- 
 ment of discerning the truth. Such, for example among oth- 
 ers, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking 
 with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error> he 
 is not ashamed to confess, and correct it in the place where 
 the finger has been laid, and who represents to us even the 
 variety of rumors that were then spread abroad, and the differ- 
 ent reports that were made to him ; 'tis the naked and inform 
 matter of history, and of which everyone may make his profit, 
 according to his understanding. The more excellent sort of 
 historians have judgment to pick out what is most worthy to 
 be known/, and, of two reports, to examine which is the most 
 likely to be true : from the condition of princes and their hu- 
 mors, they conclude their counsels, and attribute to them 
 words proper for the occasion ; such have title to assume the 
 authority of regulating our belief to what they themselves be- 
 lieve ; but, certainly, this privilege belongs to very few. For 
 the middle sort of historians, of which the most part are, they 
 spoil all ; they will chew our meat for us ; they take upon them 
 to judge of, and consequently, to incline the history to their 
 own fancy ; for if the judgment lean to one side, a man cannot 
 avoid wresting and writhing his narrative to that bias ; they, 
 
 " Cicero, " Brutus," c. 75. 
 
58 MONTAIGNE 
 
 undertake to select things worthy to be known, and yet often 
 conceal from us such a word, such a private action, as would 
 much better instruct us; omit, as incredible, such things as 
 they do not understand, and peradventure some, because they 
 cannot express them well in good French or Latin. Let them 
 display their eloquence and intelligence, and judge according 
 to their own fancy: but let them, withal, leave us something 
 to judge of after them, and neither alter nor disguise, by their 
 abridgments and at their own choice, anything of the substance 
 of the matter, but deliver it to us pure and entire in all its di- 
 mensions. 
 
 For the most part, and especially in these latter ages, persons 
 are culled out for this work from among the common people, 
 upon the sole consideration of well-speaking, as if we were to 
 learn grammar from them; and the men so chosen have fair 
 reason, being hired for no other end and pretending to nothing 
 but babble, not to be very solicitous of any part but that, and 
 so, with a fine jingle of words, prepare us a pretty contexture 
 of reports they pick up in the streets. The only good histories 
 are those that have been written by the persons themselves who 
 held command in the afifairs whereof they write, or who par- 
 ticipated in the conduct of them, or, at least, who have had the 
 conduct of others of the same nature. Such are almost all the 
 Greek and Roman histories : for, several eye-witnesses having 
 written of the same subject, in the time when grandeur and 
 learning commonly met in the same person, if there happen 
 to be an error, it must of necesssity be a very slight one, and 
 upon a very doubtful incident. What can a man expect from 
 a physician who writes of war, or from a mere scholar, treating 
 of the designs of princes ? If we could take notice how scrupu- 
 lous the Romans were in this, there would need but this ex- 
 ample : Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesar himself 
 something misreported, a mistake occasioned, either by reason 
 he could not have his eye in all parts of his army at once and 
 had given credit to some individual persons who had not de- 
 livered him a very true account; or else, for not having had 
 too perfect notice given him by his lieutenants of what they 
 had done in his absence.^® By which we may see, whether the 
 inquisition after truth be not very delicate, when a man cannot 
 
 ^" Suetonius, " Life of Caesar," c. 56. 
 
OF BOOKS 
 
 59 
 
 believe the report of a battle from the knowledge of him who 
 there commanded, nor from the soldiers who were engaged 
 in it, unless, after the method of a judicial inquiry, the witnesses 
 be confronted and objections considered upon the proof of the 
 least detail of every incident. In good earnest the knowledge 
 we have of our own affairs, is much more obscure : but that has 
 been sufficiently handled by Bodin, and according to my own 
 sentiment. ^^ A little to aid the weakness of my memory (so 
 extreme that it has happened to me more than once, to take 
 books again into my hand as new and unseen, that I had care- 
 fully read over a few years before, and scribbled with my notes) 
 I have adopted a custom of late^ to note at the end of every 
 book (that is, of those I never intend to read again) the time 
 when I made an end on't, and the judgment I had made of it, 
 to the end that this might, at least, represent to me the char- 
 acter and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading 
 it; and I will here transcribe some of those annotations. I 
 wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini (of what 
 language soever my books speak to me in, I always speak to 
 them in my own) : " He is a diligent historiographer, from 
 whom, in my opinion, a man may learn the truth of the affairs 
 of his time, as exactly as from any other ; in the most of which 
 he was himself also a personal actor, and in honorable com- 
 mand. There is no appearance that he disguised anything, 
 either upon the account of hatred, favor, or vanity ; of which 
 the free censures he passes upon the great ones, and particu- 
 larly, those by whom he was advanced and employed in com- 
 mands of great trust and honor, as Pope Clement VII, give 
 ample testimony. As to that part which he thinks himself the 
 best at, namely his digressions and discourses, he has indeed 
 some very good, and enriched with fine features ; but he is too 
 fond of them : for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so 
 full, ample, almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and 
 smacks a little of scholastic prattle. I have also observed this 
 in him, that of so many souls and so many effects, so many 
 motives and so many counsels as he judges, he never attributes 
 any one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were 
 utterly extinct in the world : and of all the actions, how brave 
 
 " In the work, by Jean Bodin, entitled " Methodus ad facilem historiarum cog- 
 nitionem," 1566. 
 
6o MONTAIGNE 
 
 soever in outward show they appear in themselves, he always 
 refers the cause and motive to some vicious occasion or some 
 prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, among 
 such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, 
 there must be some one produced by the way of honest reason. 
 No corruption could so universally have infected men that 
 some one would not escape the contagion: which makes me 
 suspect that his own taste was vicious, whence it might happen 
 that he judged other men by himself." 
 
 In my Philip de Comines, there is this written : " You will 
 here find the language sweet and delightful, of a natural sim- 
 plicity, the narration pure, with the good faith of the author 
 conspicuous therein ; free from vanity, when speaking of him- 
 self, and frpm affection or envy, when speaking of others : his 
 discourses and exhortations rather accompanied with zeal and 
 truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency; and, throughout, 
 authority and gravity, which bespeak him a man of good ex- 
 traction, and brought up in great affairs." 
 
 Upon the " Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay," I find this : 
 " 'Tis always pleasant to read things written by those that have 
 experienced how they ought to be carried on; but withal, it 
 cannot be denied but there is a manifest decadence in these 
 two lords ^^ from the freedom and liberty of writing that shine 
 in the elder historians, such as the Sire de Joinville, the familiar 
 companion of St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor to Charle- 
 magne : and of later date, Philip de Comines. What we have 
 here is rather an apology for King Francis, against the Em- 
 peror Charles V, than history. I will not believe that they 
 have falsified anything, as to matter of fact ; but they make a 
 common practice of twisting the judgment of events, very often 
 contrary to reason, to our advantage, and of omitting whatso- 
 ever is ticklish to be handled in the life of their master ; wit- 
 ness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de 
 Biron, which are here omitted : nay, so much as the very name 
 of Madame d'Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions 
 a historian may conceal ; but to pass over in silence what all 
 the world knows, and things that have drawn after them public 
 and such high consequences, is an inexcusable defect. In fine, 
 
 1' Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de Langey, brothers, who jointly wrote the 
 " Memoirs." 
 
OF BOOKS 6i 
 
 whoever has a mind to have a perfect knowledge of King Fran- 
 cis and the events of his reign, let them seek it elsewhere, if 
 my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap from 
 these " Memoirs. " is in the special narrative of battles and 
 other exploits of war wherein these gentlemen were personally 
 engaged ; in some words and private actions of the princes of 
 their time, and in the treaties and negotiations carried on by 
 the Seigneur de Langey, where there are everywhere things 
 worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar strain. 
 
OF CRUELTY 
 
 I FANCY virtue to be something else, and something 
 more noble, than good nature, and the mere propen- 
 sion to goodness, that we are born into the world 
 withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, in- 
 deed, the same methods, and represent in their actions the 
 same face that virtue itself does : but the word virtue imports 
 something more great and active than merely for a man to 
 suffer himself by a happy disposition, to be gently and quietly 
 drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a natural sweetness 
 and facility, should despise injuries received, would, doubtless, 
 do a very fine and laudable thing ; but he who, provoked and 
 nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with 
 the arms of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and, 
 after a great conflict, master his own passion, would certainly 
 do a great deal more. The first would do well ; the latter vir- 
 tuously: one action might be called goodness, and the other 
 virtue ; for, methinks, the very name of virtue presupposes dif- 
 ficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised without an 
 opponent. 'Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God 
 good, mighty, liberal, and just ; but we do not call him virtu- 
 ous, being that all His operations are natural and without 
 endeavor.^ It has been the opinion of many philosophers, not 
 only Stoics, but Epicureans — (and this addition I borrow from 
 the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the witty 
 conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached 
 that many scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but 
 never any from thence to his school, said in answer, " I believe 
 it indeed ; numbers of capons being made out of cocks, but 
 never any cocks out of capons." ^ For, in truth, the Epicu- 
 rean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and the 
 
 1 Rousseau, in his " Emile/' book v., * Diogenes Laertius, " Life of Arcesi- 
 
 adopts this passage, almost in the same laus," lib. iv. § 43. 
 words. 
 
 63 
 
64 MONTAIGNE . 
 
 rigor of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing 
 more honesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel 
 with Epicurus, and to throw the game into their hands, make 
 him say what he never thought, putting a wrong construction 
 upon his words, clothing his sentences, by the strict rules of 
 grammar, with another meaning, and a different opinion from 
 that which they knew he entertained in his mind, and in his 
 morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the Epi- 
 curean sect, upon this, among other considerations, that he 
 thought their road too lofty and inaccessible; Et ii qui (piXrj- 
 hovoL vocanturs unt (ptXoKoXoc et (pcXoSiKaiot omnesque vir- 
 tutes et colunt et retinent " ^) — these philosophers say that it 
 is not enough to have the soul seated in a good place, of a good 
 temper, and well disposed to virtue ; it is not enough to have 
 our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the power 
 of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions where- 
 in to put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, 
 and contempt, to contend with them and to keep the soul in 
 breath : " Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita." * Tis one of 
 the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,** 
 refused the riches fortune presented to him by very lawful 
 means ; because, said he, " I am to contend with poverty," in 
 which extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put 
 himself, methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise 
 a confounded scolding wife; which was fighting at sharps. 
 Metellus having, of all the Roman senators alone attempted, 
 by the power of virtue, to withstand the violence of Saturninus, 
 tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all means, cause 
 an unjust law to pass in favor of the commons, and by so doing, 
 having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had es- 
 tablished against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this 
 extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect : That 
 it was a thing too easy and too base to do ill ; and that to do 
 well where there was no danger was a common thing ; but that 
 to do well where there was danger was the proper office of a 
 man of virtue.® These words of Metellus very clearly repre- 
 
 ' " And those whom we call lovers of * " Virtue is much strengthened by 
 
 pleasure, being, in effect, lovers of hon- combats." — Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lu- 
 
 or and justice, cultivate and practise all cilium," 15. 
 the virtues," — Cicero, " Ep. Fam.," xv. ^ The Pythagorean. 
 
 I, 19. " Plutarch, " Life of Marius," c. 10. 
 
OF CRUELTY 65 
 
 sent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue refuses fa- 
 cility for a companion ; and that the easy, smooth, and de- 
 scending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition 
 of nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she re- 
 quires a rough and stormy passage ; she will have either exotic 
 difficulties to wrestle with, like that of Metellus, by means 
 whereof fortune delights to interrupt the speed of her career, 
 or internal difficulties, that the inordinate appetites and imper- 
 fections of our condition introduce to disturb her. 
 
 I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my 
 head that the soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came 
 to my knowledge, should, by this rule^ be of very little recom- 
 mendation ; for I cannot conceive in that person any the least 
 motion of a vicious inclination:.! cannot imagine there could 
 be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his virtue: I 
 know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him 
 that she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much 
 as to spring in him. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have 
 nothing to oppose. Methinks I see him march, with a vic- 
 torious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at his ease, without 
 opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine bright but 
 by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she 
 cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from 
 her that she derives her reputation and honor? What then, 
 also, would become of that brave and generous Epicurean 
 pleasure, which makes account that it nourishes virtue ten- 
 derly in her lap, and there makes it play and wanton, giving 
 it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death, and 
 torments ? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself 
 in contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the 
 uttermost extremity of the gout, without being moved in her 
 seat ; if I give her troubles and difficulty for her necessary ob- 
 jects : what will become of a virtue elevated to such a degree, 
 as not only to despise pain, but, moreover, to rejoice in it, and 
 to be tickled with the daggers of a sharp gout, such as the 
 Epicureans have established, and of which many of them, by 
 their actions, have given most manifest proofs ? As have sev- 
 eral others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the 
 very rules of their discipline ; witness the younger Cato : when 
 I see him die, and tearing out his own bowels, I am not satisfied 
 5 
 
66 MONTAIGNE 
 
 simply to believe that he had then his soul totally exempt from 
 all trouble and horror: I cannot think that he only maintained 
 himself in the steadiness that the Stoical rules prescribed him ; 
 temperate, without emotion and imperturbed. There was, 
 methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly 
 and fresh to stop there ; I believe that, without doubt, he felt 
 a pleasure and delight in so noble an action, and was more 
 pleased in it than in any other of his life : " Sic ahiit e vita, ut 
 causam moriendi nactum se esse gander et." "^ I believe it so 
 thoroughly that I question whether he would have been con- 
 tent to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an 
 execution; and if the goodness that made him embrace the 
 pubhc concern more than his own, withheld me not, I should 
 easily fall into an opinion that he thought himself obliged to 
 fortune for having put his virtue upon so brave a trial, and for 
 having favored that thief ^ in treading underfoot the ancient 
 liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this action I know 
 not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and manly 
 emotion of pleasure when he looked upon the generosity and 
 height of his enterprise : 
 
 " Deliberata morte ferocior ^ ® 
 
 not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and ef- 
 feminate judgments of some have concluded (for that consid- 
 eration was too mean and low to possess so generous, so 
 haughty, and so determined a heart as his), but for the very 
 beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had the handling of 
 the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection than 
 we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining 
 that so brave an action had been indecently placed in any other 
 life than that of Cato ; and that it only appertained to his to end 
 so ; notwithstanding, and according to reason, he commanded 
 his son and the senators who accompanied him to take another 
 course in their affairs : '^ Catoni, quum incredibilem natura 
 tribuisset gravitatem, eamque ipse perpetua constantia rohora- 
 visset, semperque in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum 
 potius, quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat" ^® Every death 
 
 "^ " He quitted life, rejoicing that a » " Bolder because he had determined 
 
 reason for dying had arisen." — Cicero, to die." — Horace, " Odes," i. 37, 29. 
 
 " Tusc. Quxs." i. 30. 1° " Nature having endued Cato with 
 
 * Caesar. an incredible gravity, which he had also 
 
OF CRUELTY 67 
 
 ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not 
 become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the 
 life preceding ; and if anyone tell me of a death strong and con- 
 stant in appearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it pro- 
 duced by some feeble cause, and suitable to the Hfe before. 
 The easiness then of this death and the facility of dying he had 
 acquired by the vigor of his soul ; shall we say that it ought to 
 abate anything of the lustre of his virtue ? And who, that has 
 his brain never so little tinctured with the true philosophy, can 
 be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear and passion 
 in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation? and 
 that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy 
 (which was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not 
 what new satisfaction, and a Irolic cheerfulness in his last 
 words and actions ? In the start he gave with the pleasure of 
 scratching his leg when his irons were taken off, does he not 
 discover an equal serenity and joy in his soul for being freed 
 from past inconveniences, and at the same time to enter into 
 the knowledge of things to come? Cato shall pardon me, if 
 he please ; his death indeed is more tragical and more linger- 
 ing ; but yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristip- 
 pus, to one that was lamenting this death : " The gods grant 
 me such a one," said he.^^ A man discerns in the soul of these 
 two great men and their imitators (for I very much doubt 
 whether there were ever their equals) so perfect a habitude to 
 virtue, that it was turned to a complexion. It is no longer a 
 laborious virtue nor the precepts of reason, to maintain which 
 the soul is so racked, but the very essence of their soul, its nat- 
 ural and ordinary habit ; they have rendered it such by a long 
 practice of philosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and 
 fine nature ; the vicious passions that spring in us can find no 
 entrance into them : the force and vigor of their soul stifle and 
 extinguish irregular desires, so soon as they begin to move. 
 
 Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine reso- 
 lution, to hinder the birth of temptations, and to be so formed 
 to virtue, that the very seeds of vice are rooted out, than to 
 hinder by main force their progress ; and, having suffered our- 
 
 fortified with a perpetual constancy, the face of the tyrant."— Cicero, " De 
 without ever flagging in his resolution, Offic," i. 3^- _ . .. ^ 
 he must of necessity rather die than see " Diogenes Laertius, n. 76. 
 
68 MONTAIGNE 
 
 selves to be surprised with the first motions of the passions, 
 to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose their progress, 
 and overcome them ; and that this second effect is not also 
 much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile 
 and affable nature, of itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, 
 I do not think can be doubted ; for this third and last sort of 
 virtue seems to render a man innocent, but not virtuous ; free 
 from doing ill, but not apt enough to do well : considering also, 
 that this condition is so near neighbor to imperfection and 
 cowardice, that I know not very well how to separate the con- 
 fines and distinguish them ; the very names of goodness and 
 innocence are, for this reason, in some sort grown into con- 
 tempt. I very well know that several virtues, as chastity, so- 
 briety, and temperance, may come to a man through personal 
 defects. Constancy in danger, if it must be so called, the con- 
 tempt of death, and patience in misfortunes, may ofttimes be 
 found in men for want of well judging of such accidents, and 
 not apprehending them for such as they are. Want of ap- 
 prehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous ef- 
 fects : as I have often seen it happen, that men have been com- 
 mended for what really merited blame. An Italian lord once 
 said this, in my presence, to the disadvantage of his own na- 
 tion : that the subtlety of the Italians, and the vivacity of their 
 conceptions were so great, and they foresaw the dangers and 
 accidents that might befall them so far oflf, that it was not to be 
 thought strange, if they were often in war, observed to provide 
 for their safety, even before they had discovered the peril ; that 
 we French and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went 
 on further, and that we must be made to see and feel the danger 
 before we would take the alarm ; but that even then we could 
 not stick to it. But the Germans and Swiss, more heavy and 
 thick-skulled, had not the sense to look about them, even when 
 the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he only 
 talked so for mirth's sake; and yet it is most certain that in 
 war raw soldiers rush into danger with more precipitancy than 
 after they have been well cudgelled : 
 
 ** Haud tgnarus . . . quantum nova gloria in armis t 
 Et prcedulce decus.primo certamine possity '^ 
 
 ^ " Not ignorant, how hope of glory excites the young soldier in the first 
 essay of arms."—" ^neid," xi. 154. 
 
OF CRUELTY 
 
 69 
 
 For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular ac- 
 tion, we are to consider the circumstances, and the whole man 
 by whom it is performed, before we give it a name. 
 
 To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends 
 call that prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and re- 
 pute that courage and patience, which was judgment and opin- 
 ion; and attribute to me one title for another, sometimes to 
 my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to the rest, I am 
 so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect degree 
 of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of 
 the second I have made no great proofs. I have not been very 
 solicitous to curb the desires by which I have been importuned. 
 My virtue is a virtue, or rather an innocence, casual and acci- 
 dental. If I had been born of a more irregular complexion, I 
 am afraid I should have made scurvy work; for I never ob- 
 served any great stability in my soul to resist passions, if they 
 were never so little vehement : I have not the knack of nourish- 
 ing quarrels and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, 
 owe myself no great thanks that I am free from several vices. 
 
 " Si vitiU mediocribus et mea paucis 
 Mendosa est nafura, alioqui recta; velut si 
 Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore ncEvos : " ^^ 
 
 I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused 
 me to be descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very 
 good father ; I know not whether or no he has infused into me 
 part of his humors, or whether domestic examples and the 
 good education of my infancy have insensibly assisted in the 
 work, or, if I was otherwise born so ; 
 
 ^^Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit 
 Formidolosus, pars violentior, 
 Natalis horcB, seutyrannus 
 HespericB Capricornus undcB :" ^* 
 
 but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The 
 answer of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the 
 best apprenticeship " to unlearn evil," seems to point at this. 
 
 ^3 " If my nature be chargeable only " " Whether I was born under the 
 
 with slight and few vices, and I am Balance, or under Scorpio, formidable 
 
 otherwise of rectitude, the venial faults at the natal hour, or under Capricorn, 
 
 will be no more than moles on a fair ruler of the occidental seas." — Horace, 
 
 body." — Horatius, " Satires," i. 6, 65. " Odes," ii. 117. 
 
7© MONTAIGNE 
 
 I have them in horror, I say, with a detestation so natural, and 
 so much my own, that the same instinct and impression I 
 brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and no 
 temptation whatever has had the power to make me aUer it. 
 Not so much as my own discourses, which in some things lash- 
 ing out of the common road might seem easily to license me 
 to actions that my natural inclination makes me hate. I will 
 say a prodigious thing, but I will say it however : I find myself 
 in many things more under reputation by my manners than 
 by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my 
 reason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favor of 
 pleasure and riches as set all the philosophers against him : but 
 as to his manners, Dionysius the tyrant, having presented 
 three beautiful women before him, to take his choice, he made 
 answer, that he would choose them all, and that Paris got 
 himself into trouble for having preferred one before the other 
 two : but, having taken them home to his house, he sent them 
 back untouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon 
 the way, with the money he carried after him, he ordered him 
 to pour out and throw away that which troubled him. And 
 Epicurus, whose doctrines were so irreligious and effeminate, 
 was in his life very laborious and devout ; he wrote to a friend 
 of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water, entreating him 
 to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against he had a mind 
 to make a feast.^^ Must if be true, that to be a perfect good 
 man, we must be so by an occult, natural, and universal pro- 
 priety, without law, reason, or example? The debauches 
 wherein I have been engaged, have not been, I thank God, 
 of the worst sort, and I have condemned them in myself, for 
 my judgment was never infected by them ; on the contrary, 
 I accuse them more severely in myself than in any other ; but 
 that is all, for, as to the rest, I oppose too little resistance and 
 suffer myself to incline too much to the other side of the bal- 
 ance, excepting that I moderate them, and prevent them from 
 mixing with other vices, which, for the most part will cling 
 together, if a man have not a care. I have contracted and cur- 
 tailed mine, to make them as single and as simple as I can : 
 
 '* Nee ultra 
 Error em foveo."" ^^ 
 "Diogenes Laertius, x. ii. i« " Not carry wrong further."— Juvenal, viii. 164. 
 
OF CRUELTY 71 
 
 For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, " That the wise 
 man when he works, works by all the virtues together though 
 one be most apparent, according to the nature of the action ; " 
 and herein the similitude of a human body might serve them 
 somewhat, for the action of anger cannot work unless all the 
 humors assist it, though choler predominate; if they will 
 thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked man 
 does wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not 
 believe it to be so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect 
 find the contrary. These are sharp, unsubstantial subtleties, 
 with which philosophy sometimes amuses itself. I follow 
 some vices, but I fly others as much as a saint would do. 
 The Peripatetics also disown this indissoluble connection; 
 and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent and just man 
 may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates confessed 
 to some who had discovered a certain inclination to vice in 
 his physiognomy, that it was, in truth, his natural propension, 
 but that he had by discipline corrected it.^^ And such as 
 were familiar with the philosopher Stilpo said, that being 
 born with addiction to wine and women, he had by study 
 rendered himself very abstinent both from the one and the 
 other.^® 
 
 What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the 
 chance of my birth ; and hold it not either by law, precept, or 
 any other instruction : the innocence that is in me is a simple 
 one ; little vigor and no art. Among other vices, I mortally 
 hate cruelty, both by nature and judgment as the very extreme 
 of all vices ; nay, with so much tenderness that I cannot see a 
 chicken's neck pulled off, without trouble, and cannot, without 
 impatience, endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though 
 the chase be a violent pleasure. I conceive that the example of 
 the pleasure of the chase would be more proper ; wherein though 
 the pleasure be less, there is the higher excitement of unex- 
 pected joy ; giving no time for the reason, taken by surprise, to 
 prepare itself for the encounter, when after a long quest the 
 beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, we 
 least expected it; the shock and the ardor of the shouts and 
 cries of the hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those 
 who love this lesser chase, to turn their thoughts, upon the in- 
 
 " Cicero, '* Tusc. Quaes.," iv. 17. 18 idem, " De Fato," c. 5. 
 
72 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 stant, another way ; and the poets make Diana triumph over the 
 torch and shafts of Cupid : 
 
 " Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet^ 
 Hcec inter obliviscitur ? " ^^ 
 
 To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly com- 
 passionate of others' afflictions, and should readily cry for com- 
 pany, if, upon any occasion whatever, I could cry at all. Noth- 
 ing tempts my tears, but tears, and not only those that are real 
 and true, but whatever they are, feigned or painted. I do not 
 much lament the dead, and should envy them rather; but I 
 very much lament the dying. The savages do not so much 
 offend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as 
 they do who torment and persecute the living. Nay, I cannot 
 look so much as upon the ordinary executions of justice, how 
 reasonable soever, with a steady eye. Someone having to give 
 testimony of Julius Caesar's clemency ; ** he was," says he, 
 " mild in his revenges. Having compelled the pirates to yield 
 by whom he had before been taken prisoner and put to ran- 
 som ; forasmuch as he had threatened them with the cross, he 
 indeed condemned them to it, but it was after they had been 
 first strangled. He punished his secretary Philemon, who had 
 attempted to poison him, with no greater severity than mere 
 death." Without naming that Latin author,^** who thus dares 
 to allege as a testimony of mercy the killing only of those by 
 whom we have been offended, it is easy to guess that he was 
 struck with the horrid and inhuman examples of cruelty prac- 
 tised by the Roman tyrants. 
 
 For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple 
 death appears to me pure cruelty ; especially in us who ought, 
 having regard to their souls, to dismiss them in a good and 
 calm condition ; which cannot be, when we have agitated them 
 by insufferable torments. Not long since a soldier who was 
 a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shut up that 
 the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and 
 that the carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently 
 concluded that the preparation was for him ; and therefore en- 
 tered into a resolution to kill himself, but could find no instru- 
 
 1* " Who among such delights, would ious cares of love." — Horace, " Epod.," 
 not remove out of his thoughts the anx- ii. 37. 
 
 ^ Suetonius, " Life of Ccesar," c. 74. 
 
OF CRUELTY 73 
 
 ment to assist him in his design except an old rusty cart-nail 
 that fortune presented to him. With this he first gave himself 
 two great wounds about his throat, but finding these would 
 not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the 
 belly, where he left the nail sticking up to the head. The first 
 of his keepers who came in found him in this condition ; yet 
 alive, but sunk down and exhausted by his wounds. To make 
 use of time, therefore, before he should die, they made haste 
 to read his sentence ; which having done, and he hearing that 
 he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed to take new 
 courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and 
 thanked his judges for the unhoped-for mildness of their sen- 
 tence ; saying, that he had taken a resolution to despatch him- 
 self for fear of a more severe and insupportable death, having 
 entertained an opinion, by the-preparations he had seen in the 
 place, that they were resolved to torment him with some hor- 
 rible execution, and seemed to be delivered from death, in 
 having it changed from what he apprehended. 
 
 I should advise that those examples of severity, by which 
 'tis designed to retain the people in their duty, might be exer- 
 cised upon the dead bodies of criminals ; for to see them de- 
 prived of sepulture, to see them boiled and divided into 
 quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar, as the 
 pain they make the living endure ; though that in effect be little 
 or nothing, as God himself says, " Who kill the body, and, after 
 that, have no more that they can do ; " ^^ and the poets singu- 
 larly dwell upon the horrors of this picture, as something worse 
 than death: 
 
 " Heu / reliquias semiassi regis, denudatis ossibus. 
 Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier." ^ 
 
 I happened to come by one day, accidentally, at Rome, just as 
 they were upon executing Catena, a notorious robber : he was 
 strangled without any emotion of the spectators, but when they 
 came to cut him in quarters the hangman gave not a blow that 
 the people did not follow with a doleful cry and exclamation, as 
 if everyone had lent his sense of feeling to the miserable carcass. 
 Those inhuman excesses ought to be exercised upon the bark, 
 
 21 LnVe xii. 4. should be shamefully dragged through 
 
 23 " Alas! that the half-burned remains the dirt."— Cicero, " Tusc. Quaes.," i. 44. 
 of these kings, and their bared bones, 
 
74 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case, 
 moderated the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining 
 that the nobility who had committed a fault, instead of being 
 whipped, as they were used to be, should be stripped only and 
 their clothes whipped for them; and that whereas they were 
 wont to tear off their hair, they should only take off their high- 
 crowned tiara.^^ The so deyout Egyptians thought they suf- 
 ficiently satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy 
 and representation ; a bold invention to pay God, so essential a 
 substance, in picture only and in show. 
 
 I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of 
 this vice, through the license of our civil wars; and we see 
 nothing in ancient histories more extreme than what we have 
 proof of every day, but I cannot, any the more, get used to it. 
 I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, 
 that there could be found souls so cruel and fell, who, for the 
 sole pleasure of murder, would commit it ; would hack and lop 
 off the limbs of others ; sharpen their wits to invent unusual tor- 
 ments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, 
 and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of 
 the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a 
 man dying in anguish. For this is the utmost point to which 
 cruelty can arrive : " Ut homo hominem, non iratiis, non timens, 
 tantum spectaturus, occidat" -* For my own part, I cannot 
 without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and 
 killed that has no defence; and from which we have received 
 no offence at all ; and that which frequently happens, that the 
 stag we hunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and 
 seeing no other remedy, surrenders himself to us who pursue 
 him, imploring mercy by his tears, 
 
 " Questuque cruentus, 
 Atque imploranti similis" 25 
 
 has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight ; and I hardly ever 
 take a beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythag- 
 oras bought them of fishermen and fowlers to do the same : 
 
 23 Plutarch, " Notable Sayings of the only for the pleasure of the spectacle." 
 
 Ancient Kings." — Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 90. 
 
 2* " That a man should kill a man 25 " Who, bleeding, by his tears seems 
 
 without being angry, or without fear, to crave mercy."— ^^neid," vii. 501. 
 
75 
 
 OF CRUELTY 
 
 " Primoque a ccedeferarum, 
 Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum." ^6 
 
 Those natures that are sanguinary toward beasts discover a 
 natural propension to cruelty. After they had accustomed 
 themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, 
 they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladi- 
 ators. Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of 
 instinct to inhumanity ; nobody takes pleasure in seeing beasts 
 play with and caress one another, but everyone is delighted with 
 seeing them dismember and tear one another to pieces. And 
 that I may not be laughed at for the sympathy I have with 
 them, theology itself enjoins us some favor in their behalf; and 
 considering that one and the same master has lodged us together 
 in this palace for his service, and that they, as well as we, are 
 of his family, it has reason to enjoin us some affection and re- 
 gard to them. Pythagoras borrowed the metempsychosis from 
 the Egyptians ; but it has since been received by several nations, 
 and particularly by our Druids : 
 
 " Morte carent animce.j semperqueypriore relict a 
 Sedey novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receplas" ^7 
 
 The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being 
 eternal, never ceased to remove and shift their places from one 
 body to another ; mixing moreover with this fancy some con- 
 sideration of divine justice ; for according to the deportments 
 of the soul, while it had been in Alexander, they said that God 
 assigned it another body to inhabit, more or less painful, and 
 proper for its condition. 
 
 * ^Muta ferarum 
 Cogit vinclapati; truculentos ingerit ursis, 
 Prcedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit: 
 Atque ubi per varios annos, per millejiguras 
 Egit, Lethoso purgatos flumine, tandem 
 RursMS ad hurnanoe revocat primordiaformoe: " ^ 
 
 28 " I think 'twas slaughter of wild chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty souls 
 
 beasts that first stained the steel of man he enclosed in bears; the thieves in 
 
 with blood." — Ovid, " Metamorphoses," wolves; the sly in foxes; where after 
 
 XV. io6. having, through successive years and a 
 
 27 " Souls never die, but, having left thousand forms, finished these careers, 
 
 one seat, are received into new houses." purging them well in Lethe's flood, at 
 
 — Ovid, '* Metamorphoses," xv. 158. last he replaces them in human bodies." 
 
 » *• He made them wear the silent — Claudian, " Contra Ruf.," ii. 482. 
 
76 MONTAIGNE 
 
 if it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion ; if volup- 
 tuous, in that of a hog ; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare ; if 
 malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified 
 it by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some 
 other man : 
 
 " Ipse egOy nam memini, Trojani tetnpore belli 
 Panthoides Euphorbus eram." ^^ 
 
 As to the relationship between us and beasts, I do not much 
 admit of it ; nor of that which several nations, and those among 
 the most ancient and most noble, have practised, who have not 
 only received brutes into their society and companionship, but 
 have given them a rank infinitely above themselves, esteeming 
 them one while familiars and favorites of the gods, and having 
 them in more than human reverence and respect; others ac- 
 knowledged no other god or divinity than they. " BellucB 
 a barbaris propter beneiicmm consecratcc: " ^^ 
 
 " Crocodilon adorat 
 Pars hcec; ilia pavet saturam serpentibus ibin: 
 Effigies sacri hie nitet aurea cercopitheci; 
 
 Hie piscemflumijiis, illic 
 Oppida iota canem venerantur.^^ ^i 
 
 And the very interpretation that Plutarch ^^ gives to this 
 error, which is very well conceived, is advantageous to them: 
 for he says that it was not the cat or the ox, for example, that 
 the Egyptians adored: but that they, in those beasts, adored 
 some image of the divine faculties : in this, patience and utility ; 
 in that vivacity, or, as with our neighbors the Burgundians and 
 all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by 
 which they represented liberty, which they loved and adored 
 above all other godlike attributes, and so of the rest. But when, 
 among the more moderate opinions, I meet with arguments that 
 endeavor to demonstrate the near resemblance between us and 
 animals, how large a share they have in our greatest privileges, 
 
 28 " For I myself remember that in the ^^ " This place adores the crocodile; 
 
 days of the Trojan war, I was Euphor- another dreads the ibis, feeder on ser- 
 
 bus, son of Pantheus." — Ovid, " Meta- pents: here you may behold the statue 
 
 morphoses," xv. i6o; and see Diogenes of a monkey shining in gold: here men 
 
 Laertius, " Life of Pythagoras." venerate a river fish; there whole towns 
 
 *> " The barbarians consecrated beasts, worship a dcg." — Juvenal, xv. 2. 
 
 out of opinion of some benefit received '^ "^ On Isis and Osiris," c. 39. 
 by them."— Cicero, " De Natura Deor.," 
 i. 36. 
 
OF CRUELTY 77 
 
 and with how much probability they compare us together, truly 
 I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly resign 
 that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over other 
 creatures. 
 
 But supposing all this were not true, there is, nevertheless, a 
 certain respect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts 
 that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants. We 
 owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other 
 creatures that are capable of it; there is a certain commerce 
 and mutual obligation between them and us. Nor shall I be 
 afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish, that 
 I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the most un- 
 seasonably importunes me so to do. The Turks have alms and 
 hospitals for beasts. The Romans had public care to the nour- 
 ishment of geese, by whose vigilance their capital had been 
 preserved. The Athenians made a decree that the mules and 
 moyles which had served at the building of the temple called 
 Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at their 
 own choice, without hinderance.^^ The Agrigentines ^* had a 
 common use solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness 
 for, as horses of some rare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and 
 even those that had only been kept to divert their children; 
 and the magnificence that was ordinary with them in all other 
 things, also particularly appeared in the sumptuosity and num- 
 bers of monuments erected to this end, and which remained 
 in their beauty several ages after. The Egyptians ^^ buried 
 wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, 'and cats in sacred places, em- 
 balmed their bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon 
 gave an honorable sepulture to the mares with which he had 
 three times gained the prize of the course at the Olympic 
 Games.^^ The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be in- 
 terred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever since retained 
 the name,^'' and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about selling 
 for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in 
 his service. ^^ 
 
 ^ Plutarch, " Life of Cato the Cen- ^ Herodotus, book ii. 
 
 sor," c. 3. 3'' Plutarch, ut supra. 
 
 ** Diogenes Siculus, xiii, 17. ^ Idem, Ibid. 
 
 38 Idem, Ibid. 
 
OF REPENTANCE 
 
 OTHERS form man ; I only report him : and represent a 
 particular one, ill-fashioned enough, and whom, if I 
 had to model him anew, I should certainly make some- 
 thing else than what he is: but that's past recalling. Now, 
 though the features of my picture alter and change, 'tis not, 
 however, unlike: the world eternally turns round; all things 
 therein are incessantly moving^, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, 
 and the pyramids of Egypt, both by the public motion and their 
 own. Even constancy itself is no other but a slower and more 
 languishing motion. I cannot fix my object ; 'tis always totter- 
 ing and reeling by a natural giddiness : I take it as it is at the 
 instant I consider it ; I do not paint its being, I paint its pas- 
 sage ; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people 
 say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from 
 minute to minute. I must accommodate my history to the hour : 
 I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by inten- 
 tion. 'Tis a counterpart of various and changeable accidents, 
 and of irresolute imaginations, and, as it falls out, sometimes 
 contrary : whether it be that I am then another self, or that I 
 take subjects by other circumstances and considerations: so 
 it is, that I may peradventure contradict myself, but, as Dema- 
 des said, I never contradict the truth. Could my soul once take 
 footing, I would not essay but resolve : but it is always learning 
 and making trial. 
 
 I propose a life ordinary and without lustre : 'tis all one ; all 
 moral philosophy may as well be applied to a common and 
 private life, as to one of richer composition : every man carries 
 the entire form of human condition. Authors communicate 
 themselves to the people by some especial and extrinsic mark; 
 I, the first of any, by my universal being ; as Michel de Mon- 
 taigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world 
 find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they 
 
 79 
 
8o MONTAIGNE 
 
 do not so much as think of themselves. But is it reason, that 
 being so particular in my way of living, I should pretend to 
 recommend myself to the public knowledge? And is it also 
 reason that I should produce to the world, where art and 
 handling have so much credit and authority, crude and simple 
 effects of nature, and of a weak nature to boot? Is it not to 
 build a wall without stone or brick, or some such thing, to write 
 books without learning and without art? The fancies of mu- 
 sic are carried on by art ; mine by chance. I have this, at least, 
 according to discipline, that never any man treated of a subject 
 he better understood and knew, than I what I have undertaken, 
 and that in this I am the most understanding man alive : sec- 
 ondly, that never any man penetrated farther into his matter, nor 
 better and more distinctly sifted the parts and sequences of it, 
 nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he proposed 
 to himself. To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity 
 to the work ; and that is there, and the most pure and sincere 
 that is anywhere to be found. I speak truth, not so much as I 
 would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a httle the more, as I 
 grow older ; for, methinks, custom allows to age more liberty of 
 prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self. That 
 cannot fall out here, which I often see elsewhere, that the work 
 and the artificer contradict one another : " Can a man of such 
 sober conversation have written so foolish a book ?" Or " Do 
 so learned writings proceed from a man of so weak conversa- 
 tion ?" He who talks at a very ordinary rate, and writes rare 
 matter, 'tis to say that his capacity is borrowed and not his own. 
 A learned man is not learned in all things : but a sufficient man 
 is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself ; here my book 
 and I go hand in hand together. Elsewhere men may com- 
 mend or censure the work, without reference to the workman ; 
 here they cannot : who touches the one, touches the other. He 
 who shall judge of it without knowing him, will more wrong 
 himself than me ; he who does know him, gives me all the satis- 
 faction I desire. I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can ob- 
 tain only thus much from the public approbation, as to make 
 men of understanding perceive that I was capable of profiting 
 by knowledge, had I had it ; and that I deserved to have been 
 assisted by a better memory. 
 
 Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very 
 
OF REPENTANCE 8i 
 
 rarely repent, and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not 
 as the conscience of an angel, or that of a horse, but as the con- 
 science of a man, always adding this clause, not one of cere- 
 mony, but a true and real submission, that I speak inquiring and 
 doubting, purely and simply referring myself to the common 
 and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach, I only 
 relate. 
 
 There is no vice that is absolutely a vice which does not offend, 
 and that a sound judgment does not accuse ; for there is in it so 
 manifest a deformity and inconvenience, that, peradventure, 
 they are in the right who say that it is chiefly begotten by stu- 
 pidity and ignorance : so hard is it to imagine that a man can 
 know without abhorring it. Malice sucks up the greatest part 
 of its own venom, and poisons itself.^ Vice leaves repentance 
 in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching 
 and lacerating itself : for reason effaces all other grief and sor- 
 rows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the 
 more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and heat 
 of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the 
 outward skin. I hold for vices (but every one according to its 
 proportion), not only those which reason and nature condemn, 
 but those also which the opinion of men, though false and 
 erroneous, have made such, if authorized by law and custom. 
 
 There is likewise no virtue which does not rejoice a well-de- 
 scended nature ; there is a kind of, I know not what, congratula- 
 tion in well-doing that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a 
 generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience : a soul 
 daringly vicious may, peradventure, arm itself with security, 
 but it cannot supply itself with this complacency and satisfac- 
 tion. 'Tis no little satisfaction to feel a man's self preserved 
 from the contagion of so depraved an age, and to say to himself : 
 " Whoever could penetrate into my soul would not there find me 
 guilty either of the affliction or ruin of anyone, or of revenge or 
 envy, or any offence against the public laws, or of innovation or 
 disturbance, or failure of my word ; and though the license of 
 the time permits and teaches everyone so to do, yet have I not 
 plundered any Frenchman's goods, or taken his money, and 
 have lived upon what is my own, in war as well as in peace; 
 neither have I set any man to work without paying him his 
 
 1 Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 8i. 
 6 
 
82 MONTAIGNE 
 
 hire." These testimonies of a good conscience please, and this 
 natural rejoicing is very beneficial to us, and the only reward 
 that we can never fail of. 
 
 To ground the recompense of virtuous actions upon the ap- 
 probation of others is too uncertain and unsafe a foundation, 
 especially in so corrupt and ignorant an age as this, wherein 
 the good opinion of the vulgar is injurious : upon whom do you 
 rely to show you what is recommendable ? God defend me from 
 being an honest man, according to the descriptions of honor I 
 daily see everyone make of himself. "" Quce fuerant vitia, mores 
 sunt." ^ Some of my friends have at times schooled and 
 scolded me with great sincerity and plainness, either of their 
 own voluntary motion, or by me entreated to it as to an office, 
 which to a well-composed soul surpasses not only in utility, but 
 in kindness all other offices of friendship: I have always re- 
 ceived them with the most open arms, both of courtesy and 
 acknowledgment; but, to say the truth, I have often found so 
 much false measure, both in their reproaches and praises, that 
 I had not done much amiss, rather to have done ill, than to 
 have done well according to their notions. We, who live pri- 
 vate lives, not exposed to any other view than our own, ought 
 chiefly to have settled a pattern within ourselves by which to try 
 our actions ; and according to that, sometimes to encourage and 
 sometimes to correct ourselves. I have my laws and my judica- 
 ture to judge of myself, and apply myself more to these than to 
 any other rules : I do, indeed, restrain my actions according to 
 others; but extend them not by any other rule than my own. 
 You yourself only know if you are cowardly and cruel, loyal 
 and devout : others see you not, and only guess at you by un- 
 certain conjectures, and do not so much see your nature as 
 your art; rely not therefore upon their opinions, but stick to 
 your own : " Tito tibi jiidicio est utendum. . . . Virtutis 
 et vitiorum grave ipsius conscientice pondus est: qua sublata, 
 jacent omnia" ^ 
 
 But the saying that repentance immediately follows the sin 
 seems not to have respect to sin in its high estate, which is 
 lodged in us as in its own proper habitation. One may disown 
 
 2 " What before were vices are now of thy own conscience in the discovery 
 
 right manners." — Seneca, " Epistolae ad of thy own virtues and vices that, being 
 
 Lucilium," 39. taken away, all things are lost."— Cicero. 
 
 8 " Thou must employ thy own judg- " De Nat. Dei," iii. 35; " Tusc. Quaes.,' 
 
 ment upon thyself; great is the weight i. 25. 
 
OP' REPENTANCE 
 
 83 
 
 and retract the vices that surprise us, and to which we are hur- 
 ried by passions ; but those which by a long habit are rooted in a 
 strong and vigorous will are not subject to contradiction. Re- 
 pentance is no other but a recanting of the will and an opposition 
 to our fancies, which lead us which way they please. It makes 
 this person disown his former virtue and continency : 
 
 " Qu(X mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fuit ? 
 Vel ciir his animis incolumes non redeunt gence f "* 
 
 'Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private. 
 Everyone may juggle his part, and represent an honest man 
 upon the stage : but within, and in his own bosom, where all may 
 do as they list, where all is concealed, to be regular — there's the 
 point. The next degree is to be so in his house, and in his ordi- 
 nary actions, for which we are accountable to none, and where 
 there is no study nor artifice. And therefore Bias, setting forth 
 the excellent state of a private family, says : *' of which ^ the 
 master is the same within, by his own virtue and temper, that 
 he is abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men." And it 
 was a worthy saying of Julius Drusus,® to the masons who 
 offered him, for three thousand crowns, to put his house in such 
 a posture that his neighbors should no longer have the same in- 
 spection into it as before ; " I will give you," said he, " six thou- 
 sand to make it so that everybody may see into every room." 
 'Tis honorably recorded of Agesilaus,"^ that he used in his jour- 
 neys always to take up his lodgings in temples, to the end that 
 the people and the gods themselves might pry into his most 
 private actions. Such a one has been a miracle to the world, 
 in whom neither his wife nor servant has ever seen anything so 
 much as remarkable ; few men have been admired by their own 
 domestics ; no one was ever a prophet, not merely in his own 
 house, but in his own country, says the experience of histories :^ 
 'tis the same in things of naught, and in this low example the 
 image of a greater is to be seen. In my country of Gascony 
 they look upon it as a drollery to see me in print ; the further 
 
 * " Why was I not of the same mind " Instructions to those who Manage 
 when I was a boy that I am now? or State Affairs," but he v/as, in reality, 
 why do not the ruddy cheeks of my Marcus Livius Drusus, the famous tri- 
 youth return to help me now? " — Hor- bune, as we find in Paterculus. 
 
 ace, " Odes," iv. 10, 7. '' Plutarch, in vita, c. 5. 
 
 ^ Plutarch, " Banquet of the Seven ^ No man is a hero to his valet-de- 
 
 Sages," chambre, said Marshal Catinat. 
 
 * He is called so by Plutarch in his 
 
84 MONTAIGNE 
 
 off I am read from my own home, the better I am esteemed. 
 I am fain to purchase printers in Guienne ; elsewhere they pur- 
 chase me. Upon this it is that they lay their foundation who 
 conceal themselves present and living, to obtain a name when 
 they are absent and dead. I had rather have a great deal less 
 in hand, and do not expose myself to the world upon any other 
 account than my present share ; when I leave it I quit the rest. 
 See this functionary whom the people escort in state, with 
 wonder and applause, to his very door ; he puts off the pageant 
 with his robe, and falls so much the lower by how much he was 
 higher exalted : in himself within, all is tumult and degraded. 
 And though all should be regular there, it will require a vivid 
 and well-chosen judgment to perceive it in these low and pri- 
 vate actions ; to which may be added, that order is a dull, som- 
 bre virtue. To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a 
 people, are actions of renown: to reprehend, laugh, sell, pay, 
 love, hate, and gently and justly converse with a man's own 
 family, and with himself ; not to relax, not to give a man's self 
 the lie is more rare and hard, and less remarkable. By which 
 means, retired lives, whatever is said to the contrary, undergo 
 duties of as great or greater difficulty than the others do ; and 
 private men, says Aristotle,^ serve virtue more painfully and 
 highly, than those in authority do: we prepare ourselves for 
 eminent occasions, more out of glory than conscience. The 
 shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience 
 which we do for glory : and the virtue of Alexander appears to 
 me of much less vigor in his great theatre, than that of Socrates 
 in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily conceive 
 Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of 
 Socrates, I cannot. Who shall ask the one what he can do, he 
 will answer, " vSubdue the world :" and who shall put the same 
 question to the other, he will say, " Carry on human life con- 
 formably with its natural condition ;" ^'^ a much more general, 
 weighty, and legitimate science than the other. 
 
 The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in 
 walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in 
 grandeur, but in mediocrity. As they who judge and try us 
 within make no great account of the lustre of our public actions, 
 
 • " Moral, ad Nicom.," x. 7. the world," but he afterwards erased 
 
 10 Montaigne added here, " To do for these words from the manuscript.— Nai- 
 the world that for which he came into geon. 
 
OF REPENTANCE 
 
 8S 
 
 and see they are only streaks and rays of clear water springing 
 from a slimy and muddy bottom: so, likewise, they who judge 
 of us by this gallant outward appearance, in like manner con- 
 clude of our internal constitution ; and cannot couple common 
 faculties, and like their own, with the other faculties that as- 
 tonish them, and are so far out of their sight. Therefore it is 
 that we give such savage forms to demons : and who does not 
 give Tamerlane great eyebrows, wide nostrils, a dreadful visage, 
 and a prodigious stature, according to the imagination he has 
 conceived by the report of his name? Had anyone formerly 
 brought me to Erasmus, I should hardly have believed but that 
 all was adage and apothegm he spoke to his man or his hostess. 
 We much more aptly imagine an artisan having a call of nature, 
 or having a wife, than a great president venerable by his port 
 and sufficiency: we fancy that they, from their high tribu- 
 nals, will not abase themselves so much as to live. As vicious 
 souls are often incited by some foreign impulse to do well, so 
 are virtuous souls to do ill ; they are therefore to be judged by 
 their settled state, when they are at home, whenever that may 
 be ; and, at all events, when they are nearer repose, and in their 
 native station. 
 
 Natural inclinations are much assisted and fortified by educa- 
 tion : but they seldom alter and overcome their institution : a 
 thousand natures of my time have escaped toward virtue or 
 vice, through a quite contrary discipline; 
 
 " Sic ubi desuetce silvis in career e clausce 
 Mansuevere fercB^ et vultus posuere minaces, 
 Atque hominejn didicere pati, si torri da parvus 
 Venit in ora cruor, redeunt rabiesque furorque^ 
 Admonitceque tument gustato sanguine fauces ; 
 Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro; " ^* 
 
 these original qualities are not to be rooted out ; they may be 
 covered and concealed. The Latin tongue is as it were natural 
 to me ; I understand it better than French ; but I have not been 
 used to speak it, nor hardly to write it these forty years. Yet, 
 upon extreme and sudden emotions which I have fallen into 
 
 " " So savage beasts, when shut up their rage and fury return, their jaws 
 
 in cages, and grown unaccustomed to are erected by thirst of blood, and they 
 
 the woods, become tame, and lay aside scarcely forbear to assail their trembling 
 
 their fierce looks, and submit to the masters." — Lucan, iv. 237. 
 rule of man; if again they taste blood. 
 
86 MONTAIGNE 
 
 twice or thrice in my life, and once, seeing my father in perfect 
 health fall upon me in a swoon, I have always uttered my first 
 outcries and ejaculations in Latin; nature starting up, and 
 forcibly expressing itself, in spite of so long a discontinuation ; 
 and this example is said of many others. 
 
 They who in my time have attempted to correct the manners 
 of the world by new opinions, reform seeming vices, but the es- 
 sential vices they leave as they were, if indeed, they do not aug- 
 ment them ; and augmentation is, therein, to be feared ; we defer 
 all other well-doing upon the account of these external reforma- 
 tions, of less cost and greater show, and thereby expiate cheaply, 
 for the other natural consubstantial and intestine vices. Look 
 a little into our experience : there is no man, if he listen to him- 
 self, who does not in himself discover a particular and govern- 
 ing form of his own, that jostles his education, and wrestles 
 with the tempest of passions that are contrary to it. For my 
 part, I seldom find myself agitated with surprises; I always 
 find myself in my place, as heavy and unwieldy bodies do; if 
 I am not at home, I am always near at hand, my dissipations do 
 not transport me very far, there is nothing strange nor extreme 
 in the case ; and yet I have sound and vigorous turns. 
 
 The true condemnation, and which touches the common prac- 
 tice of men, is, that their very retirement itself is full of filth 
 and corruption ; the idea of their reformation composed ; their 
 repentance sick and faulty, very nearly as much as their sin. 
 Some, either from having been linked to vice by a natural pro- 
 pension, or long practice, cannot see its deformity. Others (of 
 which constitution I am) do indeed feel the weight of vice, but 
 they counterbalance *it with pleasure, or some other occasion; 
 and suffer, and lend themselves to it, for a certain price, but 
 viciously and basely. Yet there might, haply, be imagined so 
 vast a disproportion of measure, where with justice the pleasure 
 might excuse the sin, as we say of utility; not only if acci- 
 dental, and out of sin, as in thefts, but the very exercise of sin, 
 where the temptation is violent, and 'tis said, sometimes not to 
 be overcome. 
 
 Being the other day at Armaignac, on the estate of a kins- 
 man of mine, I there saw a country fellow who was by everyone 
 nicknamed the thief. He thus related the story of his life ; that 
 being born a beggar, and finding that he should not be able, 
 
OF REPENTANCE 87 
 
 SO as to be clear of indigence, to get his living by the sweat of 
 his brow, he resolved to turn thief, and by means of his 
 strength of body, had exercised this trade all the time of his 
 youth in great security; for he ever made his harvest and 
 vintage in other men's grounds, but a great way off, and in so 
 great quantities, that it was not to be imagined one man could 
 have carried away so much in one night upon his shoulders; 
 and, moreover, was careful equally to divide and distribute the 
 mischief he did, that the loss was of less importance to every 
 particular man. He is now grown old, and rich for a man of 
 his condition, thanks to his trade, which he openly confesses 
 to everyone. And to make his peace with God, he says, that 
 he is daily ready by good offices to make satisfaction to the 
 successors of those he has robbed, and if he do not finish (for 
 to do it all at once he is not abhe) he will then leave it in charge 
 to his heirs to perform the rest, proportionably to the wrong 
 he himself only knows he has done to each. By this descrip- 
 tion, true or false, this man looks upon theft as a dishonest 
 action, and hates it, but less than poverty, and simply repents ; 
 but to the extent he has thus recompensed, he repents not. 
 This is not that habit which incorporates us into vice, and con- 
 forms even our understanding itself to it; nor is it that im- 
 petuous whirlwind that by gusts troubles and blinds our souls 
 and for the time precipitates us, judgment and all, into the 
 power of vice. 
 
 I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one 
 step on't; I have rarely any movement that hides itself and 
 steals away from my reason, and that does not proceed in the 
 matter by the consent of all my faculties, without division or 
 intestine sedition ; my judgment is to have all the blame or all 
 the praise ; and the blame it once has, it has always ; for almost 
 from my infancy it has ever been one; the same inclination, 
 the same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, 
 I fixed myself from my childhood in the place where I resolved 
 to stick. There are some sins that are impetuous, prompt, 
 and sudden ; let us set them aside ; but in these other sins so 
 often repeated, deliberated, and contrived, whether sins of 
 complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot con- 
 ceive that they should have so long been settled in the same 
 resolution, unless the reason and conscience of him who has 
 
8S MONTAIGNE 
 
 them, be constant to have them ; and the repentance he boasts 
 to be inspired with on a sudden, is very hard for me to imagine 
 or form. I follow not the opinion of the Pythagorean sect, 
 " that men take up a new soul when they repair to the images 
 of the gods to receive their oracles," unless he mean that it 
 must needs be extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own 
 showing so little sign of purification and cleanness, fit for such 
 an office. 
 
 They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do, in- 
 ; deed, command us to correct the imperfections and vices we 
 know ourselves guilty of, but forbid us therefore to disturb the 
 repose of our souls ; these make us beUeve that they have great 
 grief and remorse within ; but of amendment, correction, or 
 interruption, they make nothing appear. It cannot be a cure 
 if the malady be not wholly discharged ; if repentance were 
 laid upon the scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. 
 I find no quality so easy to counterfeit as devotion, if men do 
 not conform their manners and life to the profession; its es- 
 sence is abstruse and occult ; the appearances easy and osten- 
 tatious. 
 
 For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I 
 am ; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of 
 Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will 
 please to pardon my natural infirmity : but I ought not to call 
 this repentance, methinks, no more, than the being dissatisfied 
 that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and 
 conformable with what I am, and to my condition ; I can do 
 no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that 
 are not in our power ; sorrow does. I imagine an infinite num- 
 ber of natures more elevated and regular than mine ; and yet 
 I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my 
 arm or will grows more strong and vigorous for conceiving 
 those of another to be so. If to conceive and wish a nobler 
 way of acting than that we have should produce a repentance 
 of our own, we must then repent us of our most innocent ac- 
 tions, forasmuch as we may well suppose that in a more ex- 
 cellent nature they would have been carried on with greater 
 dignity and perfection ; and we would that ours were so. 
 When I reflect upon the deportments of my youth, with that 
 of my old age, I find that I have commonly behaved myself 
 
OF REPENTANCE 89 
 
 with equal order in both, according to what I understand : this 
 is all that my resistance can do. I do not flatter myself; in 
 the same circumstances I should do the same things. It is not 
 a patch, but rather a universal tincture, with which I am 
 stained. I know no repentance, superficial, half-way, and 
 ceremonious ; it must sting me all over before I can call it so, 
 and must prick my bowels as deeply and universally as God 
 sees into me. 
 
 As to business, many excellent opportunities have escaped 
 me for want of good management; and yet my deliberations 
 were sound enough, according to the occurrences presented to 
 me: 'tis their way to choose always the easiest and safest 
 course. I find that, in my former resolves, I have proceeded 
 with discretion, according to my own rule, and according to 
 the state of the subject proposed, and should do the same a 
 thousand years hence in like occasions ; I do not consider what 
 it is now, but what it was then, when I deliberated on it : the 
 force of all counsel consists in the time ; occasions and things 
 eternally shift and change. I have in my life committed some 
 important errors, not for want of good understanding, but for 
 want of good luck. There are secret, and not to be foreseen, 
 parts in matters we have in hand, especially in the nature of 
 men; mute conditions, that make no show, unknown some- 
 times even to the possessors themselves, that spring and start 
 up by incidental occasions ; if my prudence could not penetrate 
 into nor foresee them, I blame it not : 'tis commissioned no 
 further than its own limits; if the event be too hard for me, 
 and take the side I have refused, there is no remedy ; I do not 
 blame myself, I accuse my fortune, and not my work; this 
 cannot be called repentance. 
 
 Phocion, having given the Athenians an advice that was not 
 followed, and the affair nevertheless succeeding contrary to 
 his opinion, someone said to him : " Well, Phocion, art thou 
 content that matters go so well?" "I am very well con-, 
 tent," replied he, " that this has happened so well, but I do 
 not repent that I counselled the other." ^^ When any of my 
 friends address themselves to me for advice, I give it can- 
 didly and clearly, without sticking, as almost all other men 
 do, at the hazard of the thing's falling out contrary to my opin- 
 io Plutarch, " Apothegm." 
 
9© MONTAIGNE 
 
 ion, and that I may be reproached for my counsel ; I am very 
 indifferent as to that, for the fauh will be theirs for having 
 consulted me, and I could not refuse them that office. 
 
 I, for my own part, can rarely blame anyone but myself for 
 my oversights and misfortunes, for indeed I seldom solicit the 
 advice of another, if not by honor of ceremony, or excepting 
 where I stand in need of information, special science, or as 
 to matter of fact. But in things wherein I stand in need of 
 nothing but judgment, other men's reasons may serve to fortify 
 my own, but have little power to dissuade me ; I hear them all 
 with civility and patience : but to my recollection, I never made 
 use of any but my own. With me, they are but flies and atoms, 
 that confound and distract my will ; I lay no great stress upon 
 my opinions ; but I lay as Httle upon those of others, and for- 
 tune rewards me accordingly: if I receive but little advice, I 
 also give but little. I am seldom consulted, and still more 
 seldom beHeved, and know no concern, either public or pri- 
 vate, that has been mended or bettered by my advice. Even 
 they whom fortune had in some sort tied to my direction, have 
 more willingly suffered themselves to be governed by any 
 other counsels than mine. And as a man who am as jealous 
 of my repose as of my authority, I am better pleased that it 
 should be so ; in leaving me there, they humor what I profess, 
 which is to settle and wholly contain myself within myself. I 
 take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men's affairs, 
 and disengaged from being their warranty, and responsible 
 for what they do. 
 
 In all affairs that are past, be it how it will, I have very little 
 regret ; for this imagination puts me out of my pain, that they 
 were so to fall out; they are in the great revolution of the 
 world, and in the chain of stoical causes : your fancy cannot, by 
 wish and imagination, move one tittle, but that the great cur- 
 rent of things will not reverse both the past and the future. 
 
 As to the rest, I abominate that incidental repentance which 
 old age brings along with it. He, who said of old,^^ that he 
 was obliged to his age for having weaned him from pleasure, 
 was of another opinion than I am ; I can never think myself 
 beholden to impotency, for any good it can do to me; "Nee 
 tarn aversa unquam videhitur ah opere suo providentia, ut de- 
 
 " Sophocles, " Cicero, De Senectute," c. 14. 
 
OF REPENTANCE 91 
 
 bilitas inter optima inventa sit." ^* Our appetites are rare in 
 old age ; a profound satiety seizes us after the act ; in this I see 
 nothing of conscience ; chagrin and weakness imprint in us a 
 drowsy and rheumatic virtue. We must not suffer ourselves 
 to be so wholly carried away by natural alterations, as to suffer 
 our judgments to be imposed upon by them. Youth and 
 pleasure have not formerly so far prevailed with me, that I did 
 not well enough discern the face of vice in pleasure; neither 
 does the distaste that years have brought me, so far prevail 
 with me now, that I cannot discern pleasure in vice. Now 
 that I am no more in my flourishing age, I judge as well of 
 these things as if I were.^^ I, who narrowly and strictly ex- 
 amine it, find my reason the very same it was in my most li- 
 centious age, except, perhaps, that 'tis weaker and more de- 
 cayed by being grown older; and I find that the pleasure it 
 refuses me upon the account of my bodily health, it would no 
 more refuse now, in consideration of the health of my soul, 
 than at any time heretofore. I do not repute it the more valiant 
 for not being able to combat ; my temptations are so broken 
 and mortified, that they are not worth its opposition ; holding 
 but out my hands, I repel them. Should one present the old 
 concupiscence before it, I fear it would have less power to re- 
 sist it than heretofore ; I do not discern that in itself it judges 
 anything otherwise now, than it formerly did, nor that it has 
 acquired any new light : wherefore, if there be convalescence, 
 'tis an enchanted one. Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one's 
 health to one's disease ! 'Tis not that our misfortune should 
 perform this office, but the good fortune of our judgment. I 
 am not to be made to do anything by persecutions and afflic- 
 tions, but to curse them: that is for people who cannot be 
 roused but by a whip. My reason is much more free in pros- 
 perity, and much more distracted, and put to't to digest pains 
 than pleasures : I see best in a clear sky ; health admonishes 
 me more cheerfully, and to better purpose, than sickness. I 
 did all that in me lay to reform and regulate myself from pleas- 
 ures, at a time when I had health and vigor to enjoy them ; I 
 should be ashamed and envious, that the misery and misfor- 
 
 14 « Nor can Providence ever be seen ^^ " Old though I am, for ladies' love 
 so averse to her own work, that debility unfit, 
 
 should be ranked among the best The power of beauty I remember 
 
 things."— Quintilian, " Instit. Orat.," yet." —Chaucer. 
 
 V. 12. 
 
92 MONTAIGNE 
 
 tune of my old age should have credit over my good, healthful, 
 sprightly, and vigorous years; and that men should estimate 
 me, not by what I have been, but by what I have ceased to be. 
 
 In my opinion, 'tis the happy living, and not (as Antis- 
 thenes ^^ said) the happy dying, in which human felicity con- 
 sists. I have not made it my business to make a monstrous 
 addition of a philosopher's tail to the head and body of a 
 libertine ; nor would I have this wretched remainder give the 
 lie to the pleasant, sound, and long part of my life: I would 
 present myself uniformly throughout. Were I to live my life 
 over again, I should live it just as I have lived it ; I neither 
 complain of the past, nor do I fear the future ; and if I am not 
 much deceived, I am the same within that I am without. 'Tis 
 one main obligation I have to my fortune, that the succession 
 of my bodily estate has been carried on according to the nat- 
 ural seasons ; I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit ; 
 and now see the withering; happily, however, because nat- 
 urally. I bear the infirmities I have the better, because they 
 came not till I had reason to expect them, and because also 
 they make me with greater pleasure remember that long fe- 
 licity of my past life. My wisdom may have been just the same 
 in both ages ; but it was more active, and of better grace while 
 young and sprightly, than now it is when broken, peevish, and 
 uneasy. I repudiate, then, these casual and painful reforma- 
 tions. God must touch our hearts; our consciences must 
 amend of themselves, by the aid of our reason, and not by the 
 decay of our appetites ; pleasure is, in itself, neither pale nor 
 discolored, to be discerned by dim and decayed eyes. 
 
 We ought to love temperance for itself, and because God 
 has commanded that and chastity ; but that which we are re- 
 duced to by catarrhs, and for which I am indebted to the stone, 
 is neither chastity nor temperance ; a man cannot boast that he 
 despises and resists pleasure, if he cannot see it, if he knows 
 not what it is, and cannot discern its graces, its force, and most 
 alluring beauties ; I know both the one and the other, and may 
 therefore the better say it. But, methinks, ours souls, in old 
 age, are subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfec- 
 tions than in youth ; I said the same when young and when I 
 was reproached with the want of a beard ; and I say so now 
 
 »« Diogenes Laertius, vi. 5. 
 
OF REPENTANCE 93 
 
 that my gray hairs give me some authority. We call the diffi- 
 culty of our humors and the disrelish of present things wisdom ; 
 but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change 
 them, and, in my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and 
 feeble pride, an impertinent prating, froward and insociable 
 humors, superstition, and a ridiculous desire of riches when we 
 have lost the use of them, I find there more envy, injustice, and 
 malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does 
 on the face ; and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in 
 growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all to- 
 gether, both toward his perfection and decay. In observing 
 the wisdom of Socrates, and many circumstances of his con- 
 demnation, I should dare to believe that he in some sort him- 
 self purposely, by collusion, contributed to it, seeing that, at 
 the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer the lofty 
 motions of his mind to be cramped, and his wonted lustre ob- 
 scured. ^^ What strange metamorphoses do I see age every 
 day make in many of my acquaintance ! 'Tis a potent malady, 
 and that naturally and imperceptibly steals into us ; a vast pro- 
 vision of study and great precaution are required to evade the 
 imperfections it loads us with, or at least, to weaken their 
 progress. I find that, notwithstanding all my entrenchments, 
 it gets foot by foot upon me ; I make the best resistance I can, 
 but I do not know to what at last it will reduce me. But fall 
 out what will, I am content the world may know, when I am 
 fallen, from what I fell. 
 
 "Xenophon, indeed, tells us expressly that this was the purpose of Socrates in 
 making so haughty a defence. 
 
OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS 
 
 SINCE we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves 
 by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing 
 against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they 
 are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be 
 coveted soever. Greatness has in general this manifest advan- 
 tage, that it can lower itself when it pleases, and has, very near, 
 the choice of both the one and the other condition ; for a man 
 does not fall from all heights ; ihere are several from which 
 one may descend without falling down. It does, indeed, ap- 
 pear to me that we value it at too high a rate, and also over- 
 value the resolution of those whom we have either seen, or 
 heard, have condemned it, or displaced themselves of their own 
 accord : its essence is not so evidently commodious that a man 
 may not, without a miracle, refuse it. I find it a very hard 
 thing to undergo misfortunes, but to be content with a mod- 
 erate measure of fortune and to avoid greatness I think a very 
 easy matter. 'Tis methinks, a virtue to which I, who am no 
 conjurer, could without any great endeavor arrive. What, 
 then, is to be expected from them that would yet put into con- 
 sideration the glory attending this refusal, wherein there may 
 lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself, and fruition 
 of greatness? Forasmuch as ambition never comports itself 
 better, according to itself, than when it proceeds by obscure 
 and unfrequented ways. 
 
 I incite my courage to patience, but I rein it as much as I 
 can toward desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and 
 allow my wishes as much liberty and indiscretion ; but, yet it 
 never befell me to wish for either empire or royalty, or the 
 eminency of those high and commanding fortunes: I do not 
 aim that way ; I love myself too well. When I think to grow 
 greater 'tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and tim- 
 orous advancement, such as is proper for me in resolution, in 
 
 95 
 
96 MONTAIGNE 
 
 prudence, in health, in beauty, and even in riches too ; but this 
 supreme reputation, this mighty authority, oppress my imag- 
 ination; and, quite contrary to that other,^ I should, perad- 
 venture, rather choose to be the second or third in Perigord, 
 than the first at Paris : at least, without lying, rather the third 
 at Paris than the first. I would neither dispute, a miserable 
 unknown, with a nobleman's porter, nor make crowds open 
 in adoration as I pass. I am trained up to a moderate condi- 
 tion, as well by my choice as fortune ; and have made it appear, 
 in the whole conduct of my life and enterprises, that I have 
 rather avoided than otherwise the climbing above the degree 
 of fortune wherein God has placed me by my birth : all natural 
 constitution is equally just and easy. My soul is so sneaking 
 that I measure not good fortune by the height, but by the 
 facility. 
 
 But if my heart be not great enough, 'tis open enough to 
 make amends, at anyone's request, freely to lay open its weak- 
 ness. Should anyone put me upon comparing the Hfe of L. 
 Thorius Balbus, a brave man, handsome, learned, healthful, 
 understanding, and abounding in all sorts of conveniences and 
 pleasures, leading a quiet life, and all his own, his mind well 
 prepared against death, superstition, pain, and other in- 
 cumbrances of human necessity, dying at last, in battle, with 
 his sword in his hand, for the defence of his country, on the 
 one part ; and on the other part, the life of M. Regulus, so great 
 and high as is known to everyone, and his end admirable ; the 
 one without name and without dignity, the other exemplary, 
 and glorious to wonder. I should doubtless say as Cicero did, 
 could I speak as well as he.^ But if I was to compare them 
 with my own, I should then also say that the first is as much 
 according to my capacity, and from desire, which I conform to 
 my capacity, as the second is far beyond it; that I could not 
 approach the last but with veneration, the other I could readily 
 attain by use. 
 
 But let us return to our temporal greatness, from which we 
 are digressed. I disrelish all dominion, whether active or 
 passive. Otanes,^ one of the seven who had right to pretend 
 to the kingdom of Persia, did, as I should willingly have done, 
 
 ^ Julius Caesar. the preference to Regulus, and pro- 
 
 2 Cicero, " De Finibus," ii. 20, gives claims him the happier man. 
 
 3 Herodotus, iii. 83. 
 
OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS 
 
 97 
 
 which was, that he gave up to his concurrents his right of 
 being promoted to it, either by election or by lot, provided that 
 he and his might live in the empire out of all authority and 
 subjection, those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy 
 all liberty that was not prejudicial to these, being as impatient 
 of commanding as of being commanded. 
 
 The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in 
 my opinion, is worthily to discharge the office of a king. I 
 excuse more of their mistakes than men commonly do, in con- 
 sideration of the intolerable weight of their function, which 
 astounds me. Tis hard to keep measure in so immeasurable 
 a power ; yet so it is, that it is, even to those who are not of the 
 best nature, a singular incitement to virtue, to be seated in a 
 place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put 
 upon record ; and where the least benefit redounds to so many 
 men, and where your talent of administration, like that of 
 preachers, principally addresses itself to the people, no very 
 exact judge, easy to deceive, and easily content. There are 
 few things wherein we can give a sincere judgment, by reason 
 that there are few wherein we have not, in some sort, a private 
 interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjec- 
 tion, are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must of 
 necessity perpetually intrench upon one another. I believe 
 neither the one nor the other touching the rights of the other 
 party; let reason, therefore, which is inflexible and without 
 passion, determine when we can avail ourselves of it. 'Tis not 
 above a month ago that I read over two Scotch authors con- 
 tending upon this subject, of whom he who stands for the 
 people makes kings to be in a worse condition than a carter; 
 and he who writes for monarchy places them some degrees 
 above God Almighty in power and sovereignty. 
 
 Now, the inconveniency of greatness that I have made choice 
 of to consider in this place, upon some occasion that has lately 
 put it into my head, is this : there is not, peradventure, anything 
 more pleasant in the commerce of men than the trials that we 
 make against one another, out of emulation of honor and 
 worth, whether in the exercises of the body or in those of the 
 mind, wherein sovereign greatness can have no true part. 
 And, in earnest, I have often thought that by force of respect 
 itself men use princes disdainfully and injuriously in that par- 
 7 
 
98 MONTAIGNE 
 
 ticular; for the thing I was infinitely offended at in my child- 
 hood, that they who exercised with me forbore to do their 
 best because they found me unworthy of their utmost en- 
 deavor, is what we see happen to them daily, everyone finding 
 himself unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that 
 they have the least desire to get the better of us, there is no 
 one who will not make it his business to give it them, and who 
 will not rather betray his own glory than offend theirs; and 
 will, therein, ernploy so much force only as is necessary to 
 save their honor. What share have they, then, in the engage- 
 ment, where everyone is on their side ? Methinks I see those 
 Paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts and 
 battle with enchanted arms and bodies. Brisson,* running 
 against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a 
 fault in his career ; Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to 
 have had him whipped. Upon this consideration Carneades 
 said, that " the sons of princes learned nothing right but to 
 ride ; by reason that, in all their other exercises, everyone bends 
 and yields to them ; but a horse, that is neither a flatterer nor a 
 courtier, throws the son of a king with no more ceremony than 
 he would throw that of a porter." 
 
 Homer was fain to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate 
 a goddess as she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, 
 thereby to ascribe courage and boldness to her ; qualities that 
 cannot possibly be in those who are exempt from danger. The 
 gods are made to be angry, to fear, to run away, to be jealous, 
 to grieve, to be transported with passions, to honor them with 
 the virtues that, among us, are built upon these imperfections. 
 Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty can claim 
 no interest in the honor and pleasure that are the consequences 
 of hazardous actions. 'Tis pity a man should be so potent that 
 all things must give way to him ; fortune therein sets you too 
 remote from society, and places you in too great a solitude. 
 This easiness and mean facility of making all things bow 
 under you is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure : 'tis to slide, not 
 to go; 'tis to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man accom- 
 panied with omnipotence: you overwhelm him; he must beg 
 
 * Plutarch, " On Satisfaction or Tran- terer from a Friend," he calls him 
 quillity of the Mind." But in his essay, Christo. 
 " How a Man may Distinguish a Flat- 
 
OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS 
 
 99 
 
 disturbance and opposition as an alms : his being and his good 
 are in indigence.^ 
 
 Their good quahties are dead and lost; for they can only 
 be perceived by comparison, and we put them out of this : they 
 have little knowledge of true praise, having their ears deafened 
 with so continual and uniform an approbation. Have they to 
 do with the stupidest of all their subjects? they have no means 
 to take any advantage of him, if he but say : " 'Tis because he 
 is my king," he thinks he has said enough to express, that he, 
 therefore, suffered himself to be overcome. This quality 
 stifles and consumes the other true and essential qualities : they 
 are sunk in the royalty ; and leave them nothing to recommend 
 themselves with but actions that directly concern and serve the 
 function of their place ; 'tis so much to be a king, that this alone 
 remains to them. The outer glare that environs him conceals 
 and shrouds him from us ; our sight is there repelled and dis- 
 sipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing Hght. The 
 senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius ; he refused 
 it, esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no 
 advantage from a judgment so partial, and that was so little 
 free to judge. 
 
 As we give them all advantages of honor, so do we soothe 
 and authorize all their vices and defects, not only by approba- 
 tion, but by imitation also. Every one of Alexander's follow- 
 ers carried his head on one side, as he did ; and the flatterers of 
 Dionysius ran against one another in his presence, and stum- 
 bled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to show they 
 were as purblind as he. Hernia itself has also served to recom- 
 mend a man to favor ; I have seen deafness affected ; and be- 
 cause the master hated his wife, Plutarch has seen his courtiers 
 repudiate theirs, whom they loved: and, which is yet more, 
 uncleanliness and all manner of dissolution have so been in 
 fashion; as also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, super- 
 stition, irreligion, effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be : and 
 by an example yet more dangerous than that of Mithridates's 
 flatterers, who, as their master pretended to the honor of a 
 good physician, came to him to have incisions and cauteries 
 
 8 In the Bordeaux copy, Montaigne always to be shunned, nor pleasure al- 
 here adds, " Evil to man is, in its turn, ways to be pursued." 
 good; and good, evil. Neither is pain 
 
loo MONTAIGNE 
 
 made in their limbs ; for these others suffered the soul, a more 
 delicate and noble part, to be cauterized. 
 
 But to end where I began ; the Emperor Adrian, disputing 
 with the philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of 
 some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory ; for which 
 his friends rebuking him : " You talk simply," said he, 
 " would you not have him wiser than I, who commands thirty 
 legions ? " ® Augustus wrote verses against Asinius PoUio, 
 and " I," said Pollio, " say nothing, for it is not prudence to 
 write in contest with him who has power to prescribe ; " and 
 he had reason; for Dionysius, because he could not equal 
 Philoxenus in poesy and Plato in discourse, condemned the 
 one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a slave 
 into the island of ^gina. 
 
 ^ Spartian» " Life of Adrian," c. 15. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 
 
 FEW things, in comparison of what commonly affect other 
 men, move, or to say better, possess me: for 'tis but 
 reason they should concern a man, provided they do not 
 possess him. I am very solicitous, both by study and argu- 
 ment, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me 
 naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I es- 
 pouse and am very much moved^with very few things. I have 
 a clear sight enough, but I fix it upon very few objects ; I have 
 a sense delicate and tender enough ; but an apprehension and 
 application hard and negligent. I am very unwilling to en- 
 gage myself ; as much as in me lies, I employ myself wholly on 
 myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb 
 and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and 
 ears into it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of 
 others, and over which fortune has more right than I ; so that 
 even as to health, which I so much value, 'tis all the more neces- 
 sary for me not so passionately to covet and heed it, than to find 
 diseases so insupportable. A man ought to moderate himself 
 between the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure ; and Plato ^ 
 lets down a middle path of life between the two. But against 
 such affections as wholly carry me away from myself, and 
 fix me elsewhere, against those, I say, I oppose myself with my 
 utmost power. 'Tis my opinion that a man should lend himself 
 to others, and only give himself to himself. Were my will easy 
 to lend itself out, and to be swayed, I should not stick there ; I 
 am too tender, both by nature and use : 
 
 ** Fugax rerum^ securaque in otia naius" ^ 
 
 Hot and obstinate disputes wherein my adversary would at last 
 have the better, the issue that would render my heat and obsti- 
 
 i"Laws," vii. 
 
 2 " Born and bred up in negligence and ease."— Ovid, " De Trist.," iii. 2, 9. 
 
 lOI 
 
IQS. MONTAIGNE 
 
 nacjf disgraceful, would peradventure vex me to the last degree. 
 Should I set myself to it at the rate that others do, my soul would 
 never h^ye the force to bear the emotion and alarms of those who 
 gr^.sp at so much ; it would immediately be disordered by this 
 inward* agitation. If, sometimes, I have been put upon the 
 management of other men's affairs, I have promised to take them 
 in hand, but not into my lungs and liver ; to take them upon me, 
 not to incorporate them : to take pains, yes : to be impassioned 
 about it, by no means ; I have a care of them, but I will not sit 
 upon them. I have enough to do to order and govern the 
 domestic throng of those that I have in my own veins and 
 bowels, without introducing a crowd of other men's affairs ; and 
 am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and natural 
 business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such 
 as know how much they owe to themselves, and how many 
 offices they are bound to of their own, find that nature has cut 
 them out work enough of their own to keep them from being 
 idle. " Thou hast business enough at home, look to that." 
 
 Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for 
 themselves, but for those to whom they have enslaved them- 
 selves; 'tis their tenants occupy them, not themselves. This 
 common humor pleases not me. We must be thrifty of the 
 liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon just occa- 
 sions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observe 
 such as have accustomed themselves to be at everyone's call; 
 they do it indifferently upon all, as well little as great occasions ; 
 in that which nothing concerns them, as much as in what imports 
 them most. They thrust themselves in indifferently wherever 
 there is work to do and obligation ; and are without life when 
 not in tumultuous bustle : '' In negotiis sunt, negotii causa." ^ 
 It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot 
 stand still ; like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no 
 further. Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark 
 of understanding and dignity ; their souls seek repose in agita- 
 tion, as children do by being rocked in a cradle ; they may pro- 
 nounce themselves as serviceable to their friends, as they are 
 troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to 
 others, but everyone distributes his time and his life ; there is 
 
 ' " They only seek business for business' sake."— Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lu- 
 cilium," 22. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 103 
 
 nothing' of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of 
 which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. I 
 am of a quite contrary humor ; I look to myself, and commonly 
 covet with no great ardor what I do desire ; and desire little ; 
 and I employ and busy myself at the same rate, rarely and 
 temperately. Whatever they take in hand, they do it with their 
 utmost will and vehemence. There are so many dangerous 
 steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and 
 superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it. 
 Pleasure itself is painful in profundity : 
 
 " Incedis per ignes, 
 Suppositos cineri doloso." ^ 
 
 The parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city 
 at a time when I was at a distance from France,^ and still more 
 remote from any such thought. I entreated to be excused, but 
 I was told by my friends that I had committed an error in so 
 doing, and the greater because the King had, moreover, inter- 
 posed his command in that affair. 'Tis an office that ought to 
 be looked upon so much more honorable, as it has no other salary 
 nor advantage than the bare honor of its execution. It con- 
 tinues two years, but may be extended by a second election, 
 which very rarely happens ; it was to me, and had never been so 
 but twice before ; some years ago to Monsieur de Lanssac, and 
 lately to Monsieur de Biron, marshal of France, in whose place 
 I succeeded ; and I left mine to Monsieur de Matignon, marshal 
 of France also ; proud of so noble a fraternity — 
 
 ** Uterque bonus pads bellique minister ^ ^ 
 
 Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular 
 circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain ; 
 for Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who 
 came to offer him a burgess-ship of their city ; but when they 
 proceeded to lay before him that Bacchus and Hercules were 
 also in the register, he graciously accepted the offer. 
 
 At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented 
 
 * " You tread on fire, hidden tinder ca, September, 1581; see Montaigne's 
 
 deceitful ashes." — Horace, " Odes," ii. " Travels," ii. 448. 
 
 I, 7. i« " Both able ministers in peace, and 
 
 * At the baths Delia Villa, near Luc- good in war."—" -^neid," xi. 658. 
 
I04 MONTAIGNE 
 
 myself to them for such as I find myself to be — a man without 
 memory, without vigilance, without experience, and without vig- 
 or ; but withal, without hatred, without ambition, without ava- 
 rice, and without violence; that they might be informed of 
 my qualities, and know what they were to expect from my 
 service. And the knowledge they had had of my father, and the 
 honor they had for his memory, having been the only motive to 
 confer this favor upon me, I plainly told them that I should 
 be very sorry anything should make so great an impression upon 
 me as their affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon 
 him, while he held the government to which they had preferred 
 me. I remembered, when a boy, to have seen him in his old 
 age cruelly tormented with these public affairs, neglecting the 
 soft repose of his own house, to which the declension of his 
 age had reduced him for several years before, the management 
 of his own affairs, and his health ; and certainly despising his 
 own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being 
 engaged in long and painful journeys on their behalf. Such 
 was he; and this humor of his proceeded from a marvellous 
 good-nature; never was there a more charitable and popular 
 soul. Yet this proceeding which I commend in others, I do 
 not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse. 
 
 He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neigh- 
 bor, and that the particular was of no manner of consideration 
 in comparison with the general. Most of the rules and pre- 
 cepts of the world run this way ; to drive us out of ourselves into 
 the street for the benefit of public society : they thought to do 
 a great feat to divert and remove us from ourselves, assuming 
 we were but too much fixed there, and by a too natural inclina- 
 tion ; and have said all they could to that purpose : for 'tis no 
 new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as 
 they are. Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and in- 
 compatibilities with us ; we must often deceive, that we may not 
 deceive ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings, 
 to redress and amend them : " Imperiti enim judicant, et qui 
 frequenter in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent." ^ When 
 they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above 
 ourselves, they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their 
 
 ' " For the ignorant judge, and there- should err."— Quintilian, " Inst, Orat.," 
 fore are oft to be deceived lest they xi. 17. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 
 
 105 
 
 aim a great deal higher than the butt ; to make a crooked stick 
 straight, we bend it the contrary way. 
 
 I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other 
 religions, there werie apparent mysteries to be exposed to the 
 people ; and others, more secret and high, that were only to be 
 shown to such as were professed; 'tis likely that in these the 
 true point of friendship that everyone owes to himself is to be 
 found; not a false friendship, that makes us embrace glory, 
 knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal and immoderate 
 affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and ef- 
 feminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it 
 decays and ruins the walls it embraces ; but a sound and regular 
 friendship, equally useful and pleasant. He who knows the 
 duties of this friendship and practices them is truly of the 
 cabinet council of the Muses, arid has attained to the height of 
 human wisdom and of our happiness; such a one, exactly 
 knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he 
 ought to apply to himself the use of the world and of other men ; 
 and to do this, to contribute to pubHc society the duties and 
 offices appertaining to him. He who does not in some sort live 
 for others does not live much for himself : " Qui sibi amicus 
 est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse" ® The principal charge 
 we have, is, to everyone his own conduct ; and 'tis for this only 
 that we here are. As he who should forget to live a virtuous . 
 and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty 
 in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; 
 even so he who abandons his own particular healthful and pleas- 
 ant living, to serve others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a 
 wrong and unnatural course. 
 
 I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they 
 take upon them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and 
 blood if need be : 
 
 **Non ipse pro carts amicis 
 Aut patria, timidus perire : " ^ 
 
 but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally ; his mind being always 
 in repose and in health ; not without action, but without vexa- 
 tion, without passion. To be simply acting costs him so little 
 
 8 " He who is his own friend is a ^ " Not afraid to die for beloved 
 
 friend to everybody else." — Seneca, friends, and for his country."— Horace, 
 " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 6. " Odes," iv. 9, 51. 
 
io6 MONTAIGNE 
 
 that he acts even sleeping; but it must be set on going with 
 discretion; for the body receives the offices imposed upon it, 
 just according to what they are; the mind often extends and 
 makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what 
 measure it pleases. Men perform like things with several sorts 
 of endeavor, and different contention of will ; the one does well 
 enough without the other : for how many people hazard them- 
 selves every day in war without any concern which way it goes ; 
 and thrust themselves into the dangers of battles, the loss of 
 which will not break their next night's sleep ? and such a man 
 may be at home, out of the danger which he dared not have 
 looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue 
 of this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events, than 
 the soldier who therein stakes his blood and his life. I could 
 have engaged myself in public employments without quitting 
 my own matters a nail's breadth, and have given myself to 
 others, without abandoning myself. This sharpness and vio- 
 lence of desires more hinder than they advance the execution 
 of what they undertake ; fill us with impatience against slow or 
 contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with 
 whom we have to do. We never carry on that thing well by 
 which we are prepossessed and led : 
 
 ^'Male cuncta ministrat 
 Impetus "'^'^ 
 
 He who therein employs only his judgment and address pro- 
 ceeds more cheerfully : he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers 
 quite at his ease, according to the necessities of occasions; he 
 fails in his attempt without trouble and affliction, ready and 
 entire for a new enterprise ; he always marches with the bridle 
 in his hand. In him who is drunk with this violent and tyran- 
 nic intention, we discover, of necessity, much imprudence and 
 injustice ; the impetuosity of his desire carries him away; these 
 are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist, of very 
 little fruit. Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of injuries 
 received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the 
 chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the re- 
 venge may be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it 
 
 " " Passionate heat carries on things ill."— Statius, " Thebaid," x. 704. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 107 
 
 conceives, will be by this impetuosity hindered. For anger not 
 only disturbs, but, of itself, also wearies the arms of those who 
 chastise ; this fire benumbs and wastes their force ; as in precipi- 
 tation, " festinatio tarda est ''^^ — " haste trips up its own heels," 
 fetters, and stops itself ; " Ipsa se velocitas implicat." ^^ For 
 example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no 
 greater impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it 
 is, the less it rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich 
 when disguised in a visor of liberality. 
 
 A very honest gentleman, and a particular friend of mine, 
 had liked to have cracked his brains by a too passionate atten- 
 tion and affection to the affairs of a certain prince, his master ; 
 which master ^^ has thus set himself out to me ; " that he fore- 
 sees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those 
 for which there is no remedy he presently resolves upon suffer- 
 ing ; in others, having taken all the necessary precautions which 
 by the vivacity of his understanding he can presently do, he 
 quietly awaits what may follow." And, in truth, I have accord- 
 ingly seen him maintain a great indifferency and liberty of 
 actions and serenity of countenance in very great and difficult 
 affairs : I find him much greater, and of greater capacity in ad- 
 verse than in prosperous fortune : his defeats are to him more 
 glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph. 
 
 Do but consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as 
 at chess, tennis, and the like, this eager and ardent engaging 
 with an impetuous desire immediately throws the mind and 
 members into indiscretion and disorder: a man astounds and 
 hinders himself ; he who carries himself more moderately both 
 toward gain and loss has always his wits about him : the less 
 peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more ad- 
 vantageously and surely. 
 
 As to the rest, we hinder the mind's seizure and hold, in giving 
 it so many things to seize upon : some things we should only 
 offer to it ; tie it to others, and with others incorporate it. It 
 can feel and discern all things, but ought to feed upon nothing 
 but itself; and should be instructed in what properly concerns 
 itself, and that is properly of its own having and substance. 
 The laws of nature teach us what justly we need. After the 
 
 ** Quintus Curtius, ix. 9, 12. *' Probably the King of Navarre, after- 
 
 '2 Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," 44. ward Henry IV. 
 
io8 MONTAIGNE 
 
 sages have told us that no one is indigent according to nature, 
 and that everyone is so according to opinion/* they very subtly 
 distinguish between the desires that proceed from her, and those 
 that proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of 
 which we can see the end are hers ; those that fly before us, and 
 of which we can see no end, are our own : the poverty of goods 
 is easily cured ; the poverty of the soul is irreparable : 
 
 * *Nam sif quod satis est hominiy id satis esse potesset 
 Hoc sat erat ; nuncy quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro 
 Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse ? " ^^ 
 
 Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furni- 
 ture carried in pomp through the city : " How many things are 
 there," said he, " that I do not want." ^® Metrodorus lived on 
 twelve ounces a day; Epicurus upon less: Metrocles slept in 
 winter abroad among sheep; in summer in the cloisters of 
 churches ; '' SuMcit ad id natura, quod poscit." ^^ Cleanthes 
 lived by the labor of his own hands, and boasted that Cleanthes, 
 if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes. 
 
 If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us 
 for the conservation of our being, be too little (as in truth 
 what it is, and how good cheap life may be maintained, cannot 
 be better expressed than by this consideration that it is so little 
 that by its littleness it escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), 
 let us allow ourselves a little more ; let us call every one of our 
 habits and conditions, nature ; let us rate and treat ourselves by 
 this measure ; let us stretch our appurtenances and accounts so 
 far; for so far, I fancy, we have some excuse. Custom is a 
 second nature, and no less powerful. What is wanting to my 
 custom, I reckon is wanting to me ; and I should be almost as 
 well content that they took away my life, as cut me short in 
 the way wherein I have so long lived. I am no longer in condi- 
 tion for any great change, nor to put myself into a new and 
 unwonted course, not even to augmentation. 'Tis past the 
 time for me to become other than what I am ; and as I should 
 
 " Seneca, "Epistolae ad Lucilium," i6. tent? "— Lucilius, apud Nonium Marcel- 
 
 is " For if what is for man enough, liiium, v. sec. 98. 
 could be enough, it were enough; but i' Cicero, " Tusc. Quses.," v. 32._ 
 
 since it is not so, how can I believe " " Nature suffices for what it re- 
 
 than any wealth, can give my mind con- quires." — Seneca, " Epistolae ad Lucil- 
 ium," 90. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 109 
 
 complain of any great good hap that should now befall me, that 
 it came not in time to be enjoyed : 
 
 **Quo mihifortunas, si non conceditur uti? " ^^ 
 
 so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were al- 
 most better never, than so late, to become an honest man, and 
 well fit to live, when one has no longer to live. I, who am about 
 to make my exit out of the world,would easily resign to any 
 newcomer, who should desire it, all the prudence I am now ac- 
 quiring in the world's commerce ; after meat, mustard. I have 
 no need of goods, of which I can make no use ; of what use is 
 knowledge to him who has lost his head? 'Tis an injury and 
 unkindness in fortune to tender us presents that will only in- 
 spire us with a just despite that we had them not in their due 
 season. Guide me no more ; I'can no longer go. Of so many 
 parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is the most sufficient. 
 Give the capacity of an excellent treble to a chorister who has 
 rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit, exiled into the deserts 
 of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds 
 itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is 
 at an end, my form expired ; I am totally of the past, and am 
 bound to authorize it, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will 
 here declare, by way of example, that the pope's late ten days' 
 diminution ^^ has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile 
 myself to it ; I belong to the years wherein we kept another kind 
 of account. So ancient and so long a custom challenges my 
 adherence to it, so that I am constrained to be somewhat hereti- 
 cal on that point : incapable of any, though corrective, innova- 
 tion. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me 
 ten days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my 
 ears : " This rule concerns those who are to begin to be." If 
 health itself, sweet as it is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to 
 give me cause of regret than possession of it ; I have no place left 
 to keep it in. Time leaves me ; without which nothing can be 
 possessed. Oh, what little account should I make of those great 
 elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the world, that 
 are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it; 
 
 ^* " What iij the good of fortune to calendar, and, in consequence, in France 
 
 me if I can't use it? " — Horace, " Ep.," they all at once passed from the ninth 
 
 i. 5, 12. to the twentieth of December. 
 
 ^» Gregory XIII, in J582, reformed the 
 
no MONTAIGNE 
 
 wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will dis- 
 charge his trust, as how short his administration will be : from 
 the very entry they look at the exit. In short, I am about finish- 
 ing this man, and not rebuilding another. By long use, this 
 form is in me turned into substance, and fortune into nature. 
 
 I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is ex- 
 cusable in thinking that to be his own which is comprised under 
 this measure ; but withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but 
 confusion; 'tis the largest extent we can grant to our own 
 claims. The more we amplify our need and our possession, so 
 much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows and ad- 
 versities of fortune.^" The career of our desires ought to be 
 circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of near and con- 
 tiguous commodities ; and their course ought, moreover, to be 
 performed not in a right line that ends elsewhere, but in a 
 circle, of which the two points, by a short wheel, meet and 
 terminate in ourselves. Actions that are carried on without 
 this reflection — a near and essential reflection, I mean — such 
 as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so many more as 
 run point-blank, and whose career always carries them before 
 themselves, such actions, I say, are erroneous and sickly. 
 
 Most of our business is farce : " Mundiis universus exercet 
 histrionam." ^^ We must play our part properly, but withal as 
 the part of a borrowed personage ; we must not make real es- 
 sence of a mask and outward appearance ; nor of a strange per- 
 son, our own; we cannot distinguish the skin from the shirt: 
 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the breast. I 
 see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as 
 many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employ- 
 ments ; and who strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and 
 carry their state along with them even in their dressing-gowns. 
 I cannot make them distinguish the salutations made to them- 
 selves from those made to their commission, their train, or their 
 mule : " Tantum se fortunce permittunt, etiam ut naturam 
 dediscant" ^^ They swell and puff up their souls, and their 
 natural way of speaking, according to the height of their magis- 
 terial place. The mayor of Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever 
 
 20 " L'homme tient par ses voeux a ^ Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8. 
 
 mille choses: plus il augmentes ses at- 22 «< Tj^ey gQ much give themselves up 
 
 tachements, plus il , multiplie ses to fortune, as even to forget their nat- 
 
 peines." — Rousseau, " Emile," liv. v. ure." — Quintus Curtius, ii. 2. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL m 
 
 been two by very manifest separation. Because one is an ad- 
 vocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery there is in 
 such caUings ; an honest man is not accountable for the vice or 
 absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account 
 refuse to take the calling upon him : 'tis the usage of his country, 
 and then there is money to be got by it ; a man must live by the 
 world, and make his best of it, such as it is. But the judgment 
 of an emperor ought to be above his empire, and see and con- 
 sider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to know how to 
 enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as 
 James and Peter, to himself, at all events. 
 
 I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire ; when my will 
 gives me to anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that 
 my judgment is infected with it. In the present broils of this 
 kingdom my own interest has no^made me blind to the laudable 
 qualities of our adversaries, nor to those that are reproachable 
 in those of men of our party. Others adore all of their own 
 side ; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most things in 
 those of mine : a good work has never the worse grace with me 
 for being made against me. The knot of the controversy ex- 
 cepted, I have always kept myself in equanimity and pure indif- 
 ference: '' Neque extra necessitates velli, prcecipuum odium 
 gero;"^^ for which I am pleased with myself; and the more, 
 because I see others commonly fail in the contrary direction. 
 Such as extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in 
 question, as most men do, show that they spring from some 
 other occasion and private cause; like one, who, being cured 
 of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that 
 the ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason 
 is that they are not concerned in the common cause ; because it 
 is wounding to the state and general interest ; but are only net- 
 tled by reason of their particular concern. This is why they 
 are so especially animated, and to a degree so far beyond justice 
 and public reason : " Non tarn omnia universi, quam ea quce ad 
 quemque pertinent, singuli carpehant," ^* I would have the 
 advantage on our side, but if it be not, I shall not run mad. I 
 am heartily for the right party ; but I do not want to be taken 
 
 23 " And have no express hatred be- against things in general, as against 
 yond the necessity of war." those that particularly concerned him- 
 
 " " Everyone was not so much angry self."— Livy, xxxiv. 36. 
 
112 MONTAIGNE 
 
 notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general 
 quarrel. I am a mortal enemy to this vicious form of censure : 
 *' He is of the League, because he admires the Duke of Guise ; 
 he is astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, and therefore 
 he is a Huguenot ; he finds such and such faults in the King's 
 conduct, he is therefore seditious in his heart;" and I would 
 not grant to the magistrate himself that he did well in con- 
 demning a book because it had placed a heretic ^^ among the 
 best poets of the time. Shall we not dare to say of a thief, that 
 he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a strumpet, must it 
 needs follow that she has a stinking breath ? Did they in the 
 wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before 
 conferred on Marcus Manlius, as conservator of religion and 
 the public liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his 
 feats of arms, and military recompenses granted to his valor, 
 because he afterward aspired to the sovereignty, to the preju- 
 dice of the laws of his country? If we take a hatred against 
 an advocate, he will not be allowed, the next day, to be eloquent. 
 I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on worthy men 
 to the like faults. For my part, I can say, " Such a one does 
 this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well." So in 
 the prognostics, or sinister events of affairs, they would have 
 everyone in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our per- 
 suasion and judgment should subserve not truth, but to the 
 project of our desires. I should rather incline toward the other 
 extreme ; so much I fear being suborned by my desire ; to which 
 may be added that I am a little tenderly distrustful of things 
 that I wish. 
 
 I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodi- 
 gious facility of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be 
 led and governed, which way has best pleased and served their 
 leaders, despite a hundred mistakes one upon another, despite 
 mere dreams and phantasms. I no more wonder at those who 
 have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of Appollonius 
 and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutely 
 taken away by their passion ; their discretion has no more any 
 other choice than that which smiles upon them, and encourages 
 their cause. I had principally observed this in the beginning 
 of our intestine distempers ; that other, which has sprung up 
 
 » Theodore de Beza. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 113 
 
 since, in imitating, has surpassed it; by which I am satisfied 
 that it is a quality inseparable from popular errors; after the 
 first that rolls, opinions drive on one another like waves with 
 the wind : a man is not a member of the body, if it be in his 
 power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way. 
 But, doubtless, they wrong the just side, when they go about to 
 assist it with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 
 'tis only fit to work upon weak heads ; for the sound, there are 
 surer and more honest ways to keep up their courage and to 
 excuse adverse accidents. 
 
 Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that between 
 Caesar and Pompey, nor ever shall ; and yet I observe, methinks, 
 in those brave souls, a great moderation toward one another; 
 it was a jealousy of honor and command which did not transport 
 them to a furious and indiscreet" hatred, and was without malig- 
 nity and detraction ; in their hottest exploits upon one another, 
 I discover some remains of respect and good-will ; and am there- 
 fore of opinion that, had it been possible, each of them would 
 rather have done his business without the ruin of the other 
 than with it. Take notice how much otherwise matters went 
 with Marius and Sylla. 
 
 We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our 
 affections and interests. As, when I was young, I opposed 
 myself to the progress of love which I perceived to advance 
 too fast upon me, and had a care lest it should at last become 
 so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly reduce me to its 
 mercy; so I do the same upon all other occasions where my 
 will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite 
 to the side it inclines to, as I find it going to plunge and make 
 itself drunk with its own wine ; I evade nourishing its pleasure 
 so far, that I cannot recover it without infinite loss. Souls 
 that, through their own stupidity, only discern things by halves, 
 have this happiness that they smart less with hurtful things; 
 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some show of health, and such 
 a health as philosophy does not altogether contemn, but yet we 
 have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do. And after 
 this manner someone anciently mocked Diogenes, who, in the 
 depth of winter and stark naked, went hugging an image of 
 snow for a trial of his endurance ; the other seeing him in this 
 position, " Art thou now very cold ?" said he. " Not at all," 
 8 
 
114 MONTAIGNE 
 
 replied Diogenes. *' Why then/' said the other, "what dif- 
 ficult and exemplary thing dost thou think thou doest in em- 
 bracing that snow ?" ^* To take a true measure of constancy, 
 one must necessarily know what the suffering is. 
 
 But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the in- 
 juries of fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to 
 weigh and taste them according to their natural weight and 
 bitterness, let such show their skill in avoiding the causes and 
 diverting the blow. What did King Cotys do?^^ He paid 
 liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been presented 
 to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately 
 broke it, betimes to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure 
 against his servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided 
 all confusion in my affairs, and never coveted to have my estate 
 contiguous to those of my relations, and such with whom I 
 coveted a strict friendship; for thence matter of unkindness 
 and falling out often proceed. I formerly loved the hazardous 
 games of cards and dice ; but have long since left them off, only 
 for this reason, that, with whatever good air I carried my losses, 
 I could not help feeling vexed within. A man of honor, who 
 ought to be touchingly sensible of the lie or of an insult, and 
 who is not to take a scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid 
 occasions of dispute. I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I 
 would the plague ; and in matters I cannot talk of without emo- 
 tion and concern, I never meddle, if not compelled by my duty : 
 " Melius non incipient, quam desinent." ^^ The surest way, 
 therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for occasions. 
 
 I know very well that some wise men have taken another 
 way, and have not feared to grapple and engage to the utmost 
 upon several subjects ; these are confident of their own strength, 
 under which they protect themselves in all ill successes, making 
 their patience wrestle and contend with disaster : 
 
 " Velut rupeSy vastum qua prodit in aquoTj 
 Obvia ventorum furiis^ expostaque ponto. 
 Vim cunctam atque minas perfert ccelique marisque ; 
 Ipsa immota manensy ^a 
 
 2« Plutarch, " Notable Sayings of the begun, than to have to desist." — Seneca, 
 
 Lacedaemonians": Diogenes Laertius, " Epistolae ad Lucilium," ^2. 
 
 vi. 25. 29 " Ag a rock standing among the vast 
 
 27 Plutarch, " Notable Sayings of the billows, exposed to the furious winds 
 
 Ancient Kings": Cotys. and the raging flood, remains unmoved, 
 
 28 " A man had better never to have and defies all the force of seas and 
 
 skies." — Vergil, " ./Eneid," x. 693. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 
 
 "5 
 
 Let us not attempt these examples ; we shall never come up to 
 them. They set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, 
 to behold the ruin of their country, which possessed and com- 
 manded all their will ; this is too much and too hard a task for 
 our commoner souls. Cato gave up the noblest life that ever 
 was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly from the 
 storm as far as we can ; we must provide for sentiment, and not 
 for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, see- 
 ing Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit 
 down by him, suddenly started up ; and Cleanthes demanding 
 of him the reason why he did so, " I hear," said he, " that physi- 
 cians especially order repose, and forbid emotion in all 
 tumors." ^^ Socrates does not say, " Do not surrender to the 
 charms of beauty ; stand your ground, and do your utmost to 
 oppose it." " Fly it," says he ; "' shun the fight and encounter 
 of it, as of a powerful poison that darts and wounds at a dis- 
 tance." ^^ And his good disciple,^^ feigning or reciting, but, 
 in my opinion, rather reciting than feigning the rare perfections 
 of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful of his own strength to 
 resist the charms of the divine beauty of that illustrious Panthea, 
 his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping her to 
 another, who could not have so much liberty as himself. And 
 the Holy Ghost in like manner : " Ne nos inducas in tenia- 
 tionem." ^^ We do not pray that our reason may not be com- 
 bated and overcome by concupiscence, but that it should not be 
 so much as tried by it ; that we should not be brought into a 
 state wherein we are so much as to suffer the approaches, so- 
 licitations, and temptations of sin; and we beg of Almighty 
 God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered 
 from all commerce of evil. 
 
 Such as say that they have reason for their revenging pas- 
 sion, or any other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often 
 say true, as things now are, but not as they were : they speak 
 to us when the causes of their error are by themselves nourished 
 and advanced ; but look backward — recall these causes to their 
 beginning — and there you will put them to a nonplus. Will 
 they have their faults less, for being of longer continuance; 
 and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just? Who- 
 
 «> Diogenes Laertius, vii. 17. ^2 Idem, " Cyropaedia," i. 3, 3. 
 
 «i Xenophon, " Mem. of Socrates," i. ^s " Lead us not into temptation."-- 
 
 3, 13. St. Matthew, vi. 13. 
 
ii6 MONTAIGNE 
 
 ever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fret- 
 ting or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to 
 see it threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous con- 
 tinuance ; poor vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot 
 toss and steer to so contrary designs ! 
 
 "/« tarn diver sa, magister^ 
 VentuSf et unda, trahunt" ^ 
 
 He who does not gape after the favor of princes, as after a 
 thing he cannot live without, does not much concern himself at 
 the coldness of their reception and countenance, nor at the 
 inconstancy of their wills. He who does not brood over his chil- 
 dren or his honors, with a slavish propension, ceases not to 
 live commodiously enough after their loss. He who does good 
 principally for his own satisfaction, will not be much troubled 
 to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. A quarter 
 of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such 
 inconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself 
 in the beginning as cheap as I can ; and find that by this means 
 I have escaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very 
 little ado I stop the first sally of my emotions, and leave the 
 subject that begins to be troublesome, before it transports me. 
 He who stops not the start, will never be able to stop the career ; 
 he, who cannot keep them out, will never get them out when 
 they are once got in ; and he who cannot crush them at the be- 
 ginning, will never do it after ; nor ever keep himself from fall- 
 ing, if he cannot recover himself when he first begins to totter : 
 *'*' Etenim ipsoe se impellunt; ubi semel a ratione discessum est; 
 ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur im- 
 prudens, nee reperit locum consistendi" "^ I am betimes sensi- 
 ble of the little breezes that begin to sing and whistle in the 
 shrouds, the fore-runners of the storm : 
 
 ^^Ceuflamina prima 
 Quum deprensa fremunt sylvis, et cceca voluntant 
 Murmur a ^ venturos nautis prodentia ventosy^ 
 
 ** Buchanan. The translation is in the to an anchor."— Cicero, " Tusc. Quaes.," 
 
 previous passage. iv. i8. 
 
 ^ " For they throw themselves head- ^e "As when the rising winds, checked 
 
 long when once they loose their reason, by woods, send out dull murmurs, por- 
 
 and frailty so far indulges itself, that it tending a storm to the mariner."— 
 
 is unawares carried out into the deep, " ^neid," x. 97. 
 and can find no port wherein to come 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL n^ 
 
 How often have I done myself a manifest injustice, to avoid 
 the hazard of having yet a worse done me by the judges, after 
 an age of vexations, dirty and vile practices, more enemies to 
 my nature than fire or the rack ? *' Convenit a litihus, quantum 
 licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam, quam licet, ahhorrentem esse: 
 est enim non modo liberate, paululum nonnunquam de suo jure 
 decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum." ^^ Were we wise, 
 we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young gentle- 
 man of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had 
 lost her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something 
 very troublesome to keep. Even the favors that fortune might 
 have given me through relationship or acquaintance with those 
 who have sovereign authority in those affairs, I have very con- 
 scientiously and very carefully avoided employing them to the 
 prejudice of others, and of advancing my pretensions above their 
 true right. In fine, I have so much prevailed by my endeavors 
 (and happily I may say it) that I am to this day a virgin from 
 all suits in law ; though I have had very fair offers made me, 
 and with very just title would I have hearkened to them; and 
 a virgin from qua^rrels, too. I have almost passed over a long 
 life without any offence of moment, either active or passive, or 
 without ever hearing a worse word than my own name : a rare 
 favor of heaven. 
 
 Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes : 
 what ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a 
 cartload of sheepskins ? ^^ And was not the graving of a seal 
 the first and principal cause of the greatest commotion that 
 this machine of the world ever underwent ? ^^ for Pompey and 
 Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of the two others : 
 and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this kingdom 
 assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, 
 about treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in 
 the mean time, absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet 
 council, and the inclination of some foolish woman. 
 
 The poets very well understood this, when they put all 
 Greece and Asia to fire and sword about an apple. Inquire 
 
 3' " A man should be an enemy to all from one's right."— Cicero, " De Offic," 
 lawsuits as much as he may, and I ii. i8. 
 
 know not whether not something more; ^ " Mem. de Comines," lib. v. c. i. 
 
 for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes ^9 -phe civil war between Marius and 
 
 also advantageous, too, a little to recede Sylla; see Plutarch's " Life of Marius,** 
 
 c. 3. 
 
Il8 MONTAIGNE 
 
 why that man hazards his Hfe and honor upon the fortune of 
 his rapier and dagger ; let him acquaint you with the occasion 
 of the quarrel ; he cannot do it without blushing ; 'tis so idle 
 and frivolous. 
 
 A little thing will engage you in it ; but being once em- 
 barked, all the cords draw ; great provisions are then required, 
 more hard and more important. How much easier is it not 
 to enter in, than it is to get out? Now we should proceed 
 contrary to the reed, which, at its first springing produces a 
 long and straight shoot, but afterward, as if tired and out of 
 breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and knots, as so 
 many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first 
 vigor and firmness ; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, 
 and to keep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height 
 and stress of the business. We guide affairs in their begin- 
 nings, and have them in our own power ; but afterward, when 
 they are once at work, 'tis they that guide and govern us, and 
 we are to follow them. 
 
 Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged 
 me of all difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to 
 do to curb and restrain my passions ; they are not always to be 
 governed according to the measure of occasions, and often 
 have their entries very sharp and violent. But still good fruit 
 and profit may thence be reaped ; except for those who in well- 
 doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if reputation be want- 
 ing ; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by everyone to 
 himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed, 
 seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of 
 the dance, or that the provocative matter was in sight. Yet 
 not in this only, but in all other duties of life also, the way of 
 those who aim at honor is very different from that they pro- 
 ceed by, who propose to themselves order and reason. I find 
 some, who rashly and furiously rush into the lists, and cool 
 in the course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through false 
 shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, 
 are afterward as facile to break their word and to recant ; so 
 he who enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out 
 of it. The same difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, 
 would, when once hot and engaged in quarrel, incite me to 
 maintain it with great obstinacy and resolution. 'Tis the 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 119 
 
 tyranny of custom ; when a man is once engaged, he must go 
 through with it, or die. '' Undertake coldly," said Bias, '* but 
 pursue with ardor." *^ For want of prudence, men fall into 
 want of courage, which is still more intolerable. 
 
 Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours 
 are shameful and false ; we only seek to save appearances, and 
 in the mean time betray and disavow our true intentions; we 
 salve over the fact. We know very well how we said the thing, 
 and in what sense we spoke it, and the company know it, and 
 our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of our ad- 
 vantage, understand it well enough too : 'tis at the expense of 
 our frankness and of the honor of our courage, that we disown 
 our thoughts, and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up. 
 We give ourselves the He, to excuse the lie we have given to 
 another. You are not to consider if your word or action may 
 admit of another interpretation ; 'tis your own true and sincere 
 interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or did, that 
 you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men 
 speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to 
 be put under a mask ; let us leave these pitiful ways and ex- 
 pedients to the jugglers of the law. The excuses and repara- 
 tions that I see every day made and given to repair indiscretion, 
 seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion itself. It 
 were better to affront your adversary a second time, than to 
 offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You 
 have braved him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter 
 and appease him in your cooler and better sense ; and by that 
 means lay yourself lower and at his feet, whom before you pre- 
 tended to overtop. I do not find anything a gentleman can 
 say so vicious in him, as unsaying what he has said is infamous, 
 when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him ; foras- 
 much as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honor than 
 pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they 
 are hard for me to moderate : " Exscinduntur facilius animo, 
 quam temperantur" *^ He, who cannot attain the noble stoical 
 impassibility, let him secure himself in the bosom of this popular 
 stolidity of mine ; what they performed by virtue, I inure my- 
 self to do by temperament. The middle region harbors storms 
 
 *> Dioi^enes Laertius, i. 87. 
 
 *^ " They are more easily to be eradicated than governed.** 
 
I20 MONTAIGNE 
 
 and tempests ; the two extremes, of philosophers and peasants, 
 concur in tranquillity and happiness : 
 
 '■^ Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causasy 
 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari! 
 Fortunatus et zlle, Deos qui novit agrestes, 
 Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores / " ^ 
 
 The births of all things are weak and tender ; and therefore we 
 should have our eyes intent on beginnings ; for as when, in its 
 infancy, the danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, 
 the remedy is as little to be found. I had every day encountered 
 a million of crosses, harder to digest in the progress of ambi- 
 tion, than it has been hard for me to curb the natural propension 
 that inclined me to it : 
 
 ' * Jure perhorrui 
 Late conspicuum toller e verticem^^^ 
 
 All public actions are subject to various and uncertain interpre- 
 tations ; for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this 
 civic employment of mine ** (and I am willing to say a word or 
 two about it, not that it is worth so much, but to give an account 
 of my manners in such things), that I have behaved myself in 
 it as a man not sufficiently easy to be moved, and with a languish- 
 ing affection ; and they have some color for what they say. I 
 endeavored to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose, " Cum 
 semper natura, tum etiam estate jam quietus;" *^ and if they 
 sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression, 'tis 
 in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness 
 of mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for 
 want of care and w^ant of sense are two very different things), 
 and much less any unkindness or ingratitude toward that cor- 
 poration, who employed the utmost means they had in their 
 power to oblige me, both before they knew me and after ; and 
 they did much more for me in choosing me anew, than in con- 
 
 *2 " Happy is he who has discovered *» " j gyer justly feared to raise my 
 
 the causes of things, and tramples under head too high."— Horace, " Odes," iii. 
 foot all fear, all concern, as to inexor- i6, 18, 
 
 able fate, or as to the roaring of greedy ^ The Bordeaux mayoralty 
 
 Acheron: he is blest who knows the 
 country gods, Pan, old Sylvanus, and 
 
 the sister nymphs."— Vergil, " Geor- tit. Consul.," c. 2 
 gics," ii. 490. 
 
 * " As being always quiet by nature, 
 also now by age." — Cicero, " De Pe- 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 121 
 
 ferring that honor upon me at first. I wish them all imagiiia- 
 ble good ; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I 
 would have spared for their service ; I did for them, as I would 
 have done for myself. 'Tis a good, warlike, and generous peo- 
 ple, but capable of obedience and discipline, and of whom the 
 best use may be made, if well guided. They say also that my 
 administration passed over without leaving any mark or trace. 
 Good ! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when 
 everybody almost was convicted of doing too much. I am 
 impatient to be doing where my will spurs me on ; but this itself 
 is an enemy to perseverance. Let him who will make use of 
 me according to my own way, employ me in affairs where vigor 
 and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and, moreover, 
 a hazardous conduct is necessary; I may do something; but 
 if it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial, and intricate, he 
 had better call in somebody else. All important offices are not 
 necessarily difficult : I came prepared to do somewhat rougher 
 work, had there been great occasion ; for it is in my power to do 
 something more than I do, or than I love to do. I did not, to 
 my knowledge, omit anything that my duty really required. I 
 easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes with duty and 
 palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most part, 
 fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not 
 the thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no 
 noise, they think men sleep. My humor is no friend to tumult ; 
 I could appease a commotion without commotion and chastise a 
 disorder without being myself disorderly ; if I stand in need of 
 anger and inflammation, I borrow it, and put it on. My man- 
 ners are languid, rather faint than sharp. I do not condemn a 
 magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge 
 sleep as well as he : the laws in that case sleep, too. For my 
 part, I commend a gHding, staid, and silent life : " Neque sub- 
 missam et abjecfam, neque se eiferentem;" ^^ my fortune will 
 have it so. I am descended from a family that has lived with- 
 out lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambi- 
 tious of a character for probity. 
 
 Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, 
 that good nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such 
 like quiet and obscure qualities, are no more thought on or re- 
 
 ** " Not subject, nor abject, but not obtrusive."— Cicero, " De OfBc," i. 34. 
 
I2a MONTAIGNE 
 
 garded. Rough bodies make themselves feh; the smooth are 
 imperceptibly handled : sickness is felt, health little or not at all ; 
 no more than the oils that foment us, in comparison of the pains 
 for which we are fomented. 'Tis acting for one's particular 
 reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that to 
 be done in the public squares which one may do in the council 
 chamber ; and to noonday what might have been done the night 
 before ; and to be jealous to do that himself which his colleague 
 can do as well as he ; so were some surgeons of Greece wont to 
 perform their operations upon scaffolds in the sight of the peo- 
 ple, to draw more practice and profit. They think that good rules 
 cannot be understood but by the sound of trumpet. Ambition is 
 not a vice of little people nor of such modest means as ours. One 
 said to Alexander : " Your father will leave you a great do- 
 minion, easy and pacific ;" this youth was emulous of his father's 
 victories, and of the justice of his government ; he would not 
 have enjoyed the empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcib- 
 iades, in Plato, had rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, 
 and learned, and all this in full excellence, than to stop short of 
 such condition; this disease is, peradventure, excusable in so 
 strong and so full a soul. When wretched and dwarfish souls 
 gull and deceive themselves, and think to spread their fame for 
 having given right judgment in an affair, or maintained the dis- 
 cipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more they think 
 to exalt their heads the more they show their tails. This little 
 well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first 
 mouth, and goes no farther than from one street to another. 
 Talk of it by all means to your son or your servant, like that old 
 fellow who, having no other auditor of his praises, nor ap- 
 prover of his valor, boasted to his chambermaid, crying, " Oh, 
 Perrette, what a brave, clever man hast thou for thy master!" 
 At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a councillor of my ac- 
 quaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of law jar- 
 gon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council 
 chamber to a retiring room, was heard very complacently to 
 mutter between his teeth : '*" Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed 
 nomini tuo da gloriam: " *'^ He who gets it of nobody else, let 
 him pay himself out of his own purse. 
 
 •■^"Not unto us, O Lord, not to us; but unto Thy name be the glory."— 
 Psalm cxiii. i. 
 
OF MANAGING THE WILL 123 
 
 Fame is not prostituted at so dieap a rate ; rare and exemplary 
 actions, to which it is due, would not endure the company of 
 this prodigious crowd of petty daily performances. Marble 
 may exalt your titles, as much as you please, for having re- 
 paired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer ; but not men of 
 sense. Renown does not follow all good deads, if novelty and 
 difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, ac- 
 cording to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds 
 from virtue ; nor will they allow him bare thanks, who, out of 
 temperance, abstains from an old blear-eyed hag. Those who 
 have known the admirable qualities of Scipio Africanus deny 
 him the glory that Panastius attributes to him, of being absti- 
 nent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of the age he 
 lived in.*^ We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not 
 usurp those of grandeur ; our own are more natural, and by so 
 much more solid and sure, as they are lower. If not for that 
 of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject am- 
 bition ; let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and 
 mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people (" Qucb 
 est ista laus quae pessit e macello peti?" *®) by abject means, and 
 at what cheap rate soever : 'tis dishonor to be so honored. Let 
 us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of glory. 
 To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is 
 only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and 
 rare ; they will value it as it costs them. The more a good 
 effect makes a noise the more do I abate of its goodness as I sus- 
 pect that it was more performed for the noise, than upon ac- 
 count of the goodness; exposed upon the stall, 'tis half sold. 
 Those actions have much more grace and lustre, that slip from 
 the hand of him that does them, negligently and without noise, 
 and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises from 
 the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account. 
 " Mihi quidem laudahiliora videntur omnia, qucB sine vendita- 
 toine, et sine populo teste Hunt," ^^ says the most ostentatious 
 man that ever lived. 
 
 I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and 
 
 *8 Cicero, " De Offic," ii. 22. able to me that are performed without 
 
 " " What praise is that which is to be ostentation, and without the testimony 
 
 got in the market-place? "—Cicero, " De of the people."— Idem, " Tusc. Quaes.,*' 
 
 Fin.," ii. 15. ii. 26. 
 "0 " All things truly seem more laud- 
 
124 MONTAIGNE 
 
 insensible effects; innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis inter- 
 dicted in this age, when we are pressed upon and have nothing 
 to defend ourselves from but novelties. To forbear doing is 
 often as generous as to do; but 'tis less in the light, and the 
 little good that I have in me is of this kind. In fine occasions 
 in this employment of mine have been confederate with my 
 humor, and I heartily thank them for it. Is there any who de- 
 sires to be sick, that he may see his physician at work? and 
 would not that physician deserve to be whipped, who should 
 wish the plague among us, that he might put his art in prac- 
 tice? I have never been of that wicked humor, and common 
 enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city should 
 elevate and honor my government; I have ever heartily con- 
 tributed all I could to their tranquillity and ease. He who will 
 not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that has 
 accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of 
 the share that belongs to me, by title of my good fortune. And 
 I am of such a composition that I would as willingly be lucky 
 as wise, and had rather owe my successes purely to the favor 
 of Almighty God than to any operation of my own. I had 
 sufficiently published to the world my unfitness for such public 
 offices ; but I have something in me yet worse than incapacity 
 itself ; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and that I 
 do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life 
 that I have proposed to myself. Neither have I satisfied my- 
 self in this employment ; but I have very near arrived at what 
 I expected from my own performance, and have much surpassed 
 what I promised them with whom I had to do ; for I am apt to 
 promise something less than what I am able to do and than 
 what I hope to make good. I assure myself that I have left no 
 offence or hatred behind me; to leave regret or desire for me 
 among them, I at least know very well that I never much aimed 
 at it: 
 
 ^^ Mene huic confidere monstro ! 
 
 Mene salis placidi vultum,fluctusque quietos 
 
 Ignorare ? " si 
 
 ""Should I place confidence in this those now quiet waves?" — Vergil, 
 monster? Should I be ignorant of the " ^neid," v. 849. 
 dangers of that seeming placid sea, 
 
OF CEREMONIES 
 ON CROMWELL 
 
 BY 
 
 VOLTAIRE 
 
 (Frangois Marie Arouet) 
 
FRANCOIS MARIE VOLTAIRE 
 . 1694— 1778 
 
 The father of the great French writer universally known as Voltaire 
 was a notary of good family by the name of Arouet. His famous son, 
 who was born at Chateiiay in 1694, was baptized Frangois Marie Arouet. 
 He took the name Voltaire in 1718, shortly after the production of 
 his tragedy " CEdipe." The origin of his assumed name has never 
 been definitely traced. Voltaire's early education was in charge of 
 the Jesuits at the College Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He began the 
 writing of verses while at college, and his wit, seconded by the influ- 
 ence of his godfather, the Abbe de Chateauneuf, secured for him an 
 introduction into the most aristocratic circles of Parisian society. The 
 freedom of his satirical utterances soon made enemies for him. Be- 
 tween 1716 and 1726 he was twice expelled from Paris, and twice 
 imprisoned in the Bastile. His second imprisonment was due to a 
 quarrel with an influential but unscrupulous nobleman. These differ- 
 ences eventually caused his expulsion from the country. 
 
 During his exile Voltaire spent nearly two years in England, At that 
 time the group of literary men who made the reign of Queen Anne 
 illustrious was at the height of its activity, and London was the fore- 
 most literary centre in Europe. Here Voltaire wrote his " Histoire 
 de Charles XII " and a number of tragedies, of which " Zaire " was 
 the most successful, and published his " Henriade." His " Lettres 
 philosophiques " produced such a storm in France that they were or- 
 dered to be destroyed by the public executioner. In 1734 Voltaire went 
 to live at the chateau of the Marquise du Chatelet at Cirey in Champagne. 
 The Marquise, who was devoted to science and literature, had con- 
 ceived a great admiration for Voltaire, and sought to surround him 
 with the external conditions most favorable to sustain literary effort. 
 With the exception of some brief excursions Voltaire remained at 
 Cirey until the death of his patroness in 1749. During this period he 
 wrote the dramas " Zulime," " L'enfant prodigue," " Mahomet," " Me- 
 rope," and the " Essai sur les mceurs." In 1746, being again in favor 
 with the Court, he was elected a member of the Academy. 
 
 From 1750 to 1753 Voltaire resided at the Court of Frederick the 
 Great, where he completed and published one of his most important 
 works, " Le siecle de Louis XIV." After quarrelling with his royal 
 master he returned to France. In 1758 he purchased the chateau of 
 Ferney, in France, near the Swiss frontier, where he passed the re- 
 mainder of his life. Of his later works the most notable were his 
 " Histoire de la Russie sous Pierre le Grand," his tragedy " Tancrede," 
 and the novels " Candide," " Zadig," and " L'Ingenu." In 1778 Vol- 
 taire was invited to Paris, where he was received like a conquering 
 hero. The fatigue of the journey and the excitement of his enthusi- 
 astic reception were too great a strain on his weakened frame, and he 
 died at Paris on May 30, 1778. 
 
 Numerous volumes of Voltaire's works fail to reveal the secret of 
 the vast influence he exerted. He attacked institutions that were 
 already tottering in their foundations, and addressed minds already ripe 
 for the principles he preached. His writings are, however, remark- 
 able for their wit and versatility, and for their easy, graceful style, of 
 which his essays " On Cromwell " and " On Ceremonies " are ex- 
 cellent examples. 
 
 126 
 
OF CEREMONIES 
 
 THE arm-chair, the easy-chair, the court-stool, the right 
 and the left hand, have for several ages been considered 
 as important objects of policy and illustrious subjects 
 for disputes. I fancy that the ancient ceremonial relating to 
 arm-chairs took its rise from our barbarous ancestors having 
 but one of these chairs at most in a house, and that this was 
 commonly appropriated to the use of any person who was sick. 
 There are still several provinces in France, and countries in 
 England, where the arm-chair is called a groaning-chair. 
 
 Long after the times of Attila and Dagobert, when luxury 
 began to creep into courts, and the great ones of the earth had 
 two or three arm-chairs in their mighty dungeons, it was es- 
 teemed a singular mark of distinction to sit on one of these 
 thrones ; and the master of a castle took care to have preserved 
 among the records of his family that having been to pay his 
 court to such a count, he had been received by him in an arm- 
 chair. 
 
 We may read in the " Memoirs " of mademoiselle, sister to 
 Louis XIV, that this august princess passed at least a fourth 
 part of her life in mortal agonies occasioned by disputes about 
 easy-chairs ; and a whole court was taken up in caballing whether 
 it was proper to sit on a chair or a stool in such or such a room, 
 or whether to sit at all. At present our manners are more uni- 
 form; and ladies make use indifferently of couches or sofas, 
 without the peace of society being disturbed. 
 
 When Cardinal Richelieu was negotiating the marriage be- 
 tween Henrietta of France and Charles I of England, with the 
 ambassador of that nation, the affair was on the point of being 
 broken off, on account of two or three steps nearer to a door 
 that was claimed by the ambassador, till the cardinal, to get 
 over the mighty difficulty, received him in bed ; and this precious 
 anecdote has been carefully preserved in history. I am of 
 opinion that, if it had been proposed to Scipio to place himself 
 
 127 
 
128 VOLTAIRE 
 
 at his length naked between two sheets to receive Hannibal's 
 visit, he would have thought it a droll ceremony. 
 
 One coach going before another, and what is called taking 
 the way in a street or a road, has also been a mark of grandeur, 
 and occasioned claims, disputes, and petty combats, for a whole 
 century together ; and it was esteemed a singular victory for the 
 equipage of one person to oblige that of another to yield the 
 way. When foreign ambassadors passed through a street it 
 was like disputing the prize in a circus ; and if a Spanish min- 
 ister made a Portuguese coachman back his horses, he imme- 
 diately despatched a courier post haste to Madrid, to inform 
 the King his master of the advantage he had gained. 
 
 In proportion as a nation is more or less barbarous, or the 
 court weak or powerful, these ceremonies are more or less in 
 vogue. True power and real politeness despise ostentation. 
 
 It is probable that we shall one time or other see an end to 
 the ridiculous custom which still prevails among the ambassa- 
 dors of some courts, to beggar themselves for the sake of going 
 in procession through the streets with a number of hired 
 coaches, vamped up and new-gilt, and preceded by a crowd of 
 servants walking on foot. This is called making their entry; 
 and it is pleasant enough to hear of a person making his entry 
 into a city seven or eight months after his arrival. 
 
 The important affair of the punctilio, which constitutes the 
 grandeur of the modern Romans — the theory of the number of 
 paces to be made in conducting a signor to the door at his 
 departure; of opening a curtain half way, or altogether; of 
 taking the right or left hand of a person in a room — this noble 
 art, I say, which would never have entered the head of a Fabius 
 or a Cato, begins now to give way ; and the train-bearers to the 
 Cardinals lament, with tears in their eyes, that everything seems 
 to denounce a general lapse of these essential ceremonials. 
 
 A French colonel happening to be at Brussels, about a year 
 ago, and not knowing how to spend his time, proposed going 
 to the public assembly; one of his acquaintances told him it 
 was held at the house of a princess. " Very true," replied the 
 officer; " but what of that ? " " Why, princes go there." "Are 
 you a prince ? " " Pish, man ! " said he, " they are a very good 
 kind of princes; last year, when we took the town, I had a 
 dozen of them waiting in my ante-chamber ; they are the civilest 
 creatures breathing." 
 
ON CROMWELL 
 
 CROMWELL is commonly represented as one who was 
 an impostor through the whole course of his life. This 
 is what I can hardly believe. My opinion of the matter 
 is that he was, first of all, an enthusiast, but that afterwards he 
 made his very fanaticism subservient to his greatness. A 
 novice possessed of extreme religious fervor at twenty often 
 becomes a consummate knavfi at forty. In the great game of 
 human life men begin with being dupes, but end knaves. A 
 statesman shall sometimes take for his chaplain a monk covered 
 over with the little pedantry of his convent; fanatic, devout, 
 credulous, awkward, and quite raw in the world; the monk 
 acquires knowledge, politeness, learns to intrigue, till at last he 
 supplants his patron. 
 
 Cromwell at first hardly knew what to make of himself, and 
 was puzzled whether to be a churchman or a soldier. He was 
 actually both. He made a campaign with Frederick Henry, 
 Prince of Orange, in 1622, who was not only a man of great 
 capacity himself, but also brother to two illustrious personages. 
 When he returned to England he entered into the service of 
 Bishop Williams, and was my lord's chaplain, whilst my lord 
 was thought to be rather to great with his wife. His religious 
 principles were those of the puritanical sect ; so that he could 
 not but mortally hate the bishop, nor could he have any great 
 affection for kings. He was banished from the bishop's family 
 on account of his being a puritan, and this accident was properly 
 the foundation and first beginning of all his grandeur. The 
 English Parliament had declared against royalty and episcopacy 
 when some friends Cromwell had in that Parliament succeeded 
 in having him chosen for a borough. He may be said to have 
 existed only from this time and was turned of forty before he 
 made any noise in the world. In vain had he studied the Bible, 
 learned to wrangle about the institution of priests and deacons, 
 9 129 
 
I30 VOLTAIRE 
 
 and made some wretched sermons and libels: he was still in 
 obscurity. I have seen a sermon of his pretty much like one of 
 the Quakers' harangues, in which one cannot discover the small- 
 est traces of that persuasive eloquence by which he afterwards 
 swayed the Parliaments. The true reason of this is, he was 
 much better qualified for the State than the Church. But his 
 eloquence consisted wholly in his air and in the tone of his voice ; 
 the single motion of that hand, that won so many battles, and 
 killed so many Royalists, was more persuasive than all the 
 studied periods of Cicero. It must also be acknowledged that 
 the reputation he acquired was wholly owing to his incompar- 
 able valor, which laid the first steps of that ladder, by which he 
 reached the highest summit of human grandeur. 
 
 He began with serving as a volunteer, desirous of making 
 his fortune in the city of Hull, which was then besieged by the 
 King. Here he performed so many gallant and successful ex- 
 ploits that he was rewarded by the Parliament with a gratifica- 
 tion of about six thousand livres of our money. Such a present, 
 bestowed by the Parliament on a simple volunteer, was a sure 
 prognostic that their party must one day get the better. The 
 King was not then in a condition to make such a present to his 
 general officers as the Parliament gave on this occasion to 
 their volunteers. With money and fanaticism, they must, in 
 the long run, overcome all that stood in their way : they made 
 Cromwell a colonel : then it was that his great talents for war 
 began to display themselves, insomuch that, when the Parlia- 
 ment made the Earl of Manchester their general, they made 
 Cromwell a lieutenant-general, without passing through the 
 intermediate ranks. Never did man seem more worthy of 
 command; never was there seen a greater share of prudence 
 and activity, or a more daring and undaunted spirit, joined to 
 such an infinity of resources as were in Cromwell. 
 
 He was wounded in the battle of York ; and whilst the sur- 
 geons were beginning to dress his wound he was told that his 
 general. Lord Manchester, was retreating, and the battle en- 
 tirely lost. He runs to Lord Manchester, whom he finds flying 
 with some of his officers: he immediately takes him by the 
 arm; and, with an air of intrepidity and greatness, told him, 
 " You are mistaken, my lord ; this is not the way the enemy 
 have fled." He leads him back near to the spot on which the 
 battle was fought; rallies in the night upwards of twelve 
 
ON CROMWELL 131 
 
 thousand men; exhorts them in the name of the Lord; cites 
 the examples of Moses, Gideon, and Joshua; beseeches them 
 by all means not to neglect to engage the victorious Royalists 
 at break of day; and entirely defeats them. Almost all the 
 officers in his army were enthusiasts, who carried their Bibles 
 tied to the pommel of their saddles : There was nothing talked 
 of, either in the army or in Parliament, but the overthrowing 
 of Babylon, establishing the Lord's worship in the new Jeru- 
 salem, and breaking the great idol. Cromwell, though amidst 
 a host of fools, grew wise at last, and bethought himself that 
 it was better to guide them than to be governed by them. The 
 habit, however, of preaching like one inspired still remained 
 with him. Imagine to yourself a fakir, with his loins bound 
 about with a girdle of iron out of mere mortification, who af- 
 terwards pulls off his girdle and falls to knocking down his 
 brother fakirs. This is Cromwell: he became full as good 
 a politician as he was a soldier: he enters into an association 
 with all the colonels of the army ; and thus he forms his soldiers 
 into a kind of republic, who force their general to abdicate. 
 Another generalissimo is named, with whom he is presently 
 dissatisfied ; he governs the army, and with them the Parliament, 
 whom he at last compels to create him generalissimo. All this is 
 certainly a great deal ; but what is more remarkable is, that he 
 gained every battle he fought, whether in Scotland, England, 
 or Ireland ; and gained them not like other generals, by being a 
 mere spectator, soHcitous about his own safety, but by con- 
 tinually charging the enemy in person ; rallying his troops ; by 
 being present everywhere ; often wounded, killing several of the 
 Royalists with his own hand ; like some furious grenadier, that 
 delights in carnage. 
 
 In the midst of this cruel and bloody war, Cromwell was 
 making love, and went with his Bible under his arm to He with 
 the wife of his major-general, Lambert. This lady was in love 
 with the Earl of Holland, who was then serving in the royal 
 army. Cromwell takes him prisoner in one of his battles, and 
 has the pleasure to cut off his rival's head. His maxim was 
 to cut off every enemy of any consequence, either in the field 
 of battle, or by the hand of the executioner. He increased his 
 power on every occasion by perpetually abusing it; and the 
 depth of his designs wants nothing of his natural ferocity. He 
 enters the Parliament^ and taking out his watch, throws it on 
 
132 VOLTAIRE 
 
 the ground, and breaks it into pieces, with this expression, " I 
 will break you, just as I have done that watch." Some time 
 after he returns, and dissolves them by his own authority, mak- 
 ing them file off, as it were, in review, before him. Each mem- 
 ber was obliged, as he passed him, to make him a profound bow. 
 One of them, it seems, thought proper to pass him with his hat 
 on; when Cromwell, taking it off, threw it on the ground. 
 *' Learn," says he, " to show me the proper respect." 
 
 After having insulted every crowned head, by cutting off 
 that of the King, his lawful sovereign, and when he had even 
 begun his own reign, he sent his picture to Queen Christina of 
 Sweden. Marvel, a famous English poet, who made very good 
 Latin verses, composed six lines on the occasion, which were 
 to accompany that present, in which he introduced Cromwell 
 himself. Cromwell corrected the two last, which are these : 
 
 " At tibt submittit frontem reverentior umbia 
 JNon sunt bi vultus regibus usque truces J** 
 
 The bold sentiment expressed in those three couplets may be 
 turned in this manner : 
 
 " Z<?j armes a la main fat defendu les loix ; 
 D'un peuple audacieux f ai vetige la querelle ; 
 Regardez sansfrimir cette image JidHe ; 
 Mon front n^ est pas toujour s Vipouvante des rois** 
 
 Behold the chief who fought for dying laws, 
 And shunned no dangers in his country's cause ; 
 To kings no longer dreadful, sues to you, 
 And smooths the terrors of his awful brow. 
 
 This queen was the first who acknowledged him on his being 
 made protector of the three kingdoms. Almost every sovereign 
 in Europe sent ambassadors to their brother Cromwell, to this 
 once menial servant of a bishop, who had put his sovereign, 
 who was of their blood, to death by the hands of the execu- 
 tioner : Nay, they disputed who should have the honor of being 
 in alliance with him. Cardinal Mazarin, to please him, ban- 
 ished the two sons of Charles I, the two grandsons of Henry IV, 
 the two cousins-germain of Louis XIV, of France ; conquered 
 Dunkirk for him, and the keys of that place were accordingly 
 sent him. When he died, Louis XIV, with his whole xouxt- 
 
ON CROMWELL 133 
 
 put on mourning, except mademoiselle, who had the courage 
 to come to the circle in colors, thus singly maintaining the honor 
 of her family. 
 
 Never was there a king more absolute than Cromwell. He 
 said he liked better to govern under the quality of protector 
 than that of king, because the power of the latter was well 
 known to the people of England, whereas that of a protector was 
 not. This showed a thorough knowledge of mankind, who are 
 slaves to opinion, which opinion often depends on a mere name. 
 He had conceived a thorough contempt for religion, though he 
 was indebted to it for all the power and honors he enjoyed. We 
 have an undeniable anecdote of this preserved in the St. John 
 family, which is a sufficient proof of the sovereign contempt 
 Cromwell entertained for that instrument which had produced 
 such wonderful effects in his hands. He was one day cracking 
 a bottle with Ireton Fleetwood and St. John. They wanted to 
 draw the cork of a bottle, when the corkscrew happened to fall 
 under the table ; they were, all of them in search of it, but could 
 not find it. In the mean time word was brought in that a deputa- 
 tion from the Presbyterian churches waited for an audience in 
 the ante-chamber. " Tell them," says Cromwell, " that I am in 
 private seeking the Lord." This was the canting expression 
 of those fanatics for being at prayers. When he had in this 
 manner dismissed the deputation of ministers, he made use of 
 these very words to his companions : " Those knaves think we 
 are seeking the Lord, whereas in truth we are looking for the 
 corkscrew." 
 
 Europe has no other example of a man who raised himself 
 to such a height of glory from so humble an original. What 
 could such a man want? Success. This success he enjoyed; 
 but was he happy with all his good fortune? He lived in very 
 narrow and uneasy circumstances till past forty ; he then bathed 
 himself in blood, passed the rest of his days in perpetual anxie- 
 ties, and died at last in his seven and fiftieth year. Let any 
 man but compare the life of this man with that of Newton, who 
 lived four-score and four years, in perfect tranquillity, full of 
 honor, the light and guide of all intelligent beings, his reputation 
 and fortune daily increasing, without care or remorse; and 
 then tell me whose was the happier lot of the two. 
 
 cura§ hominu7n, o quantum est in rebus inane / 
 
CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY> PRINTING AND 
 ENGRAVING. 
 
 Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books. 
 
 EARLY VENETIAN PRINTING. 
 
 Page from Appmn's Roman History. 
 
 This page, which is the work of the printers Bernardo Pictor and Erhardt Rat- 
 dolt, shows all the characteristics of printing at Venice in the fifteenth century- 
 beauty and regularity of letters — boldness of leading, and fine initial and border 
 adornments. The branching and looping of the woodcut decorations are notable 
 for ease and flexibility, and are models of what such work ought to be. Appian's 
 " Roman History," from which this page is taken, was printed at Venice in 1477. 
 
^^ 
 
 Addiuum Alfbnfum Aiagonum atucnu^Siali? 
 r<^m in librosciutliu belloru ex Appi loo Alocatv 
 drino m laanu cradudos Prcfano ifvipic FcliciCflmc. 
 
 Attboru rcgcm m abAiinoo accept 
 mu8 fiae muncrc (alutarc nemo pcv 
 ted. Ego uero glonofinime rex cu m 
 cuam utixuce bonunicate^ co(i4ero 
 cum c^ceras nature docesrquibus in'' 
 tcr 5Utis"noftr5pfindpcs ucl in pri' 
 mis illuttii^ e$: fublime ingenium : 
 Cumma uncate: furomaconcinencil 
 nulla racwne adduapoffum utnon 
 plum apudtcfidemnTcaeflrecxiftimcm qullasopcs-QiJip^ 
 pc cu tt indigcntibus & uctuti e naufragio cmctrts qa ignocis 
 ofFcrrc uidcarti pias manus-Cjcc.^ nee fine munerc ad te ucni 
 necuacuisC uc a4urit)manibu5 tua.matcftatsfutn adoracurus . 
 Namcu pnorcs Appianilibros/Libycum: Synum: Pattbicu 
 & Mithn^aDoi P^Colao quinco Rimo pontifrddum i buma^ 
 nisagetetcgrccocranftuliiTcm/ Rcli"quos duvliurn belloium 
 comcntariosiqu? Scnatusipopuluf^ romanus inuiiem gcflfic 
 nnndu cditos auc peifeclos a mc ad qucm podus mitccrcn\ q 
 ad tc luitfbflimc princcpsi Hifpanift pflntcr & Irali^ noftr? dc 
 
 Appiant Alexandria i fopbjfrc Romanoru hbcr &nic 
 quiCclcicus mfcribaur. TraduOw.P.Candidi. 
 
 I mpreffum e(l boc opus Vcnctijs per Bcmaxdu oiOo- 
 rcm& Erbardumratdoltde Augufta una cum Fetro 
 lodctn dc Langenccn corrrsStove ac fbao. Laus Deo- 
 M.CCCC LXXVIK 
 
 Anneus Sen cade 
 regepixixsrum. 
 
 Nioolauspapaquiii^ 
 Libycus. ( tuss. 
 Sytius. 
 Partbicus. 
 MitbridiifCtts. 
 
,» • •» • 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 
 1712 — 1778 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva in 1712. His early edu- 
 cation was sadly neglected, but he acquired a great deal of knowledge 
 by reading, which, though unsystematic, was extensive. His father 
 was a watchmaker, and young Rousseau was, therefore, apprenticed 
 to a watchmaker in his native town. But the boy soon ran away from 
 his master, and figured successively in the capacity of an engraver's 
 apprentice, a lackey, a musician, a student in a seminary, a clerk, a 
 private tutor, and a music copyist. From time to time he lived at 
 the houses of various patrons — Madame de Warens, Madame d'Epinay, 
 the Duke of Luxembourg, Marshall Keith, David Hume, Madame 
 d'Enghien — and quarrelled with all. His last home was with M. de 
 Giradin, near Paris, where he died in 1778. 
 
 The first period of Rousseau's life, covering nearly twenty years, 
 has been characterized as one of vagabondage. The next period, end- 
 ing about 1741, was devoted to ardent study; and during this time 
 he evidenced a steadily growing interest in literature. The nine suc- 
 ceeding years were the period of his lighter writings, operas, and come- 
 dies. None of them have proved of permanent interest, but they gave 
 him a considerable reputation among the literary circles of his day. 
 Some articles on music contributed to the " Encyclopedic " secured for 
 him an introduction to Diderot, who probably influenced him in turning 
 his mind toward more serious subjects. 
 
 In 1749 Rousseau wrote an essay to compete for a prize offered by 
 the Academy of Dijon, entitled " Discours sur les sciences et les 
 arts," which was crowned and brought him great fame. During the 
 following ten years he wrote in rapid succession the works that have 
 given him lasting fame. His romance " Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise " 
 appeared in 1761. The year following he published " fimile, ou de 
 I'education," and the ** Contrat social." The ideas expressed in 
 " Emile " led to Rousseau's exile from France, but it is credited with 
 having laid the foundation of modern pedagogy. 
 
 The " Contrat social " voiced the popular protest against the injus- 
 tice of a social state already rotten and trembling on the brink of 
 ruin. Rousseau's brilliant social philosophy, though superficial and 
 often false, was hailed by the downtrodden masses as an inspired mes- 
 sage, and became the gospel of the Revolution. 
 
 The vast influence of Rousseau's work on the social and political 
 history of France overshadows but should not blind us to the far- 
 reaching influence of his style and methods upon literature. His novels 
 popularized the analysis of the emotions, and he was the first writer 
 to make word-painting of nature an indispensable element of fiction. 
 His style, both in his romances and in his more serious writings, is 
 simple, direct, unconventional, yet full of passion and eloquence. 
 
 His teachings and his literary manner exerted a strong influence 
 on the orators of the French Revolution. The essay on " The People " 
 is taken from the " Social Contract," and is a characteristic example 
 of his work in his best and most effective vein. After Rousseau's ex- 
 pulsion from France he lived in Switzerland and England until he 
 was allowed to return in 1767, on condition that he would henceforth 
 cease to write for publication. Accordingly, his last works of conse- 
 quence, " Les confessions " and " Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire," 
 were not published until four years after his death. He died of apoplexy 
 at Ermenonville, near Paris, on July 2, 1778. 
 
 136 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 AS an architect, before erecting a large edifice, examines 
 and tests the soil in order to see whether it can support 
 the weight, so a wise lawgiver does not begin by draw- 
 ing up laws that are good in themselves, but considers first 
 whether the people for whom he designs them are fit to endure 
 them. It is on this account that Plato refused to legislate for 
 the Arcadians and Cyrenians, knowing that these two peoples 
 were rich and could not tolerate equality; and it is on this 
 account that good laws and worthless men were to be found 
 in Crete, for Minos had only discipHned a people steeped in 
 vice. 
 
 A thousand nations that have flourished on the earth coujd 
 never have borne good laws ; and even those that might have 
 done so could have succeeded for only a very short period of 
 their whole duration. The majority of nations, as well as of 
 men, are tractable only in their youth ; they become incorrigible 
 as they grow old. When once customs are established and 
 prejudices have taken root, it is a perilous and futile enterprise 
 to try and reform them ; for the people cannot even endure 
 that their evils should be touched with a view to their removal, 
 like those stupid and covv^ardly patients that shudder at the 
 sight of a physician. 
 
 But just as some diseases unhinge men's minds and deprive 
 them of all remembrance of the past, so we sometimes find, 
 during the existence of States, epochs of violence, in which 
 revolutions produce an influence upon nations such as certain 
 crises produce upon individuals, in which horror of the past 
 suppHes the place of forgetfulness, and in which the State, in- 
 flamed by civil wars, springs forth so to speak from its ashes, 
 and regains the vigor of youth in issuing from the arms of 
 death. Such was Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, such was 
 
 137 
 
 
138 ROUSSEAU 
 
 Rome after the Tarquins, and such among us moderns were 
 Holland and Switzerland after the expulsion of their tyrants. 
 
 But these events are rare ; they are exceptions, the explana- 
 tion of which is always found in the particular constitution of 
 the excepted State. They could not even happen twice with 
 the same nation ; for it may render itself free so long as it is 
 merely barbarous, but can no longer do so when the resources 
 of the State are exhausted. Then commotions may destroy 
 it without revolutions being able to restore it, and as soon as 
 its chains are broken, it falls in pieces and ceases to exist; 
 henceforward it requires a master and not a deliverer. Free 
 nations, remember this maxim : " Liberty may be acquired 
 but never recovered." 
 
 Youth is not infancy. There is for nations as for men a 
 period of youth, or, if you will, of maturity, which they must 
 await before they are subjected to laws; but it is not always 
 easy to discern when a people is mature, and if the time is an- 
 ticipated, the labor is abortive. One nation is governable from 
 its origin, another is not so at the end of ten centuries. The 
 Russians will never be really civilized, because they have been 
 ^ civilized too early. Peter had an imitative genius ; he had not 
 the true genius that creates and produces anything from noth- 
 ing. Some of his measures were beneficial, but the majority 
 were ill-timed. He saw that his people were barbarous, but 
 he did not see that they were unripe for civilization ; he wished 
 to civilize them, when it was necessary only to discipline them. 
 He wished to produce at once Germans or EngHshmen, when, 
 he should have begun by making Russians ; he prevented his 
 subjects from ever becoming what they might have been, by 
 persuading them that they were what they were not. It is in 
 this way that a French tutor trains his pupil to shine for a 
 moment in childhood, and then to be forever a nonentity. The 
 Russian Empire will desire to subjugate Europe, and will itself 
 be subjugated. The Tartars, its subjects or neighbors, will 
 become its masters and ours. This revolution appears to me 
 inevitable. All the kings of Europe are working in concert 
 to accelerate it. 
 
 As nature has set limits to the stature of a properly formed 
 man, outside which it produces only giants and dwarfs; so 
 likewise, with regard to the best constitution of a State, there 
 
THE PEOPLE 139 
 
 are limits to its possible extent so that it may be neither too 
 great to enable it to be well governed, nor too small to enable it 
 to maintain itself single-handed. There is in every body politic 
 a maximum of force which it cannot exceed, and which is often 
 diminished as the State is aggrandized. The more the social 
 bond is extended, the more it is weakened ; and, in general, a 
 small State is proportionally stronger than a large one. 
 
 A thousand reasons demonstrate the truth of this maxim. 
 In the first place, administration becomes more difficult at 
 great distances, as a weight becomes heavier at the end of a 
 longer lever. It also becomes more burdensome in proportion 
 as its parts are multiplied ; for every town has first its own ad- 
 ministration, for which the people pay; every district has its 
 administration, still paid for by the people ; next, every prov- 
 ince, then the superior governments, the satrapies, the vice- 
 royalties, which must be paid for more dearly as we ascend, 
 and always at the cost of the unfortunate people ; lastly comes 
 the supreme administration, which overwhelms everything. 
 So many additional burdens perpetually exhaust the subjects ; 
 and far from being better governed by all these different or- 
 ders, they are much worse governed than if they had but a 
 single superior. Meanwhile, hardly any resources remain for 
 cases of emergency ; and when it is necessary to have recourse 
 to them the State trembles on the brink of ruin. 
 
 Nor is this all ; not only has the government less vigor and 
 activity in enforcing observance of the laws, in putting a stop 
 to vexations, in reforming abuses, and in forestalling seditious 
 enterprises which may be entered upon in distant places ; but 
 the people have less affection for their chiefs whom they never 
 see, for their country, which is in their eyes like the world, and 
 for their fellow-citizens, most of whom are strangers to them. 
 The same laws cannot be suitable to so many different prov- 
 inces, which have different customs and different climates, and 
 cannot tolerate the same form of government. Different laws 
 beget only trouble and confusion among the nations which, 
 living under the same chiefs and in constant communication, 
 mingle or intermarry with one another, and, when subjected 
 to other usages, never know whether their patrimony is really 
 theirs. Talents are hidden, virtues ignored, vices unpunished, 
 in that multitude of men, unknown to one another, whom the 
 
I40 ROUSSEAU 
 
 seat of the supreme administration gathers together in one 
 place. The chiefs, overwhelmed with business, see nothing 
 themselves; clerks rule the State. In a word, the measures 
 that must be taken to maintain the general authority, which so 
 many officers at a distance wish to evade or impose upon, ab- 
 sorb all the public attention ; no regard for the welfare of the 
 people remains, and scarcely any for their defence in time of 
 need ; and thus a body too huge for its constitution sinks and 
 perishes, crushed by its own weight. 
 
 On the other hand, the State must secure a certain founda- 
 tion, that it may possess stability and resist the shocks which 
 it will infallibly experience, as well as sustain the efforts which 
 it will be forced to make in order to maintain itself; for all 
 nations have a kind of centrifugal force, by which they con- 
 tinually act one against another, and tend to aggrandize them- 
 selves at the expense of their neighbors, like the vortices of 
 Descartes. Thus the weak are in danger of being quickly 
 swallowed up, and none can preserve itself long except by put- 
 ting itself in a kind of equilibrium with all, which renders the 
 compression almost equal everywhere. 
 
 Hence we see that there are reasons for expansion and rea- 
 sons for contraction ; and it is not the least of a statesman's 
 talents to find the proportion between the two which is most 
 advantageous for the preservation of the State. We may say, 
 in general, that the former, being only external and relative, 
 ought to be subordinated to the others, which are internal and 
 absolute. A healthy and strong constitution is the first thing 
 to be sought ; and we should rely more on the vigor that springs 
 from a good government than on the resources furnished by an 
 extensive territory. 
 
 States have, however, been constituted in such a way that 
 the necessity of making conquests entered into their very con- 
 stitution, and in order to maintain themselves they were forced 
 to enlarge themselves continually. Perhaps they rejoiced 
 greatly at this happy necessity, which nevertheless revealed to 
 them, with the limit of their greatness, the inevitable moment 
 of their fall. 
 
 A body politic may be measured in two ways, viz., by the 
 extent of its territory, and by the number of its people ; and 
 there is between these two modes of measurement a suitable 
 
THE PEOPLE 141 
 
 relation according to which the State may be assigned its true 
 dimensions. It is the men that constitute the State, and it is 
 the soil that sustains the men; the due relation, then, is that 
 the land should suffice for the maintenance of its inhabitants, 
 and that there should be as many inhabitants as the land can 
 sustain. In this proportion is found the maximum power of 
 a given number of people ; for if there is too much land, the 
 care of it is burdensome, the cultivation inadequate, and the 
 produce superfluous, and this is the proximate cause of de- 
 fensive wars. If there is not enough land, the State is at the 
 mercy of its neighbors for the additional quantity; and this 
 is the proximate cause of offensive wars. Any nation which 
 has, by its position, only the alternative between commerce and 
 war is weak in itself ; it is dependent on its neighbors and on 
 events ; it has only a short arid precarious existence. It con- 
 quers and changes its situation, or it is conquered and reduced 
 to nothing. It can preserve its freedom only by virtue of 
 being small or great. 
 
 It is impossible to express numerically a fixed ratio between 
 the extent of land and the number of men which are recipro- 
 cally sufficient, on account of the differences that are found in 
 the quality of the soil, in its degrees of fertility, in the nature 
 of its products, and in the influence of climate, as well as on 
 account of those which we observe in the constitutions of the 
 inhabitants, of whom some consume little in a fertile country, 
 while others consume much on an unfruitful soil. Further, 
 attention must be paid to the greater or less fecundity of the 
 women, to the conditions of the country, whether more or less 
 favorable to population, and to the numbers which the legis- 
 lator may hope to draw thither by his institutions ; so that an 
 opinion should be based not on what is seen, but on what is 
 foreseen, while the actual state of the people should be less 
 observed than that which it ought naturally to attain. In 
 short, there are a thousand occasions on which the particular 
 accidents of situation require or permit that more territory 
 than appears necessary should be taken up. Thus men will 
 spread out a good deal in a mountainous country, where the 
 natural productions, viz., woods and pastures, require less la- 
 bor, where experience teaches that women are more fecund 
 
,42 ROUSSEAU 
 
 than in the plains, and where with an extensive indined sur- 
 face there is only a small horizontal base, which alone should 
 count for vegetation. On the other hand, people may inhabit 
 a smaller space on the seashore, even among rocks and sands 
 that are almost barren, because fishing can, in great measure, 
 supply the deficiency in the productions of the earth, because 
 men ought to be more concentrated in order to repel pirates, 
 and because, further, it is easier to reheve the country, by 
 means of colonies, of the inhabitants with which it is over- 
 burdened. 
 
 In order to establish a nation, it is necessary to add to these 
 conditions one which cannot supply the place of any other, 
 but without which they are all useless— it is that the people 
 should enjoy abundance and peace ; for the time of a State's 
 formation is, like that of forming soldiers in a square, the time 
 when the body is least capable of resistance and most easy to 
 destroy. Resistance would be greater in a state of absolute 
 disorder than at a moment of fermentation, when each is oc- 
 cupied with his own position and not with the common danger. 
 Should a war, a famine, or a sedition supervene at this critical 
 period, the State is inevitably overthrown. 
 
 Many governments, indeed, may be established during such 
 storms, but then it is these very governments that destroy 
 the State. Usurpers always bring about or select troublous 
 times for passing, under cover of the public agitation, de- 
 structive laws which the people would never adopt when sober- 
 minded. The choice of the moment for the establishment of 
 a government is one of the surest marks for distinguishing the 
 work of the legislator from that of the tyrant. 
 
 What nation, then, is adapted for legislation? That which 
 is already united by some bond of interest, origin, or conven- 
 tion, but has not yet borne the real yoke of the laws ; that which 
 has neither customs nor superstitions firmly rooted ; that which 
 has no fear of being overwhelmed by a sudden invasion, but 
 which, without entering into disputes of its neighbors, can 
 single-handed resist either of them, or aid one in repelling the 
 other; that in which every member can be known by all, and 
 in which there is no necessity to lay on a man a greater burden 
 than a man can bear : that which can subsist without other na- 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 143 
 
 tions, and without which every other nation can subsist;^ 
 that which is neither rich nor poor and is self-sufficing ; lastly, 
 that which combines the stability of an old nation with the 
 docility of a new one. The work of legislation is rendered 
 arduous not so much by what must be estabHshed as by what 
 must be destroyed; and that which makes success so rare is 
 the impossibihty of finding the simplicity of nature conjoined 
 with the necessities of society. All these conditions, it is true, 
 are with difficulty combined ; hence few well-constituted States 
 are seen. 
 
 There is still one country in Europe capable of legislation ; 
 it is the island of Corsica. The courage and firmness which 
 that brave nation has exhibited in recovering and defending 
 its freedom would well deserve that some wise man should 
 teach it how to preserve it. I have some presentiment that 
 this small island will one day astonish Europe. 
 
 ^ If of two neighboring nations one could to do without salt rather than buy it of the 
 not subsist without the other, it would be Mexicans or even accept it gratuitously, 
 a very hard situation for the first, and a The wise Tlascalans saw a trap hidden be- 
 very dangerous one for the second. Every neath this generosity. They kept them- 
 wise nation in such a case will endeavor selves free ; and this small State, enclosed 
 very quickly to free the other from this de- in that great empire, was at last the in- 
 pendence. The republic of Tlascala, en- strument of its downfall, 
 closed in the empire of Mexico, preferred 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 BY 
 
 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 
 
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 
 1729—1781 
 
 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born in the little Saxon town of 
 Kamenz, in 1729, and received his education at the universities of 
 Leipsic and Wittenberg. His father intended him for the ministry, 
 but his abiHty lay in other directions. At the universities he dis- 
 played marked literary ability. In 1748 he went to Berlin, where he 
 succeeded in gaining a precarious livelihood by his pen. As the years 
 went on recognition came, and by 1755, when he published " Miss 
 Sara Sampson," a tragedy, Lessing had already become a celebrated 
 man, a dreaded critic, and an admired dramatist and poet of some 
 distinction. In 1759 he commenced the publication of the " Literary 
 Letters," a series of literary criticisms of remarkable acumen and 
 force, which he continued during nearly seven years. Meantime he 
 had left Berlin to become the private secretary of the Governor of 
 Silesia. While at Breslau, " Minna von Barnhelm," one of the mas- 
 terpieces of the German drama, was published. After his return to Ber- 
 lin, in 1766, " Laocoon," his masterly treatise on aesthetic criticism, was 
 given to the world. In 1767 Lessing was called to Hamburg to assist in 
 establishing a stage for the national drama. The result of his activity 
 there caused him to write his famous " Dramatic Notes," a series of es- 
 says that exerted a profound influence on the German drama. They were 
 written in Lessing's best vein and in the fulness of his powers. " Aris- 
 totle and Tragedy " is a good example of these remarkable essays as 
 well as of Lessing's style. In 1770 he was appointed by the Duke of 
 Brunswick librarian at Wolfenbiittel, a position he held until his death 
 in 1781. Here he wrote the two excellent plays, " Emilia Galotti " and 
 " Nathan the Wise," besides numerous treatises, chiefly on theological 
 questions and polemic in character. 
 
 The key-note of Lessing's character and writings is truth. Hence 
 his impatience with cant and hypocrisy, the unsparing severity dis- 
 played in his theological controversies, and the lucidity of his dramatic 
 and literary criticisms. As a critic Lessing may justly be regarded 
 as the greatest Germany has produced. Although not exclusively 
 destructive in his criticisms, it was as a critic of this school that he 
 produced his most lasting works. His dramatic criticisms did much 
 toward the development of the modern German Drama and his literary 
 criticisms prepared the way for Goethe and Schiller. His theological 
 and philosophical writings are less important, but they in turn served 
 in preparing the way for Kant and Fichte. 
 
 Lessing's literary style is distinguished by clearness and precision, 
 in marked contrast to that in vogue with German prose writers of 
 his time. He avoided long and intricate sentences and constructions. 
 ** Write as you speak," was his motto, and in all his writings he dis- 
 plays a most astonishing power of clear and concise statement and 
 a wealth of logical argument thut make his works models of expository 
 and argumentative style. 
 
 146 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 CREBILLON is known among the French as " the Ter- 
 rible." I greatly fear that he has received this name 
 more on account of the terror which should not exist 
 in tragedy, than on account of that legitimate terror which the 
 philosopher includes amongst the essentials of tragedy. 
 
 And this ought not to have been named terror at all. The 
 word used by Aristotle means fear: fear and pity, he says, 
 should be provoked by tragedy, not terror and pity. Terror 
 is, it is true, a species of fear ; it is a sudden, overwhelming fear. 
 But this very suddenness, this surprise, which is included in the 
 conception of the term, clearly shows that those who here 
 substituted the word terror for fear did not understand to what 
 kind of fear Aristotle was referring. 
 
 *' Pity," says Aristotle, " demands a person who suffers un- 
 deservedly, and fear requires him to be one of ourselves. The 
 villain is neither the one nor the other, and his misfortunes 
 consequently do not excite either pity or fear."^ 
 
 Fear, as I have said, has been called terror by modern com- 
 mentators and translators; and this substitution has enabled 
 them to bring the most extraordinary charges against the 
 philosopher. 
 
 " It has not been found possible," says one of this crowd,^ 
 " to agree as to the explanation of terror ; and indeed it con- 
 tains in every respect one superfluous link which hampers its 
 universality and limits it too much. If Aristotle, in adding 
 the words * one of ourselves,' was merely thinking of the sim- 
 ilarity of mankind, in the sense that the spectator and the act- 
 ing personage are both human beings, however widely they 
 may differ from each other in character, dignity, and rank: 
 then such an addition was unnecessary, for the fact was self- 
 
 1 " Poetics," cap. xiii. 
 
 a Schmidt, in his Introduction to "The Comic Theatre." 
 
 147 
 
14^ LESSING 
 
 evident. If, on the contrary, he was of opinion that terror 
 could only be excited by virtuous persons or by such as are 
 afflicted with venial faults : then he was mistaken, for common- 
 sense and experience are opposed to him. Terror undoubt- 
 edly springs from a feeling of humanity; for every human 
 being is subject to it, and every human being is touched by 
 this feeling at the adverse fortunes of a fellow-creature. There 
 may possibly be persons who deny this with regard to them- 
 selves; but such a denial would only be a disavowal of their 
 natural sensibility, a mere boast founded upon defective prin- 
 ciples, and therefore no argument. Now if a vicious person, 
 upon whom our attention is centred, meets with an unexpected 
 misfortune, we lose sight of the reprobate and behold only the 
 human being. The sight of human suffering in general makes 
 us sad, and this sudden feeling of sadness which comes over us 
 is terror.'* 
 
 All this is perfectly true, but it is out of place. For what 
 does it prove against Aristotle ? Nothing at all. Aristotle is 
 not thinking of this kind of terror when he speaks of that fear 
 which can only be evoked by one of our fellow-creatures. Such 
 fear, with which we are seized when we are suddenly brought 
 face to face with a misfortune that threatens another person, 
 is a sympathetic fear, and should therefore be included in the 
 term pity. Aristotle would not say " Pity and Fear," if by the 
 latter he understood no more than merely a modified form of 
 pity. 
 
 " Pity," says the author of " Letters on the Emotions,"^ " is 
 a compound emotion consisting of love for an object and dis- 
 pleasure at its misfortunes. The movements by which pity 
 manifests itself differ from the simple symptoms of love as well 
 as from those of displeasure ; for pity is a mere manifestation. 
 But how varied this manifestation may be ! Let the one lim- 
 itation of time be but changed in a commiserated misfortune, 
 and pity will manifest itself by totally different signs. The 
 sight of Electra, weeping over her brother's urn, fills us with 
 compassionate grief; for she thinks that the misfortune has 
 taken place and is lamenting the loss which she has sustained. 
 The sufferings of Philoctetes likewise call forth our pity, but 
 in this case it is pity of a somewhat different nature ; for the 
 
 • Moses Mendelssohn. 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 149 
 
 afflictions which overtake this virtuous man are actually pres- 
 ent and seize him before our very eyes. But what do we feel 
 when CEdipus is seized with terror, as the fatal secret is sud- 
 denly revealed ; when Monime is alarmed at seeing the jealous 
 Mithridates turn pale ; when the virtuous Desdemona becomes 
 frightened as she hears the threatening words of her Othello, 
 erstwhile so tender? We still feel pity. But pitiful terror, 
 pitiful alarm, pitiful fear. The movements are various; but 
 the essence of the emotion is in all cases identical. For since 
 love is ever connected with a wiUingness to put ourselves in 
 the place of the person whom we love, we must share every 
 kind of misfortune with that person ; and this is very expres- 
 sively termed compassion or pity. Why then should not also 
 fear, terror, wrath, jealousy, revenge — in fact, all kinds of un- 
 pleasant emotions, even envy'not excepted, spring from pity? 
 We may hereby see how unskilfully the majority of critics 
 divide the tragic passions into terror and pity. Terror and 
 pity ! Is theatrical terror no pity, then ? For whom does the 
 spectator tremble when Merope draws the dagger upon her 
 own son ? Certainly not for himself, but for yEgisthus, whose 
 preservation he so earnestly desires, and for the deluded queen 
 who regards him as the murderer of her son. But if we apply 
 the name of pity to the mere displeasure which the present mis- 
 fortunes of a fellow-creature excite in us : then we must draw 
 a distinction between pity properly so called, on the one hand, 
 and not only terror, but all other feelings communicated to us 
 by a fellow-creature, on the other." 
 
 These ideas are so correct, so clear, so perspicuous, that 
 everyone, it seems to us, could and ought to hold them. Nev- 
 ertheless I will not ascribe the acute observations of the new 
 philosopher to the ancient one ; I am too well acquainted with 
 the former's contributions to the doctrine of mixed sensations, 
 for the true theory of which we are indebted to him alone. But 
 what he has explained so thoroughly, Aristotle may also, on 
 the whole, have experienced ; at all events it cannot be denied 
 that Aristotle must either have believed that tragedy could and 
 should excite nothing but genuine pity, nothing but the dis- 
 pleasure experienced at the present misfortunes of a fellow- 
 creature, which seems highly improbable ; or else he included 
 under the term pity all passions in general that can be com- 
 municated to us by another. 
 
ISO 
 
 LESSING 
 
 For it certainly was not Aristotle who made the division, 
 so justly censured, of the tragic passions into pity and terror. 
 He has been misread and mistranslated. He speaks of pity 
 and fear, not of pity and terror ; and the fear to which he refers 
 is not that which an impending misfortune to another person 
 excites in us on his behalf, but that which, from our resem- 
 blance to the victim, we feel on our own behalf; it is the fear 
 that the disasters which we see threatening him may overtake 
 us also ; it is the fear that we may ourselves become the objects 
 of commiseration. In a word: this fear is pity referred back 
 to ourselves. 
 
 Aristotle always requires to be interpreted through himself. 
 If any person were thinking of giving us a new commentary 
 upon his " Poetics," which should excel that of Dacier, I would 
 strongly advise him, before so doing, to read the philosopher's 
 works from beginning to end. He will come across explana- 
 tions bearing upon the art of poetry where he least expects to 
 find them ; and he must above all things study the treatises on 
 rhetoric and ethics. It might indeed be supposed that the 
 schoolmen, who had the writings of Aristotle at their finger 
 ends, would long ago have discovered these explanatory 
 passages. Yet the " Poetics " was the very work to which 
 they paid the least attention. They moreover lacked other 
 knowledge without which the explanations referred to could 
 not have borne fruit ; they were not acquainted with the theatre 
 and its masterpieces. 
 
 The true explanation of this fear, which Aristotle mentions 
 in conjunction with tragic pity, is to be found in the fifth and 
 eighth chapters of the second book of his " Rhetoric." It 
 would have been an easy matter to remember these chapters ; 
 yet not one of his commentators seems to have called them to 
 mind ; at any rate not one has made that use of them which 
 they afford. For even those who perceived, without their aid, 
 that this fear was not the same as compassionate terror, might 
 still have learnt an important fact from them — viz., the reason 
 why the Stagyrite here combines pity with fear, why he com- 
 bines it with fear alone, and not with any other passion or 
 passions. Of the reason of this they know nothing, and I for 
 my part should like to hear what answer their own intelligence 
 would suggest to them, if they were asked, for example, the 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 151 
 
 following question: Why cannot and may not tragedy excite 
 pity and admiration equally as well as pity and fear ? 
 
 AH, however, depends upon the conception which Aristotle 
 framed of pity. Now he was of opinion that a misfortune 
 which is intended as the object of our pity, must of necessity 
 be of such a nature that we are capable of dreading its happen- 
 ing to ourselves also, or to one of our friends. And where 
 there was not this fear, he argued, there could be no pity ; for 
 neither he whom misfortune had so overwhelmed that he saw 
 nothing further to fear, nor he who considered his happiness 
 so complete that he could not imagine any misfortune over- 
 taking him ; neither the desperate man nor the over-confident 
 one is in the habit of feeHng pity for others. He therefore 
 explains the fearful and the pitiable by means of each other. 
 We find those things fearful, he says, which would awaken 
 our pity if they had befallen, or were about to befall, another 
 person ; and we find those things pitiable which we should fear 
 if they were about to happen to ourselves. It is not enough, 
 therefore, that the sufferer, for whom we are to feel pity, may 
 not deserve his misfortune, though he may have brought it 
 upon himself by his own weakness : his injured innocence, or 
 rather his error, for which he is made to pay too severe a pen- 
 alty, would lose its efifect upon us, would fail to excite our pity, 
 unless we saw that there was a possibility of his calamity over- 
 taking us also. Now this possibility arises, and it becomes 
 the more probable, if the poet does not represent him worse 
 than mankind in general ; if he lets him think and act exactly 
 as we should have thought and acted in his place, or as we 
 imagine we should have done ; if, in short, he makes him of the 
 same flesh and blood as ourselves. It is this resemblance that 
 gives rise to the fear that our fate may as easily become like 
 his as we feel ourselves to be like him ; and it is this fear that 
 serves as it were to mature our pity. 
 
 Such were Aristotle's thoughts concerning pity, and by their 
 aid alone can we arrive at the true reason why, in his definition 
 of tragedy, fear was the only emotion which he named in con- 
 junction with pity. It is not that this fear is a separate passion 
 independent of pity, which might be excited now with pity, 
 and now without it, in the same way as pity can be excited now 
 with and now without fear. This was Corneille's error. Aris- 
 
152 LESSING 
 
 totle's reason was that, in his definition of pity, fear was of 
 necessity included, because nothing could awaken our pity 
 which did not at the same time excite our fear. 
 
 Corneille had already written all his plays before he set him- 
 self to commentate upon the " Poetics " of Aristotle.* For 
 half a century he had been working for the theatre, and after 
 such experience he might undoubtedly have furnished us with 
 much valuable information concerning the ancient dramatic 
 code, if, during the time of his labors, he had but studied it a 
 little more diligently. But this he appears only to have done 
 in so far as the mechanical rules of his art were concerned. In 
 the more essential points he disregarded it ; and when he found 
 in the end that he had violated its laws, a thing which he was 
 by no means disposed to admit, he sought to clear himself by 
 the help of comments, and caused his pretended master to say 
 things of which he had never thought. 
 
 Corneille had brought martyrs upon the stage and portrayed 
 them as the most perfect and immaculate of human beings ; he 
 had produced the most repulsive monsters in Prusias, Phocas, 
 and Cleopatra ; and of both these species Aristotle declares that 
 they are unsuitable for tragedy, since neither of them can 
 awaken pity or fear. What does Corneille say in answer to 
 this? How does he contrive to prevent both his own au- 
 thority and that of Aristotle from being disparaged by this 
 contradiction ? " We can easily come to terms with Aristotle," 
 he says f " we need only assume that he did not mean to main- 
 tain that both fear and pity were required at the same time to 
 effect the purification of our passions, which according to him 
 should be the chief aim of tragedy, but that one of these means 
 would suffice. We can find this explanation confirmed in his 
 own writings," he continues, " if we carefully weigh the rea- 
 sons given by him for the exclusion of those events which he 
 censures in tragedies. He never says : this or that event is out 
 of place in tragedy because it merely awakens pity, and not 
 fear; or again, such a thing is intolerable because it simply 
 produces fear, without calling forth pity. No ; he excludes 
 
 * He says: " Je hasarderai quelque so that in his commentaries upon Aris- 
 
 chose sur cinquante ans de travail pour totle he was certainly able to have an 
 
 la scene," in his dissertation on the eye to all his plays. 
 
 Drama. His first play, " Melite," dates ^ " II est aise de nous accommoder 
 
 from 1621^, and his last, " Surena," from avec Aristote," etc. 
 1675. This makes exactly fifty years, 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 153 
 
 such events because, as he says, they fail to excite either pity 
 or fear; and he thereby gives us to understand that he finds 
 them unsuitable because the one is wanting as well as the 
 other, and that he would not condemn them if they did but 
 produce one of these effects." 
 
 Now this it utterly wrong. And I cannot understand why 
 Dacier, who, as a rule, did not fail to observe the false inter- 
 pretations which Corneille tried to place upon the text of Aris- 
 totle to suit his own purpose, should have overlooked this, the 
 worst example of all. Yet, after all, how could he help over- 
 looking it, since it never occurred to him to study the philoso- 
 pher's definition of pity? Corneille's ideas on this point are, 
 as I have said, utterly wrong. Aristotle cannot have meant 
 anything of the kind, or else we must believe that he could 
 have so far forgotten his owfl definitions as to contradict him- 
 self in the most flagrant manner. If, according to his doctrine, 
 no misfortune that befalls another can excite our pity, unless 
 we are afraid that it may also overtake ourselves : then no ac- 
 tion in tragedy, which could only excite pity, and not fear, 
 would have appeared suitable to him ; for he deemed the thing 
 itself an impossibility. Such actions did not exist for him ; on 
 the contrary, as soon as they reached a pitch at which they 
 were capable of awakening our pity, they must, he opined, also 
 awaken fear for ourselves ; or rather, it was only by means of 
 this fear that they called forth our pity. Still less could he 
 conceive of an action in a tragedy which could awaken fear for 
 ourselves without at the same time calling forth our pity ; for 
 he was convinced that anything which awakens in us fear for 
 ourselves, must also call forth our pity, as soon as we see others 
 threatened or overtaken by it ; and this is precisely what hap- 
 pens in tragedy, where we see all the evils which we fear, hap- 
 pening not to ourselves, but to others. 
 
 In speaking of those actions which are unsuitable for trag- 
 edy, Aristotle, it is true, avails himself more than once of the 
 expression that they excite neither pity nor fear. Yet if Cor- 
 neille has allowed himself to be misled by this neither , . . nor, 
 so much the worse for him. These disjunctive particles do 
 not always express what he intends them to express. For if 
 we use them to deny two or more properties of an object, the 
 existence of the object, notwithstanding that one or other of 
 
154 LESSING 
 
 these properties is wanting to it, depends on whether the latter 
 can be as easily separated in nature as we separate them in the 
 abstract by means of symbolic expressions. If, for example, 
 we say, in speaking of a woman, that she has neither beauty 
 nor wit, we certainly wish to convey that we should be satisfied 
 if she possessed either of these qualities; for wit and beauty 
 cannot only be separated in thought, but they are also separate 
 in reality. But if we say : " This man believes in neither 
 heaven nor hell," do we also wish to imply that we should be 
 satisfied if he did but believe in one of the two ; if he beUeved 
 in heaven, but not in hell ; or in hell, but not in heaven ? Surely 
 not ; for he who believes in the one must of necessity believe in 
 the other also. Heaven and hell, punishment and reward, are 
 correlative terms ; if the one exists so must the other. Or, to 
 borrow an example from a sister art, if we say : " This painting 
 is worthless ; it has neither outline nor color," do we wish it 
 to be inferred that there could be such a thing as a good paint- 
 ing possessing only one of these properties ? All this is very 
 clear. 
 
 But what if Aristotle's definition of pity were false? What 
 if we found that we could also feel pity for evils and calamities 
 which we have in nowise to fear for ourselves ? 
 
 Fear for ourselves is not necessary, it is true, to produce in 
 us a feeling of displeasure at the physical suffering of a person 
 whom we love. Such displeasure arises simply from our per- 
 ception of the imperfection, just as our love arises from that 
 of the perfections of the individual ; and when these feelings of 
 pleasure and displeasure are united, they give rise to that 
 mixed feeling which we term pity. 
 
 Yet even then, I do not think that Aristotle's position is at 
 all weakened. 
 
 For although we can feel pity for others without experienc- 
 ing any fear for ourselves, it is indisputable that our pity, when 
 accompanied by such a fear, becomes much stronger and more 
 vivid than it could otherwise be. And what is there to prevent 
 us from assuming that the mixed sensation which we feel on 
 beholding the physical suffering of a beloved object, can only 
 by the addition of fear for ourselves attain a sufficient degree 
 of intensity to deserve the name of an effective force (Affekt). 
 
 This is precisely what Aristotle assumed. He did not re- 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 155 
 
 gard pity according to its primary emotions; he regarded it 
 merely as an effective force (Aifekt). Without mistaking the 
 former, he only denied to the spark the name of flame. Com- 
 passionate emotions, unaccompanied by fear for ourselves, he 
 terms philanthropy ; and he reserves the name of pity for those 
 stronger emotions of the same kind, which are combined with 
 fear for ourselves. According to him, therefore, the misfor- 
 tunes of a villain will excite neither our pity nor our fear ; yet 
 he does not on this account deny him all power of moving 
 us. Even the villain is still a human being possessing, in spite 
 of all his moral imperfections, enough perfections to make us 
 rather hope against his ruin or destruction, and to awaken in 
 us, if we behold it, something akin to pity, the rudiments, as 
 it were, of pity. But this rudimentary feeling, as I have al- 
 ready pointed out, he does not call pity but philanthropy. " A 
 villain," he tells us, " must never be allowed to pass from a 
 state of adversity to one of prosperity ; for nothing could be 
 more untragical ; he would then lack all that he should have, 
 and would call forth neither philanthropy, nor pity, nor fear. 
 Neither must it be an utter villain who is plunged from a state 
 of prosperity into one of adversity ; for such an event might, it 
 is true, excite philanthropy, but not pity, nor yet fear." I 
 know of nothing more feeble and absurd than the common 
 rendering of this word " philanthropy." Its adjective is usu- 
 ally translated into Latin by hominibus gratum; into French by 
 ce qui peut faire quelque plaisir; and into German by was 
 Vergnilgen machen kann (" what may give pleasure "). Goul- 
 ston alone, as far as I can see, appears to have caught the 
 philosopher's meaning ; he translates (piXdvOpcJirov by quod 
 humanitatis sensu tangat. For this word philanthropy is used 
 to signify that feeling which the misfortunes even of a villain 
 can awaken ; it is not the satisfaction which we feel at his well- 
 merited punishment, but the common feeling of human sym- 
 pathy which comes over us when we see him suffer, even 
 though we are given to understand that his suffering is amply 
 deserved. Herr Curtius would indeed confine this feeling of 
 pity for an unfortunate villain to one section only of the evils 
 to which he is liable. " Those accidents to the vicious," he 
 says, " which excite in us neither terror nor pity, must be the 
 results of their vices; for, were they to happen to them by 
 
156 LESSING 
 
 chance, or undeservedly, the sufferers would still retain in the 
 hearts of the spectators the privileges of humanity, which does 
 not withhold its pity from a villain who suffers innocently." 
 But he does not appear to have considered this sufficiently. 
 For even in cases where the misfortune that overtakes the vil- 
 lain is the direct outcome of his crime, we cannot forbear suf- 
 fering with him at the sight of his punishment. " Behold the 
 mob," says the author of '' Letters on the Emotions," as they 
 crowd closely around the condemned criminal! They have 
 heard of all the outrages which the villain has committed ; they 
 have been horrified at his conduct, and have perhaps even 
 hated him. Now he is dragged, pale and fainting, to the ter- 
 rible scaffold. The crowd press forward, some stand on tip- 
 toe, others climb on to the roofs, to see how his features change 
 at the approach of death. His sentence is pronounced; the 
 executioner steps forward; another moment and all will be 
 over. How earnestly all the spectators now wish that he 
 might be pardoned! What? That same person, the object 
 of their hatred, whom but a moment before they would them- 
 selves have condemned to death ? What has happened to send 
 this sudden ray of human love through their hearts? Is it not 
 his approaching doom, the aspect of the direst physical calam- 
 ity, that, as it were, reconciles us to the worst offender and 
 secures him our affection? Without love it would be impos- 
 sible to feel pity for his fate." 
 
 And it is this very love for our fellow-creatures, I say, which 
 is never entirely absent from our hearts, which, hidden beneath 
 other and stronger emotions, lies smouldering unceasingly, 
 and needs but a favorable gust, so to speak, of misfortune, 
 pain, or crime, to fan it into a flame of pity ; this very love it 
 is that Aristotle understands under the name of philanthropy. 
 We are right in looking upon it as a kind of pity. But neither 
 was Aristotle wrong in giving it a separate name, to distin- 
 guish it, as I have said, from the highest grade of compassion- 
 ate emotions, in which the addition of a probable fear for our- 
 selves converts those emotions into effective forces (Affekt). 
 
 I must here meet another objection. If Aristotle conceived 
 of the effectiveness (Affekt) of pity as being necessarily com- 
 bined with fear for ourselves, what necessity was there for him 
 to make special mention of fear? The word pity already in- 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 157 
 
 eluded it, and it would have been sufficient for him to say: 
 tragedy ought to effect the purification of our passions by 
 exciting our pity. For the addition of the word fear does not 
 alter the sense, and only makes that which he says ambiguous 
 and uncertain. 
 
 I answer: if Aristotle had merely wished to teach us what 
 passions can and ought to be awakened by tragedy, he might 
 indeed have omitted all mention of fear, and would no doubt 
 have done so, for no philosopher was ever more sparing of 
 his words than he. But he wanted to tell us at the same time 
 what passions ought to be purified by means of those which 
 tragedy awakens in us ; and for this purpose he was obliged to 
 include fear. For although, according to him, the effective 
 power (Affekt) of pity cannot but be connected with fear for 
 ourselves both within and without the theatre; although fear 
 is a necessary ingredient of pity; yet the converse does not 
 hold good, and pity for others is no ingredient of fear for our- 
 selves. As soon as the tragedy is over, our pity ceases ; and 
 of all the emotions which we have experienced, none remains 
 save the possible fear which the misfortunes we have pitied 
 have led us to entertain for ourselves. This fear we retain; 
 and whereas before, as an ingredient of pity, it helped to purify 
 our pity, it now helps, as an emotion continuing independently 
 and by itself, to purify itself. Consequently, in order to show 
 that it can and does act thus, Aristotle found it necessary to 
 mention it separately. 
 
 It is undeniable that Aristotle never intended to give a strict 
 logical definition of a tragedy. For instead of confining him- 
 self merely to those properties which are essential to it, he has 
 included several others which are purely accidental to it, and 
 which had been rendered necessary by the customs of his time. 
 But, leaving these aside and reducing the remaining character- 
 istics to their simplest form, we shall arrive at a concise and 
 exact definition, viz., that a tragedy is, in a word, a poem 
 which excites pity. According to its genus, it is the imitation 
 of an action, like the epic and the comedy ; but according to 
 its species, it is the imitation of an action deserving of pity. 
 From these two conceptions all its rules may be clearly de- 
 duced, and even its dramatic form may be determined by them. 
 
 This latter statement may be doubted. At all events I know 
 
15^ LESSINC 
 
 of no critic who ever thought of attempting this. They all 
 look upon the dramatic form of a tragedy as something tra- 
 ditional, which is what it is simply because it happens to be so, 
 and which is left so because it is found to be good. Aristotle 
 alone has discerned the reason of it; but in his definition he 
 assumes it as understood instead of pointing it out clearly. 
 " A tragedy," he tells us, " is the imitation of an action which, 
 not by means of narration, but by means of pity and fear, 
 serves to effect the purification of these and similar passions." 
 These are his actual words. Who could help noticing here 
 the curious antithesis, " not by means of narration, but by 
 means of pity and fear"? Pity and fear are the means em- 
 ployed by tragedy to attain its end, and the narration can only 
 refer to the manner in which these means are employed or 
 avoided. Would not Aristotle, therefore, appear to have 
 omitted something here? Is not the proper antithesis of the 
 narration, namely, the dramatic form, manifestly wanting? 
 Now, how do the translators repair this omission? Some 
 manage carefully to circumvent it; others fill it in, but only 
 with words. They all look upon it as nothing but a carelessly 
 worded sentence, to which they do not consider themselves 
 bound to adhere, provided they convey the philosopher's 
 meaning. Dacier's translation runs as follows : " d'une action 
 — qui, sans le secours de la narration, par le moyen de la com- 
 passion et de la terreur/' etc. Curtius says, " of an action, 
 which not by the poet's narration, but (by the representation 
 of the action itself) by means of terror and pity serves to purify 
 us of the faults in the passions represented." Quite so ! They 
 both say what Aristotle wishes to convey; only they do not 
 say it as he says it. Yet this " as " is of importance ; for the 
 sentence is not really so carelessly worded as one might im- 
 agine. Briefly stated, the matter stands as follows: Aristotle 
 found that pity of necessity demands some present misfortune ; 
 that misfortunes which have happened long ago or may happen 
 in the distant future either fail to awaken our compassion alto- 
 gether or else awaken it to a far lesser degree than would a 
 present misfortune ; that it is consequently necessary to repre- 
 sent the action which is to excite our pity, not as having al- 
 ready occurred, that is to say, in a narrative form, but as actu- 
 ally occurring, that is to say, in a dramatic form. And this 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 159 
 
 fact, that our pity is hardly, if at all, awakened by the narra- 
 tion, but is almost entirely aroused by the actual sight; this 
 fact alone justified him in substituting the thing itself in his 
 definition in place of the form of the thing, because the thing 
 itself is only capable of this one form. Had he considered it 
 possible that our pity could also be awakened by the narration, 
 he would indeed have been guilty of an important omission in 
 saying, " not by means of narration, but by means of pity and 
 fear." Being convinced, however, that in representation, pity 
 and fear can only be excited by means of the dramatic form, 
 he was justified in making that omission for the sake of brevity. 
 I refer my readers to the ninth chapter of the second book of 
 his " Rhetoric." 
 
 And lastly, as regards th^ moral purpose which Aristotle 
 assigns to tragedy and which he thought it necessary to in- 
 clude in his definition of the same, the controversies to which 
 it has given rise, especially in modem times, are well known. 
 Now I am confident of being able to prove that all who have 
 declared themselves against it have failed to grasp Aristotle's 
 meaning. They have invested him with their own particular 
 views, without knowing for certain what his views were. They 
 combat strange notions which originate from themselves, and 
 in refuting the emanations of their own brains they imagine 
 that they incontrovertibly confute the philosopher. I cannot 
 discuss this matter in detail here. But in order not to appear 
 to speak without proof, I will add two observations. 
 
 I. They make Aristotle say: " Tragedy should, by means of 
 terror and pity, purify us from the faults of the passions repre- 
 sented." The passions represented? If, therefore, the hero 
 meets with misfortune owing to his curiosity, his ambition, his 
 love, or his wrath : then our curiosity, ambition, love or wrath, 
 is the passion which the tragedy is to purify? Aristotle 
 thought nothing of the kind. And so these gentlemen go on 
 disputing; their imagination transforms windmills into gi- 
 ants ; confident in their victory, they tilt at them, nor do they 
 pay the slightest heed to Sancho, who has only common-sense 
 to commend him, and who, seated upon his more cautious 
 quadruped, calls after them urging them not to be over-hasty, 
 but to first look carefully around them. Tfav rotovrcov iraOrj' 
 {loLToavy says Aristotle ; and that does not mean " the passions 
 
i6o LESSING 
 
 represented " ; they should have translated it by " these and 
 similar ones," or " the passions awakened." The tolovtcov re- 
 fers solely to the preceding " pity and fear " ; tragedy is to 
 excite our pity and our fear, in order to purify merely these 
 and similar passions, but not all passions without distinction. 
 He, however, uses the word Totovrtovy and not Tovroiv ; he says 
 " these and similar," and not simply " these," in order to show 
 that by the term pity he understands not merely pity properly 
 so called, but all philanthropic feelings in general, and like- 
 wise, by the term fear, not merely the displeasure with which 
 we anticipate an impending misfortune, but also every kind of 
 displeasure which is allied to it, the displeasure at present and 
 past misfortunes, sorrows, and griefs. Thus the pity and the 
 fear excited by tragedy are to purify our pity and our fear in 
 a widened sense ; they are, however, to purify these alone, and 
 no other passions. 
 
 Useful lessons and examples, serving to purify other pas- 
 sions also, may, it is true, be found in tragedy ; but these do not 
 form part of its aim ; it shares them in common with the epic 
 and the comedy, inasmuch as it is a poem, an imitation of an 
 action in general, but not in so far as it is a tragedy, an imita- 
 tion of an action deserving of pity in particular. All species 
 of poetry aim at making us better than we are; it is a la- 
 mentable thing to have to prove this first, and still more so to 
 find even poets who doubt it. But every species of poetry can- 
 not better everything, or at any rate it cannot better all things 
 equally ; but that direction in which each is best capable of ef- 
 fecting improvement, and in which no other species can do so 
 to the same degree, that, and that alone, forms its peculiar aim. 
 
 2. Seeing that Aristotle's opponents were not careful to 
 observe what passions he considered that tragedy should purify 
 in us by means of pity and fear : it was but natural that they 
 should misinterpret the purification itself. At the end of his 
 " Politics," where he speaks of the purification of the passions 
 by means of music, Aristotle promises to give a fuller account 
 of this purification in his " Poetics." " Since, however," says 
 Corneille, "there is no mention of it in this work, the ma- 
 jority of his commentators have arrived at the conclusion that 
 it must have reached us in an incomplete form." No mention 
 of it? For my part, I think that even in what remains to us of 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY i6i 
 
 his " Poetics," be it much or Httle, there can be found all that 
 he deemed it necessary to say on this subject to anyone not 
 altogether unacquainted with his other philosophical writings. 
 Corneille himself noticed one passage which he thought suf- 
 ficiently clear to enable us to discover the manner in which a 
 purification of the passions is effected by tragedy, viz., the 
 passage in which Aristotle says : " Pity demands an innocent 
 sufferer, and fear one of our fellow-creatures." Now this 
 passage is a very important one ; only Corneille made a wrong 
 use of it, and he could hardly help doing so, seeing that his 
 thoughts were running on the purification of the passions in 
 general. " Our pity for a misfortune," he says, " with which 
 we see a fellow-creature afiflicted, awakens a fear in us lest 
 a similar misfortune overtake ourselves; this fear awakens a 
 desire to evade it, and this desire an endeavor to purify, to 
 moderate, to ameliorate, and even to eradicate entirely that 
 passion owing to which the object of our pity meets with the 
 misfortune before our very eyes. For our common-sense tells 
 us that the cause must be removed if the effect is to be 
 avoided." But this reasoning, whereby fear is made the mere 
 instrument with which pity effects a purification of the pas- 
 sions, is false and cannot possibly be what Aristotle wished to 
 convey. For in that case tragedy would be capable of purify- 
 ing all the passions except the very two which Aristotle ex- 
 pressly tells us it ought to purify. It would be capable of puri- 
 fying our wrath, our curiosity, our envy, our ambition, our 
 hatred and our love, accordingly as it is the one or the other 
 of these passions that has brought misfortune upon the object 
 of our pity. Only our pity and our fear would it be unable 
 to purify. For pity and fear are the passions which we, and 
 not the acting personages, feel in tragedy; they are the pas- 
 sions by means of which the acting personages move us ; they 
 are not the passions which lead to their own misfortune. I 
 am, of course, quite aware that there might be a play in which 
 they perform both functions. But I have never yet come 
 across one in which the suffering person was plunged into mis- 
 fortune by means of misconceived pity or misconceived fear. 
 And yet such a play would be the only one embodying, accord- 
 ing to Corneille's interpretation, the ideas which Aristotle ap- 
 plied to all tragedies ; and even there those ideas would not be 
 II 
 
i62 LESSING 
 
 carried into practice in the way demanded by the latter. Such 
 a play would form, as it were, the point at which two inclined 
 straight lines intersect never to meet again in all eternity. 
 Dacier could not go so far wrong in interpreting Aristotle's 
 meaning. He was bound to pay more attention to the words 
 of his author, and these distinctly state that our pity and our 
 fear are to be purified by the pity and the fear awakened by 
 tragedy. But thinking, no doubt, that the purpose of tragedy 
 would be very insignificant if it were merely confined to these 
 limitations, he allowed himself to be persuaded, by Corneille's 
 explanation, to assign to it a similar purification of all the other 
 passions. And when Corneille, for his part, denied this and 
 proved by examples that he held it to be a beautiful thought 
 rather than a thing generally attainable, Dacier had to accept 
 these same examples, and thus found himself in such straits 
 that he was forced to make the most violent twists and turns 
 to extricate himself and his Aristotle. I say his Aristotle ; for 
 the real one stands in no need of such twists and turns. To 
 repeat it once again, the latter thought of no other passions 
 which should be purified in tragedy by means of pity and fear, 
 save only pity and fear themselves ; and it was a matter of in- 
 difference to him whether a tragedy contributed much or little 
 to the purification of the rest of the passions. Dacier should 
 have confined himself to that purification of which Aristotle 
 speaks ; but in that case he would certainly have had to com- 
 bine it with a broader conception. " It is not difficult to ex- 
 plain," he tells us, " how tragedy excites pity and fear in order 
 to purify pity and fear. It excites these passions by displaying 
 to us the misfortunes into which our fellow-creatures have 
 been plunged through unpremeditated faults; and it purifies 
 them by acquainting us with these misfortunes and by teaching 
 us neither to fear them too much, nor to be too much affected 
 by them, if they should happen to ourselves. It enables per- 
 sons to bear the most untoward accidents bravely, and causes 
 the most wretched to deem themselves fortunate when they 
 compare their woes with the still greater ones represented in 
 tragedy. For in what condition could a man be found who, 
 on beholding an CEdipus, a Philoctetes, or an Orestes, would 
 not confess that all the evils which he has to suffer are as noth- 
 ing when compared to those which afflict these men ? " This 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 163 
 
 is quite true; and the explanation cannot have cost Dacier 
 much reflection. He found it almost word for word in one of 
 the Stoics who always had an eye to apathy. Without urging 
 that the feeling of our own woe does not leave much room for 
 pity, and that consequently in the case of a sufferer whose pity 
 cannot be awakened, the purification or diminution of his sor- 
 row cannot be brought about by pity: I will allow all his re- 
 marks to hold good. I would only ask: to what do all his 
 statements amount? Has he said anything further than that 
 pity purifies our fear? Certainly not; and yet this is but a 
 quarter of what Aristotle intends to convey. For when the 
 latter asserts that tragedy excites pity and fear in order to 
 purify pity and fear, surely anyone can see that this means far 
 more than Dacier has thought jt advisable to state. Accord- 
 ing to the different combinations of these various conceptions, 
 if it is attempted to give the entire meaning of Aristotle, it 
 must be shown successively (i) how tragic pity can, and in 
 reality does, purify our pity ; (2) how tragic fear purifies our 
 fear ; (3) how tragic pity purifies our fear ; and (4) how tragic 
 fear purifies our pity. Now Dacier confined himself merely to 
 the third combination, and even this one he did not treat care- 
 fully, but left it only half explained. For if an attempt is made 
 to arrive at a correct and complete conception of the Aristo- 
 telian doctrine of the purification of the passions, it will be 
 found that each of the four combinations above mentioned in- 
 cludes in it a two-fold contingency, which may be briefly stated 
 as follows. Since the purification rests upon nothing else but 
 the transformation of passions into virtuous habits, and since, 
 according to our philosopher, every virtue is situated midway 
 between two extremes ; it follows that tragedy, if it is to trans- 
 form our pity into a virtue, must be able to purify us from the 
 two extremes of pity; the same applies in the case of fear. 
 Tragic pity must not only purify the soul of him who feels too 
 much pity, but also of him who feels too little. Tragic fear 
 must not only purify the soul of him who fears no manner of 
 misfortune, but also of him who is afraid of every misfortune, 
 however distant and improbable it may be. In the same way, 
 tragic pity, in regard to fear, must steer between this too much 
 and this too little ; and conversely, tragic fear in regard to pity. 
 Dacier, as I have said, has only shown how tragic pity may 
 
i64 LESSING 
 
 moderate excessive fear, but not how its entire absence may 
 be remedied, nor how it may be wholesomely increased in him 
 who has too little of it ; not to mention that he has omitted to 
 say anything of the rest. Those who came after him have not 
 in the least repaired his omissions; but in order to settle the 
 dispute concerning the utility of tragedy in their own minds, 
 they have drawn matters into it which apply to poetry in gen- 
 eral, but in nowise to tragedy as such in particular ; they have 
 maintained, for instance, that tragedy is intended to feed and 
 strengthen the feelings of humanity, to inculcate a love of vir- 
 tue, a hatred of vice, and so on f but, my good sir, what poem 
 should not do the same ? Then if this is the intention of every 
 poem, it cannot form the distinctive feature of tragedy; and 
 this cannot therefore be what we were seeking. 
 
 To what end the hard work of dramatic form ? Why build 
 a theatre, disguise men and women, burden their memories, 
 and assemble the whole town in one place, if I intend my work 
 and its representation to produce nothing more than some of 
 those emotions which could be as well produced by any good 
 story that everyone could read at home for himself? 
 
 The dramatic form is the only one in which pity and fear 
 may be aroused ; at all events in no other form can these pas- 
 sions be awakened to such a degree. And yet people prefer to 
 awaken in it all other emotions rather than these, and to use 
 it for every other purpose than the one for which it is pre- 
 eminently adapted. 
 
 The public is satisfied ; this is well and yet not well. One 
 has no special longing for the food with which one is bound 
 to put up. 
 
 It is well known how intent the Greeks and the Romans were 
 upon their plays, especially the former upon their tragedies. 
 What coldness and indifference our public, on the other hand, 
 show towards the theatre! To what must we attribute this 
 difference, if it be not to the fact that the Greeks felt themselves 
 animated by their stage with such intense and extraordinary 
 emotions that they could hardly await the moment to experi- 
 ence them again and again; whereas we, on the other hand, 
 derive such feeble impressions from our stage that we rarely 
 
 « Curtius, in his " Dissertation upon the Aims of Tragedy," appended to 
 Aristotle's " Poetics." 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 165 
 
 consider it worth the time and the money to procure them? 
 Most of us go to the theatre almost invariably for the sake of 
 satisfying our curiosity or of killing time, for the sake of fash- 
 ion or of company, from a desire to see and be seen ; very few 
 of us, and those but seldom, go from any other motive. 
 
 When I say we, our public, our stage, I do not mean the 
 Germans only. We Germans candidly admit that we as yet 
 possess no theatre. What many of our critics, who join us in 
 this confession and who are great admirers of the French the- 
 atre, think when they admit it, I am unable to say. But I know 
 what my own views on the matter are. I am of opinion that 
 not only we Germans, but also those who boast of having pos- 
 sessed a theatre for a century already, nay more, who brag of 
 having the best theatre in all Europe — that even the French 
 themselves have as yet no theatre. 
 
 At all events, they have no tragic one. The impressions pro- 
 duced by French tragedy are absolutely cold and feeble. Hear 
 what a Frenchman himself has to say of them. 
 
 " The surpassing beauties of our theatre," says M. de Vol- 
 taire, " were combined with a hidden fault which had escaped 
 notice because the public could not of its own accord have any 
 higher ideas than those imparted to it by the models of the 
 great masters. Saint-Evremond has alone discovered this fault ; 
 he says that our plays do not make a sufficient impression, that 
 that which should excite pity only awakens tenderness, that 
 gentle emotion takes the place of agitation, and surprise that of 
 terror ; that our feelings, in short, do not attain a sufficient de- 
 gree of intensity. It cannot be denied that Saint-Evremond 
 has laid his finger upon the secret sore of the French theatre. 
 It may be urged that Saint-Evremond was the author of a 
 wretched comedy, * Sir Politic Wouldbe,' and of another equally 
 wretched one called * The Operas ' ; that his small society verses 
 are the weakest and most trivial of their kind ; and that he was 
 nothing but a poetaster. One may not have a spark of genius, 
 and yet possess much wit and taste. Now he had unquestion- 
 ably a very refined taste ; this is borne out by the fact that he 
 divined the true reason why most of our plays are so tame and 
 cold. We have always lacked a certain degree of warmth; 
 everything else we possessed." 
 
 In other words: we possessed everything excepting only 
 
i66 LESSING 
 
 that which we most needed ; our tragedies were excellent, but 
 for the fact that they were not tragedies at all. And why were 
 they not tragedies? 
 
 " This coldness," Voltaire continues, " this monotonous 
 tameness, arose in part from the petty spirit of gallantry which 
 was at that time so prevalent amongst our courtiers, and which 
 transformed a tragedy into a series of amorous dialogues after 
 the taste of Cyrus and Clelie. The only plays that formed an 
 exception to this rule consisted of lengthy political tirades, such 
 as spoilt Sertorius, made Otho cold, Surena and Attila wretched. 
 There was yet another cause that prevented the display of high 
 pathos upon our stage and hindered the action from becoming 
 truly tragic, and that was the narrow, poorly-constructed the- 
 atre with its paltry decorations. What room was there for ac- 
 tion upon a stage composed of a few dozen boards, which was 
 moreover filled with spectators? How could the eyes of the 
 latter be captivated, dazzled and illuded, by any display of pomp 
 and accessories ? How could great tragic actions be performed 
 there ? How could the poet's imagination be allowed free play ? 
 The pieces had to consist of lengthy descriptions, so that they 
 resembled dialogues rather than plays. Every actor was bent 
 upon shining in a long monologue, and such plays as did not 
 contain any were rejected. In this form all theatrical action 
 disappeared, as did also all intense display of the passions, all 
 powerful pictures of human misery, all harrowing traits which 
 could pierce to the very soul ; the spectator's heart, instead of 
 being rent asunder, was scarcely touched." 
 
 The first reason is a perfectly correct one. Gallantry and 
 politics always leave a cold impression; and ^ no poet has ever 
 yet succeeded in arousing pity and fear by means of them. The 
 former make us imagine that we hear only the fat or the school- 
 master ; the latter would have us hear nothing but the human 
 being. 
 
 But how about the second reason ? Can it be possible that the 
 absence of a spacious theatre and of good scenery should have 
 exercised such an influence upon the genius of the poet? Is 
 it true that every tragic plot requires pomp and accessories? 
 Or should not the poet rather construct his play in such a man- 
 ner that it could produce its full effect even without these ad- 
 ditions ? 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 167 
 
 He certainly should do so, according to Aristotle. " Fear 
 and pity," says the philosopher, " may be awakened by appeal- 
 ing to the organs of sight ; but they can also proceed from the 
 connection of the events themselves ; the latter is the more 
 excellent method and that adopted by the best poets. For the 
 story must be so constructed that it awakens pity and fear in him 
 who merely listens to the relation of its events; such is the 
 story of GEdipus, which only requires to be heard to arouse the 
 above-mentioned passions. To produce this effect by means of 
 the organs of sight, less art is required; and this should be 
 left to the person who undertakes the representation of the 
 play." 
 
 Shakespeare's plays are said to afford a curious proof of the 
 dispensableness of scenic decorations. What plays, it is asked, 
 stand more in need of the whole art of the decorator than these, 
 with their constant interruptions and changes of scene? Yet 
 there was a time when the stages on which they were per- 
 formed consisted of nothing but a curtain of some coarse ma- 
 terial, which, when drawn up, disclosed the walls, which were 
 quite bare or covered, at most, with matting or tapestry. Here 
 there was nothing save the imagination to assist the actors in 
 interpreting the piece and the spectators in comprehending it; 
 yet, in spite of this, it is maintained that Shakespeare's plays 
 were in those days more intelligible without scenery than they 
 afterwards were with it.'^ 
 
 If, then, the poet need not trouble himself about scenery; 
 and if the same, even in cases where it would seem necessary, 
 can be omitted without essentially detracting from his play: 
 why should the fact of the French poets not having given us 
 more touching plays be ascribed to the narrow and unfavorable 
 construction of the theatre? The fault did not He with the 
 theatre ; it lay with themselves. 
 
 And this is confirmed by experience. For to-day the French 
 
 ' Gibber's " Lives of the Poets of changes in which the poets of those 
 
 Great Britain and Ireland," vol. ii. pp. times freely indulged themselves, there 
 
 78, 79: — " Some have insinuated that fine was nothing to help the spectator's un- 
 
 scenes proved the ruin of acting. In derstanding, or to assist the actor's per- 
 
 the reign of Charles I there was nothing formance, but bare imagination. The 
 
 more than a curtain of very coarse stuff, spirit and judgment of the actors sup- 
 
 upon the drawing up of which the stage plied all deficiencies and made, as some 
 
 appeared, either with bare walls on the would insinuate, plays more intelligible 
 
 sides, coarsely matted, or covered with without scenes than they afterwards 
 
 tapestry; so that for the place original- were with them." 
 ly represented, and all the successive 
 
1 68 LESSING 
 
 have a finer and more spacious stage; the spectators are no 
 longer allowed upon it ; the wings are kept clear ; the decora- 
 tor has free hands and can paint and construct whatever the 
 poet requires of him. Yet where are those more passionate 
 plays that one might have expected to find ? Does M. de Vol- 
 taire flatter himself that his " Semiramis " is one of them ? 
 There we have pomp and accessories in plenty, and a ghost into 
 the bargain ; and notwithstanding all this, I know of no colder 
 play than his " Semiramis." 
 
 Now shall I be taken to mean by all this that no Frenchman 
 is capable of writing a really passionate tragedy; that the 
 volatile spirit of that nation is unequal to the task ? I should be 
 ashamed of entertaining such an opinion. Germany has not so 
 far made herself ridiculous by any Bouhours; and I, for my 
 part, have not the least inclination for the part. I am convinced 
 that no nation in the world has been specially endowed with 
 any mental gift superior to that of other nations. We often 
 hear of the shrewd Englishman, the witty Frenchman. But 
 who made this distinction? Certainly not Nature, for she dis- 
 tributes all things equally amongst all. There are as many 
 witty Englishmen as witty Frenchmen, and as many shrewd 
 Frenchmen as shrewd Englishmen, whilst the bulk of the peo- 
 ple is neither one nor the other. 
 
 What, then, do I mean to convey? I merely want to say 
 that the French have not yet got that which they might very 
 well have — viz., true tragedy. And why have they not got it 
 yet ? In order to hit upon the correct reason, it v/ould have been 
 necessary for Voltaire to know himself a great deal better. 
 
 I mean that they have not got it because they believe that 
 they have had it for a long time. And they are certainly 
 strengthened in this belief by a quality which they possess be- 
 yond all other nations, but which is not a gift of nature — 
 namely, their vanity. 
 
 As with single individuals, so it is with nations. Gottsched 
 (it will readily be guessed why I mention him here) was in his 
 young days held to be a poet, because at that time people did 
 not know the difference between a mere versifier and a poet. 
 Philosophy and criticism in due course made the distinction 
 clear ; and if Gottsched had but tried to keep abreast with the 
 times, if he had but developed and rectified his ideas and his 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 169 
 
 taste according to the ideas and the taste of the age, the versifier 
 might perhaps have grown into a poet. But having so often 
 heard himself styled the greatest poet, and being persuaded by 
 his vanity that such was really the case, he neglected to do this. 
 He could not possibly acquire what he already believed himself 
 to possess ; and the older he grew, the more obstinately and un- 
 blushingly he asserted his imagined superiority. 
 
 The same thing, it appears to me, has happened to the French. 
 No sooner had Corneille raised their theatre a little out of the 
 barbarous conditions in which he found it than they already 
 deemed it close to perfection. Racine appeared to them to add 
 the finishing touch ; and from that time forth they never asked 
 themselves for one moment (nor, in fact, had they ever done 
 so) whether it was possible for any tragic poet to be more 
 pathetic, more passionate, than Corneille and Racine. They 
 took it for granted that such a thing was impossible, and all 
 their succeeding poets had to confine their zeal to imitating the 
 one or the other as closely as possible. For a hundred years 
 they have thus deceived themselves and partly also their neigh- 
 bors. And now let some one tell them so, and see what they 
 will say! 
 
 Of the two, Corneille has done the greater harm and exer- 
 cised the more baneful influence upon their tragic poets. For 
 Racine deceived them by his example only, but Corneille by his 
 example and doctrines together. 
 
 The latter especially, which were accepted as oracles by the 
 whole nation (with the exception of one or two pedants, a 
 Hedelin, a Dacier, who, however, often did not themselves know 
 what they wanted) and followed by all subsequent poets, have 
 failed to produce anything but the most shallow, vapid, and 
 untragical stuff. This I would undertake to prove piece by 
 piece. 
 
 The rules of Aristotle are well calculated to produce the 
 highest tragic effect. What does Corneille do with them ? He 
 brings them forward falsely and inaccurately ; and finding them 
 still too severe, he endeavors to discover in one or the other 
 quelque moderation, quelque favorable interpretation, and 
 weakens and mutilates, misinterprets and frustrates every rule. 
 And why? Pour n'etre pas obliges de condamner beaucoup de 
 poemes que nous avons vu reussir sur nos theatres; " so as not 
 
lyo LESSING 
 
 to be obliged to condemn many plays which have met with suc- 
 cess upon our stage." A fine reason ! 
 
 I will rapidly touch upon the chief points. Some of them I 
 have already noticed; but for the sake of consistency I must 
 reiterate them. 
 
 1. Aristotle says: tragedy should excite pity and fear. Cor- 
 neille says : yes, but not necessarily both at the same time ; we 
 are quite satisfied with either one or the other, now with pity 
 without fear, now with fear without pity. For else, where 
 should I, the great Corneille, be with my Rodogune and my 
 Chimene? These good children arouse pity, very great pity, 
 but hardly fear. Then again, where should I be, with my Cleo- 
 patra, my Prusias, my Phocas? Who can feel any pity for 
 these wretches ? And yet they awaken fear. So thought Cor- 
 neille, and the French thought it after him. 
 
 2. Aristotle says : tragedy should excite pity and fear ; that 
 is to say, both by means of one and the same person. Corneille 
 says : if this can be so arranged, very good. But it is not ab- 
 solutely necessary, and one would be perfectly justified in em- 
 ploying several persons to produce these two feelings, as I have 
 done in my " Rodogune." Thus did Corneille, and the French 
 follow his example. 
 
 3. Aristotle says : through the pity and the fear which are 
 awakened by tragedy, our pity and our fear, and all our allied 
 feelings, ought to be purified. Corneille knows nothing at all 
 of this, and imagines that Aristotle meant to say that tragedy 
 awakens our pity in order to awaken our fear, and that the 
 latter will serve to purify in us those passions through which 
 the object of our pity has been plunged into misfortune. I will 
 not discuss the value of this aim ; suffice it to say that it does 
 not belong to Aristotle, and that, as Corneille assigned to his 
 tragedies an entirely different aim, they could not but become 
 entirely different works from those whence Aristotle had ab- 
 stracted his theory ; they had needs to become tragedies which 
 were no true tragedies. And this applies not only to his plays, 
 but to all the French tragedies, for their authors did not set 
 themselves to follow the lines laid down by Aristotle, but those 
 laid down by Corneille. I have already said that Dacier held 
 that both aims could be combined ; but by this very combination 
 the former is weakened, and the tragedy falls short of its full 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 171 
 
 effect. Dacier^s conception of the former was, moreover, as I 
 have shown, a very imperfect one, and it was therefore no 
 wonder that he imagined that the French tragedies of his time 
 fulfilled the former aim rather than the latter. " Our tragedy," 
 he says, " is fairly successful in the former aim of exciting and 
 purifying pity and fear. But it rarely succeeds in the latter one, 
 though that is the more important, and it purifies the other pas- 
 sions but little, or, since it ordinarily contains nothing but love- 
 intrigues, if it purified any one of them, it would be the passion 
 of love alone, whence it may be inferred that it is of very small 
 value." ^ Now the truth is exactly the contrary. There are 
 more French tragedies that do justice to the second aim than to 
 the first. I know of several French plays which clearly expose 
 the hurtful consequences resulting from one passion or another, 
 and from which many good le'ssons may be gathered in regard 
 to such a passion ; but I know of none that excite my pity to 
 the extent to which tragedy ought to excite it, and to which 
 several Greek and English plays have conclusively shown me 
 that tragedy can excite it. Some of the French tragedies are 
 very fine and instructive works, and, in my opinion, very praise- 
 worthy; only they are not tragedies. Their authors cannot 
 have been other than very clever men ; some of them deserve no 
 mean rank among the poets : only they are not tragic poets ; 
 their Corneille and Racine, their Crebillon and Voltaire, have 
 little or nothing of that which makes Sophocles a Sophocles, 
 Euripides a Euripides, and Shakespeare a Shakespeare. These 
 latter are seldom at variance with the essential demands of Ar- 
 istotle ; the former, on the contrary, are often so. For to pro- 
 ceed 
 
 4. Aristotle says: in tragedy a good man must not be 
 plunged into misfortune without any fault on his part ; for this 
 would be too terrible. '' Precisely," says Corneille, " such an 
 event awakens more displeasure and hatred for him who causes 
 the misfortune, than pity for him who is afflicted byit. The former 
 feeling, which should not be the proper effect of tragedy, would 
 consequently, unless treated with very great skill, stifle the 
 latter feeling, which is the one that tragedy ought to produce. 
 The spectator would go away dissatisfied, because too much 
 wrath would be mingled with his pity, which latter would have 
 
 8 " Poet. d'Arist.," chap, vi., Rem. 8. 
 
172 
 
 LESSING 
 
 satisfied him, if he could but have remained free from any 
 other feeHngs. But," Corneille hastens to add ; for he always 
 has a " but " to follow—" but if this cause is removed ; if the 
 poet constructs his play in such a way that the virtuous man 
 who suffers can excite more pity for himself than hatred for 
 him who causes his suffering; what then? Why, then," he 
 goes on to say, " I am of the opinion that no one should hesitate 
 to represent even the most virtuous of men suffering upon the 
 stage." I am at a loss to understand how anyone can deal with 
 the philosopher in such a slipshod manner, and profess to un- 
 derstand him, whilst imputing opinions to him which he has 
 never held. " A totally unmerited misfortune, which overtakes 
 a good man," says Aristotle, " is not suitable for tragedy, be- 
 cause it is terrible." This " because," which leads to the cause, 
 is changed by Corneille into " in so far as," merely a certain 
 condition under which it ceases to be tragic. Aristotle says: 
 it is altogether terrible, and for that very reason untragical. 
 But Corneille says: it is untragical in so far as it is terrible. 
 This terribleness is ascribed by Aristotle to the nature of the 
 misfortune itself ; but Corneille sets it down to the displeasure 
 which it awakens towards him who is the cause of it. He does 
 not, or will not, see that this terribleness is something quite 
 different from this displeasure, and that even if the latter were 
 entirely absent, the former might nevertheless be experienced 
 to its fullest extent: it is enough for him that in the first place 
 several of his plays seem to be justified by this quid pro quo; 
 plays, which he deems so little at variance with the rules of Ar- 
 istotle, that he actually has the boldness to imagine that, if 
 Aristotle had but been acquainted with such plays, he would 
 have modified his doctrines accordingly and gathered from 
 them various methods by which the misfortune of a virtuous 
 man may yet be rendered a fitting subject for tragedy. " En 
 void," he says, " deux ou trois manieres, que peut-etre Aristote 
 n'a su prevoir, parcequ'on n'en voyait pas d'exemples sur les 
 theatres de son temps." And whose are these examples? 
 Whose else but his own? And what are those two or three 
 methods ? We will see at once. " The first," he says, " consists 
 in representing a very virtuous person as being persecuted by 
 a very vicious one, and yet escaping from his peril, in such a 
 way that the vicious person is himself ensnared by it. This is 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 173 
 
 the case in * Rodogune ' and in * Heraclius ' ; and it would 
 have been quite intolerable had Antiochus and Rodogune per- 
 ished in the first-mentioned play, and Heraclius, Pulcheria and 
 Martian in the second, and Cleopatra and Phocas been left to 
 triumph. The sufferings of the former persons awaken a feel- 
 ing of pity which our hatred for their persecutors is incapable 
 of stifling, for we keep on hoping that some happy circum- 
 stance may intervene to save them from ruin." It is absurd of 
 Corneille to try and make out that Aristotle was unacquainted 
 with this method. On the contrary, he was so well acquainted 
 with it that, if he did not condemn it altogether, he at any rate 
 explicitly declared it to be more suitable for comedy than for 
 tragedy. How could Corneille have forgotten this? But so it 
 is with all who start by assurning their cause to be the cause 
 of truth. Moreover, strictly speaking, this method does not 
 apply to the case in point at all. For it would not have the effect 
 of rendering the virtuous man unfortunate, but would merely 
 lead him along the road to misfortune, and this of itself might 
 perhaps arouse sympathetic anxiety on his behalf, but it would 
 not be terrible. 
 
 Now for the second method. " It may also happen," says 
 Corneille, " that a very virtuous man is persecuted and ruined 
 at the instigation of another who is not so vicious as to wholly 
 deserve our displeasure, and whose persecution of the virtuous 
 man reveals more weakness than wickedness. When Felix 
 causes the downfall of his son-in-law Polyeucte, he is prompted 
 not so much by indignant rage against the Christians, which 
 would render him detestable in our eyes, as by servile fear, which 
 hinders him from saving him in the presence of Severus, by 
 whose hatred and vengeance he is awed. Some displeasure will 
 doubtless be awakened against Felix; his conduct will be 
 blamed ; yet this displeasure will not outweigh the pity which 
 we entertain for Polyeucte, nor will it prevent his wonderful 
 conversion at the end of the play from reinstating him in the 
 good graces of the spectators." I suppose there have been 
 bunglers in tragedy at all times and even in Athens. Why then 
 ; should not Aristotle have been acquainted with a play of similar 
 construction, from which he could draw the same conclusions 
 as Corneille? What nonsense! In plays of this kind, timid, 
 vacillating and undecided characters, like Felix, are but an ad- 
 
174 
 
 LESSING 
 
 ditional fault, for they lend them a certain coldness and repul- 
 siveness on the one hand, without in the least detracting from 
 their terribleness on the other. For, as already mentioned, the 
 terrible does not consist in the displeasure or aversion which 
 they excite, but in the misfortune itself which afflicts the inno- 
 cent sufferers. The misfortune is in any case equally unde- 
 served, be the persecutors wicked or weak, be their conduct 
 premeditated or unpremeditated. The thought that there may 
 be persons who, from no fault of their own, meet with mis- 
 fortunes, is in itself a terrible one. And whereas the pagans 
 tried to banish this terrible thought as much as possible, we 
 endeavor to retain it? We try to derive pleasure from plays 
 that confirm it ? We, whom religion and common-sense should 
 have convinced that it is as erroneous as it is blasphemous ? 
 
 The same would no doubt apply to the third method, had not 
 Corneille himself forgotten to state which this is. 
 
 5. Aristotle's remarks upon the unfitness of an entirely vici- 
 ous person to form a tragic hero, inasmuch as his misfortunes 
 would awaken neither pity nor fear, are likewise modified by 
 Corneille. Pity, he tells us, a person of that sort could not 
 excite, but he might very well arouse fear. For although none 
 of the spectators deemed themselves capable of acquiring his 
 vices, and consequently liable to suffer his misfortune in its en- 
 tirety ; yet each one of them might be the victim of some fault 
 more or less akin to one or other of these vices, and would 
 in that case derive a salutary corrective from a fear of its con- 
 sequences, which, though proportionately less serious, would 
 still be unfortunate. But this argument is based upon the false 
 conception which Corneille formed of fear and of the purifica- 
 tion of those passions which are awakened by tragedy. It con- 
 tradicts itself; for, as I have already pointed out, the excita- 
 tion of pity is inseparable from the excitation of fear, and if it 
 were possible for a villain to excite our fear, he must of neces- 
 sity excite our pity also. But since, as Corneille himself admits, 
 he cannot do the latter, he can neither do the former ; and he 
 therefore does not serve in the least to fulfil the aim of tragedy. 
 Aristotle even considers him less fitted to do so than the en- 
 tirely virtuous man ; for he clearly maintains that, failing a hero 
 who combines good and bad qualities equally, it is better to 
 choose a good one than a bad one. The reason is very simple ; 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 175 
 
 a man may be very good, and yet possess more faults than one 
 or commit more errors than one, whereby he is plunged into an 
 immeasurable misfortune which fills us with pity and sorrow, 
 without being in the least terrible, because it is the natural 
 consequence of his errors. What Dubos ^ says about the em- 
 ployment of vicious persons in tragedy is not what Corneille 
 means. Dubos would only allow them as subsidiary charac- 
 ters, as merely instrumental in rendering the chief characters 
 less culpable by serving as foils to them. Corneille, on the other 
 hand, would make them the main objects of interest, as he has 
 shown us in " Rodogune " ; and it is the latter which is at vari- 
 ance with the aim of tragedy, not the former. Dubos adds the 
 very true remark that the misfortunes of these subsidiary vil- 
 lains make no impression upon us. " In ' Britannicus,' " he 
 says, " we scarcely notice the Meath of Narcissus." And for 
 this very reason the poet should avoid these characters as far as 
 possible. For if their misfortunes do not directly further the 
 aim of tragedy; if they are merely employed by the poet as 
 instruments to enable him the better to achieve that aim in other 
 characters: it cannot be denied that a play would be all the 
 better, if it produced the same effect without their aid. The 
 simpler a machine, the fewer its springs and wheels and 
 weights, the more perfect it will be. 
 
 6. And lastly, as regards the misconception of the first and 
 most essential quality demanded by Aristotle in the moral char- 
 acter of tragic personages. Their morals must be good. 
 " Good ? " says Corneille. " Why, if good here means the same 
 as virtuous, what becomes of the majority of ancient and 
 modern tragedies which abound in characters, which if not ab- 
 solutely bad and vicious, are yet endowed with a weakness that 
 is hardly compatible with virtue ? " He is especially alarmed 
 for the safety of Cleopatra in his " Rodogune." So he refuses 
 to regard the goodness demanded by Aristotle as moral good- 
 ness ; it must be some other kind of goodness, compatible with 
 moral badness as well as with moral goodness. But what Aris- 
 totle means is purely moral goodness; only virtuous persons 
 and persons who, under certain circumstances, display moral 
 virtue, are not one and the same thing to him. Corneille, in 
 short, connects the word " moral " with an entirely false idea, 
 
 ^ " Reflexions Critiques sur la Poesie et la Peinture," t. i., sec. xv. 
 
176 LESSING 
 
 and he has altogether failed to grasp the proseresis, through 
 which alone, according to our philosopher, free actions become 
 moral or immoral. I cannot here furnish an exhaustive proof 
 of any assertion ; in order to clearly understand it, one must be 
 familiar with the connection and syllogistic sequence of all the 
 ideas propounded by the Greek critic. I will therefore defer 
 it until another occasion ; all that I have to show at present is 
 that Corneille, having missed the proper path, has chosen a 
 very disastrous one instead. The latter leads him to the fol- 
 lowing conclusion: that by moral goodness Aristotle under- 
 stood the brilliant and lofty character of some inclination, 
 whether praiseworthy or reprehensible, which might either be 
 the peculiar attribute of the person introduced, or else be skil- 
 fully imparted to that person ; le caractere brillant et Sieve d'une 
 habitude vertiieuse ou criminelle, selon qu'elle est propre et con- 
 venable a la personne qu'on intra duit. " Cleopatra in * Rodo- 
 gune,' " he says, " is a thoroughly bad person ; there is no 
 murder that she fears to commit, if it but serve to maintain her 
 upon the throne, which is dearer to her than anything else in 
 the world ; so keen is her love of dominion. But all her crimes 
 are connected with a certain greatness of soul, which is of itself 
 so impressive that, whilst we condemn her actions, we cannot 
 but admire the source from which they originate. I would say 
 the same thing of the Liar. Lying is unquestionably a vicious 
 habit ; but Dorante gives vent to his lies with such presence of 
 mind, with such vivacity, that this defect almost appeals in his 
 favor, and the spectators are bound to admit that the ability to 
 tell such lies is a vice whereof no fool could be capable." Cor- 
 neille could, indeed, hardly have arrived at a more wretched 
 conclusion ! Carry it into execution and you will find that all 
 the truth, the illusion and the moral benefit of tragedy vanish 
 entirely. For virtue, which is ever modest and simple, is, by 
 assuming that brilliant character, rendered vain and romantic, 
 whilst vice is thereby shrouded with a certain glamour which 
 always dazzles us, from whichever point of view we regard it. 
 It is absurd to try to employ the mere evil consequences of a 
 vice as a deterrent, if its inner hideousness is kept out of sight. 
 The consequences are accidental, and experience shows us that 
 they are as often favorable as unfavorable. This refers to the 
 purification of the passions, as understood by Corneille. As I 
 
ARISTOTLE AND TRAGEDY 
 
 177 
 
 imagine it, as Aristotle explained it, it has nothing whatever to 
 do with that deceptive brilliance. The false foil which is by 
 this means given to vice causes us to recognize perfections 
 where none exist, and to feel pity where we should feel none. 
 Dacier, it is true, has already contradicted this explanation, but 
 for less cogent reasons; and the one which he, together with 
 Pere Le Bossu, adopts in its place, is not far from being quite 
 as disadvantageous to the poetical perfection of a play. For, 
 according to him, the statement, that the morals should be good, 
 means no more than that they should be clearly defined, qu'elles 
 soient bien marquees. This is a rule which, if correctly taken, 
 is, in its proper place, worthy of careful attention on the part 
 of the dramatist. From the French models it would unfortu- 
 nately appear that clearly defined has been taken to mean the 
 same as strongly defined. The expression has been over- 
 charged, pressure added to pressure, until the persons charac- 
 terized have been transformed into personified characters, and 
 vicious or virtuous human beings into haggard skeletons of vice 
 or virtue. 
 
 12 
 
PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE 
 
 ART OF LIFE AND HEALING 
 
 ART OF THE SOUL 
 
 ON THE RELATION OF THE AGREE 
 ABLE AND THE BEAUTIFUL 
 TO THE USEFUL 
 
 BY 
 
 CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND 
 
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND 
 1733— 1813 
 
 Like Lessing, Christopher Martin Wieland was the son of a clergy- 
 man. Born in the village of Oberholzheim, in Wiirtemberg, in the 
 year 1733, he displayed at an early age a remarkable aptitude for poetry. 
 Some of his youthful productions, written soon after he left the Uni- 
 versity of Tiibingen, awakened Bodmer's interest in him. The Swiss 
 poet and critic invited his young protege to Zurich, where he re- 
 mained eight years. During the next decade of the poet's life there 
 were many changes of occupation and residence. But better things 
 were in store for him. In 1769 he was appointed to the chair of 
 philosophy and literature at the University of Erfurt. Three years 
 later he became tutor to the sons of the Duchess Amalia of Saxe- 
 Weimar. It was not long, however, before he was enabled to devote 
 himself entirely to literary pursuits, and thus the great wish of his life 
 had become a reality. Henceforth he lived at Weimar, an intimate 
 companion of the great German poets of his time. He died there in 
 1813, at the age of eighty. 
 
 Wieland was a very prolific writer. In addition to his translations 
 from Shakespeare, Horace, Lucian, and Cicero, we possess more than 
 fifty volumes of writings from his own pen. It cannot be said of him 
 that all his literary productions are of genuine or equal merit. Some 
 have become classical, others are little read now, and almost for- 
 gotten. We find in his works a great diversity in form as well as in 
 spirit. He possessed a marked aptitude for versification, as his poetic 
 writings abundantly prove. The spiritual changes he underwent, the 
 progressive views of life he acquired with age and different surround- 
 ings are equally manifest in his works. At Zurich the young Wieland 
 was religiously inclined, puritanical, and ascetic. ^ Later in life, and un- 
 der more liberal influences, associated with men in touch and sympathy 
 with the Encyclopaedists, he went to the other extreme, and his spiritual 
 emancipation was complete. 
 
 We have already indicated the character of his earlier works. His 
 " Agathon," however, published in 1767, his " Musarion," and a num- 
 ber of other poetical works of less importance, but of great popularity 
 among his contemporaries, placed Wieland at the head of the national 
 literature of his day. Immediately upon his arrival at Weimar he 
 established a monthly literary periodical, " The German Mercury," 
 which he continued to edit for thirty-seven years, and this enterprise 
 greatly increased his literary influence. It was in the pages of this 
 publication that many of his prose writings, chiefly literary and philo- 
 sophical essays, first appeared, including his essay on " Philosophy 
 Considered as the Art of Life," and that " On the Relation of the 
 Agreeable and the Beautiful to the Useful." Of Wieland's later works 
 the most important is his romantic epic " Oberon," now regarded as 
 the best of his productions. 
 
 Both in prose and verse Wieland was a master of literary composi- 
 tion, and most of the younger writers of his day learned much from 
 the clearness, ease, and grace of his style. If Lessing gave precision 
 to modern German prose, Wieland gave it elegance and fluency. His 
 work, at once graceful and fanciful, is pervaded by a quaint humor 
 and delicate irony that give it a lasting charm.^ Wieland holds an 
 important and even illustrious place in German literature. His share 
 in the development of the epic form of poetry in Germany is undisputed, 
 while, with his universal popularity with all classes, he wielded an in- 
 fluence which it would be difficult to overestimate, and which was 
 attained by few of his contemporaries. 
 
 180 
 
PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE ART OF 
 LIFE AND HEALING ART OF THE SOUL 
 
 MEN had lived, and perhaps lived many thousand years, 
 before one of them hit upon the thought that life could 
 be an art ; and, in all probability, every other art, from 
 the arts of Tub^l Cain to the art of catching flies — which Shah 
 Baham, a peritus in arte, assures nis, is not so easy a matter as 
 some people imagine — had long been invented, when, at last, the 
 sagacious Greeks, along with other fine arts and sciences, in- 
 vented also this famous art of life, called philosophy : or, if they 
 did not altogether invent it, first reduced it to the form of art, 
 and carried it to a high degree of refinement. 
 
 By far the greater part of the children of men never dreamed 
 that there was such an art. People lived without knowing how 
 they did it, very much as Mons. Jourdain in Moliere's " Citizen 
 Gentleman," had talked prose all his life, or as we all draw 
 breath, digest, perform various motions, grow and thrive, with- 
 out one in a thousand knowing or desiring to know by what 
 mechanical laws or by what combination of causes all these 
 things are done. And in this thick fog of ignorance innumera- 
 ble nations in Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the 
 South Sea, white and olive, yellow-black and pitch-black, 
 bearded and unbearded, circumcised and uncircumcised, tat- 
 tooed and untattooed, with and without rings through the nose, 
 from the giants in Patagonia to the dwarfs on Hudson's Bay, 
 etc., etc., live to this hour. And not only so, but even of the 
 greatest portion of the inhabitants of our enlightened Europe, 
 it may be maintained with truth, that they know as little about 
 said art of life and that they care as little about it as the careless 
 people of Otaheite or the half-frozen inhabitants of Terra del 
 Fuego, who are scarcely more than sea-calves. 
 
 The strangest part of this business is, that all these people, 
 
 i8i 
 
i82 WIELAND 
 
 who, according to a very moderate calculation, constitute nearly 
 the whole human race — like their ancestors as far back as Adam 
 and Eve, who also knew nothing of the aforesaid fine art — not- 
 withstanding their ignorance, live away as courageously as if 
 they were finished masters of it. Nay more, the greater part 
 of these bunglers get on so well, as it respects all the most es- 
 sential and important functions of human life, that scarcely one 
 of the hired masters and professors of the art can hold a candle 
 to them. 
 
 Cicero says somewhere, " Nature is the best guide of life," 
 which probably means, that Nature shows us best how we may 
 help ourselves through this earthly state. Further, he says, 
 " No one can fail who suffers himself to be guided by her." On 
 this guidance, therefore, it would seem that men must always 
 have relied. This same Nature, they thought, which teaches 
 us to breathe, eat, drink, to move hands and feet, etc., teaches 
 us also how to use our senses, our memory, our understanding, 
 and all our other powers ; teaches us what is fitting and what 
 is not fitting. It requires only so much attention as every object 
 enforces of itself, to see and feel whether it is friendly or hostile. 
 Our nose and our tongue teach us, without any other instruc- 
 tion, what fruits, herbs, and roots, etc., are good to eat. At a 
 pinch, hunger teaches the same, without much circumstance. 
 Nature has provided for all pressing necessities. Either the 
 thing which we require exists already ; and then we have what- 
 ever is needed to seize and enjoy it ; or, at least, the materials of 
 it exist; and then we have just so much understanding, power, 
 and natural dexterity in our members as is necessary to form 
 those materials to our use and purpose. What does not suc- 
 ceed the first time will succeed the tenth or the twentieth. If 
 two arms are not sufficient, four, six, eight will accomplish it. 
 Every new trial adds something to our knowledge of the thing, 
 and to our faculty. We learn by errors and failures, and be- 
 come masters by practice, without perceiving how it has come 
 about. And this same Nature which carries us so far, always 
 conceals from us what lies too far to be reached from the place 
 assigned us ; makes us happy by ignorance, and has given us 
 this beneficent sluggishness, of which the world-reformers make 
 so much complaint, for no other purpose but that the everlasting 
 desire to improve our condition may not cause us to fall from 
 
PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE ART OF LIFE 183 
 
 the frying-pan into the fire, and that we may not fare like that 
 man who, in order to feel better, physicked himself to death, 
 and had for his epitaph : Per star meglio sto qui. 
 
 So Nature teaches all men how to live, who have not run away 
 from the instruction and discipline of the good Mother. And, 
 in all this, as you perceive, there is no art. It is Nature herself, 
 bodily. The celebrated Quam multis non ego! of the ancient 
 philosopher is the native philosophy of all Samoyedes, Lap- 
 landers, Esquimaux, etc. — a philosophy in which the New Hol- 
 landers or the New Walesmen, as the honest people must suffer 
 themselves to be called, according to the arbitrary pleasure of 
 the gentlemen with the firelocks, who have the command, ap- 
 pear to have made the greatest progress. Let no man come and 
 say that such a life is an oyster-life. Call it, if you please, a 
 continual childhood ; but honor-Nature who conducts these her 
 children, by the shortest route, to the beate vivere at which we 
 enlightened people seldom or never arrive, merely on account 
 of the great multitude of roads which lead to it. 
 
 The wise Theophrastus (not Paracelsus, but the scholar and 
 successor of the divine Aristotle) lived ninety years, and when 
 he came to die, he complained against Nature because " she has 
 given man so little time to live, and because an honest fellow 
 must die at the very moment when he has begun to comprehend 
 a little the art of life." When did ever a New Hollander make 
 so unreasonable a complaint? When he has come to be a 
 hundred years old (which is nothing rare with them) he has 
 lived just one hundred years, and rises satisfied from the ban- 
 quet of Nature; and truly, a banquet that, in which Nature 
 furnishes such poor entertainment, that the strictest candidate 
 for canonization need not scruple to share it. 
 
 But — let me remark in passing — I am very far from believ- 
 ing that Theophrastus made the foolish speech which is imputed 
 to him. The people around his bed did not exactly understand 
 what he said, and then some schoolmaster came along, a good 
 while after, and tried to make sense of it, and made nonsense. 
 I would bet that Theophrastus meant neither more nor less than 
 this: that he regretted he had not been wise enough, sixty or 
 seventy years before, to see that he might have saved himself the 
 trouble of studying, as art and science, what Nature would 
 have taught him far better and more surely, without study, if 
 
i84 WIELAND 
 
 be had had the simplicity of mind to heed her instruction. It 
 was not innocent Nature but his own folly that he blamed, as 
 most men are wont to do in his case; although they might as 
 well let it alone ; for what is the use of repentance when one has 
 no time left for amendment ? 
 
 Notwithstanding all that has been said, it is by no means my 
 intention to dispute the value, whatever it may be, of the above- 
 mentioned art of life. 
 
 It has somewhere been said, that art is, at bottom, nothing 
 else than Nature herself, who, by means of man, as her most 
 perfect instrument, unfolds and brings to perfection under a 
 different name, what before she had merely sketched, as it were, 
 or hastily begun. If art is that, and so far as it is that, it is 
 worthy of all honor. 
 
 Yes, even then, when it merely comes in aid of enfeebled or 
 corrupted Nature, it is, like the art of medicine, sometimes bene- 
 ficial, although often just as uncertain and just as ineffectual 
 as that. When Nature no longer suffices for the support of 
 life, then, to be sure, art must patch and prop, and plaster and 
 doctor as well as it can. Or, to speak more correctly, even in 
 this case, the good, universal Mother has provided for her 
 darling child. She has remedies in her store-chamber for every 
 wound or disease of the outward or the inward man, so that 
 art has nothing to do but to observe and to exhibit. The simpler 
 then the remedies are, the less they have been tampered with, 
 the better for the sufferer. And still, the successful issue must 
 be expected from Nature alone. If she has strength enough 
 left to raise herself up by the hand of art, well and good ; if not, 
 then, for art too, nothing remains, but to let the sick man die and 
 to embalm the dead. Art cannot supply the power of life where 
 it is wanting. 
 
 It was long ago that philosophy, on account of this resemblance 
 to the healing art, received the name of " medicine for the soul." 
 And truly, this qualification seems better adapted to secure its 
 acceptance, than when it claims to teach us to live according to 
 the rules of art. For who that has the free use of his natural 
 powers does not feel that he can live without it ? On the other 
 hand, when it presents itself only as physician, then the well 
 know that they have nothing to do with it. 
 
 The Indians in the islands of the South Sea, it seems, are un- 
 
PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE ART OF LIFE 185 
 
 acquainted with medicines. With them slight wounds or ill- 
 nesses heal themselves ; and of great ones they die — as we do. 
 And as they are so fortunate as to have no idea of a soul in and 
 of itself, as a man in their apprehension is always a man, made 
 out of one piece, so they know nothing of particular diseases 
 of the soul ; or if ever they experience an attack of this kind, 
 the hunger-cure, for which they have but too frequent oppor- 
 tunity, is generally the most effectual remedy. 
 
 On the other hand, when the progress of refinement in a na- 
 tion has gone so far, that body and soul, instead of being as they 
 should be one person, are treated as two powers with different 
 interests, each having its separate establishment, like naughty 
 husbands and wives ; what is more natural than that bad conse- 
 quences should result from such an ill-starred union? Man is 
 then no longer that noble being in whom all is sense and power 
 and soul, in whom, so to speak, everything corporeal is spiritual, 
 and everything spiritual, corporeal. He is an unnatural, cen- 
 taur-like compound of animal and spirit, in which the one lives 
 at the other's expense, in which the animal creates for itself 
 necessities, the spirit passions, projects, and aims of which the 
 natural man knows nothing. Each oppresses, drags, worries, 
 and exhausts the other as much as it can, and a vast number of 
 bodily and mental diseases are the ultimate fruit of this putting 
 asunder what God had joined together. In such cases, when 
 the evil has reached its height, that " medical art for the soul " 
 may offer its aid with some degree of success ; and either re- 
 lieve the patient by purging, bleeding, and clysters ; or, at least, 
 by means of agreeable opiates, procure for him a delusive rest. 
 
 But this art has never yet been found able to effect a radical 
 cure ; and we may boldly maintain, that when a nation has once 
 fallen into the hands of the two goddesses of healing, it is irre- 
 coverably lost; not because one must needs burst with their 
 medicines, but because whenever they are resorted to, the evil 
 has already proceeded too far to admit of entire restoration. 
 
 I said philosophy might the rather maintain its place, as heal- 
 ing art for the soul, because then, the well would know that they 
 had nothing to do with it. But as all arts love to make them- 
 selves more important than they are, so this art, too, has found 
 means to impose itself upon all the world as indispensable. 
 Like its sister art, which ministers to the body, it will not allow 
 
i86 WIELAND 
 
 anyone to be entirely well. According to its doctrine and its 
 ideal of health, the whole earth is one great lazar-house of bodily 
 and mental diseases, and there is no man well enough to dispense 
 with its prescriptions. Happily, this assumption is not con- 
 ceded to either of these arts. Nature knows nothing of ideals. 
 As long as a man feels himself sound, he has a right to think 
 himself sound ; and, without troubling himself whether others 
 object to that view or not, he lives straight forward as a healthy 
 man; and (like Voltaire's Zadig) reads not a letter of all the 
 learned dissertations, in which gentlemen undertake to ptove 
 it impossible that he should be well. There are cases, it is 
 true, in which a sick man is only the more dangerously sick, be- 
 cause unconscious of his malady. But these cases are rare, and 
 cannot deprive the great mass of those who feel well, of their 
 traditional right to that feeling. 
 
ON THE RELATION OF THE AGREEABLE 
 AND THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE USEFUL 
 
 BALZAC, whose " Letters/' once so admired, would fur- 
 nish an inexhaustible fund of antitheses, concetti, and 
 other witticisms for epigrammatists by profession, was 
 often in the predicament of saying something very flat when 
 he imagined that he had said something very ingenious. Never- 
 theless, he sometimes made a "good hit, as one who spends his 
 whole life in chasing after thoughts necessarily must. 
 
 In the following passage I am pleased with the concluding 
 thought, notwithstanding its epigrammatic turn, on account of 
 the simplicity and luminous truth of the image in which it is 
 clothed. " We must have books," he says, " for recreation and 
 entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business. 
 The former are agreeable, the latter useful; and the human 
 mind requires both. The Canon-law and the codes of Justinian 
 shall have due honor, and reign at the universities, but Homer 
 and Vergil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate 
 the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and 
 the rose." 
 
 I have two remarks to make, however, respecting this pas- 
 sage. In the first place, Balzac concedes too much to those 
 pedants, who turn up their noses at the favorites of the Muses 
 and their works, when he reckons the Homers and the Vergils 
 among the merely agreeable writers. Antiquity, more wise in 
 this respect, thought differently; and Horace maintains with 
 good reason, that there is more practical philosophy to be 
 learned from Homer than from Crantor and Chrysippus. 
 
 In the next place, it seems to me on the whole to indicate 
 rather a mercantile than a philosophical way of thinking, when 
 people place the agreeable and the useful in opposition to each 
 other, and look upon the former with a kind of contempt in com- 
 parison with the latter. 
 
 187 
 
i88 WIELAND 
 
 Presuming that what we understand by the agreeable is some- 
 thing that violates neither law nor duty nor sound moral senti- 
 ment, I say that the useful, as opposed to the agreeable and the 
 beautiful, is common to us with the lowest brute ; and that when 
 we love and honor that which is useful in this sense, we do 
 only what the ox and the ass do likewise. The value of such 
 utility depends on the greater or less degree of indispensable- 
 ness which attaches to it. So far therefore as a thing is neces- 
 sary to the preservation of the human species and of civil 
 society, so far it is good indeed, but not on that account excellent. 
 Accordingly, we desire the useful, not on its own account, but 
 only on account of certain advantages which we derive from it. 
 The beautiful, on the other hand, we love by virtue of an in- 
 trinsic superiority of our nature over the merely animal. For 
 man alone of all animals is endowed with a delicate feeling for 
 order and beauty and grace. Hence, he is so much the more 
 perfect, so much the more a man, the more extended and in- 
 tense his love for the beautiful, and the greater the refinement 
 and accuracy with which, by mere sensation, he can distinguish 
 different degrees and kinds of beauty. And therefore, more- 
 over, it is only the beautiful in art as well as in the mode of life 
 and in morals, that distinguishes social, developed, refined man 
 from savages and barbarians. Nay, all the arts without ex- 
 ception, and the sciences, too, owe their growth almost exclu- 
 sively to this love for the beautiful and the perfect, inherent in 
 man, and would still be infinitely removed from that degree of 
 perfection to which they have risen in Europe, if men had at- 
 tempted to confine them within the narrow limits of the neces- 
 sary and the useful, in the common acceptation of those words. 
 
 Socrates did so, and if ever he was mistaken in anything, it 
 was in this. Keppler and Newton would never have discovered 
 the laws of the mundane system — the noblest product of human 
 thought — if, in conformity with his precepts, they had confined 
 geometry to mere mensuration, and astronomy to the mere 
 necessities of travel by land and sea, and to the making of 
 almanacs. 
 
 Socrates exhorted painters and sculptors to combine the 
 agreeable and the beautiful with the useful ; just as he urged 
 mimic dancers to ennoble the pleasure which their art was 
 capable of yielding, and to entertain the heart together with 
 
RELATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE USEFUL 189 
 
 the senses. According to the same principle, he behoved to 
 admonish those laborers who occupy themselves with things 
 essential, to combine the useful as far as possible with the beau- 
 tiful. But to deny the name of beautiful to everything that is 
 not useful is to confound ideas. 
 
 It is true Nature herself has established a relation between 
 the useful, and the beautiful and graceful. But these are not 
 desirable because they are useful, but because it is the nature of 
 man to enjoy a pure satisfaction in the contemplation of them, 
 a satisfaction altogether similar to that which we derive from 
 the contemplation of moral excellence, and as much a want of 
 rational beings as food, clothing, shelter, are wants of the 
 animal man. 
 
 I say of the animal man because they are common to him 
 with all other, or at least, with most other animals. But neither 
 these animal necessities, nor the power and the effort to satisfy 
 them, constitute him a man. In providing food, in building his 
 nest, in choosing a mate, in training his young, in battling with 
 others who would deprive him of his food, or take possession of 
 his dwelling — in all this he acts, materially considered, as an 
 animal. It is the way and manner in which man — unless re- 
 duced to the condition of a brute, and kept therein by cogent, 
 external circumstances — ^performs these animal functions, that 
 distinguishes him from and raises him above all other orders 
 of animals, and characterizes his humanity. For this animal 
 that calls itself man, and this only, possesses an inborn feeling 
 for beauty and order, possesses a heart disposed to communi- 
 cation of itself, to sympathy with sorrow and with joy, and to 
 an infinite diversity of agreeable and beautiful sentiments. Only 
 this animal possesses a strong propensity to imitate and to create, 
 and labors unceasingly to improve what he has invented and 
 made. 
 
 All these qualities together distinguish him essentially from 
 other animals, make him their lord and master, subject land and 
 sea to his dominion, and lead him from step to step so far, that, 
 by the almost unlimited extension of his artistic powers, he is 
 enabled to transform Nature herself, and, from the materials 
 which she furnishes, to create for himself a new world, more 
 perfectly adapted to his particular ends. 
 
 The first thing, in which man displays this his superiority, 
 
190 WIELAND 
 
 is the refinement and ennobling of all those wants, impulses and 
 functions which he has in common with other animals. The 
 time which he requires for this purpose is not to be considered. 
 Enough that he finally arrives at that point where he is no longer 
 necessitated to beg his sustenance from mere chance, and where 
 the greater certainty of a richer and better support allows him 
 leisure to think also of perfecting the other necessities of life. 
 He invents one art after another, and each increases the security 
 or the pleasure of his existence. And so he ascends continually 
 from the indispensable to the convenient, from the convenient to 
 the beautiful. 
 
 The natural society into which he is born, combined with the 
 necessity of securing himself against the injurious consequences 
 of a too great extension of the human species, leads him at last 
 to civil society and civilized modes of life. 
 
 But here, too, no sooner has he provided for the necessary, 
 for the means of internal and external security, than we find 
 him occupied, in thousand-fold ways, with beautifying this his 
 new condition. Imperceptibly small villages are transformed 
 into large cities, the abodes of the arts and of commerce, and 
 points of union for the different nations of the earth. Man 
 spreads himself ever farther in all senses and in all directions. 
 Navigation and traffic multiply relations and pursuits by multi- 
 plying the wants and the goods of life. Wealth and luxury 
 refine every art whose mother was want and necessity ; leisure, 
 ambition, and public encouragement promote the growth of the 
 sciences, which, by the light they diffuse over all the objects of 
 human life, become rich sources of new advantages and en- 
 joyments. 
 
 But in the same proportion in which man adorns and im- 
 proves his external condition, his feeling for the morally beauti- 
 ful is also unfolded. He renounces the rude and inhuman 
 uses of the savage state, he learns to abhor all violent conduct 
 toward his kind, and accustoms himself to laws of justice and 
 propriety. The manifold relations of the social condition un- 
 fold and determine the ideas of politeness and etiquette, and the 
 desire of pleasing others and of gaining their esteem teaches him 
 to restrain his passions, to conceal his faults, to turn his best 
 side out, and to perform whatsoever he does in a decent manner. 
 In a word, his manners improve with the rest of his condition. 
 
RELATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE USEFUL 191 
 
 Through all these gradations he raises himself at last to the 
 highest perfection of mind, possible in this present life, to the 
 great idea of the whole of which he is a part, to the idea, of the 
 fair and good, to wisdom and virtue, and to the worship of the 
 inscrutable, original power of nature, the universal Father of 
 Spirits, to know whose laws and to do them is his greatest priv- 
 ilege, his first duty, and his purest pleasure. 
 
 All this we denominate, with one word, the progress of hu- 
 manity. And now let everyone answer for himself the question, 
 whether man would have made this progress if that inborn feel- 
 ing of the beautiful and the graceful had remained inactive in 
 him ? Take from him this, and all the results of his dormant 
 power, all the monuments of his greatness, all the riches of 
 Nature and Art of which he has possessed himself, disappear ; 
 he relapses into the brutal condition of the inhabitants of New 
 Holland; and, with him, Nature herself relapses into savage 
 and formless chaos. 
 
 What are all these steps by which man gradually approaches 
 perfection but successive embellishments, embellishments of his 
 necessities, his mode of living, his habitation, his apparel, his 
 implements, embellishments of his mind and heart, his senti- 
 ments and passions, his language, manners, customs, pleasures ? 
 
 What a distance from the earliest hovel to a building of Pal- 
 ladio ! From the canoe of a Carib to a ship of the line ! From 
 the three blocks by which, in the remotest ages, the Boeotians 
 represented the three Graces, to the Graces of Praxiteles ! From 
 a village of Hottentots or wild Indians to a city like London ! 
 From the ornaments of a woman of New Zealand to the state- 
 dress of a sultana ! From the dialect of the natives of Otaheite 
 to the languages of Homer, of Vergil, Tasso, Milton, and 
 Voltaire ! 
 
 What innumerable gradations of embellishment must men 
 and human things have passed through before they could over- 
 come this almost measureless interval ! 
 
 The desire to beautify and refine, and the dissatisfaction with 
 the lower grade as soon as a higher was known, are the true, 
 the only, and the very simple forces by which man has been 
 urged onward to the point at which we find him. All nations 
 which have perfected themselves are a proof of this proposition. 
 And if there are any to be found which, without any special im- 
 
ig2 WIELAND 
 
 pediment, physical or moral, have always remained stationary 
 in the same degree of imperfection, or which betray an entire 
 want of those motives to progress, which have been mentioned, 
 we should have reason to regard them rather as a particular 
 species of man-like animals than as actual men of our own 
 race and kind. 
 
 If now, as no one will deny, everything which tends to perfect 
 man and his condition deserves the name of useful, where is 
 there any ground for this hateful antithesis which certain Ostro- 
 goths still make between the useful and the beautiful ? Prob- 
 ably these people have never thought what the consequences 
 would be, if a nation, which has reached a high degree of re- 
 finement, should banish or let starve its musicians, its actors, 
 its poets, its painters, and other artists ; in a word, all who min- 
 ister in the kingdom of the muses and the graces ; or, what would 
 be quite as bad, if it should lose its taste in all these arts. 
 
 The loss of things which are incomparably less important 
 would make a great gap in its prosperity. If one should reckon 
 up to you what the consequences would be to the French, if only 
 the two little articles, fans and snuff-boxes, were stricken out 
 from the number of European necessities, and if you were to 
 consider that these are but two little twigs of the countless 
 branches of that industry elicited by the love for playthings and 
 trinkets, wherewith all the large children in trousers and long 
 coats around us are affected, and if you were to calculate how 
 useful to the world even these useless things are, and were to 
 reflect that the departments of the beautiful and the useful are 
 not exclusive departments, but are so manifoldly intertwined 
 with each other that it is impossible ever to define with certainty 
 and precision their respective boundaries, in short, that there 
 exists such an intimate relation between them that almost all 
 that is useful is or may be made beautiful, and all that is beauti- 
 ful useful ; if you were to consider all this, you would — 
 
 But there are some people who, like the Abderites, grow no 
 wiser by considering. He whose head has, once for all, a crook 
 in it, will never, in his life, be brought to see things as they are 
 seen by all the rest of the world who look straight before them. 
 
 And then there is still another class of incorrigible people who 
 have always been avowed contemners of the beautiful, not be- 
 cause their head is placed awry, but because they call nothing 
 
RELATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE USEFUL 193 
 
 useful that does not fill their purse. Now, the trade of a syco- 
 phant, a quack, a dealer in charms, a clipper of ducats, a pimp, 
 a Tartuffe, is certainly not beautiful; it is therefore perfectly 
 natural that this gentry should manifest on every occasion a 
 profound contempt for that kind of beauty which yields them 
 nothing. Besides, to how many a blockhead is stupidity useful ! 
 How many would lose their whole authority, if those among 
 whom they had won or stolen it, had taste enough to distinguish 
 the genuine from the false, the beautiful from the ugly ! Such 
 persons, to be sure, have weighty, personal reasons to be ene- 
 mies of wit and taste. They are in the condition of the honest 
 fellow who had married his homely daughter to a blind man, 
 and was unwilling that his son-in-law should be couched. 
 
 But the rest of us, who can only gain by being made wiser — 
 what Abderites we should be if we suffered ourselves to be per- 
 suaded by these gentlemen who are interested in the matter, to 
 become blind or to remain blind, in order that the ugliness of 
 their daughters may not come to light ! 
 
 13 
 
ON THE NAT-URE OF MAN 
 
 OF THE TRUTH OF PHYSIOGNOMY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER 
 
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER 
 1741— 1801 
 
 Switzerland claims no small share in the literary honors of Germany; 
 one of the most notable of the Swiss contributors to German litera- 
 ture being Johann Kaspar Lavater, who was born at Zurich in 1741. 
 He received his education in the grammar school and university of 
 his native town, and in 1762 was ordained a minister. Nearly his 
 whole life was spent in preaching to various churches in Zurich and 
 in devoting himself to charitable work, for which he displayed an 
 unbounded zeal. In 1798 Lavater's public and outspoken protest 
 against the ravages of the French troops, who were at that time occu- 
 pying Switzerland, gained the applause of Europe. The following 
 year, while standing in front of his own house, he was shot by a French 
 soldier. He never recovered from the wound, and died from its effects 
 two years later, after much suffering. 
 
 Lavater is best known by his works on physiognomy, the first of 
 which was published in 1772. Three years later appeared the first 
 volume of his celebrated " Physiognomical Fragments for the Promotion 
 of Knowledge and Love of Mankind," his most important work. 
 Goethe contributed to it a chapter on the skulls of animals. Besides 
 numerous other treatises on physiognomy he wrote on theology as 
 well. His works were at one time extravagantly praised by his con- 
 temporaries, but as original contributions to the fund of human knowl- 
 edge they have failed to stand the test of time. Lavater is important, 
 however, in the history of German thought and civilization as one 
 of the most interesting literary figures of his generation. His per- 
 sonality was sufficient to impress Goethe, and the observations of the 
 latter would seem to indicate that the man was greater than his works. 
 
 Lavater's vStyle is vivid and declamatory, and betrays a genuine depth 
 of conviction that inspired respect and gave him a great personal in- 
 fluence. He is sometimes very abstruse ; but he is always entertaining. 
 There is no writer in all literature whose personal character was purer 
 or nobler, or whose life was more unselfish. The essays " On the Nat- 
 ure of Man " and " Of the Truth of Physiognomy " are excellent and 
 representative examples of his style. 
 
 196 
 
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 
 
 Which is the Foundation of the Science of Physiognomy 
 
 OF all earthly creatures man is the most perfect, the most 
 imbued with the principles of Hfe. 
 
 Each particle of matter is an immensity ; each leaf 
 a world ; each insect an inexplicable compendium. Who then 
 shall enumerate the gradations between insect and man? In 
 him all the powers of nature are united. He is the essence 
 of creation. The son of earth, he is the earth's lord ; the sum- 
 mary and central point of all existence, of all powers, and of 
 all life, on that earth which he inhabits. 
 
 Of all organized beings with which we are acquainted, man 
 alone excepted, there are none in which are so wonderfully 
 united the three dififerent kinds of life, the animal, the intel- 
 lectual, and the moral. Each of these lives is the compendium 
 of various faculties, most wonderfully compounded and har- 
 monized. 
 
 To know, to desire, to act, or accurately to observe and 
 meditate ; to perceive and to wish ; to possess the powers of 
 motion and of resistance ; these combined, constitute man an 
 animal, intellectual, and moral being. 
 
 Man, endowed with these faculties, with this triple life, is in 
 himself the most worthy subject of observation, as he likewise 
 is himself the most worthy observer. Under whatever point 
 of view he may be considered, what is more worthy of con- 
 templation than himself? In him each species of life is con- 
 spicuous; yet never can his properties be wholly known, ex- 
 cept by the aid of his external form, his body, his superficies. 
 How spiritual, how incorporeal soever, his internal essence 
 may be, still is he only visible and conceivable from the har- 
 mony of his constituent parts. From these he is inseparable. 
 
 197 
 
198 LAVATER 
 
 He exists and moves in the body he inhabits, as in his element. 
 This material man must become the subject of observation. 
 All the knowledge we can obtain of man must be gained 
 through the medium of our senses. 
 
 This threefold life, which man cannot be denied to possess, 
 necessarily first becomes the subject of disquisition and re- 
 search, as it presents itself in the form of body, and in such of 
 his faculties as are apparent to sense. 
 
 There is no object in nature, the properties and powers of 
 which can be manifest to us in any other manner than by such 
 external appearances as affect the senses. By these all beings 
 are characterized. They are the foundations of all human 
 knowledge. Man must wander in the darkest ignorance, 
 equally with respect to himself and the objects that surround 
 him, did he not become acquainted with their properties and 
 powers by the aid of their externals ; and had not each object 
 a character peculiar to its nature and essence, which acquaints 
 us with what it is, and enables us to distinguish it from what 
 it is not. 
 
 All bodies which we survey appear to sight under a certain 
 form and superficies. We behold those outlines traced which 
 are the result of their organization. I hope I shall be par- 
 doned the repetition of such commonplace truths, since on 
 these are built the science of physiognomy, or the proper study 
 of man. However true these axioms, with respect to visible 
 objects, and particularly to organized bodies, they are still 
 more extensively true when applied to man, and his nature. 
 The organization of man peculiarly distinguishes him from all 
 other earthly beings ; and his physiognomy, that is to say, the 
 superficies and outlines of this organization, show him to be 
 infinitely superior to all those visible beings by which he is 
 surrounded. 
 
 We are unacquainted with any form equally noble, equally 
 majestic, with that of man, and in which so many kinds of life, 
 so many powers, so many virtues of action and motion, unite, 
 as in a central point. With firm step he advances over the 
 earth's surface, and with erect body raises his head toward 
 heaven. He looks forward to infinitude ; he acts with facility 
 and swiftness inconceivable, and his motions are the most im- 
 mediate and the most varied. By whom may their varieties 
 
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 199 
 
 be enumerated ? He can at once both suffer and perform in- 
 finitely more than any other creature. He unites flexibiUty 
 and fortitude, strength and dexterity, activity and rest. Of all 
 creatures he can the soonest yield, and the longest resist. 
 None resemble him in the variety and harmony of his powers. 
 His faculties, like his form, are peculiar to himself. 
 
 How much nobler, more astonishing, and more attractive 
 will this form become, when we discover that it is itself the 
 interpreter of all the high powers it possesses, active and 
 passive! Only in those parts in which animal strength and 
 properties reside does it resemble animals. But how much is . 
 it exalted above the brute in those parts in which are the pow- 
 ers of superior origin, the powers of mind, of motion ! 
 
 The form and proportion of man, his superior height, capa- 
 ble of so many changes, and such variety of motion, prove to 
 the unprejudiced observer his supereminent strength, and as- 
 tonishing facility of action. The high excellence and physi- 
 ological unity of human nature are visible at the first glance. 
 The head, especially the face, and the formation of the firm 
 parts, compared to the firm parts of other animals, convince 
 the accurate observer, who is capable of investigating truth, 
 of the greatness and superiority of his intellectual qualities. 
 The eye, the look, the cheeks, the mouth, the forehead, whether 
 considered in a state of entire rest or during their innumerable 
 varieties of motion, in fine, all that is understood by physiog- 
 nomy, is the most expressive, the most convincing picture of 
 interior sensation, desires, passions, will, and of all those prop- 
 erties which so much exalt moral above animal life. 
 
 Although the physiological, intellectual, and moral life of 
 man, with all their subordinate powers and their constituent 
 parts, so eminently unite in one being; although these three 
 kinds of life do not, like three distinct families, reside in sep- 
 arate parts, or stories of the body ; but co-exist in one point, 
 and by their combination form one whole ; yet is it plain that 
 each of these powers of life has its peculiar station, where it 
 more especially unfolds itself, and acts. 
 
 It is beyond contradiction evident that, though physiological 
 or animal life displays itself through all the body, and especially 
 through all the animal parts, yet does it act most conspicuously 
 in the arm, from the shoulder to the ends of the fingers. 
 
200 LAVATER 
 
 It is equally clear that intellectual life, or the powers of the 
 understanding and the mind, make themselves most apparent 
 in the circumference and form of the solid parts of the head, 
 especially the forehead; though they will discover themselves 
 to an attentive and accurate eye in every part and point of the 
 human body, by the congeniality and harmony of the various 
 parts, as will be frequently noticed in the course of this work. 
 Is there any occasion to prove that the power of thinking re- 
 sides neither in the foot, in the hand, nor in the back ; but in 
 the head, and its internal parts ? 
 
 The moral life of man, particularly, reveals itself in the lines, 
 marks, and transitions of the countenance. His moral powers 
 and desires, his irritability, sympathy, and antipathy; his fa- 
 cility of attracting or repelling the objects that surround him ; 
 these are all summed up in, and painted upon, his countenance 
 when at rest. When any passion is called into action, such 
 passion is depicted by the motion of the muscles, and these 
 motions are accompanied by a strong palpitation of the heart. 
 If the countenance be tranquil, it always denotes tranquillity 
 in the region of the heart and breast. 
 
 This threefold life of man, so intimately interwoven through 
 his frame, is still capable of being studied in its different ap- 
 propriate parts ; and did we live in a less depraved world we 
 should find sufficient data for the science of physiognomy. 
 
 The animal life, the lowest and most earthly, would discover 
 itself from the rim of the belly to the organs of generation, 
 which would become its central or focal point. The middle 
 or moral life would be seated in the breast, and the heart would 
 be its central point. The intellectual life, which of the three 
 is supreme, would reside in the head, and have the eye for its 
 centre. If we take the countenance as the representative and 
 epitome of the three divisions, then will the forehead, to the 
 eyebrows, be the mirror, or image, of the understanding ; the 
 nose and cheeks the image of the moral and sensitive life ; and 
 the mouth and chin the image of the animal life ; while the eye 
 will be to the whole as its summary and centre. I may also 
 add that the closed mouth at the moment of most perfect tran- 
 quillity is the central point of the radii of the countenance. It 
 cannot however too often be repeated that these three lives, by 
 
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 201 
 
 their intimate connection with each other, are all, and each, 
 expressed in every part of the body. 
 
 What we have hitherto said is so clear, so well known, so 
 universal, that we should blush to insist upon such common- 
 place truths, were they not, first, the foundation on which we 
 must build all we have to propose; and, again, had not these 
 truths (can it be believed by futurity ?) in this our age been so 
 many thousand times mistaken and contested, with the most 
 inconceivable affectation. 
 
 The science of physiognomy, whether understood in the 
 most enlarged or most confined sense, indubitably depends on 
 these general and incontrovertible principles; yet, incontro- 
 vertible as they are, they have not been without their oppon- 
 ents. Men pretend to doubt of the most striking, the most 
 convincing, the most self-evidenT: truths ; although, were these 
 destroyed, neither truth nor knowledge would remain. They 
 do not profess to doubt concerning the physiognomy of other 
 natural objects, yet do they doubt the physiognomy of human 
 nature ; the first object, the most worthy of contemplation, and 
 the most animated which the realms of nature contain. 
 
OF THE TRUTH OF PHYSIOGNOMY 
 
 ALL countenances, all forms, all created beings, are not 
 only different from each other in their classes, races, 
 and kinds, but are also individually distinct. 
 
 Each being differs from every other being of its species. 
 However generally known, it is a truth the most important to 
 our purpose, and necessary to repeat, that, " There is no rose 
 perfectly similar to another rose, no egg to an egg, no eel to 
 an eel, no lion to a lion, no eagle to an eagle, no man to a 
 man." 
 
 Confining this proposition to man only, it is the first, the 
 most profound, most secure, and unshaken foundation-stone 
 of physiognomy that, however intimate the analogy and sim- 
 ilarity of the innumerable forms of men, no two men can be 
 found who, brought together, and accurately compared, will 
 not appear to be very remarkably different. 
 
 Nor is it less incontrovertible that it is equally impossible 
 to find two minds, as two countenances, which perfectly re- 
 semble each other. 
 
 This consideration alone will be sufficient to make it received 
 as a truth, not requiring farther demonstration, that there must 
 be a certain native analogy between the external varieties of 
 the countenance and form, and the internal varieties of the 
 mind. Shall it be denied that this acknowledged internal va- 
 riety among all men is the cause of the external variety of their 
 forms and countenances? Shall it be affirmed that the mind 
 does not influence the body, or that the body does not influ- 
 ence the mind? 
 
 Anger renders the muscles protuberant ; and shall not there- 
 fore an angry mind and protuberant muscles be considered as 
 cause and effect? 
 
 After repeated observation that an active and vivid eye and 
 an active and acute wit are frequently found in the same per- 
 
 203 
 
204 LAVATER 
 
 son, shall it be supposed that there is no relation between the 
 active eye and the active mind ? Is this the effect of accident ? 
 Of accident! Ought it not rather to be considered as sym- 
 pathy, an interchangeable and instantaneous effect, when we 
 perceive that, at the very moment the understanding is most 
 acute and penetrating and the wit the most lively, the motion 
 and fire of the eye undergo, at that moment, the most visible 
 change ? 
 
 Shall the open, friendly, and unsuspecting eye and the open, 
 friendly, and unsuspecting heart be united in a thousand in- 
 stances, and shall we say the one is not the cause, the other 
 the effect? 
 
 Shall nature discover wisdom and order in all things ; shall 
 corresponding causes and effects be everywhere united; shall 
 this be the most clear, the most indubitable of truths ; and in 
 the first, the most noble of the works of nature, shall she act 
 arbitrarily, without design, without law? The human coun- 
 tenance, that mirror of the Divinity, that noblest of the works 
 of the Creator — shall not motive and action, shall not the cor- 
 respondence between the interior and the exterior, the visible 
 and the invisible, the cause and the effect, be there apparent ? 
 
 Yet this is all denied by those who oppose the truth of the 
 science of physiognomy. 
 
 Truth, according to them, is ever at variance with itself. 
 Eternal order is degraded to a juggler, whose purpose it is to 
 deceive. 
 
 Calm reason revolts at the supposition that Newton or Leib- 
 nitz ever could have the countenance and appearance of an 
 idiot, incapable of a firm step, a meditating eye; of compre- 
 hending the least difficult of abstract propositions, or of ex- 
 pressing himself so as to be understood ; that one of these in 
 the brain of a Laplander conceived his " Theodica " ; and that 
 the other in the head of an Esquimaux, who wants the power 
 to number farther than six, and affirms all beyond to be in- 
 numerable, had dissected the rays of light, and weighed 
 worlds. 
 
 Calm reason revolts when it is asserted that the strong man 
 may appear perfectly like the weak, the man in full health like 
 another in the last stage of a consumption, or that the rash and 
 irascible may resemble the cold and phlegmatic. It revolts 
 
OF THE TRUTH OF PHYSIOGNOMY 205 
 
 to hear it affirmed that joy and grief, pleasure and pain, love 
 and hatred, all exhibit themselves under the same traits ; that 
 is to say, under no traits whatever, on the exterior of man. 
 Yet such are the assertions of those who maintain physiog- 
 nomy to be a chimerical science. They overturn all that order 
 and combination by which eternal wisdom so highly astonishes 
 and delights the understanding. It cannot be too emphatic- 
 ally repeated that blind chance and arbitrary disorder consti- 
 tute the philosophy of fools; and that they are the bane of 
 natural knowledge, philosophy and religion. Entirely to ban- 
 ish such a system is the duty of the true inquirer, the sage, and 
 the divine. 
 
 All men (this is indisputable), absolutely all men, estimate all 
 things whatever by their physiognomy, their exterior, tempo- 
 rary superficies. By viewing these on every occasion, they 
 draw their conclusions concerning their internal properties. 
 
 What merchant, if he be unacquainted with the person of 
 whom he purchases, does not estimate his wares by the physi- 
 ognomy or appearance of those wares? If he purchase of a 
 distant correspondent, what other means does he use in judg- 
 ing whether they are or are not equal to his expectation? Is 
 not his judgment determined by the color, the fineness, the 
 superficies, the exterior, the physiognomy? Does he not 
 judge money by its physiognomy? Why does he take one 
 guinea and reject another? Why weigh a third in his hand? 
 Does he not determine according to its color, or impression ; 
 its outside, its physiognomy ? If a stranger enter his shop, as 
 a buyer or seller, will he not observe him ? Will he not draw 
 conclusions from his countenance? Will he not, almost be- 
 fore he is out of hearing, pronounce some opinion upon him, 
 and say : " This man has an honest look," " That man has a 
 pleasing, or forbidding, countenance ? " What is it to the 
 purpose whether his judgment be right or wrong? He judges. 
 Though not wholly, he depends in part upon the exterior form, 
 and thence draws inferences concerning the mind. 
 
 How does the farmer, walking through his grounds, regu- 
 late his future expectations by the color, the size, the growth, 
 the exterior ; that is to say, by the physiognomy of the bloom, 
 the stalk, or the ear, of his corn ; the stem, and shoots of his 
 vine-tree? " This ear of com is blighted," " That wood is full 
 
2o6 LAVATER 
 
 of sap ; this will grow, that not," affirms he, at the first or sec- 
 ond glance. " Though these vine-shoots look well, they will 
 bear but few grapes." And wherefore ? He remarks, in their 
 appearance, as the physiognomist in the countenances of shal- 
 low men, the want of native energy. Does not he judge by 
 the exterior? 
 
 Does not the physician pay more attention to the physiog- 
 nomy of the sick than to all the accounts that are brought him 
 concerning his patient? Zimmermann, among the living, 
 may be brought as a proof of the great perfection at which this 
 kind of judgment has arrived; and among the dead, Kempf, 
 whose son has written a treatise on temperament. 
 
 The painter Yet of him I will say nothing ; his art too 
 
 evidently reproves the childish and arrogant prejudices of 
 those who pretend to disbelieve physiognomy. 
 
 The traveller, the philanthropist, the misanthrope, the lover 
 (and who not?), all act according to their feeHngs and deci- 
 sions, true or false, confused or clear, concerning physiog- 
 nomy. These feelings, these decisions, excite compassion, 
 disgust, joy, love, hatred, suspicion, confidence, reserve, or 
 benevolence. 
 
 Do we not daily judge of the sky by its physiognomy ? No 
 food, not a glass of wine or beer, not a cup of coffee or tea, 
 comes to table, which is not judged by its physiognomy, its 
 exterior, and of which we do not thence deduce some conclu- 
 sion respecting its interior, good or bad properties. 
 
 Is not all nature physiognomy, superficies and contents; 
 body, and spirit ; exterior effect and internal power ; invisible 
 beginning and visible ending? 
 
 What knowledge is there, of which man is capable, that is 
 not founded on the exterior ; the relation that exists between 
 visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible ? 
 
 Physiognomy, whether understood in its most extensive or 
 confined signification, is the origin of all human decisions, ef- 
 forts, actions, expectations, fears, and hopes; of all pleasing 
 and unpleasing sensations, which are occasioned by external 
 objects. 
 
 From the cradle to the grave, in all conditions and ages, 
 throughout all nations, from Adam to the last existing man, 
 from the worm we tread on to the most sublime of philoso- 
 
OF THE TRUTH OF PHYSIOGNOMY 
 
 207 
 
 phers (and why not to the angel, why not to the Mediator 
 
 • Christ ?), physiognomy is the origin of all we do and suffer. 
 
 Each insect is acquainted with its friend and its foe; each 
 child loves and fears, although it knows not why. Physiog- 
 nomy is the cause ; nor is there a man to be found on earth who 
 is not daily influenced by physiognomy ; not a man who cannot 
 figure to himself a countenance which shall to him appear ex- 
 
 * ceedingly lovely, or exceedingly hateful ; not a man who does 
 not more or less, the first time he is in company with a stranger, 
 observe, estimate, compare, and judge him, according to ap- 
 pearances, although he might never have heard of the word 
 or thing called physiognomy ; not a man who does not judge 
 of all things that pass through his hands, by their physiog- 
 nomy ; that is, of their internal worth by their external appear- 
 ance. 
 
 The art of dissimulation itself, which is adduced as so in- 
 superable an objection to the truth of physiognomy, is founded 
 on physiognomy. Why does the hypocrite assume the ap- 
 pearance of an honest man, but because that he is convinced, 
 though not perhaps from any systematic reflection, that all 
 eyes are acquainted with the characteristic marks of honesty. 
 
 What judge, wise or unwise, whether he confess or deny the 
 fact, does not sometimes in this sense decide from appear- 
 ances ? Who can, is, or ought to be, absolutely indifferent to 
 the exterior of persons brought before him to be judged? 
 What king would choose a minister without examining his ex- 
 terior, secretly at least, and to a certain extent? An officer 
 will not enlist a soldier without thus examining his appearance, 
 his height out of the question. What master or mistress of a 
 family will choose a servant without considering the exterior; 
 no matter whether their judgment be or be not just, or whether 
 it be exercised unconsciously? 
 
 I am wearied of citing instances so numerous, and so con- 
 tinually before our eyes, to prove that men, tacitly and unani- 
 mously, confess the influence which physiognomy has over 
 their sensations and actions. I feel disgust at being obliged 
 to write thus, in order to convince the learned of truths with 
 which every child is or may be acquainted. 
 
 He that hath eyes to see, let him see; but should the light, 
 by being brought too close to his eyes, produce frenzy, he may 
 
2o8 LAVATER 
 
 burn himself by endeavoring to extinguish the torch of truth. 
 I use such expressions unwiUingly, but I dare do my duty, and 
 my duty is boldly to declare that I believe myself certain of 
 what I now and hereafter shall affirm ; and that I think myself 
 capable of convincing all real lovers of truth, by principles 
 which are in themselves incontrovertible. It is also necessary 
 to confute the pretensions of certain literary despots, and to 
 compel them to be more cautious in their decisions. It is 
 therefore proved, not because I say it, but because it is an eter- 
 nal and manifest truth, and would have been equally truth, 
 had it never been said, that, whether they are or are not sen- 
 sible of it, all men are daily influenced by physiognomy ; that, 
 as Sultzer has affirmed, every man, consciously or incon- 
 sciously, understands something of physiognomy; nay, that 
 there is not a living being that does not, at least after its man- 
 ner, draw some inferences from the external to the internal; 
 that does not judge concerning that which is not, by that 
 which is, apparent to the senses. 
 
 This universal, though tacit confession, that the exterior, 
 the visible, the superficies of objects, indicates their nature, 
 their properties, and that every outward sign is the symbol of 
 some inherent quality, I hold to be equally certain and im- 
 portant to the science of physiognomy. 
 
 I must once more repeat, when each apple, each apricot, has 
 a physiognomy peculiar to itself, shall man, the lord of earth, 
 have none? The most simple and inanimate object has its 
 characteristic exterior, by which it is not only distinguished 
 as a species, but individually ; and shall the first, noblest, best 
 harmonized, and most beauteous of things be denied all char- 
 acteristic. 
 
 But whatever may be objected against the truth and cer- 
 tainty of the science of physiognomy, by the most illiterate, 
 or the most learned ; how much soever he who openly professes 
 faith in this science, may be subject to ridicule, to philosophic 
 pity and contempt; it still cannot be contested that there is 
 no object, thus considered, more important, more worthy of 
 observation, more interesting than man, nor any occupation 
 superior to that of disclosing the beauties and perfections of 
 human nature. 
 
 Such were my opinions six or eight years ago. Will it in 
 
OF THE TRUTH OF PHYSIOGNOMY 209 
 
 the next century be believed that it is still, at this time, neces- 
 sary to repeat these things ; or that numerous obscure witlings 
 continue to treat with ridicule and contempt the general feel- 
 ings of mankind, and observations which not only may be, 
 but are demonstrated ; and that they act thus without having 
 refuted any one of the principles at which they laugh ; yet that 
 they are, notwithstanding, continually repeating the words, 
 philosophy and enlightened age? 
 
 14 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER 
 
JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER* 
 1744— 1803 
 
 Few men have risen to greatness in spite of such formidable ob- 
 stacles as confronted Johann Gottfried von Herder in his early career. 
 He was the son of a poor schoolmaster, born in 1744 at Mohrungen, 
 in East Prussia, in the dominions of Frederick the Great, and was 
 educated at the University of Konigsberg, where he subsisted literally 
 on charity. Here he came in contact with Kant and Hamann, both of 
 whom influenced his mental development to a marked degree. The 
 strain of his work at the university brought on an affection of the eyes 
 from which he never fully recovered. It was while undergoing a 
 course of treatment for this trouble, at Strasburg in 1769, that he met 
 Goethe, and a friendship sprang up between the two young men that 
 was bound to exert a great influence on the minds and lives of both. 
 Having achieved considerable success in the ministry, his chosen call- 
 ing. Herder was invited, in 1775, to Weimar as Court preacher. He 
 accepted, and the remainder of his life was spent in that famous cen- 
 tre of literary activity where Wieland and Goethe had already taken 
 up their abode. In 1801 Herder was appointed President of the Con- 
 sistory, the highest clerical ofifice in the duchy. He also received a 
 patent of nobility from the Elector of Bavaria. He enjoyed these 
 honors only a short time, for two years later he died, in 1803, at the 
 age of fifty-nine. 
 
 In 1778 Herder published his " Poetry of the Races " (Dichtung der 
 Volker), a careful selection of popular songs and ballads, taken from 
 nearly every language of Europe, and rendered into his own tongue 
 with poetic sympathy and remarkable accuracy. In 1782 appeared 
 " The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," and from 1784 to 1791 his greatest 
 work, " Ideas on the Philosophy of the Human Race." He wrote a 
 metrical romance of great power, entitled " The Cid." Herder is also 
 the author of numerous essays and works on theology, philosophy, 
 and criticism, of which " Tithon and Aurora " has been selected as an 
 example. 
 
 Herder's success as a translator has already been referred to. In 
 poems of his own composition his style does not show to equal ad- 
 vantage, and in his prose works his style is decidedly inferior in point 
 of clearness to that of his two great contemporaries, Wieland and 
 Goethe. But while his writing lacks occasionally careful attention to 
 detail and form, it often carries with it a peculiar eloquence and pro- 
 found suggestiveness of thought that give it deservedly a high place in 
 German literature. The genius of Herder was the source of great in- 
 spiration to his contemporaries, for the views on art, on history, and life 
 in general that he disseminated were broader than the current views 
 of the eighteenth century. On Goethe and Richter especially his in- 
 fluence was far reaching and happy in its results. The monument 
 erected to Herder by his fellow-philosophers and poets at Weimar 
 bears these three words, " Light, Love, Life," an inscription that ex- 
 presses most admirably the characteristic aspirations of his soul. 
 
 212 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 
 
 ALTHOUGH, in general, no epitaph or panegyric uses to 
 notice how long a man has outlived himself, yet is this 
 one of the most remarkable and not infrequent phe- 
 nomena in the history of human lives. The earlier the play of 
 the faculties and passions begins, the more impetuously it is 
 continued, and assailed in various v^ays by external accident, 
 the oftener shall one discover cases of that early exhaustion of 
 the soul — of the warrior laid prostrate without death or wound 
 — of a manly, and, often even, of a youthful extreme age. A 
 man may go about for a long while, with a living body, like the 
 image of his own funeral monument ; his spirit gone from him 
 — a shadow and a memory of his former name. Many causes 
 may contribute to this early death: qualities of mind and 
 heart, too great activity and too sluggish patience, relaxation 
 as well as over-tension, too rapid prosperity and too protracted 
 adversity. For it is a general truth, that health, cheerfulness, 
 pleasure, and virtue are ever the medium between two extremes. 
 Either on the precipitous or the shallow shore of the stream 
 the vessel may be wrecked. In the middle, it is easy and pleas- 
 ant sailing. Many a one has grown old because he wanted the 
 true interior source of activity. He was a brook that contracts 
 its waters into itself and soon dries up and shows its melan- 
 choly bed. This one endeavored to make seeming supply the 
 place of being. The darkness passed away, and the glow- 
 worms in the hair glittered as sparkling diamonds no longer. 
 That one would accomplish by toil and memory, what intelli- 
 gence and genius alone can perform. The overloaded memory 
 gave way, excessive labor tired, and the want of the essential 
 was at last painfully apparent. Another, while a youth, over- 
 strained his nobler powers ; he piled up mountains of imagina- 
 tion to the skies, and soon, without the lightning of Jupiter, 
 found under them his grave. Still another, whose learning and 
 
 213 
 
214 HERDER 
 
 effort had no object but his own ease, abandoned learning and 
 effort as soon as he had obtained that ease, and buried himself 
 in a blessed decay. Here, one, without desert, has had his brain 
 turned by an unexpected prosperity, a too rapidly acquired 
 fame, an unlooked for success in action. He has no longer any 
 thought beyond this success. His seductive goddess, Fortune, 
 has crowned him at once with laurel, with poplar, and with 
 poppy. He falls asleep or babbles nonsense in her enervating 
 lap. There, one of great merit has suffered too long with unde- 
 served misfortune, until his shoulders are bowed, his breast con- 
 tracted, his arm paralyzed, and he can no longer stand erect 
 and recruit himself. A thunderbolt from heaven has stricken 
 the oak even to its root and deprived it of the power of life. 
 To this one — a man of manifold capacity — there was wanting 
 a capacious breast to despise envy and to wait for better times. 
 He suffered himself to be drawn into conflict with it, and the 
 flying eagle was unworthily vanquished by the viper that held 
 him in her folds. That one — a man of honest industry — was 
 wanting in intelligence. His more cunning enemies soon made 
 him powerless and wretched. And thus it befell ten other 
 characters, in other situations. Hard by the theatre of civil 
 life there is generally a hospital, and in that the greater part of 
 the actors gradually lose themselves. 
 
 Two things especially contribute to this result, and they, too, 
 are extremes. In the first place, the arbitrariness of the ruling 
 great; and, secondly, a too refined delicacy and carefulness. 
 As to the former, it is a well-known and favorite saying, that 
 nothing is so troublesome as gratitude, nothing so insupport- 
 able as continued respect and the daily spectacle of acknowl- 
 edged merit. Accordingly, new favor purchases for itself new 
 gratitude; and creatures whom the great purposely attract to 
 themselves — in whom they even pretend to find gifts and merits 
 which the gods never gave them — have, for them, a peculiar 
 charm, as their own creation. The sap is withdrawn from the 
 old trees that the young world may bloom and thrive. Whoso, 
 in such cases, is not greater than he on whom he depends, dies 
 inwardly with self-consuming vexation. The majestic voice 
 of Philip H, " Yo el Rey," has slain many a one of this descrip- 
 tion. Opposed to this murder of human merits and powers, 
 there is another, which may be termed the most refined species 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 215 
 
 of self-murder. It is the more to be lamented because it occurs 
 only in the case of the most elect of men ; suddenly or gradually 
 breaking in pieces their costly mechanism. Men of extreme 
 delicacy of feeling have a " Highest " after which they strive 
 — an idea to which they attach themselves with unspeakable 
 longing — an ideal perfection which they pursue with irresistible 
 impulse. When deprived of this idea, when this fair image is 
 destroyed before their eyes, the heart of their flower is broken, 
 and feeble, withered leaves alone remain. Perhaps more of the 
 dead of this description go about in society, than one might at 
 first suppose, because they, of all men, most carefully conceal 
 their grief, and hide even from their friend the slow poison of 
 their death — that sad secret of the heart. Shakespeare, who 
 depicted all conditions of the soul, has delineated, also, this 
 epoch of the sinking or confusion of the faculties, in various 
 situations and characters, with great truth and exactness. One 
 — perhaps the crown of lamentations over such a state — ^may 
 serve as an example of all. 
 
 ** O! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair State, 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers! quite, quite down! 
 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 
 Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh; 
 That unmatched form and stature of blown youth, 
 Blasted with ecstasy." 
 
 Not only individual persons outlive themselves, but much 
 oftener and longer, those politico-moral persons, so called — 
 institutions, forms of polity, classes, corporations. Often their 
 body remains for centuries, as a show, when the soul of that 
 body has long since fled ; or they creep about as shadows among 
 living forms. To be convinced of this, let anyone enter a Jewish 
 synagogue, or read Anquetil's " Zend-Avesta," and the sacred 
 books of the Brahmins. There is no doubt that all these re- 
 ligious institutions were once very useful, and that, in every one 
 of these hulls, lay the germs of a great development. Time has 
 developed each of them more or less — one happily, so that we 
 are disposed perhaps to look for more in it than w^as there ; an- 
 other imperfectly and feeble ; as in the great course of Nature 
 
2i6 HERDER 
 
 it will fall out. Nevertheless, everything has its goal, and the 
 Rabbi, the Destur, the Mobed — perhaps also the Brahmin — 
 has, in the great whole, outlived himself. In some regions of 
 Mahommedanism something similar is already reported of the 
 Koran, although that is the youngest of bibles. And in Chris- 
 tendom, true as its pure fountain streams, with the water of 
 eternal life, how many a vessel is already broken that was 
 thought to have exhausted this fountain ! How many a form 
 which still stands there, had long ago outlived itself ! Look at 
 the Romish mass ! Listen to many of their litanies and prayers ! 
 Into what times do they take us back ! What a strange savor 
 of long-perished ages! As, in religion, the priestly order, so 
 in other institutions the orders connected with them follow 
 each its living or its dead. Consider so many institutions and 
 orders of the Middle Ages ! Where they could not follow the 
 Genius of opinion and renew their youth with him, they either 
 remained stationary on the shore or else the stream bore them 
 lifeless on, until they found somewhere their place of rest. 
 Even in Cervantes' days the Duke of Be jar would not allow that 
 " Don Quixote " should be dedicated to him, so long as he sup- 
 posed it to be a serious book of knight-errantry ; because the 
 taste for such things had already begun to be ridiculous. He 
 accepted the dedication gladly when, as the book was read to 
 him, he discovered its true character. Time has enacted novels 
 of this kind with several institutions. The princes and heroes 
 of Corneille are for the most part insupportable to us, and we 
 wonder how other times could ever put together, believe, and 
 admire such nonsense. Shakespeare's court-scenes seem to us 
 like capital and state acts. The knights of our day are no 
 longer of the ancient order; and that kingly word of Louis 
 XIV: " L'Etatf c'est moi!" will ever remain the appropriate 
 epitaph of that great world-monarch. 
 
 " Whatsoever had a birth must die," says the Brahmin ; and 
 that, which seeks to defer its downfall by artificial methods, in 
 resorting to such methods, has already outlived itself. In the 
 early spring, the foliage and grass of the former year are often 
 still visible ; much of it has retained its place ; but, in a short 
 time, the whole is vanished, and a new raiment covers the trees 
 and the bosom of the earth. 
 
 If there is anything in the circle of humanity which ought 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 217 
 
 not to outlive itself, it is science and art. The nature of these 
 is eternal, and they are capable of the purest truth and of infi- 
 nite extension. And indeed the real essence of art and science 
 never dies, never changes. But their forms are all the more 
 perishable, as they appear, above all things, to depend on their 
 masters and discoverers — to originate, to flourish, and to perish 
 with them. So long as the discoverer lives, so long as the mas- 
 ter teaches and directs, men draw^ living thoughts from his 
 living fountain. In the second and third generation one already 
 v^anders through schools that echo and ape him. The image of 
 the master stands there dead. His science and his art has out- 
 lived itself, not in his own, but in his successors' works. 
 
 Travels give us a long catalogue of things which have thus 
 outlived themselves — travels in the history, as well as in the 
 actual inspection or regions, countries, institutions, persons, 
 classes. Who that enters an ancient castle, and old-fashioned 
 knightly hall, an archive of old diplomas and treaties, of old 
 arms and decorations, old court-houses, churches, convents, 
 palaces, and imperial cities, does not feel himself translated into 
 a perished century? In a tour through Germany, one often 
 finds, within a circle of a few miles, the ancient, the middle, the 
 modern, and most modern ages together. Here, we breathe 
 still the air of the twelfth century ; there, we hear the melodies 
 of the sixteenth, the tenth, the fourth. All at once, you enter 
 cabinets which have been instituted under the luxurious ducal 
 government — galleries collected under Louis XIV, and end 
 with institutions which seem to have been devised for the 
 twentieth century. Instructive as this chaos may be for 
 the traveller, it would be very confusing and oppressive for the 
 resident, did not human nature accustom itself to all things. 
 " Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four 
 days," said the sorrowing sister; one might say, with regard 
 to many institutions, four centuries, and still they are not offen- 
 sive to their brothers and sisters. These are accustomed to the 
 odor, and find it nourishing. 
 
 Italy seems to me the most instructive theatre of these life- 
 epochs and world-ages. There, you can be with Egyptians, 
 Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, nay, if you please, with Chinese, 
 with Hindoos, and with the people of Madagascar ! In Rome, 
 alone, you may follow paganism from Romulus to Diocletian, 
 
2i8 HERDER 
 
 and Christianity from Constantine to Pius. There, and in the 
 Italian provinces, you may live at pleasure in the fifteenth, 
 the sixteenth, or the eighteenth century. And if you investigate 
 the monuments of nature, you will come upon self-survivals 
 which will take you beyond the bounds of history. It requires a 
 capacious mind to embrace, to distinguish, to classify all these 
 scenes. But, to such a mind, they exhibit a compend of all his- 
 tory, which floods us, at last, with, I know not, what pleasing 
 but dissolving melancholy. 
 
 " The cloud-capped towers, etc., etc. 
 
 We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Enough of sleep and of dying out! Let us now speak of 
 waking and rejuvenescence! How is this brought about? By 
 revolution ? 
 
 I confess that, among the misused words of our modern, 
 fashionable vocabulary, few are so displeasing- to me as this ; 
 because it has entirely departed from its original, pure significa- 
 tion, and carries with it the most mischievous confusion of 
 thought. In astronomy, we call revolution a movement of the 
 great world-bodies which returns into itself — determined by 
 measure, number, and forces ; a movement, which is not only 
 the most peaceful order in itself, but, in connection with other 
 harmonious powers, establishes the kingdom of eternal order. 
 Thus the earth revolves around itself and makes day and night, 
 and by means of these, arranges and regulates the sleep and the 
 waking of its creatures, their time for rest and the circle of their 
 occupations. Thus the earth moves around the sun and makes 
 the year, and by means of that, the seasons, and by means of 
 them, the changes of labor and of mortal enjoyment. The revo- 
 lution of the moon around our earth gives to the sea its ebb and 
 flood, determines the periods of diseases, and perhaps, of the 
 growth of plants. In this sense it is useful to notice revolu- 
 tions ; for, in them, we observe a course of affairs which returns 
 into itself, and, in that course of things, the laws of a perpetual 
 order. In such a course there is nothing abrupt, arbitrary, 
 without reason. There is nothing of destruction in it, but a 
 gently vibrating thread of conservation. Revolutions of this 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 219 
 
 kind are the dance of the Hours around the throne of Jupiter. 
 They are the chaplet of victory on the immortal head of the 
 god, after the conquest of chaos. 
 
 Also, if we draw down this idea of revolution from heaven 
 to earth, it can be no other than the idea of a silent progress 
 of things, of a reappearance of certain phenomena, according 
 to their peculiar nature, consequently, of the design of an ever- 
 working Wisdom, Order, and Goodness. In this sense, we 
 speak of the revolutions of arts and sciences, that is, a periodical 
 return of them, the causes of which we endeavor to investigate 
 in history, and, as it were, to calculate astronomically. Thus 
 the Pythagoreans spoke of the revolutions of the human soul, 
 that is, of its periodical return into other forms. Thus have 
 men investigated the laws of the revolution of human thoughts ; 
 when they return from oblivion into remembrance; when 
 visions and desires, when activities and passions which had 
 gone to sleep, reappear once more. In all these things, it has 
 been attempted to discover the laws of a hidden, silent order 
 of nature. 
 
 But the meaning of this word has undergone a detestable 
 change, because, in the barbarous centuries, men knew of no 
 other revolutions than conquests, overturns, oppressions, confu- 
 sions without motive, aim, or order. Then it was called revolu- 
 tion, when the nethermost was made uppermost — when, by the 
 so-called right of war, a nation lost more or less of its property, 
 its laws, its goods ; or when, by the right of monarchy, all those 
 so-called rights were enforced, which St. Thomas, Machiavel, 
 and Naude afterwards collected from actual events and brought 
 together in one chapter. Then, finally, it was called a revolu- 
 tion, when the ministers did what the rulers themselves would 
 not do; or when, here and there, the people undertook that 
 which they could rarely execute so well as kings or ministers. 
 Hence the numerous " Histoires des Revolutions " — a kind of 
 book whose title is all the more popular, that its contents are, for 
 the most part, unintelligible or abominable. The notion of an 
 aim or object was almost lost sight of. History became an ex- 
 hibition of entanglements without a denouement. For, after 
 the conclusion of each revolution, socalled, the confusion, in 
 the kingdoms where they occurred, was greater than before. 
 Revolutions of this sort, whencesoever they may derive their 
 
220 
 
 HERDER 
 
 origin, are signs of barbarism, of an insolent force, of a mad 
 wilfulness. The more reason and moderation increase among 
 men, the rarer they will become, until, at last, they entirely dis- 
 appear. Then the word revolution will revert to its pure and 
 true meaning. Then it will mean, in history also as elsewhere, 
 a course of things arranged according to laws — a course of 
 events which peacefully returns into itself. In this view alone 
 is history worth the study; for, as to the revolutions of wild 
 elephants, when they tear up trees and devastate yillages — from 
 these there is not much to be learned. 
 
 Not to mislead, therefore, with this abused word, and not 
 to make destructive violence a medicine for mortal ills, we will 
 keep the path of healing Nature. Not revolutions, but evolu- 
 tions are the silent process of the great mother, wherewith she 
 awakens slumbering powers, brings germs to maturity, gives 
 renewed youth to premature age, and new life to seeming death. 
 Let us see what this remedy comprehends, and how it heals. 
 
 If we suppose Nature to have an aim on the earth, that aim 
 can be no other than the development of her powers in all 
 forms, kinds, and ways. These evolutions proceed slowly, often 
 imperceptibly ; and, for the most part, they appear periodically. 
 After a night of sleep follows a morning of awakening. Under 
 the shade of the former Nature had re-collected her powers, 
 in order to meet the latter with spirit. In the ages of man, child- 
 hood continues long; body and mind advance with a slow 
 growth, until, with collected energies, the flower of youth 
 breaks forth, and the fruit of later years comes gradually to 
 maturity. Very improperly have these periods of development 
 been called revolutions. There is nothing here that revolves, 
 but faculties are evolved, developed. Ever, the more recondite 
 and deeper-lying come forth to view, which, without many a 
 preceding one, could not have been brought into action. There- 
 fore Nature made periods. She gave the creature time to re- 
 cover itself from one exertion gone through with, in order to 
 begin, with joy, and to accomplish another and more difficult. 
 For when the plant puts forth a flower, or when the fruit is 
 forming in it, unquestionably more inward and finer forces are 
 put in action than when the sap was entering the stem, and the 
 lowest leaves were brought forth. In the ordinary course of 
 things Nature does not leave her work until all its physical 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 221 
 
 powers have been brought into action; the innermost, as it 
 were, turned outward, and the development, which, at every 
 step, is assisted by a kindly epigenesis, has become as perfect as 
 it could become, under the given conditions. 
 
 Men are accustomed to regard each individual object, and 
 especially each living individual as an isolated whole; but a 
 nearer view shows it to be connected with soil, climate, weather, 
 with the periodical breath of all Nature; and that, according 
 to these, it lasts for a longer or shorter time, grows early old or 
 easily renews its youth. Man, a rational, moral, and political 
 creation, lives, by means of these capacities and powers, in a 
 peculiar and infinitely extended element. His reason is con- 
 nected with the reason of others, his moral culture with the 
 conduct of others, his capacity to constitute himself a free 
 being — both in himself and in connection with others — is so 
 intimately connected with the way of thinking, the reasonable- 
 ness, the active enterprise of many, that out of this element, 
 he must needs be like a fish on dry land, or a bird in a space 
 destitute of air. His best powers die out, his capacity remains a 
 dead capability ; and all effort, out of time and place, and with- 
 out the cooperation of the elements, is like a flower in the 
 midst of winter. It is Nature that makes seasons ; it is she that 
 furthers capacities. She furthers them also in humankind. 
 Individual men, classes, corporations, whole societies, and na- 
 tions, can only advance with this stream, they have done all if 
 they steer wisely upon it. Let no one think that, if all the 
 regents of the earth from the proudest negro king to the mighti- 
 est khan of the Tartars should combine to make to-day yester- 
 day and to hinder forever the progressive development of the 
 human race, whether it lead to youth or to old age they could 
 ever accomplish their aim. This can never be an aim with wise 
 rulers, simply, because there is no sense in such fruitless en- 
 deavor. 
 
 A wise ruler then will always regard himself as the house- 
 holder, not as the antagonist of Nature. He will improve every 
 circumstance which she offers, to the best issues. Here leaves 
 are falling, there a whole autumn of leaves lie already in their 
 shrouds. He will not attempt to restore them again to their 
 former places on limb and twig. Can he give them back their 
 former freshness and sap which made them a living whole with 
 
222 HERDER 
 
 the tree on which they hung? And if he cannot do this, how 
 then ? Will he crown himself with a withered wreath of dried 
 leaves, because they were other once than they are now ? What 
 Nature could not keep, will the gardener keep it ? and that too, 
 not in conformity with the ends of Nature, but in direct opposi- 
 tion to them? Infinitely more beautiful the task to follow 
 Nature, to mark her times, to awaken powers wherever they 
 slumber, to promote thought, activity, invention, joy, and love, 
 in whatsoever field of useful employment. Necessity comes at 
 last and compels with iron sceptre. He who obeys reason and 
 measure will prevent necessity. Often, he will need only to 
 beckon with the lily-staff of Oberon, and here new flowers will 
 spring instead of the withered ones, and there, if the blossom- 
 time is past, nourishing fruits will come to maturity. He will 
 come to the aid of the young shoot and take it under his protec- 
 tion against oppressive weeds. The old wild tree he will not 
 cut down but graft more genial fruits upon it, and the reju- 
 venized tree will wonder, itself, at its nobler existence. A slight 
 anticipation of this kind, by which one nation had got the start 
 of another, has often secured to it, for centuries, unattainable 
 advantages. England acquired the position which she now 
 occupies, by a somewhat earlier adoption and application of 
 certain points of constitutional finance and commerce, which 
 had long before germinated in other countries, but which folly 
 and passion had suppressed. After many violent revolutions 
 which passed over her, like bloody thunder-showers, it was 
 given to the most peaceful and silent revolution, to awaken a 
 new activity, and thereby to establish, for centuries, the pros- 
 perity of a living constitution. If in the time of William III, 
 she had attempted to renew the feudal, military, and forest 
 laws of William the Conqueror, where would she be now ? 
 
 All orders and arrangements of society are the children of 
 Time. This ancient mother produced, nourished, educated 
 them ; she adorned and fitted them out ; and after a longer or 
 shorter term of life, she buries them as she buries and renews 
 herself. Whoever therefore confounds his own being with the 
 duration of an order or institution, gives himself unnecessary 
 torment. That which was before thee, will be behind thee too, 
 if it is to be. For thine own part, act understandingly and 
 wisely ; time will proceed in its great course and accomplish its 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 223 
 
 own. Be in thine own person more than thine order ; and then, 
 however that may grow old, thou wilt be, for thyself and for 
 others, always young. Yea, the darker the night, the brighter 
 shalt thou beam a star ! He who does not raise himself above 
 the breastwork of his order, is no hero within it. An order, as 
 such, makes only puppets. Personality makes worth and merit. 
 The more that idle, dead hull which conceals the best as well as 
 the poorest kernel falls away, the more the fair and ripe fruit 
 appears. Assuredly, therefore, it is no retrocession, but an evo- 
 lution of the times, when the order ceases to be all, and men 
 demand to see, in each order, persons, men, active beings. 
 And since, without a new incursion of barbarism, and with the 
 daily increasing necessities of Europe, this feeling must neces- 
 sarily increase, there remains qnly one counsel which can se- 
 cure each one against the senescence of his order. Be some- 
 thing in your order, and then you will be the first to perceive, 
 to avoid, and to amend its defects. Its old age will appear 
 rejuvenized in you, precisely because there is something in you 
 which would grace every form and live in all. 
 
 The excellent Paolo Sarpi wrote a treatise, the title of which 
 attracted me exceedingly : " How opinions are born and die 
 in us." I was very curious to become acquainted with its con- 
 tents. And although I saw from Foscarini's extract in Grisel- 
 lini that it was not likely to contain what I had supposed, this 
 capital problem nevertheless was often in my thoughts. Many 
 are the ways in which, from earliest childhood, we arrive at 
 opinions with which we clothe ourselves, body and soul. Many 
 of them cleave to us with great tenacity, and the silliest we gen- 
 erally keep concealed behind our innermost, ninth skin, where, 
 let no one presume to touch them! Unfortunately, however. 
 Time will touch them, and often with very rude hands. And 
 he who, in order to save his life, that is, his reason, peace, and 
 the self-consciousness of internal worth, cannot yield the skin 
 and hair of his opinions to the meddling Satan, is in bad hands. 
 For that which is mere opinion, or even false opinion, will as- 
 suredly perish in the fierce fire of purification. But is it not 
 something better that shall arise in its place ? Instead of opin- 
 ions received on authority or even, as Franklin relates, from 
 politeness, knowledge from conviction, reason approved by our 
 own investigation, and a self-acquired felicity shall be our por- 
 
224 
 
 HERDER 
 
 tion. The old man in us must die that a new youth may spring 
 up. 
 
 " But how may this be ! Can a man return into his mother's 
 womb and be born again ? " To this doubt of old Nicodemus, 
 the only answer that can be given is: " Palingenesia!" — not 
 revolution, but a happy evolution of the faculties which slumber 
 in us, and by means of which we renew our youth. What we 
 call outliving ourselves — that is, a kind of death — is, with souls 
 of the better sort but sleep, which precedes a new waking, a 
 relaxation of the bow which prepares it for new use. So rests 
 the fallow-field, in order to produce the more plentifully here- 
 after. So dies the tree in winter, that it may put forth and 
 blossom anew in the spring. Destiny never forsakes the good, 
 as long as he does not forsake himself, and ignobly despair of 
 himself. The Genius which seemed to have departed from him 
 returns to him again, at the right moment, bringing new activ- 
 ity, fortune, and joy. Sometimes the Genius comes in the shape 
 of a friend, sometimes in that of an unexpected change of times. 
 Sacrifice to this Genius even though you see him not ! Hope in 
 back-looking, returning Fortune, even when you deem her far 
 off ! If the left side is sore, lay yourself on the right ; if the 
 storm has bent your sapling one way, bend it the other way, 
 until it attains, once more, the perpendicular medium. You 
 have wearied your memory? Then exercise your understand- 
 ing. You have striven too diligently after seeming, and it has 
 deceived you ? Now seek being. That will not deceive. Un- 
 merited fame has spoiled you? Thank Heaven that you are 
 rid of it, and seek, in your own worth, a fame which cannot be 
 taken away. Nothing is nobler and more venerable than a man, 
 who, in spite of fate, perseveres in his duty, and who, if he is 
 not happy outv/ardly, at least deserves to be so. He will cer- 
 tainly become so, at the right season. The serpent of time often 
 casts her slough, and brings to the man in his cave, if not the 
 fabled jewel on her head and the rose in her mouth, at least 
 medicinal herbs which procure him oblivion of the past, and 
 restoration to new life. 
 
 Philosophy abounds in remedies designed to console us for 
 misfortunes endured, but unquestionably its best remedy is 
 when it strengthens us to bear new misfortunes, and imparts to 
 us a firm reliance on ourselves. The illusion which weakens 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 225 
 
 the faculties of the soul, comes, for the most part, from without. 
 But the objects which environ us are not ourselves. It is sad 
 indeed, when the situation in which a man is placed is so embit- 
 tered and made so wretched, that he has no desire to touch one of 
 its grapes or flowers, because they crumble to ashes in his hands, 
 like those fruits of Sodom. Nevertheless, the situation is not 
 himself ; let him, like the tortoise, draw in his limbs and be what 
 he can and ought. The more he disregards the consequences of 
 his actions, the more repose he has in action. Thereby the soul 
 grows stronger and revivifies itself, like an ever-springing 
 fountain. The fountain does not stop to calculate through 
 what regions of the earth its stream shall flow, what foreign 
 matter it shall take in, and where it shall finally lose itself. It 
 flows from its own fulness, with an irrepressible motion. That 
 which others show us of oursetves is only appearance. It has 
 always some foundation, and is never to be wholly despised; 
 but it is only the reflection of our being in them, mirrored back 
 to us from their own ; often a broken and dim form, and not our 
 being itself. Let the little insects creep over and around you, 
 and be at the uttermost pains to make you appear dead ; they 
 work in their nature. Work you in yours, and live ! In fact, 
 our breast, our character, keeps us always more and longer up- 
 right, than all the acumen of the head, than all the cunning of 
 the mind. In the heart we live, and not in the thoughts. The 
 opinions of others may be a favorable or unfavorable wind in 
 our sails. As the ocean its vessels, so circumstances at one 
 time may hold us fast, at another may powerfully further us ; 
 but ship and sail, compass, helm, and oar, are still our own. 
 Never, then, like old Tithonus, grow gray in the conceit that 
 your youth has passed away. Rather, with newly awakened 
 activity, let a new Aurora daily spring from your arms. 
 
 I ought now to speak to the greater problem, so peculiarly 
 adapted to our times : Whether nations, countries, states, must 
 also decline with old age, or whether they, too, are capable of a 
 new youth ? And by what means that youth may be renewed ? 
 On this question there is great division of opinion, and, as each 
 opinion knows how to fortify itself with examples from history, 
 this very difference in the answers is itself a proof of the in- 
 definiteness of the question. What is it that can grow old in a 
 nation, a country, a state ? What, in them, can or ought to be 
 15 
 
2 26 HERDER 
 
 made young again ? Is it the soul, the air, the sky ? And how 
 are these changed for the better or worse? Is it the farms, 
 meadows, forests, salt-springs, mines, trees ? Or is it the man- 
 ner of working them, the profit and the application of their 
 products ? Is it these alone, or is it man himself, his race, his 
 manners, his education and mode of living, his principles and 
 opinions, his relations and conditions ? And how shall these be 
 changed? By speeches and writings, or by institutions and 
 well-directed, consistent, continued action? And what object 
 shall this change accomplish? Superfluity for the few, com- 
 fort and idleness for the many, or the happiness of all ? And 
 wherein consists the happiness of all? In arts and sciences? 
 In seeming or in being? In loquacious enHghtenment or in 
 genuine culture ? All these, and perhaps other questions, should 
 be considered with careful reference to place, time and cir- 
 cumstances, and a comparison with more ancient examples 
 and their consequences. And then, it would probably be 
 found : 
 
 1. That land and people never grow old, or only at a very 
 late period ; but that States, as human institutions, as children 
 of the times, or even, in many cases, as the mere growth of ac- 
 cident, have their age and their youth, and, consequently, an 
 ever-progressive, imperceptible movement toward growth, to- 
 ward blossoming, or toward dissolution. 
 
 2. That man, often individual men, may retard or promote 
 these periods, nay, that they are mostly promoted by opposite 
 measures. 
 
 3. That when forces are at work, either for bloom or for 
 dissolution, their progress is rapid, and everything appears to 
 assimilate itself with them, until trivial circumstances — often 
 again, individual men — give the stream a different direction; 
 which new direction, again, is the result of a living presence, 
 although it sometimes appears to be the effect of chance. 
 
 4. That, finally, in order to forestall those fearful explosions 
 which are called political revolutions, and which ought to be 
 entirely foreign from the book of human affairs, the State has 
 no other remedy, but to preserve or to restore the natural re- 
 lation, the healthy action of all its parts, the brisk circulation of 
 its juices, and must not contend against the nature of things. 
 Sooner or later the strongest machine must succumb in that 
 
TITHON AND AURORA 227 
 
 contest; but Nature never grows old. She only renews her 
 youth periodically, in all her living forces. 
 
 The timid nature of man, always compassed about with hope 
 and fear, often prophesies distant evils as near, and calls that 
 death, which is only a wholesome slumber, a necessary, health- 
 bringing relaxation. And so it generally deceives itself in its 
 predictions concerning lands and kingdoms. Powers lie dor- 
 mant which we do not perceive. Faculties and circumstances 
 are developing themselves, on which we could not calculate. 
 But even when our judgment is true, it usually leans too much 
 to one side. " If this is to live," we say, " that must die." We 
 do not consider whether it may not be possible that both shall 
 live and act favorably on each other ? 
 
 The good Bishop Berkeley, who was no poet, was inspired, 
 by his beneficent zeal for America,-to write the following : 
 
 *' Westward the star of empire takes its way; 
 The four first acts already past, 
 The fifth shall close the drama with the day. 
 Time's noblest offspring is the last." * 
 
 So prophesied the good-natured bishop, and if his spirit 
 could now glance at yonder upstriving America, he would per- 
 haps discover, with that same glance, that, in the arms of the 
 old Tithon, Europe, also, a new Aurora was slumbering. Not 
 four, scarcely three acts in the great drama of this, still youth- 
 ful, quarter of the globe, are past ; and who shall say how many 
 times yet the old Tithon of the human race may and will renew 
 his youth upon our earth ! 
 
 1 The original gives the entire poem of which the above is the concluding stanza, 
 together with a German version of it. 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 
 
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 
 
 1749— 1832 
 
 " Of great men, among so many millions of noted men," says Car- 
 lyle, "it is computed that in our time there have been two; one in 
 the practical, another in the speculative, province: Napoleon Bona- 
 parte and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Goethe intrinsically of much 
 more unquestionable merit." The man of whom this high estimate 
 was written was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main on August 28, 1749. 
 His father was a man of wealth, culture, and high social position, and 
 his mother, to whom he owed much, was a woman of fine intellect, 
 rare tact and wisdom in all that pertained to the early education of 
 her remarkable son. After two or three years spent in studying law at 
 the University of Leipsic, where he led a life rather unfettered by 
 conventionalities, young Goethe was sent to Strasburg, where he met 
 Herder. In 1773 his first important work was published, the tragedy 
 of " Goetz von Berlichingen." Its popularity was immediate and 
 universal. Soon afterwards he met the young prince, Karl August of 
 Weimar, and a friendship was formed that continued without inter- 
 ruption for fifty-five years. Many of his finest lyrics belong to this 
 period. In 1774 he published his famous novel, " The Sorrows of 
 Werther." The following year his friend, Prince Karl, became Grand 
 Duke of Weimar, and at once summoned Goethe to his Court, where he 
 became the intimate companion of the Duke, was elevated to the dignity 
 of Privy Councillor in 1779, and knighted in 1782. He was made 
 Minister of Finance of the little duchy in the latter year, and in 1815 
 he became its Prime Minister. The name of Weimar is indelibly linked 
 with Goethe's life and work. After the death of his patron, in 1828, 
 Goethe, then nearly eighty years of age, lived in retirement, but still 
 engaged and interested in literary pursuits so far as his faculties would 
 permit. He died in Weimar in March, 1832, at the ripe age of eighty- 
 three. 
 
 In 1786 Goethe set out on a journey to Italy, the country he had 
 long desired to visit. Of his two years' stay, his impressions and ex- 
 periences, as well as of the journey, we have an account from his own 
 pen. On his return, he wrote in rapid succession the dramas " Eg- 
 mont," " Iphigenia," " Tasso," and numerous fine poems, chiefly 
 lyrical. He devoted also much attention to science and art. In 1794 
 a friendship sprang up between Goethe and Schiller that profoundly 
 influenced the work of both, and lasted uninterruptedly till Schiller's 
 death in 1805. ^ In 1796 Goethe completed " Wilhelm Meister," a work 
 he had begun in 1777, and the following year he published " Hermann 
 and Dorothea." At this time also appeared many of his finest ballads. 
 The first part of " Faust," his greatest work and one of the grandest 
 compositions in literature, appeared in 1808. His literary activity con- 
 tinued to the very close of his long life. The second part of " Faust," 
 in the completion of which he labored assiduously during the declining 
 years of his life, appeared only after his death. 
 ^ Goethe's style is characteristic of the man, marvellously clear and 
 simple, free from all mannerism and eccentricities, yet profoundly im- 
 pressive, suggestive, and individual. A characteristic example of his 
 prose is given in his essay on " The Vicar of Wakefield." It is as a 
 poet, however, that he achieved his greatest triumphs and his endur- 
 ing fame. " In Goethe," says Bayard Taylor, " we find a long, rich, 
 and wholly fortunate life, almost unparalleled in its results. In him 
 there is no unfilled promise, no fragmentary destiny: he stands as 
 complete and symmetrical and satisfactory as the Parthenon." 
 
 230 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 HERDER paid us a visit, and together with his great 
 learning, he brought with him many other aids, and 
 the later publications besides. Among these he an- 
 nounced to us the " Vicar of Wakefield " as an excellent work, 
 with the German translation of which he wished to make us 
 acquainted by reading it aloud to us himself. 
 
 His method of reading was quite pecuHar; one who has 
 heard him preach will easily form an idea of it for himself. 
 He delivered everything, and this romance as well as the rest, 
 in a serious and simple style, perfectly removed from all imita- 
 tive-dramatic representation, and avoiding even that variety 
 which is not only permitted, but even required, in an epical 
 delivery; I mean that slight change of voice which sets in 
 relief what is spoken by the different characters, and by means 
 of which the interlocutors are distinguished from the narrator. 
 Without being . montonous. Herder let everything follow 
 along in the same tone, just as if nothing of it was present be- 
 fore him, but all was only historical ; as if the shadows of this 
 poetic creation did not affect him in a life-like manner, but 
 only glided gently by. Yet this manner of delivery had an 
 infinite charm in his mouth : for, as he felt it all most deeply, 
 and knew how to estimate the variety of such a work so its 
 whole merit appeared in perfect purity, and the more clearly, 
 as you were not disturbed by passages sharply spoken out, nor 
 interrupted in the feeling which the whole was meant to 
 produce. 
 
 A Protestant country clergyman is, perhaps, the most beau- 
 tiful subject for a modern idyl ; he appears, like Melchizedek, 
 as priest and king in one person. In the most innocent situa- 
 tion which can be imagined in the world, that of a husband- 
 man, he is, for the most part, united to his people by similar 
 
 231 - 
 
232 GOETHE 
 
 occupations, as well as by similar family relationships; he is 
 a father, a master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus a per- 
 fect member of the community. On this pure, beautiful, 
 earthly foundation, reposes his higher calling; to him is it 
 given to guide men through life, to take care for their spiritual 
 education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of their ex- 
 istence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and, if 
 present consolation is not sufficient, he calls up before them 
 the hope and firm assurance of a happier future. Imagine to 
 yourself such a man, with feelings of pure humanity, strong 
 enough not to deviate from them under any circumstances, and 
 by this already elevated above the many, of whom one can ex- 
 pect neither purity nor firmness ; give him the learning neces- 
 sary for his office, as well as a cheerful, equable activity which 
 is even passionate, for he neglects no moment for doing good 
 — and you will have him well endowed. But at the same time 
 add the necessary limitedness, so that he must not only labor 
 on in a small circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a 
 smaller; grant him good-nature, placability, resolution, and 
 everything else praiseworthy that springs from so decided a 
 character, and over all this a serene condescension and a smil- 
 ing forbearance towards his own failings and those of others : 
 so will you have put together pretty well the image of our ex- 
 cellent Wakefield. 
 
 The delineation of this character on his course of life through 
 joys and sorrows, and the ever increasing interest of the plot, 
 by the combination of what is quite natural with the strange 
 and the wonderful, make this romance one of the best which 
 has ever been written ; besides this, it has the great superiority 
 of being quite moral, nay, in a pure sense, Christian, for it 
 represents the reward of good intentions and perseverance in 
 the right, it strengthens an unconditional confidence in God, 
 and asserts the final triumph of good over evil, and all this 
 without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was pre- 
 served from both of these by an elevation of mind that shows 
 itself throughout in the form of irony, by reason of which this 
 little work must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The 
 author, Dr. Goldsmith, has without question great insight into 
 the moral world, into its strength and its infirmities; but at 
 the same time he may thankfully acknowledge that he is an 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 233 
 
 Englishman/ and reckon highly the advantages which his 
 country and his nation afforded him. The family, with whose 
 delineation he has here busied himself, stands upon one of the 
 lowest steps of citizen-comfort, and yet comes in contact with 
 the highest; its narrow circle, which becomes still more con- 
 tracted, extends its influence into the great world through the 
 natural and common course of things; this little skiff floats 
 full on the agitated waves of English life, and in weal or woe 
 it has to expect injury or help from the vast fleet which sails 
 around it. 
 
 I may suppose that my readers know this work and remem- 
 ber it ; whoever hears it named for the first time here, as well 
 as he who is induced to read it again, will thank me. For the 
 former I would merely remark, en passant, that the vicar's wife 
 is of that busy, good sort, who 'allows herself and family to 
 want for nothing, but who is also somewhat vain of herself 
 and family. There are two daughters ; Olivia, handsome and 
 more devoted to the exterior ; and Sophia, charming and more 
 given to her inner self ; nor will I omit mentioning an indus- 
 trious son, Moses, who is somewhat astringent and emulous 
 of his father. 
 
 If Herder could be accused of any fault in his reading aloud, 
 it was impatience ; he did not wait until the hearer had heard 
 and comprehended a certain part of the details, so as to be 
 able to feel and think correctly about them ; he would hurry 
 on immediately to see their effect, and yet he was displeased 
 with this too when it manifested itself in us. He blamed the 
 excess of feeling which overflowed from me at every step in 
 the story. I felt like a man, like a young man; everything 
 was living, true, and present before me. He, considering only 
 the artistic keeping and form, saw clearly, indeed, that I was 
 overpowered by the subject-matter, and this he was unwilling 
 to allow. Peglow's reflections, besides, which were not of the 
 most refined character, were still worse received ; but he was 
 especially angry at our want of keenness in not seeing before- 
 hand the contrasts which the author often makes use of, and in 
 suffering ourselves to be moved and carried away by them 
 without remarking the oft-returning art. Nor would he par- 
 
 1 Goldsmith was an Irishman by birth, but Goethe presumably meant to refer 
 to him as a British author. 
 
234 GOETHE 
 
 don us for not having seen at once, or at least suspected from 
 the first, where Burchell is on the point of discovering himself 
 by passing over in his narration from the third to the first 
 person, that he himself was the lord whom he was talking 
 about; and when, finally we rejoiced like children at the 
 denouement, and the transformation of the poor, needy wan- 
 derer into a rich, powerful lord, he immediately recalled the 
 passage, which, according to the author's plan, we had over- 
 looked, and then he read us a powerful lecture on our stupidity. 
 It will be seen from this that he regarded the work merely as 
 a production of art, and required the same of us who were yet 
 wandering in that state where it is very allowable to let works 
 of art affect us just as if they were productions of nature. 
 
 I did not suffer myself to be at all confused by Herder's in- 
 vectives; for young people have the happiness or unhappi- 
 ness, that, when anything has produced an effect on them, this 
 effect must be wrought out within themselves; from which 
 much good, as well as much mischief arises. The above work 
 had produced a great impression upon me, for which I could 
 not account. Properly speaking, I felt myself in unison with 
 that ironical tone of mind which elevates itself above every 
 object, above fortune and misfortune, good and evil, death 
 and life, and thus attains to the possession of a truly poetical 
 world. In fact, though I could not become conscious of this 
 until later, it was enough that it gave me much to do at the 
 moment; but I could by no means have expected to see my 
 self so soon transposed from this fictitious world into an actual 
 one so similar. 
 
 My fellow-boarder, Weyland, who enlivened his quiet, la- 
 borious life by visiting his friends and relations in the country 
 (for he was a native of Alsace), did me many services on my 
 little excursions, by introducing me to different localities and 
 individuals, sometimes in person, sometimes by his recommen- 
 dations. He had often spoken to me about a country clergy- 
 man who lived near Drusenheim, six leagues from Strasburg, 
 in possession of a good benefice, with an intelligent wife and 
 a pair of lovely daughters. The hospitality and agreeableness 
 of this family were always highly extolled. It scarcely needed 
 all this to draw thither a young rider who had already ac- 
 customed himself to spend all his leisure days and hours on 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 235 
 
 horseback and in the open air. We decided upon this trip, 
 too, on which my friend had to promise that, on introducing 
 me, he would say neither good nor ill of me, but would treat 
 me with general indifference, and would also allow me to make 
 my appearance clad, if not meanly, yet somewhat poorly and 
 slovenly. He consented to this, and promised himself some 
 sport from it. 
 
 It is a pardonable whim in men of consequence to place 
 their exterior advantages in concealment now and then, so as 
 to give the fairer play to the intrinsic worth of their inner 
 man. For this reason the incognito of princes, and the ad- 
 ventures resulting therefrom, are always highly pleasing ; they 
 appear like masked divinities, who can nobly reckon at double 
 their value all the good offices shown to them as individuals, 
 and are able either to make' light of the disagreeable or to 
 avoid it. That Jupiter should be well pleased in his incognito 
 with Philemon and Baucis, and Henry IV with his peasants 
 after a hunting party, is quite conformable to nature, and we 
 like it well ; but that a young man, of no importance or name, 
 should take it into his head to derive any pleasure from an in- 
 cognito might be construed by many as an unpardonable ar- 
 rogance. Yet since the question here is not whether such 
 opinions and deeds are praiseworthy or blameable, but how 
 they may have shown themselves and been put into execution, 
 we will pardon the youngster his self-conceit, for this time, 
 for the sake of our own amusement; and the more so as I 
 must here affirm, in my excuse, that from youth up, a love for 
 masquerade had been excited in me even by my stern father 
 himself. 
 
 This time too, partly with my own cast-oflf clothes, partly 
 with some borrowed garments and by the manner of comb- 
 ing my hair, I had, if not disfigured myself, yet at least botched 
 up my accoutrements so outlandishly that my friend could not 
 help laughing along the way, especially since I knew how to 
 take ofif to the life the bearing and gesture of the Latin riders 
 (as such-looking figures are called) when they sit on horse- 
 back. The fine road, the most splendid weather, and the 
 neighborhood of the Rhine, put us in the best humor. We 
 stopped a moment in Drusenheim, he to make himself spruce, 
 and I to rehearse the part I was to play, for I was afraid of 
 
236 GOETHE 
 
 speaking now and then out of character. The country here 
 has the characteristics of all the open, level parts of Alsace. 
 We rode by a pleasant foot-path over the meadows, soon 
 reached Sesenheim, left our horses at the tavern, and walked 
 leisurely towards the parsonage. " Do not be put out," said 
 Weyland, showing me the house from a distance, " that it 
 looks like an old and miserable farm-house ; it is so much the 
 younger inside." We stepped into the court-yard; the whole 
 pleased me well: for it was just what is called picturesque, 
 and what had so magically interested me in the Dutch school 
 of art. The effect which time produces on all the works of 
 man was strongly perceptible. House, barn, and stable were 
 just at that point of dilapidation where, in doubtful hesitation 
 betwixt repairing and rebuilding, men often neglect the one 
 without being able to accomplish the other. 
 
 As in the village, so in the court-yard of the parsonage, 
 everything was quiet and deserted. We found the father quite 
 alone, a little man, wrapped up within himself, but friendly 
 notwithstanding ; the family were then in the field. He bade 
 us welcome, and offered us some refreshment, which we de- 
 clined. My friend hurried away to look after the ladies, and 
 I remained alone with our host. " Perhaps," said he, " you 
 are surprised to find me so miserably quartered in a wealthy 
 village, and with a lucrative benefice ; but," continued he, " it 
 proceeds from irresolution. Long since it has been promised 
 me by the parish, and even by those in higher places, that the 
 house should be rebuilt ; many plans have been already drawn, 
 examined, and altered, none of them altogether rejected, and 
 none carried into execution. This has lasted so many years, 
 that I scarcely know how to command my impatience." I an- 
 swered him whatever I thought likely to cherish his hopes, 
 and encourage him to take up the affair more vigorously. 
 Thereupon he proceeded to describe familiarly the personages 
 on whom such matters depend, and although he was no great 
 hand at the delineation of character, yet I could easily com- 
 prehend how the whole business must have been delayed. The 
 confidentialness of the man was something peculiar ; he talked 
 to me as if he had known me for ten years, though there was 
 nothing in his look from which I could have suspected that he 
 was directing any particular scrutiny to my character. At last 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 237 
 
 my friend came in with the mother. She seemed to look at 
 me with altogether different eyes. Her countenance was reg- 
 ular, and its expression intelligent ; she must have been hand- 
 some in her youth. Her figure was tall and spare, but not 
 mo^e so than became her years, and when seen from behind 
 she had yet quite a youthful and pleasing appearance. The 
 elder daughter then came bouncing in briskly; she inquired 
 after Frederica, just as both the others had also done. The 
 father assured them that he had not seen her since all three 
 had gone out together. The daughter again went out to the 
 door to look for her sister ; the mother brought us some refresh- 
 ment, and Weyland continued the conversation with the old 
 couple, which referred to nothing but known persons and cir- 
 cumstances; for it is usually the case, when acquaintances 
 meet after some length of time, that they make inquiries about 
 the members of a large circle, and mutually give each other 
 information. I listened, and now learned how much I had to 
 promise myself from this circle. 
 
 The elder daughter came hastily back into the room, anx- 
 ious at not having found her sister. They felt uneasy about 
 her, and scolded at this or that bad habit; only the father 
 said, very composedly : " Always let her alone ; she is back 
 again already ! " At this instant, in fact, she entered the door ; 
 and then truly a most charming star arose in this terrestrial 
 heaven. Both daughters still wore nothing but German, as 
 they used to call it, and this almost obsolete national costume 
 became Frederica particularly well. A short, white, full skirt, 
 with a furbelow, not so long but it left the neatest little foot 
 visible up to the ankle ; a tight white bodice and a black taf- 
 feta apron — there she stood, on the boundary between country 
 beauty and city belle. Slender and airy, she tripped along as 
 if she had nothing to carry, and her neck seemed almost too 
 delicate for the luxuriant braids of flaxen hair on her elegant 
 little head. A free, open glance beamed from her calm blue 
 eyes, and her pretty little turned-up nose peered inquiringly 
 into the air with as much unconcern as if there could be noth- 
 ing like care in the world ; her straw hat dangled on her arm, 
 and thus, at the first glance, I had the delight of seeing her 
 perfect grace, and acknowledging her perfect loveliness. 
 
 I now began to act my character subduedly, half ashamed 
 
238 GOETHE 
 
 to have played a joke on such good people, whom I had leisure 
 enough to observe : for the girls continued the previous con- 
 versation, and that with feeling and humor. All the neighbors 
 and connections were again brought upon the tapis, and to 
 my imagination there seemed such a swarm of uncles and 
 aunts, relations, cousins, comers and goers, gossips and guests, 
 that I thought myself lodged in the liveliest world possible. 
 All the members of the family had spoken some words with 
 me, the mother looked at me every time she came in or went 
 out, but Frederica first entered into conversation with me, and 
 as I took up and glanced through the music that was lying 
 around, she asked me if I played also? When I told her 
 " Yes," she requested me to perform something ; but the 
 father would not allow this, for he maintained that it was be- 
 coming in her to serve her guest first, with some piece of 
 music or other, or a song. 
 
 She played several things with some execution, in the style 
 which one usually hears in the country, and on a harpsichord, 
 too, that the schoolmaster should have tuned long since, if he 
 had only had time. She was now to sing a song also, some- 
 thing of the tender-melancholy; but she couici not succeed 
 with it. She rose up and said, smiling, or rather with that 
 touch of serene joy which ever reposed on her countenance: 
 " If I sing poorly, I cannot lay the blame on the harpsichord 
 or the schoolmaster ; but let us go out of doors, then you shall 
 hear my Alsatian and Swiss songs, they sound much better." 
 
 During tea, an idea which had already struck me before, 
 occupied me to such a degree, that I became meditative and 
 silent, although the liveliness of the elder sister, and the grace- 
 fulness of the younger, shook me often enough out of my con- 
 templations. My astonishment at finding myself so actually 
 in the Wakefield family was beyond all expression. The 
 father, indeed, could not be compared with that excellent man ; 
 but where will you find his like ? On the other hand, all the 
 worth which is peculiar to the husband there, here appeared in 
 the wife. You could not see her without at once reverencing 
 and fearing her. In her we saw the fruits of a good education ; 
 her demeanor was quiet, easy, cheerful, and inviting. 
 
 If the elder daughter had not the celebrated beauty of Olivia, 
 yet she possessed a fine figure, was lively, and rather impet- 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 239 
 
 uous ; she everywhere showed herself active, and lent a help- 
 ing hand to her mother in all things. It was not hard to put 
 Frederica in the place of Primrose's Sophia : for of her there 
 is little said, we take it for granted that she is lovely ; and this 
 girl was lovely indeed. Now as the same occupation and the 
 same general situation, wherever they can occur, produce 
 similar, if not the same effects, so here too many things were 
 talked about and happened which had already taken place in the 
 Wakefield family. But when a younger son, long spoken of and 
 impatiently expected by the father, at last sprang into the room, 
 and boldly sat himself down by us, taking but little notice of the 
 guests, I could scarcely help exclaiming : " Moses, are you 
 here, too? " 
 
 The conversation at table extended my insight into this coun- 
 try and family circle, as they chatted about various pleasant 
 incidents which had happened here and there. Frederica, who 
 sat next to me, took occasion from that circumstance to de- 
 scribe to me different localities which it might be worth my 
 while to visit. As one little story always calls out another, I 
 was able to mingle in the conversation the better, and relate 
 similar incidents, and as, besides this, a good country wine was 
 by on means spared, I stood in danger of slipping out of my 
 character, for which reason my provident friend took advan- 
 tage of the beautiful moonlight, and proposed a walk, which 
 was immediately resolved on. He gave his arm to the elder, 
 I to the younger, and thus we went through the wide plains, 
 paying more attention to the heavens above than to the earth 
 beneath, which lost itself in extension around us. There was 
 nothing of moonshine about Frederica's conversation, how- 
 ever ; by the clearness with which she spoke she turned night 
 into day, and there was nothing in it which hinted at or would 
 have excited feeling, only her expressions addressed themselves 
 more than ever to me, while, as I walked by her side, she rep- 
 resented to me her own situation, as well as the neighborhood 
 and her acquaintances, just as I wished to be made acquainted 
 with them ; then she added that she hoped I would make no 
 exception, and would visit them again, as all strangers had 
 willingly done who had once lodged at the parsonage. 
 
 It was very pleasant to me to listen silently to the descrip- 
 tions which she gave of the little world in which she moved, 
 
240 GOETHE 
 
 and of the persons whom she particularly valued. She thereby 
 imparted to me a clear, and, at the same time, such an amiable 
 idea of her situation, that it had a very strange effect on me : 
 for I felt at once a deep regret that I had not lived with her 
 sooner, and at the same time a right painful jealous feeling 
 towards all who had hitherto had the good fortune to surround 
 her. I also watched closely, as if I had had a right to do so, all 
 her descriptions of men, whether they appeared under the 
 names of neighbors, cousins, or familiar friends, and my con- 
 jectures inclined now to one, now to another ; but how should 
 I have discovered anything in my complete ignorance of all 
 the circumstances? She at last became more and more talk- 
 ative, and I constantly more and more silent. It was so good 
 to listen to her, and as I heard only her voice, while the out- 
 lines of her countenance, like the rest of the world around, 
 floated dimly in the twilight, it seemed to me as if I could see 
 into her heart, and that I could not but find it very pure, since 
 it unbosomed itself to me in such unembarrassed prattle. 
 
 When my companion and I retired to the guest-chamber 
 which was prepared for us, he, with self-complacency, im- 
 mediately broke out into pleasant jesting, and took great 
 credit to himself for having surprised me so much with the 
 likeness of the Primrose family. I chimed in- with him, by 
 showing myself thankful. "Truly," cried he, "the story is 
 all here together. This family may well be compared to that, 
 and the gentleman in disguise here, may assume the honor 
 of passing for Mr. Burchell ; moreover, since scoundrels are 
 not so necessary in every-day life as in romances, I will for 
 this time undertake the role of the nephew, and will behave 
 myself better than he did." However, I immediately changed 
 this conversation, pleasant as it was to me, and first of all 
 asked him, on his conscience, if he had not betrayed me ? He 
 answered me " No ! " and I ventured to believe him. They 
 had rather inquired, said he, after the jovial table-companion 
 who boarded at the same house with him in Strasburg, and of 
 whom they had heard all sorts of preposterous stuff. I now 
 went to other questions: Had she ever been in love? Was 
 she now in love ? Was she engaged ? He said " No " to 
 them all. " In truth," replied I, " that such a serenity should 
 come by nature is inconceivable to me. If she had loved and 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 241 
 
 lost, and again recovered herself, or if she was betrothed, in 
 both these cases I could account for it." 
 
 Thus we chatted together till deep in the night, and I was 
 awake again at the dawn. My longing to see her once more 
 seemed unconquerable; but while I was dressing I was hor- 
 rified at the confounded wardrobe I had so capriciously se- 
 lected. The further I advanced in putting on my clothes, the 
 meaner I seemed in my own eyes : for everything was calcu- 
 lated for just that effect. I might perchance have set my hair 
 to rights; but when at last I forced my arms into the bor- 
 rowed, worn-out gray coat, the short sleeves of which gave 
 me the most absurd appearance, I fell decidedly into despair, 
 and the more so since I could see myself only piece-meal, in a 
 little looking-glass, and then each part always looked more 
 ridiculous than the rest. 
 
 During this toilette my friend awoke, and with the satisfac- 
 tion of a good conscience, and in the feeling of pleasurable 
 hopes for the day, he looked out at me from under the quilted 
 silk coverlet. I had envied his fine clothes for a long time 
 already, as they hung over the chair, and had he been of my 
 size, I would have carried them off before his very eyes^ dressed 
 myself in them, and hurrying into the garden, left my cursed 
 husks for him; he would have had good humor enough to 
 deck himself out in my clothes, and our tale would have found 
 a merry ending early in the morning. But that was not now 
 to be thought of, as little as any other feasible accommodation. 
 To appear again before Frederica in such a figure that my 
 friend could give me out as a laborious and accomplished but 
 poor student of theology — before Frederica, who yesterday 
 evening had spoken so friendly to my disguised self — that was 
 altogether impossible. There I stood, vexed and thoughtful, 
 and summoned up all my power of invention; alas! it de- 
 serted me! But now when he, comfortably stretched out in 
 bed, after fixing his eyes upon me for a while, all at once burst 
 out into a loud laugh, and exclaimed : " Yes ! it is true, you 
 do look most confoundedly ! " I replied impetuously : " And 
 I know what I will do. Good-by, and make my excuses ! " 
 " Are you crazy ! " cried he, springing out of bed and trying 
 to detain me. But I was already out of the door, down the 
 stairs, out of the house and yard, to the tavern ; in an instant 
 16 
 
242 GOETHE 
 
 my horse was saddled, and I hurried away in mad vexation, 
 galloping towards Drusenheim, dashed through the place, and 
 still onwards! 
 
 As I thought myself by this time in safety, I began to nde 
 more leisurely, and now first felt how infinitely against my 
 will I was going away. But I resigned myself to my fate, re- 
 called to mind the promenade of yesterday evening with the 
 greatest calmness, and cherished the secret hope of seeing her 
 soon again. Yet this quiet feeling again changed itself into 
 impatience, and I now determined to ride rapidly into the city, 
 change my dress, take a good fresh horse, and then, as my 
 passion made me believe, I could at all events return before 
 dinner, or, as was more probable, to the dessert or towards 
 evening, and beg my forgiveness. 
 
 I was just about to put spurs to my horse to execute this re- 
 solve, when another, and, as seemed to me, a happier thought 
 came into my head. In the tavern at Drusenheim, the day be- 
 fore, I had noticed a son of the landlord very nicely dressed, 
 who, up early to-day and busied about his rural arrangements, 
 had saluted me from his court-yard as I rode by. He was of 
 my size, and had slightly reminded me of myself. Thought, 
 done ! My horse was hardly turned around, when I found my- 
 self in Drusenheim ; I brought him into the stable, and made 
 the fellow my proposal in brief: that he should lend me his 
 clothes, as I had something merry on foot at Sesenheim. I 
 had no need to talk long; he agreed to the proposition with 
 joy, and praised me for wishing to make some sport for the 
 Mamselles ; they were so gallant and good, especially Mamselle 
 Rica, and the parents, too, liked to see everything go on merry 
 and pleasant. He considered me attentively, and as from my 
 appearance he might have taken me for a poor starveling, he 
 said : " If you wish to insinuate yourself into their good graces, 
 this is the right way." Meanwhile we had already made rapid 
 advances in our toilette ; he could not indeed trust me with his 
 holiday clothes on the strength of mine; but he was honest- 
 hearted, and had my horse in his stable. I soon stood there 
 right trig, threw back my shoulders, and my friend seemed 
 to contemplate his likeness with complacency. " Well, Mr. 
 Brother ! " said he, giving me his hand, which I grasped hearti- 
 ly, " don't come too n^ar my gal, she might mistake you ! " 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 243 
 
 My hair, which now had its full growth again, I could part 
 at top pretty much like his, and as I looked at him repeatedly, 
 I found it comical to imitate closely his thicker eyebrows, with 
 a burnt cork, and bring mine nearer together in the middle, 
 so as with my enigmatical intentions, to make myself an ex- 
 ternal riddle likewise. " Now have you not," said I, as he 
 handed me his beribboned hat, " something or other to be 
 done at the parsonage, so that I may announce myself there in 
 a natural manner ? " " Good ! " replied he, " but then you 
 must wait two hours yet. There is a confinement at our house ; 
 I will offer to take the cake to the parson's wife,^ and you 
 might carry it over there. Pride must be paid for, and so must 
 a joke." I concluded to wait, but these two hours were infin- 
 itely long, and I was dying of injpatience when the third hour 
 passed by before the cake came out of the oven. I got it at 
 last, quite hot, and hastened away with my credentials in the 
 most beautiful sunshine, accompanied for a space by my ditto, 
 who promised to come after me in the evening and bring me 
 my clothes, which however, I briskly declined, and reserved 
 to myself the privilege of returning him his own when I was 
 done with them. 
 
 I had not skipped far with my present, which I carried neatly 
 tied up in a napkin, when, in the distance, I saw my friend ap- 
 proaching with the two ladies. My heart was uneasy, al- 
 though in fact it was unnecessary under this jacket. I stood 
 still, took breath, and tried to think how I should begin ; and 
 now I first remarked that the nature of the ground was very 
 much in my favor; for they were walking on the other side 
 of the brook, which, together with the strips of meadow 
 through which it ran, kept the two foot-paths pretty far apart. 
 When they were just opposite to me, Frederica, who had al- 
 ready perceived me long before, cried : " George, what have 
 you got there ? " I was clever enough to cover my face with 
 my hat, which I took off, at the same time holding up the 
 loaded napkin high in the air. " A christening-cake 1 " cried 
 she at that ; " how does your sister do 1 " " Gooed," said I, 
 for I tried to talk strange, if not exactly in the Alsatian dialect. 
 " Carry it to the house ! " said the elder, " and if you do not 
 
 2 [This was the general custom of the country villages in Protestant Germany 
 on such occasions.] 
 
244 GOETHE 
 
 find mother, give it to the maid ; but wait for us, we will be 
 back soon, do you hear? " I hastened along my path in the 
 joyous feeling of the best hope that, as the beginning was so 
 lucky, all would go off well, and I soon reached the parsonage. 
 I found nobody either in the house or the kitchen ; I did not 
 wish to disturb the old gentleman, whom I might have sup- 
 posed busy in the study ; I therefore sat me down on the bench 
 before the door, placed the cake beside me, and pressed my 
 hat upon my face. 
 
 I cannot easily recall more delightful sensations. To sit 
 here again on this threshold, over which, a short time before, 
 I had blundered out in despair; to have seen her already, to 
 have heard her dear voice again so soon after my chagrin had 
 pictured to me a long separation, to be expecting every mo- 
 ment herself, and a discovery at which my heart throbbed fast, 
 and yet, in this ambiguous case, it would be an exposure with- 
 out shame ; for from its very beginning it was a merrier prank 
 than any of those they had laughed at so much yesterday. 
 Love and necessity are yet the best masters ; they both worked 
 together here, and their pupil was not unworthy of them. 
 
 But the maid came stepping out of the barn. " Now ! did the 
 cake turn out well ! " cried she to me ; "how does your sister do ?" 
 " All gooed," said I, and pointed to the cake without looking up. 
 She took up the napkin and muttered : " Now what's the mat- 
 ter with you to-day again ? Has little Barbara been looking 
 at somebody else once more ? Don't let us suffer for that ! A 
 happy couple you will make, if you carry on so ! " As she 
 spoke pretty loud, the parson came to the window and asked : 
 "What's the matter?" She showed him; I stood up and 
 turned myself towards him, but yet kept the hat over my face. 
 As he spoke rather kindly to me and had asked me to remain, 
 I went towards the garden, and was just going in when the 
 parson's wife, who was entering the court-yard gate, called 
 to me. As the sun shone right in my face, I once more took 
 advantage of my hat, and saluted her with a ploughman's 
 scrape ; but she went into the house after she had bidden me 
 not go away without eating something. I now walked up 
 and down in the garden ; everything had hitherto had Ihe best 
 success, yet I drew a deep breath when I reflected that the 
 young people would soon return. But the mother unexpect- 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 
 
 245 
 
 edly stepped up to me, and was just going to ask me a ques- 
 tion, when she looked me in the face so that I could not con- 
 ceal myself any longer, and the question stuck in her mouth. 
 " I was looking for George," said she, after a pause, " and 
 whom do I find? Is it you, young sir? How many forms 
 have you, then ? " " In earnest only one," replied I ; "in 
 sport as many as you like." " Which sport I will not spoil," 
 smiled she ; " go out behind the garden and into the meadow 
 until it strikes twelve, then come back, and I will already have 
 contrived the joke." I did so ; but when I was outside of the 
 hedge that bounds the village gardens, and was going into the 
 meadow, I saw some country people coming along the foot- 
 path towards me, who embarrassed me. I therefore turned 
 aside into a little grove which crowned an elevation near by, 
 in order to conceal myself there till the appointed time. Yet 
 how strangely was I surprised when I entered it! for it ap- 
 peared to be a neatly trimmed place, with benches, from every 
 one of which could be enjoyed a fine view of the country. 
 Here were the village and the church tower, here Drusenheim, 
 and behind it the woody islands of the Rhine, in the opposite 
 direction was the Vosgian mountain-range, and at last the 
 minster of Strasburg. These different heaven-bright pictures 
 were surrounded by frames of foliage, so that one could imag- 
 ine nothing more joyous and more pleasing. I sat me down 
 upon one of the benches and noticed on the largest tree an 
 oblong little board with the inscription : " Frederica's Re- 
 pose." It never entered into my head that I could have come 
 to disturb this repose: for a budding passion has this beauty 
 about it, that, as it is unconscious of its origin, neither does 
 it spend any thought upon its end, and as it feels itself glad 
 and cheerful, it can have no presentiment that it may make 
 mischief too. 
 
 Scarcely had I had time to look about me and lose myself 
 in sweet reveries, when I heard somebody coming; it was 
 Frederica herself. " George, what are you doing here ? " she 
 cried from a distance. " Not George ! " cried I, running to- 
 wards her, " but one who craves forgiveness of you a thousand 
 times." She looked at me with astonishment, but soon col- 
 lected herself and said, after drawing a deeper breath : " You 
 abominable fellow, how you frighten me ! " " The first dis- 
 
246 GOETHE 
 
 guise has led me into the second," exclaimed I ; " the former 
 would have been unpardonable if I had only known in any 
 manner whom I was. going to see, but this one you will cer- 
 tainly forgive, for it is the form of a man whom you meet in 
 so friendly a manner." Her pale cheeks had colored up with 
 the loveliest rosy red. " You shall not be treated worse than 
 George, at all events ! But let us sit down ! I confess that the 
 fright has thrilled through all my limbs." I sat down beside 
 her, exceedingly agitated. " We know everything already 
 from your friend, up to this morning," said she, " now do you 
 tell me the rest." I did not suffer her to ask twice, but de- 
 scribed to her my horror at my yesterday's figure, and my 
 rushing out of the house, so comically that she laughed heartily 
 and delightedly ; then I went on with what followed, with all 
 modesty, indeed, yet passionately enough to have well passed 
 for a declaration of love in historical form. At last I solemn- 
 ized my pleasure at finding her again, by a kiss upon her hand, 
 which she suffered to remain in mine. If she had taken upon 
 herself the expense of the conversation during yesterday even- 
 ing's moonlight walk, I now, on my part, richly repaid the 
 debt. The pleasure of seeing her again, and being able to say 
 to her everything that I had kept back yesterday, was so great, 
 that, in my eloquence, I did not remark how meditative and 
 silent she was becoming. Once more she drew a deep breath, 
 and over and over again I begged her forgiveness for the 
 fright which I had caused her. How long we may have sat 
 here I know not; but all at once we heard someone call, 
 " Rica ! Rica ! " It was the voice of her sister. " That will 
 be a pretty story to tell," said the dear girl, restored to her 
 perfect serenity again ; " she is coming hither from the side 
 next to me," added she, bending over so as half to conceal me : 
 "turn yourself away, so that she will not recognize you at 
 once." The sister came up to the spot, but not alone ; Wey- 
 land was with her, and both, as soon as they saw us, stood 
 still as if petrified. 
 
 If we should all at once see a powerful flame burst out from 
 a quiet roof, or should meet a monster whose deformity was 
 at the same time revolting and fearful, we should not be struck 
 with such massive astonishment as seizes us, when, unexpect- 
 edly, we see with our own eyes something we had believed 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 247 
 
 morally impossible. " What is this ? " cried the elder, with 
 the rapidity of one who is frightened to death. " What is this ? 
 you with George! Hand-in-hand! How am I to understand 
 this? " " Dear sister," replied Frederica, very doubtfully, " the 
 poor fellow is begging something of me ;he has something to beg 
 of you, too, you must forgive him beforehand." " I don't under- 
 stand — I don't comprehend " said her sister, shaking her 
 
 head and looking at Weyland, who, in his quiet way, stood by in 
 perfect tranquillity, and contemplated the scene without any kind 
 of expression. Frederica arose and drew me after her. " No 
 hesitating ! " cried she. " Pardon begged and granted ! " " Now 
 do ! " said I, stepping pretty near the elder, " I have need of 
 pardon ! " She drew back, gave a loud shriek, and blushed 
 over and over, then threw herself down on the grass, burst into 
 a roar of laughter, and could not get enough of it. Weyland 
 smiled as if pleased, and cried : " You are a rare youth ! " 
 Then he shook my hand in his. He was not usually liberal 
 with his caresses, but his shake of the hand had something 
 hearty and enlivening about it; yet he was sparing of this 
 also. 
 
 After taking some time to recover and collect ourselves, we 
 set out on our return to the village. On the way I learned how 
 this singular rencounter had been occasioned. Frederica had 
 at last parted from the promenaders to rest herself in her 
 little nook for a moment before dinner, and when the other 
 two came back to the house, the mother had sent them to call 
 Frederica in the greatest haste, as dinner was ready. 
 
 The elder sister manifested the most extravagant delight, 
 and when she learned that the mother had already discovered 
 the secret, she exclaimed : " All that is left now is that father, 
 brother, servant-man, and maid should be cheated likewise." 
 When we were at the garden-hedge, Frederica insisted upon 
 going beforehand into the house with my friend. The maid 
 was busy in the kitchen-garden, and Olivia (for so I may be 
 allowed to name the elder sister here) called out to her : " Here, 
 I have something to tell you ! " She left me standing by the 
 hedge, and went towards the maid. I saw that she was speak- 
 ing to her very earnestly, Olivia represented to her that 
 George had quarrelled with Barbara, and seemed desirous of 
 marrying her. The lass was not displeased at this; I was 
 
248 GOETHE 
 
 now called, and was to confirm what had been said. The 
 handsome, stout girl cast down her eyes, and remained so till 
 I stood quite near before her. But when, all at once, she looked 
 into the strange face, she too gave a loud scream and ran away. 
 Olivia bade me run after her and hold her fast, so that she 
 should not get into the house and give the alarm ; while she 
 herself wished to go and see how it was with her father. On 
 the way Olivia met the servant-boy, who was in love with the 
 maid ; I had in the mean time hurried after the maid, and held 
 her fast. " Only think ! what good luck 1 " cried Olivia : ** it's 
 all over with Barbara, and George marries Liese." " I have 
 thought he would for a long while," said the good fellow, and 
 stood there disconsolate. 
 
 I had given the maid to understand, that all we had yet to 
 do was to cheat the father. We went up to the lad, who turned 
 away and would have walked ofif ; but Liese took him aside, 
 and he, too, when he was undeceived, made the most extra- 
 ordinary gestures. We went together to the house. The table 
 was covered, and the father already in the room. Olivia, who 
 kept me behind her, stepped to the threshold and said : " Fath- 
 er, you have no objections to George's dining with us to-day? 
 but you must let him keep his hat on." " With all my heart ! " 
 said the old man, " but why such an unusual thing? Has he 
 hurt himself ? " She led me forward as I stood, with my hat 
 on. " No ! " said she, handing me into the room, " but he has 
 a bird-cage under it, and the birds might fly out and make a 
 deuce of a fuss; for there are nothing but loose wild birds 
 there." The father was pleased with the joke, without pre- 
 cisely knowing what it meant. At this instant she took off my 
 hat, made a ploughman's scrape, and required me to do the 
 same. The old man looked at me, recognized me, but was not 
 put out of his priestly self-possession. " Ay, ay, Mr. Candi- 
 date ! " exclaimed he, raising a threatening finger at me : " You 
 have changed saddles very quickly, and over-night I have lost 
 an assistant, who yesterday promised me so faithfully that he 
 would often mount my pulpit on week-days." Thereupon he 
 laughed heartily, bade me welcome, and we sat down to table. 
 Moses came in much later; for, as the youngest and spoiled 
 child, he had accustomed himself not to hear the dinner-bell. 
 Besides, he took very little notice of the company, scarce even 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 249 
 
 when he contradicted them. In order to make surer of him, 
 they had placed me, not between the sisters, but at the end of 
 the table, where George often used to sit. As he came in at 
 the door, which was behind me, he slapped me smartly on the 
 shoulder, and said : " Good dinner to you, George ! " " Many 
 thanks, youngster ! " replied I. The strange voice and the 
 strange face startled him. " What say you ? " cried OHvia : 
 " does he not look very like his brother ? " " Yes, from be- 
 hind," replied Moses, who managed to recover his composure 
 immediately, like other folk. He did not look at me again, 
 and busied himself merely with zealously devouring the dishes, 
 in order to make up for lost time. Then, too, he thought 
 proper occasionally to find something for himself to do in the 
 yard and the garden. At the dessert the genuine George came 
 in, and made the scene still more lively. They rallied him for 
 his jealousy, and would not praise him for having gotten him- 
 self a rival in me ; but he was modest and clever enough, and, 
 in a half-confused manner, he mixed up himself, his sweet- 
 heart, his ditto, and the Mamselles with each other to such a 
 degree that at last nobody could tell whom he was talking 
 about, so that they were glad to give him a glass of wine and 
 a piece of his own cake to eat, to keep him quiet. 
 
 At table there was some talk about going to walk; which 
 however did not suit me very well in my peasant's clothes. 
 But the ladies, early on that day already, when they learned 
 who had run away in such a desperate hurry, had remembered 
 that a hunting-coat of a cousin of theirs, in which he used to 
 go sporting when he was here, was hanging in a clothes-press. 
 Yet I declined, apparently with all sorts of jokes, but with a 
 feeling of secret vanity, not wishing, as cousin, to disturb the 
 good impression I had made in the character of peasant. The 
 father had gone to take his afternoon nap ; the mother, as al- 
 ways, was busy about her housewifery. But my friend pro- 
 posed that I should tell them some story, to which I im- 
 mediately agreed. We repaired to a spacious arbor, and I 
 gave them a tale which I have since written out under the title 
 of " The New Melusina." It bears about the same relation to 
 " The New Paris " as the youth bears to the boy, and I would 
 insert it here, were I not afraid of injuring, by its outlandish 
 play of fancy, the rural reality and simplicity which agreeably 
 
250 GOETHE 
 
 surround us. Enough: I succeeded in that which rewards 
 the inventors and narrators of such productions, I succeeded 
 in awakening curiosity, in fixing the attention, in inciting them 
 to give over-hasty solutions of impenetrable riddles, in de- 
 ceiving their expectations, in confusing them by making that 
 wonderful which was merely strange, in arousing sympathy 
 and fear, in making them anxious, in moving them; and at 
 last, by the inversion of what was apparently sober earnest 
 into an ingenious and cheerful jest, this little tale satisfied the 
 mind, leaving behind it materials for new images to the im- 
 agination, and to the understanding for further reflection. 
 
 Should anyone hereafter read this tale in print, and doubt 
 whether it could have and produce such an effect, let him re- 
 member that, properly speaking, man is only intended to have 
 influence while present. Writing is an abuse of language, 
 reading silently to one's self is a pitiful succedaneum of speech. 
 The strongest influence in a man's power is made by his per- 
 sonal presence, youth is the most powerful upon youth, and 
 hence too arise the purest influences. These are they which 
 enliven the world, and can perish neither morally nor physi- 
 cally. I had inherited from my father a certain loquacious 
 fondness for teaching; from my mother the faculty of repre- 
 senting, clearly and powerfully, everything that the imagina- 
 tion can produce or grasp, of giving a freshness to known 
 stories, of inventing and relating others, and even making 
 them up as I went along. By my paternal endowment I was 
 for the most part rather a bore to the company : for who likes 
 to listen to the opinions and sentiments of another, especially 
 a youth, whose judgment, on account of his fragmentary ex- 
 perience, seems constantly insufficient? My mother, on the 
 contrary, had thoroughly qualified me for social conversations. 
 For to the imagination even the emptiest tale has an elevated 
 charm, and even the smallest quantity of solid matter is thank- 
 fully received by the understanding. 
 
 By such recitals, which cost me nothing, I made myself be- 
 loved by children, I excited and delighted youth, and drew 
 upon me the attention of older persons. But in society, such 
 as it commonly is, I was soon obliged to stop these practices, 
 and I have thereby lost but too much of the enjoyment of the 
 world and of intellectual improvement; yet both these par- 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 251 
 
 ental gifts accompanied me throughout my whole life, united 
 with a third, namely the necessity of expressing myself figu- 
 ratively and by comparisons. In consideration of these pecul- 
 iarities. Doctor Gall, a man of as much profundity as acute- 
 ness, discovering them by his theory, assured me that I was 
 properly speaking born for a popular orator. At this dis- 
 closure I was not a little confounded: for as I discovered, in 
 my nation, no opportunity to harangue about anything, it 
 would follow, if his assertion were well grounded, that every- 
 thing else I could undertake would have been, alas, but a mis- 
 taken vocation! 
 
UPON NAlVE AND SENTIMENTAL 
 POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER 
 
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER 
 1759— 1805 
 
 The most popular of German poets, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 
 Schiller, was born at Marbach, in the duchy of Wiirtemberg, in 1759. 
 His own tastes and the wishes of his father inclined him to the min- 
 istry, but poverty forced him to accept the oflfer of the Duke of Wiir- 
 temberg to educate him at the Karlschule in Stuttgart. The narrow 
 repressive discipline of this institution fostered in the fiery youth a 
 spirit of rebellion, which found vent in his first drama, " The Robbers," 
 written when he was nineteen, and published three years later. This 
 stormy, impetuous tragedy startled not only Germany, but all Europe. 
 Translations soon appeared in several languages, and its author, like 
 Byron after the publication of " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," 
 awoke one morning to find himself famous. The revolutionary spirit 
 pervading the play, however, brought on him the displeasure of the 
 Duke, and, to escape persecution and possible imprisonment, Schiller 
 fled to Mannheim, and soon afterward to Leipsic. During the period 
 following he wrote many of his lyrics, but an incessant struggle with 
 poverty prevented him from devoting his best energies to literature. 
 One of the great events of his life was his first visit to Weimar, in 
 1787, where he made the acquaintance of Wieland and Herder. In 
 the following year he met Goethe. There seemed to be at that time 
 a wide difference in the tendencies, mode of thought, and literary aims 
 of the two poets, and their first meeting resulted in little more than 
 the exchange of formal courtesies and the beginning of a formal cor- 
 respondence. It was not until 1794, after a conversation on scientific 
 subjects, that the eyes of the older poet were opened to the worth of 
 the younger. After this their friendship grew strong and fast, ripening 
 into one of the most beautiful examples to be found in the history of 
 literature. To this friendship Goethe ascribes what he calls his second 
 youth. The publication of his " History of the Revolt of the Nether- 
 lands," in 1788, called attention to Schiller as an original investigator; 
 and in recognition of this he was appointed to the chair of history at 
 Jena. Here he wrote his " History of the Thirty Years' War." In- 
 fluenced by Kant, he abandoned history for philosophical investigation, 
 chiefly along the line of aesthetics and criticism. In his essay " On Naive 
 and Sentimental Poetry," Goethe thought Schiller had laid the founda- 
 tion of modern criticism. His intimacy with Goethe after 1794 was the 
 cause of an increased lyrical activity, and scarcely a year passed with- 
 out remarkable poetical works coming from his pen. For seven years 
 he worked at his trilogy of " Wallenstein," and in 1798-99 the work 
 was produced at Weimar. In 1799 he removed to Weimar to be in 
 close touch with Goethe. Here he wrote " Marie Stuart," " The Maid 
 of Orleans," " The Bride of Messina," and, in 1804, " Wilhelm Tell," 
 his last drama. The following year he died, at the early age of forty- 
 six. In 1802 he received a patent of nobility. 
 
 As a dramatist, among the modern writers, Schiller has been surpassed 
 only by Goethe and Shakespeare. As a poet, not even Goethe ranks 
 so high in the estimation of the German people. Schiller's poems 
 appeal decidedly more to popular sympathy, although Goethe un- 
 doubtedly touched chords that were more profound. In his style, 
 both in poetry and prose, Schiller is clear and methodical, a master of 
 words, and always effective. 
 
 254 
 
UPON NAlVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 
 
 THERE are moments in our life when we feel a kind of 
 love and tender respect for nature in plants, minerals, 
 animals, landscapes, and for human nature in children, 
 in the manners of rustics and of the primitive times: not on 
 account of its sensuous interest, nor because it satisfies our 
 intellect or taste, for the opposite may often occur with both, 
 but solely because it is nature. 'Every cultivated man, not en- 
 tirely deficient in feeling, is sensible of this, when he walks in 
 the open air, or is Hving in the country, or lingers near the 
 monuments of past time : in short, when he is overtaken, in the 
 midst of artificial relations and situations, by the simpUcity of 
 nature. It is this interest, often amounting to a want, which 
 underlies many of our passions for flowers and creatures, for 
 simple gardens, for walks, for the country and its inhabitants, 
 for many products of distant antiquity, and the like. But this 
 presupposes that neither affectation nor an otherwise acciden- 
 tal interest comes into play. Then this kind of interest in 
 nature occurs only under two conditions. In the first place it 
 is absolutely necessary that the object which excites it should 
 be nature, or taken for such by us : secondly, that, in the widest 
 signification of the term, it should be naive, that is, that nature 
 should stand in contrast with art, and rebuke it. Nature be- 
 comes naive as soon as these two conditions are combined. 
 
 From this point of view nature becomes for us nothing more 
 nor less than independent being, the persistence of things by 
 themselves, existence according to peculiar and immutable 
 laws. 
 
 This conception is absolutely prerequisite, if we would take 
 interest in like phenomena. Could one, with the completest 
 deception, give a natural look to an artificial flower, or carry the 
 imitation of naive manners to the highest point of illusion, 
 the discovery that it was all imitation would entirely destroy 
 
 255 
 
256 SCHILLER 
 
 the feeling of which we speak. ^ Whence it is clear that this 
 kind of pleasure in nature is moral and not aesthetic : for it is 
 mediated by an idea, and is not created by direct contempla- 
 tion. Besides which, it is by no means directed towards beauty 
 of form. For instance: what attraction would a colorless 
 flower, a fountain, a mossy stone, the twitter of birds, the hum- 
 ming of bees, have for us in themselves? What could give 
 them a claim to our love? We do not love the objects them- 
 selves, but the ideas they represent. We love in each of them 
 the still, creative life, the tranquil production out of itself, ex- 
 istence according to its own laws, eternal unity with itself. 
 
 They are what we were ; they are what we again should be. 
 Like them, we were nature ; and our culture ought to lead us 
 back to nature, by the path of reason and freedom. Then 
 they are at the same time the representation of our lost child- 
 hood, which forever remains the dearest to us : hence, they fill 
 us with a certain sadness ; and at the same time the representa- 
 tion of our loftiest completion in the ideal : hence, they give us 
 a sublime emotion. 
 
 But their completeness is not their merit, since it is not the 
 work of their own choice. They secure for us, then, this en- 
 tirely peculiar pleasure, that without making us ashamed, they 
 are our model. They surround us, as a continual divine mani- 
 festation, but more refreshing than dazzling. What makes 
 their character complete is exactly that in which our own is 
 deficient: what distinguishes us from them is exactly that of 
 divinity in which they fail. We are free, and they are neces- 
 sary: we alter, they remain one. But the divine or the ideal 
 obtains, only when the differences are blended, when the will 
 follows freely the law of necessity, and the reason maintains 
 its sway through every change of fancy. Then we forever per- 
 ceive in them that which we lack, but for which we are invited 
 to strive, and to which, even though we never attain it, we 
 may yet hope to approximate in an infinite progression. We 
 
 1 Kant, the first to my knowledge who interest in the beautiful. Whoever 
 directed reflection expressly towards has learned to admire the author only 
 this phenomenon, remarks, that if we as a great thinker, will here be de- 
 heard a man imitate with complete sue- lighted to meet with a trace of his 
 cess the note of a nightingale, and yield- heart; and to be convinced, by the 
 ed to the impression with profound discovery, of his fitness for this lofty 
 emotion, all our pleasure would vanish vocation, which unquestionably de- 
 with the dissipation of this illusion. mands the union of both those quali- 
 See the chapter in the " Critigue of Ms- ties, 
 thetic Judgment," upon intellectual 
 
UPON NAi'VE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 
 
 257 
 
 perceive in ourselves a superiority, which they lack, but which 
 they can either never share, like the senseless creation, or only 
 as they proceed in our path, Hke the state of childhood. Hence, 
 as idea, they create for us the sweetest enjoyment of our man- 
 hood, although they must of necessity humiliate us with re- 
 spect to each determinate condition of our manhood. 
 
 As this interest for nature is based upon an idea, it can be 
 shown only in dispositions susceptible of ideas, that is, in moral 
 ones. By far the majority of men only affect it ; and the uni- 
 versality of this sentimental taste in our times, which displays 
 itself, especially since the appearance of certain writings, in 
 affected travels, gardens of like sort, walks and other fond- 
 nesses of the kind, is no proof at all for the universality of the 
 true sentiment. Yet nature will always exert something of 
 this influence upon the most insensible, since for that the com- 
 mon bias of all men to the moral is adequate; and all of us 
 without distinction, however great a disproportion there may 
 be between our acts and the simplicity and truth of nature, 
 are compelled to that in idea. This sentiment for nature and 
 incitement from objects standing in a close relation with us — 
 as for example, children and childlike people — and bringing 
 nearer to us both self-retrospection and our own unnature, is 
 especially strong and universal. It is erroneous to suppose 
 that it is only the appearance of helplessness which makes us, 
 at certain times, Hnger with so much emotion near children. 
 Perhaps that may be the case with some, who are wont to feel, 
 in the presence of weakness, nothing but their own superiority. 
 But the feehng of which I speak occurring only in entirely 
 moral dispositions, and not to be confounded with that excited 
 by the playful activity of children, is rather humiliating than 
 gratifying to self-love ; and indeed if any superiority is notice- 
 able at all, it is by no means on our side. We experience emo- 
 tion, not while we look down upon the child from the height 
 of our power and perfection, but while we look up, out of the 
 limitation of our condition which is inseparable from the defi- 
 nite mode to which we have attained, at the child's boundless 
 determinableness and its perfect innocence. And, at such a 
 moment, our feeling is too plainly mingled with a certain 
 sadness, to allow us to mistake its source. The child repre- 
 sents the bias and determination, we represent the fulfilment, 
 17 
 
258 SCHILLER 
 
 which forever remains infinitely far behind the former. Hence 
 the child is an actualization of the ideal, not indeed of one ful- 
 filled, but of one proposed ; and so it is by no means the ap- 
 pearance of its neediness and limits which moves us, but, on 
 the contrary, the appearance of its free and pure power, its in- 
 tegrity, its infinity. For this reason, a child will be a holy 
 object to the man of morality and feeling, that is, an object 
 which, by the magnitude of an idea, abolishes every actual 
 magnitude, and which wins again in rich measure from the 
 estimation of the reason all that it may lose in the estimation 
 of the understanding. 
 
 Out of this very contradiction between the judgment of the 
 reason and of the understanding, proceeds the entirely pecul- 
 iar phenomenon of mixed feeling, which a naive disposition 
 excites in us. It unites childHke with childish simplicity. By 
 the latter, it gives the understanding an idea of weakness, and 
 produces that laughter by which we make known our (theo- 
 retic) superiority. But as soon as we have reason to believe 
 that childish simplicity is at the same time childlike, and that 
 consequently its source is not folly, or imbecility, but a loftier 
 (practical) strength, a heart full of innocence and truth, which 
 makes ashamed, by its internal greatness, the mediation of 
 art — then that triumph of the understanding is over, and a 
 jest at simpleness passes over into admiration of simplicity. 
 We feel ourselves compelled to respect the object at which we 
 previously laughed, and, while casting a look into ourselves, 
 to lament that we are not like it. Thus arises the entirely 
 peculiar appearance of a feeling, in which are blended gay de- 
 rision, reverence, and sadness.^ The naive demands that nature 
 
 2 Kant, in a note to the " Analysis of cated, blameless nature, which we were 
 the Sublime " (" Critique of Esthetic not at all prepared to meet, and which, 
 Judgment," p. 225, ist Ed.), in like man- it would seem, was not meant to be 
 ner distinguishes this threefold compo- exposed. And because the aesthetic, but 
 sition in the perception of the naive, but false, show, which commonly counts for 
 he gives another explanation of it. much in our judgment, here suddenly 
 " Something of both (the animal feel- vanishes, and because, so to speak, our 
 ing of pleasure, and the spiritual feel- waggery is exposed, this brings out in 
 ing of respect) united, is found in two opposite directions, a mental agita- 
 naivete, which is the outbreak of the tion, which at the same time gives the 
 originally natural uprightness of human- body a salutarjr shaking. But because 
 ity against the art of dissimulation be- something, which is infinitely better 
 come a second nature. We laugh at the than all assumed style, that is, mental 
 simplicity which does not yet under- sincerity (at least the tendency there- 
 stand how to dissimulate, and still we to), is not yet entirely extinguished in 
 enjoy that natural simplicity which dis- human nature — this it is which mingles 
 appoints such arts. If we expected the seriousness and regard in this play of 
 every-day style of an affected expres- the judgment. But since the phenome- 
 sion that is prudently established upon non lasts only for a little while, and 
 aesthetic show, behold, it is unsophisti- the veil of dissimulation is soon again 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 259 
 
 should bear away the victory over art,^ whether it happen with- 
 out the knowledge and will of the person, or with his full con- 
 sciousness. In the first case it is the naive of surprise, and 
 delights: in the other case it is the naive of disposition, and 
 moves. 
 
 In the naive of surprise, the person must be morally able to 
 deny nature ; in the naive of disposition he need not be so, and 
 yet, if it would afifect us as naivete, we need not imagine him 
 as physically unable to do so. Hence the talk and actions of 
 children give us the pure impression of naivete, only so long 
 as we do not remember their incapacity for art, but merely 
 regard the contrast of their naturalness with the art in us. A 
 childishness, where it is no longer expected, is naive, and there- 
 fore that cannot be ascribed, in strictness of meaning, to actual 
 childhood. 
 
 But in the cases, both of naivete of surprise and that of dis- 
 position, nature must be right, but art be wrong. 
 
 The conception of the naive is only completed by this final 
 definition. Feeling is also nature, and the rule of propriety 
 is something artificial ; but yet the victory of feeling over pro- 
 priety is nothing less than naive. If, on the other hand, the 
 same feeling overcomes artifice, false propriety, dissimulation, 
 we do not hesitate to call that naive.* It is necessary, then, 
 
 drawn before it, a regret, which is an deterioration we are reminded by such 
 emotion of tenderness, mingles also a circumstance. It is too plainly a 
 with our feeling; and it does not re- moral sadness, which must have a no- 
 fuse to unite as play with a hearty bier object than the physical weakness 
 laugh, at the same time relieving the with which sincerity is threatened in 
 embarrassment of the person who is the customary routine of life; and this 
 the object of it, because he has not yet object cannot well be other than the 
 learned the way of the world." I must decay of truth and simplicity in hu- 
 confess the explanation does not entire- manity. 
 
 ly satisfy me, and particularly for this ^ Perhaps I should briefly say, " truth 
 
 reason, that it asserts something of over dissimulation." But the idea of 
 
 the naive in general, which is chiefly the naive appears to me to include still 
 
 true of one species, the naive of sur- something more, while the simplicity 
 
 frise, of which I shall afterwards speak. which prevails over artifice, and the 
 t certainly excites laughter, when any- natural freedom which conquers stiff- 
 body exposes himself by naivete; and ness and constraint, excite in us a sira- 
 in many cases this laughter may result ilar perception. 
 
 from a previous expectation which is * A child is ill bred if it resists the 
 
 resolved into nothing. But also naivete precepts pf a good education from de- 
 
 of the noblest kind, the naive of dis- sire, caprice, or passion: but it is naive, 
 
 position, always excites a smile, which if it releases itself by virtue of a free 
 
 can hardly have for its cause an expec- and healthy nature, from the mannerism 
 
 tation resolved into nothing; but it is of an unwise education, from the stiff 
 
 generally to be explained only by the postures of the dancing-master, and the 
 
 contrast of a certain demeanor with like. The same also occurs with that 
 
 the once assumed and expected forms. loosely defined naivete which results 
 
 I also doubt, whether the pity, which from the transmission of humanity to 
 
 is blended in our feeling at the naive the irrational. If the weeds got the 
 
 of the latter kind, relates to the naive upper hand in a badly kept garden, no 
 
 person, and not rather to ourselves, or one would find the appearance naive; 
 
 rather to mankind in general, of whose but there is something positively naive 
 
26o SCHILLER 
 
 that nature should triumph over art not as a dynamic magni- 
 tude, by its blind force, but as a moral magnitude, by its form. 
 The impropriety, and not the insufficing of art, must have af- 
 forded the victory to nature; for nothing which results from 
 deficiency can command respect. It is true, that in the naive 
 of surprise it is always the overplus of feeling and a deficiency 
 of restraint which causes nature to be recognized : but this de- 
 ficiency and that overplus by no means create the naive, for 
 they only afford an opportunity for nature to follow unim- 
 peded its moral capacity, that is, the law of harmony. 
 
 The naive of surprise can only appertain to man, and to man 
 alone, in so far as at that moment he is no longer pure and 
 innocent nature. It presupposes a will which does not har- 
 monize with that which nature does spontaneously. Such a 
 person, if rendered conscious of it, will be frightened at him- 
 self: on the contrary, he who is naive by disposition, will be 
 surprised at men and at their astonishment. Then, as the 
 truth does not here recognize the personal and moral char- 
 acter, but only the natural character released by feeling, so we 
 attribute no merit to the man for his uprightness, and our 
 laughter, which is restrained by no personal veneration for him, 
 is merited sport. But as here also it is the uprightness of nat- 
 ure which breaks through the veil of falseness, a satisfaction 
 of a higher kind unites with the mischievous pleasure at hav- 
 ing surprised a man. For nature, in opposition to artifice, 
 and truth, in opposition to deception, must always excite re- 
 spect. We feel, then, in the naive of surprise also, an actual 
 moral pleasure, though not from a moral character.*^ 
 
 It is true, we always respect nature in the naive of surprise, 
 since we must respect the truth. On the contrary, we respect 
 the person in the naive of disposition, and then we enjoy not 
 only a moral pleasure, but also at a moral object. In the one 
 
 when the free growth of outspreading impression. By naivete of this kind 
 
 branches destroys the laborious work even a crime can be detected, but then 
 
 of the shears in a French garden. And we have neither the quiet nor the leisure 
 
 so it is not at all naive when a trained to direct our attention to the form of 
 
 horse repeats his lesson badly out of the detection: and aversion for the per- 
 
 natural fatness, but there is something sonal character absorbs all our satisfac- 
 
 naive when he forgets it out of natural tion at the nature. And as a revolted 
 
 freedom. feeling steals the moral pleasure at the 
 
 ° As the naive depends only upon the uprightness of nature, as soon as nai- 
 
 form in which something is said or vete gives knowledge of a crime, just 
 
 done, this property disappears, as soon so does an excited compassion destroy 
 
 as the thing itself, either through its our mischievous pleasure, as soon as we 
 
 causes or through its effects, makes a see anybody placed in peril by his nai- 
 
 preponderating or indeed contradictory vete. 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 261 
 
 as in the other case nature is right, so that she speaks the 
 truth: but in the latter case nature is not only right, but the 
 person is also worthy of respect. In the first case the upright- 
 ness of nature always redounds to the shame of the person, be- 
 cause it is involuntary ; in the second it always redounds to his 
 merit, even supposing that he incurs odium by what it ex- 
 presses. 
 
 We ascribe a naive disposition to a man, if in his judgments 
 of things, he overlooks their artificial and forced relations, and 
 adheres only to simple nature. We demand from him all the 
 judgments that can be made within the limits of healthy nat- 
 ure; and we completely discharge him only from that which 
 presupposes a separation from, at least a knowledge of, nature, 
 whether in feehng or in thought. 
 
 If a father tells his child that, this or that man is pining in 
 poverty, and the child hastens to carry to the man his father's 
 purse of gold, the action is naive, for healthy nature acts out 
 of the child : and it would be perfectly right so to proceed in a 
 world where healthy nature rules. He only regards the need 
 and the nearest method of satisfying it: such an extension of 
 the right of property whereby a part of humanity are left to 
 perish, is not founded in simple nature. The action of the 
 child, then, is a rebuke of the actual world, and our heart also 
 confesses it by the satisfaction which the action causes it to 
 feel. 
 
 If a man without knowledge of the world, but otherwise of 
 good capacity, confesses his secrets to another, who betrays 
 him — but who knows how to artfully dissimulate — and by this 
 very candor lends him the means of doing him an injury, we 
 find it naive. We laugh at him, but yet we cannot resist for 
 that reason highly prizing him. For his confidence in the 
 other results from the honesty of his own intentions : at least 
 he is naive only so far as that is the case. 
 
 Hence the naive of reflection can never be a property of cor- 
 rupted men, but can only belong to children and men with 
 childlike dispositions. The latter often act and think naively 
 in the most artificial relations of the great world. Out of their 
 own fine humanity they forget that they have to do with a 
 corrupted world, and they demean themselves at the courts of 
 kings with an ingenuous innocence only to be found among 
 a race of shepherds. 
 
262 SCHILLER 
 
 Now it is not so easy always correctly to distinguish childish 
 from childlike innocence, since there are actions which waver 
 between the extreme limits of both, and which actually leave 
 us in doubt, whether we ought to laugh at simpleness or rev- 
 erence a noble simplicity. A very remarkable instance of this 
 kind is found in the political history of Pope Adrian VI, which 
 Schrockh has described for us with the thoroughness and prag- 
 matic truth peculiar to himself. This pope, a Netherlander by 
 birth, administered the pontificate at a critical moment for the 
 hierarchy, when an embittered party exposed without mercy 
 the weak points in the Roman Church, and the adverse party 
 was deeply interested to conceal them. What the truly naive 
 character, if such a one ever strayed into the holy chair of 
 Peter, would have to do in this case, is not the question: but 
 rather, how far such a naivete of disposition might be com- 
 patible with the function of a pope. This, by the way, was 
 something which by no means embarrassed the predecessors 
 and followers of Adrian. With perfect uniformity they ad- 
 hered to the Romish system once for all accepted, nowhere to 
 concede anything. But Adrian really had the simple charac- 
 ter of his nation and the innocence of his former rank. He 
 was elevated from the narrow sphere of the student to his ex- 
 alted post, and had never been false to the simplicity of that 
 character on the eminence of his new dignity. The abuses in 
 the Church disturbed him, and he was much too honest openly 
 to dissimulate his private convictions. In conformity to such 
 a mood he suffered himself, in the instruction with which he 
 furnished his legate to Germany, to fall into confessions, be- 
 fore unheard of from any pope, and to flatly impugn the prin- 
 ciples of this court. Among other things it says : " We know 
 well that for many years past much that is odious has been 
 perpetrated in this holy chair: no wonder if the sickness has 
 been transmitted from the head to the members, from the pope 
 to the prelates. We have all fallen away, and for a long time 
 past there has not been one of us who has done a good thing, 
 no, not one." Again, elsewhere, he enjoins the legate to de- 
 clare in his name, " that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed on ac- 
 count of that which happened through former popes, and that 
 such excesses had always displeased him, even when he filled 
 an inferior station," etc. We can easily imagine what recep- 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 263 
 
 tion the Roman clergy gave to such naivete on the part of 
 the pope. The least which they imputed to him was that he 
 had betrayed the church to the heretics. Now this highly im- 
 politic measure of the pope would compel our whole respect 
 and admiration, if we could only be convinced that he was actu- 
 ally naive, that is, that he had been forced to it only through 
 the natural truth of his character, without any regard to the 
 possible consequences, and that he would have done it none 
 the less if he had anticipated the whole extent of its unseem- 
 liness. But we have some grounds for beheving that he did 
 not deem this step so very impolitic, and in his innocence went 
 so far as to hope that he might gain a very important advan- 
 tage for the church by his condescension toward the opposi- 
 tion. He not only presumed that as an honest man he ought 
 to take this step, but to be able also as pope to justify it : and 
 while he forgot that the most artificial of all structures could 
 actually be sustained by a systematic denial of the truth, he 
 committed the unpardonable error of using precepts in a posi- 
 tion completely the reverse of those natural relations in which 
 they might have been valid. This certainly modifies our judg- 
 ment seriously : and although we cannot withhold our respect 
 from the honesty of heart, out of which that action flowed, it 
 is not a little weakened by the reflection that nature had in 
 art, and the heart in the head, a feeble rival. 
 
 That is not a true genius which is not naive. Nothing but 
 its naivete makes it genius ; and what it is in taste and intel- 
 lect it cannot contradict in its morality. Unacquainted with 
 rules, the crutches of weakness and the taskmasters of per- 
 versity, guided only by nature or by instinct, its guardian an- 
 gel, it passes tranquilly and safely through all the snares of a 
 vicious taste, in which the pseudo-genius is inevitably caught, 
 unless it is acute enough to anticipate them from afar. It is 
 only granted to genius to be always at home beyond the limits 
 of the familiar, and to extend, without transgressing, nature. 
 It is true the greatest genius now and then commits the latter 
 fault, but only because it also has its moments of fantasy, when 
 protecting nature leaves it : only because the force of example 
 wins it, or the corrupt taste of its age seduces it. 
 
 Genius must solve the most complicated problems with un- 
 pretending simplicity and skill. The egg of Columbus is a 
 
a64 SCHILLER 
 
 sample of every method of true spirit. It legitimates itself as 
 genius only by triumphing through simplicity over the most 
 factitious art. It proceeds not according to familiar principles, 
 but by impulses and feelings. But its impulses are sugges- 
 tions of a god — all which healthy nature does, is divine — and 
 its feelings are laws for all ages and for every race of men. 
 
 The childlike character which genius stamps upon its works, 
 it also manifests in its manners and its private life. It is chaste, 
 because nature is always so : but it is not decent, because de- 
 cency is only native to depravity. It is intelligent, for nature 
 can never be the opposite ; but it is not cunning, for only art 
 can be so. It is true to its character and its inclinations, but 
 not so much because it has principles, as because nature al- 
 ways returns through every vacillation to its first position, al- 
 ways restores the old necessity. It is modest, even bashful, 
 because genius itself is always a mystery, but it is not anxious, 
 because it does not know the perils of the road on which it 
 travels. We know little of the private life of the greatest 
 geniuses, but even that little which has been preserved, for 
 example, concerning Sophocles, Archimedes, Hippocrates, 
 among the ancients, and Ariosto, Dante and Tasso, Raphael, 
 Albert Diirer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Fielding, Sterne, and 
 others of modern times, confirms this assertion. 
 
 And even, a fact which seems to present for greater diffi- 
 culty, the great statesman and general will exhibit a naive 
 character, as soon as their genius makes them great. Among 
 the ancients, I will only here allude to Epaminondas and Julius 
 Caesar, and to Henry IV of France, Gustavus Adolphus of 
 Sweden, and Peter the Great, among the moderns. The Duke 
 of Marlborough, Turenne, Vendome, all display this charac- 
 ter. And in the other sex, nature has indicated her highest 
 perfection of naivete. Feminine coquetry strives for nothing 
 so much as for the appearance of naivete : proof enough, if we 
 had no other, that the chief power of the sex rests upon this 
 quality. But since the prevalent principles of female educa- 
 tion are in lasting opposition to this character, it is as hard for 
 the woman morally, as for the man intellectually, to maintain 
 that noble gift of nature with the advantages bestowed by gen- 
 erous culture. The woman who unites this naivete of manners 
 with a demeanor appropriate to the world merits our rever- 
 
UPON NAiVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 265 
 
 ence as much as the scholar who combines a genial freedom 
 of thought with all the severity of the schools. 
 
 A naive expression necessarily flows out of naive reflection, 
 both in words and gestures : and it is the most important ele- 
 ment of grace. Genius expresses thus naively its sublimest 
 and deepest thoughts: they are oracles from the mouth of a 
 child. While common-sense, always afraid of error, nails its 
 words and conceptions upon the cross of logic and grammar, 
 while it is hard and stiff in order to be definite, multiplies words 
 lest it say too much, and prefers to extract all the force and 
 keenness from its thought, from dread of being inconsiderate, 
 genius, with a single happy dash of the pencil, gives to its 
 thought a firm, forever definite, and yet flowing outline. If, on 
 the one hand, the symbol and the thing symbolized remain for- 
 ever foreign and heterogeneous; on the other, the speech issues 
 from the thought as by an inward necessity, and is so entirely 
 one with it, that the spirit seems exposed even under its ma- 
 terial veil. In composition, it is expression of this kind, where 
 the symbol entirely vanishes in the thing symbolized, and 
 where the language still leaves the thought which it expressed 
 naked, while another never can present without at the same 
 time concealing it, that we style by eminence spirited and 
 genial. 
 
 Innocence of heart expresses itself freely and naturally in 
 daily life, like genius in its works of thought. It is notorious 
 that in social life a man eschews simplicity and severe integrity 
 of expression in the same proportion as he lacks purity of in- 
 tention : and where offence is so readily incurred, and the im- 
 agination so easily corrupted, a constrained demeanor is a ne- 
 cessity. Without being false, we often say what we do not 
 think : we invent circumlocutions in order to say things which 
 can offend only a sickly vanity, or injure only a corrupt imag- 
 ination. An ignorance of these conventional laws, united with 
 natural uprightness, which despises every labyrinth and show 
 of falsehood (and not rudeness, which only rejects those laws 
 because they incommode it), creates a naivete of expression 
 in intercourse, which consists in calling things, which we either 
 may not designate at all or only artfully, by their right names 
 and in the curtest way. The customary expressions of chil- 
 dren are of this kind. They create laughter from their con- 
 
266 SCHILLER 
 
 trast with our customs ; and yet in our hearts we confess that 
 the child is right. 
 
 It is true that, strictly speaking, a naive disposition can be 
 attributed to man only as a being not positively subject to nat- 
 ure, though still only so far as pure nature really acts in him. 
 And yet, by an effect of the poetizing imagination, it is often 
 transferred from the rational to the irrational. Thus we often 
 attribute a naive character to an animal, a landscape, a build- 
 ing, and to nature generally, in opposition to the caprice and 
 fantasy of man. But this always demands that we should sub- 
 jectively lend a will to that which has none, and have regard 
 to its strict direction according to necessary laws. Dissatis- 
 faction at our own ill-exercised moral freedom, and at the lack 
 of moral harmony in our actions, easily induces that kind of 
 mood in which we address an irrational thing as a person, and 
 imagine its eternal uniformity a merit, and envy its tranquil 
 tenor, as if it really had to struggle with a temptation to be 
 otherwise. At such a moment it jumps with our humor to con- 
 sider our prerogative of reason an evil and a curse, and to deny 
 justice to our capacity and destiny, from a vivid sense of the 
 meagreness of our actual execution. 
 
 Then we see in irrational nature only a more fortunate sister, 
 who remained in the maternal house, from which we stormed 
 fo*-th into the distance, in the exuberance of our freedom. 
 With sorrowful longing we yearn to be back again, as soon 
 as we begin to feel the oppressiveness of culture, and to hear 
 in the foreign remoteness of art the winning voice of the 
 mother. While we were only nature's children we were happy 
 and perfect; we became free and ceased to be both. Hence 
 results a twofold and very dissimilar longing for nature, long- 
 ing for her happiness, longing for her perfection. The loss 
 of the former is lamented only by the sensuous man; but the 
 moral man alone can mourn over the loss of the latter. 
 
 Ask yourself strictly then, sympathizing friend of nature, 
 does your indolence pine for her repose ? does your offended 
 moral sense desire her harmony? Ask yourself candidly, doe? 
 art disgust you, and do you take refuge in the solitude of in- 
 animate nature from the abuses of society? do you abhor its 
 privations, its burdens, its difficulties, or its moral anarchy, its 
 disorders, its caprice? You must meet the former with joy 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 267 
 
 and courage, and your compensation must be the very free- 
 dom out of which they flow. You may well propose the tran- 
 quil joy of nature for your distant goal, but only such as is the 
 prize of your own worthiness. Then complain no longer of 
 the hardship of life, of the inequality of conditions, of the stress 
 of circumstances, of the insecurity of property, of ingratitude, 
 oppression, persecution. You must submit to all the evils of 
 culture with free resignation, you must respect them as the 
 natural conditions of the only Good: you must lament only 
 over its wickedness, but not with unmanly teats. Much rather 
 care to act purely amid those contaminations, freely under that 
 slavery, firmly through that fickle mutability, loyally through 
 that anarchy. Do not fear external, but internal confusion: 
 strive for unity, but seek it not in uniformity: strive for re- 
 pose, but through the equipose, not through the cessation, of 
 your activity. That nature, which you begrudge to the irra- 
 tional, deserves neither longing nor respect. It lies behind 
 you: it must forever lie behind you. When you no longer 
 feel the ladder which upheld you, there remains for you no 
 choice but to grasp the law with free consciousness and voli- 
 tion, or else to fall beyond deliverance into a fathomless abyss. 
 
 But if you become consoled for the loss of nature's happi- 
 ness, then let her perfection be your heart's ideal. If you step 
 forth unto her from your sphere of art, and see her before you 
 in her great tranquillity, in her naive beauty, in her childlike 
 innocence and simplicity, linger before the picture, cherish that 
 feeling : it is worthy of your noblest manhood. Do not longer 
 indulge the wish or fancy to exchange with her, but receive her 
 into yourself, and strive to wed her infinite superiority to your 
 own infinite prerogative, and create from that union the divine. 
 Let her encompass you like a tender Idyll, in which you may 
 always find yourself again out of the distractions of art, from 
 which you may gather new courage and confidence for the 
 race, and kindle afresh in your heart the flame of the Ideal, 
 which flickers and sinks so soon in the storms of life. 
 
 If we call to mind the beautiful nature which surrounded the 
 ancient Greeks, if we recollect how confidingly that people 
 could live under their fortunate heaven with free nature, how 
 much nearer their conception, their sentiment, their manners 
 lay to simple nature, and what a true reflection of her their 
 
268 SCHILLER 
 
 works of fancy are, it must seem strange to observe that we 
 find sd few traces among them of that sentimental interest with 
 which we moderns can chng to natural scenes and characters. 
 It is true, the Greek is in the highest degree strict, true, cir- 
 cumstantial, in his description of nature, but yet not a whit 
 more and with no heartier sympathy, than he is also in the 
 description of an array, a shield, a suit of armor, a domestic 
 utensil, or of any product of mechanics. He seems to make 
 no distinction in his love for the object, between that which 
 is in itself and that which is through art and human will. Nat- 
 ure seems to interest his intellect and curiosity more than his 
 moral sense : he does not cling to her as we do, with heartiness, 
 with sensibility, with a sweet sadness. And even when he per- 
 sonifies and deifies her single manifestations, and represents 
 their effects as actions of a free being, he abolishes in her that 
 tranquil necessity, by which precisely she is so attractive to us. 
 His impatient fancy bears him away over her to the drama of 
 human life. Nothing satisfies him but the free and living, 
 nothing but characters, actions, fates, and manners. And 
 while we, in certain moral moods of mind, could wish to give 
 up the superiority of our free volition, which causes us so much 
 strife with ourselves, so much unrest and confusion, for the 
 choiceless but tranquil necessity of the irrational, the Greek 
 fancy, precisely the reverse, is busy making human nature in- 
 choate even within the inanimate world, and giving influence 
 to will in the province of bHnd necessity. 
 
 Whence indeed this diversity of spirit ? How comes it that 
 we who are so far surpassed by the ancients in everything that 
 is nature, can precisely here honor nature in a higher sense, 
 cling to her with heartfulness, and embrace even the inanimate 
 world with warmest sensibility? It is because with us nature 
 has vanished out of humanity, and we meet her again in her 
 truth only beyond the latter, in the world of matter. It is not 
 our greater conformity with nature, but, quite the contrary, the 
 incongruity of our relations, conditions, and manners, which 
 impels us to procure in the physical world that which is hope- 
 less in the moral world, namely, satisfaction for the growing 
 impulse for truth and simplicity, which lies incorruptible and 
 ineffaceable in all human hearts, like the moral disposition 
 whence it flows. It is for this reason that the feeling with 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 269 
 
 which we cling to nature is so nearly akin to the feeling which 
 laments the vanished age of childhood and of childUke inno- 
 cence. Our childhood is the only unmutilated nature which 
 we still fiod in cultivated manhood: then it is no wonder if 
 every vestige of external nature conducts us back to our child- 
 hood. 
 
 It was very different with the ancient Greeks.® Their cult- 
 ure had not so far degenerated that nature was abandoned. 
 The whole structure of their social life was based upon feelings, 
 and not upon a composition of art : their mythology itself was 
 the suggestion of a naive sentiment, the creation of a joyous 
 fancy, and not of a refining reason, like the religion of later 
 nations. Then as the Greek had not lost the nature in hu- 
 manity, he could not be surprised by her beyond the Hmits of 
 the latter: and so he could have no pressing necessity for ob- 
 jects in which he might recover her. In unison with himself, 
 and happy in the feeling of his humanity, he fain held silently 
 to that as his maximum, and approached all else with diffi- 
 culty : while we, not in unison with ourselves, and unhappy in 
 our experiences of humanity, have no pressing interest except 
 to escape from it, and to thrust from our vision a form so un- 
 successful. 
 
 The feeling to which we here allude, is not then, that which 
 the ancients had : it is rather identical with that which we have 
 for the ancients. They perceived naturally: we perceive the 
 natural. Without doubt, the feeling which filled Homer's soul 
 when he let his celestial swineherd entertain Ulysses was quite 
 different from that which moved the soul of the young Wer- 
 ther, when he read the passage after a tedious company. Our 
 sentiment for nature is Hke the feeling of the invalid for health. 
 
 In the same degree that nature vanished out of human life 
 as experience and as the (active and perceptive) subject, we 
 see her appearing in the poetic world as idea and as object. 
 
 <* But with the Greeks only: for just ure (in opposition to man) appears in 
 
 such a lively animation and such a rich the songs of this poet much more as 
 
 fulness of human life as surrounded an object of sentiment. But Ossian too 
 
 the Greek, were requisite, in order to laments a falling away of humanity; 
 
 transfer life into the lifeless also, and and however small was the circle oi 
 
 to pursue with that zeal the image of his people's culture and their corrupt 
 
 humanity. Ossian's human world, for tions, its experience was still lively and 
 
 example, was needy and monotonous: impressive enough, to repel the smger, 
 
 the inanimate around him was great, with his tenderness and purity, back 
 
 colosspl, mighty. Thus it was impera- towards the inanimate, and to pour over 
 
 tive, and maintained its rights over his songs that elegiac tone which we 
 
 man himself: and hence inanimate nat- find so moving and attractive. 
 
270 
 
 SCHILLER 
 
 That nation which has proceeded furthest both in unnature and 
 in reflection upon it must have been the first to be most 
 strongly moved by the phenomenon of naivete, and to give to 
 it a name. This nation, so far as I know, was the French. 
 But perception of, and interest in, the naive, is naturally much 
 earlier, and dates from the very commencement of moral and 
 aesthetic depravation. This change in the perceptive mode is 
 extremely striking even so early as Euripides; for example, 
 when we compare him with his predecessors and with ^schy- 
 lus especially, and yet that poet was the favorite of his age. 
 The same revolution is apparent also among the old historians. 
 Horace, the poet of a cultivated and corrupted age, extols 
 tranquil happiness in his Tibur ; and we may designate him as 
 the true founder of this sentimental school of poetry, while as 
 a model he has not yet been surpassed. We also find traces of 
 this perception in Propertius, Vergil, and others, but few in 
 Ovid, who lacked heartfulness, and who mourns, in his exile 
 at Tomi, the loss of that happiness which Horace so readily 
 dispenses with in his Tibur. 
 
 Poets are universally, by their very conception, the guar- 
 dians of nature. Where they can no longer be so, and already 
 feel in themselves the destructive influence of capricious and 
 artificial forms, or at least have had to struggle with it, they 
 will then appear as the witnesses and as the avengers of nat- 
 ure. They will either be, or they will seek, a lost nature. Thus 
 two very different schools of poetry arise, which cover and 
 exhaust the whole province of that art. All who are really 
 poets will belong either to the naive or to the sentimental 
 school, according to the constitution of the age in which they 
 flourish, or as contingent circumstances affect their general 
 culture and predominating neutral tone. 
 
 The early poet of a naive and spiritual world, and he, in an 
 age of artificial culture, who is nearest to him, is austere and 
 coy, like the virgin Diana in her forests. With no familiar 
 manners, he eludes the heart that seeks him, and the longing 
 that would embrace him. The homely truthfulness with 
 which he handles an object often seems like insensibility. The 
 object possesses him entirely: his heart does not lie, like a 
 base metal, just beneath the surface, but will be sought after 
 in the depths, like gold. He stands behind his work hke the 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 
 
 271 
 
 Infinite behind the structure of the world. He is the work and 
 the work is him. We must first be unworthy of the work, 
 or unequal to it, or weary, only to ask for him. 
 
 So appears, for example. Homer among the ancients and 
 Shakespeare among the moderns; two very different natures, 
 separated by the immeasurable lapse of ages, but in this par- 
 ticular characteristic completely one. When I first became 
 acquainted with the latter poet, at a very early age, I was 
 troubled at the coldness, the insensibility, which permitted him 
 to jest in the deepest pathos, to disturb with a clown the heart- 
 rending scenes in " Hamlet," " King Lear," " Macbeth," and 
 others, which now held him fast where my feelings hurried on, 
 and now coldly hastened forward where the heart would so will- 
 ingly have rested. Led by acquaintance with the later writers, 
 to seek for the poet in the work, to meet his heart, to reflect 
 famiHarly with him concerning his object, in short, to contem- 
 plate the object in the subject, it was intolerable to me that 
 the poet would nowhere suffer contact, and never deign to talk 
 with me. And for many years he had all my reverence and 
 my study too, before I learned to win his personality. I was 
 yet incapable of understanding nature at first hand. I could 
 only tolerate her image reflected through the intellect and ad- 
 justed by the rules; and the sentimental poets both of the 
 French and Germans, from 1750 to 1780, were just the proper 
 subjects for that end. But I am not ashamed of this puerile 
 judgment, since the mature critic passed a similar one, and was 
 naive enough to publish it to the world. 
 
 The same thing happened to me with respect to Homer, 
 also, whom I knew at a still later period. I remember now 
 the remarkable place in the sixth book of the " Iliad," where 
 Glaucus and Diomed attack each other, and after one recog- 
 nizes the other as his guest, exchange presents. This affect- 
 ing picture of the piety with which the laws of hospitality were 
 observed in war itself, can be matched with a description of 
 knightly magnanimity in Ariosto, where two knights and 
 rivals, Ferran and Rinaldo, the one a Saracen, the other a 
 Christian, make peace after being covered with wounds in a 
 violent conflict, and mount the same horse in order to seek and 
 bring back the flying Angelica. Different as both examples 
 are, they still coincide in the effect upon our hearts, since both 
 
272 SCHILLER 
 
 depict the "beautiful triumph of manners over passion, and af- 
 fect us with their naivete of disposition. But how differently 
 do the poets undertake the description of this same action. Ar- 
 iosto, the citizen of a later age, whose manners had deteriorated 
 in simplicity, cannot conceal his own admiration and emotion 
 at the relation of this event. The feeling of the remoteness of 
 these manners from those which characterize his age over- 
 powers him. He abandons at once the delineation of the ob- 
 ject and appears in his own person. The beautiful stanzas are 
 well known, and have always excited special admiration : 
 
 " O noble minds, by knights of old possess'd! 
 Two faiths they knew, one love their hearts profess'd: 
 And still their limbs the smarting anguish feel 
 Of strokes inflicted by the hostile steel. 
 Through winding paths and lonely woods they go, 
 Yet no suspicion their brave bosoms know. 
 At length the horse, with double spurring, drew 
 To where diverging ways appeared in view.'* 
 
 And now old Homer! Hardly does Diomed learn from the 
 relation of Glaucus, his rival, that the latter is a guest of his 
 family from the father's times downward, when he buries his 
 spear in the ground, talks cordially with him, and they agree 
 in future to avoid each other during battle. But hear Homer 
 himself: 
 
 " Henceforth let our spears 
 
 Avoid each other in tumultuous war; 
 
 For many Trojans and renown'd allies 
 
 Have I to slay, whom to this arm some god 
 
 May bring, or else my speed may overtake; 
 
 And many Greeks there are for thee to slay, 
 
 Whome'er thou canst; but let us arms exchange, 
 
 That all who see our conference may know 
 
 We boast to be hereditary guests. 
 
 This said, both heroes leaping from their cars, 
 
 With mutual kindness joined their hands and pledged 
 
 The faith of friendship!" 
 
 A modern poet (at least one who is so in the moral sense of 
 that word) would have hardly waited until now, in order to 
 testify his pleasure at the action. And we should the easier 
 pardon him for it, since our heart also makes a pause in the 
 reading, and withdraws from the object, in order to contem- 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 273 
 
 plate itself. But no trace of all this in Homer: he proceeds 
 in his barren truthfulness, as if he had announced an every-day 
 affair, nay, as if he bore no heart in his bosom : 
 
 " Then Saturnian love 
 Exalted Glaucus' liberal mind, who gave 
 His golden for Tydides' brazen arms, 
 Although a hundred oxen his were worth, 
 And those of Diomed no more than nine." 
 
 Poets of this naive kind are properly no longer in their place 
 in an artificial age. In fact they are hardly possible there, at 
 least only if they run wild, and are saved from the crippling 
 influence of their times by a fortunate destiny. They can never 
 proceed out of society itself; but they sometimes appear be- 
 yond its limits, yet rather as strangers who astonish us, and as 
 untamed children of nature who scandalize us. Beneficial as 
 such phenomena are for the artist who studies them, and for 
 the genuine connoisseur who knows how to estimate them, 
 they prosper little on the whole with their period. The seal 
 of ruler rests upon their brow ; but we prefer to be rocked and 
 carried by the muses. The critics, who are the special hedge- 
 trimmers of taste, hate them as bound-breakers, and would fain 
 suppress them. For Homer himself need thank only the 
 power of more than a millennium of evidence, for the toleration 
 of these aesthetic judges : it would harass them not a little to 
 maintain their rules against his example, and his reputation 
 against their rules. 
 
 I said that the poet either is nature, or he will seek her. If 
 the former, he is naive ; if the latter, he is sentimental. 
 
 The poetic spirit is immortal and inalienable in humanity: 
 it cannot fail except simultaneously with that and with the 
 poetic inclination. For when the man removes himself, by 
 the freedom of his fancy and his understanding, from the sim- 
 plicity, truth, and necessity of nature, not only the road to her 
 remains forever open to him, but a mightier and more inde- 
 structible instinct, the moral, also impels him constantly back 
 to her; and the poetic capacity stands in the closest relation- 
 ship with this very instinct. That, then, is not also lost to- 
 gether with natural simplicity, but only operates in another 
 channel. 
 
 Nature is still the only flame which nourishes the poetic 
 18 
 
274 SCHILLER 
 
 Spirit ; it creates its whole energy out of her alone, and speaks 
 to her even in the artificial man comprised within his culture. 
 Every other mode of operation is foreign to the poetic spirit ; 
 hence, by the way, all so-called works of humor are improperly 
 styled poetic, although, guided by the reputation of French 
 literature, we have for a long time confounded the two quali- 
 ties. It is still nature, I say, that even in the artificial condi- 
 tions of culture, gives energy to the poetic spirit; only she 
 stands in a relation to it entirely new. 
 
 It is evident that, while man continues to be pure and not 
 rude nature, he acts as an undivided sensuous unity and as a 
 harmonizing whole. Sense and reason, the receptive and the 
 creative faculty, are not yet separate in their operations, much 
 less do they stand in opposition. The perceptions of the one 
 are not the formless sport of chance, the ideas of the other are 
 not the barren play of fancy; the former result from the law 
 of necessity, the latter from reality. When man has passed 
 into the state of culture, and art has lain her hand upon him, 
 that sensuous harmony within him is removed, and he can 
 only express himself as a moral unity, that is, as striving after 
 unity. The agreement between his perception and reflection, 
 which took place in the first condition actually, now exists only 
 ideally. It is no longer in him, but out of him ; as a thought 
 which has yet to be realized, and no longer as a fact of his life. 
 If now we apply the conception of poetry, which is none other 
 than to give humanity its completest possible expression, to 
 both the above conditions, the result is, that in the condition 
 of natural simplicity, where the man still acts with all his pow- 
 ers at once as a harmonious unity, and where therefore the 
 totality of his nature fully expresses itself in reality, the com- 
 pletest possible imitation of the actual must make the poet; 
 that on the contrary, in the condition of culture, where that 
 harmonious cooperation of his whole nature is only an idea, 
 the elevation of reality to the ideal or what amounts to the 
 same thing, the representation of the ideal, must make the poet. 
 And these are also the two only possible modes in which the 
 poetic genius can find expression. They are, as we see, en- 
 tirely distinct; but there is a higher conception which com- 
 prehends them both, and we need not be surprised to find this 
 conception coinciding with the idea of humanity. 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 275 
 
 This is not the place to pursue further this thought, which 
 only a special discussion can place in its full light. But who- 
 ever knows how to institute a comparison between the ancient 
 and modern poets/ not only according to accidental forms, 
 but according to the spirit, can easily be satisfied of its truth. 
 The former affect us through their nature, through sensuous 
 truth, through living presence: the latter affect us through 
 ideas. 
 
 Moreover, this path which the modern poets travel is the 
 same which man must commonly pursue, as well in the part as 
 in the whole. Nature makes him one with himself, art sep- 
 arates and divides him, the ideal restores his unity. But since 
 the ideal is an infinity which man never reaches, the cultivated 
 man can never become perfect in his mode, as the natural man 
 is able to become in his. Then^he must be infinitely inferior 
 to the latter in perfection, if regard is had only to the relation 
 in which both stand to their mode and their maximum. On 
 the contrary, if we compare together the modes themselves, it 
 is evident that the goal for which the man strives through 
 culture is infinitely superior to that which he attains through 
 nature. The one then acquires his value through positive 
 attainment of a finite, the other desires it through approxima- 
 tion to an infinite, magnitude. But since the latter has only 
 degree and progress, the relative worth of the cultivated man, 
 taken as a whole, is never determinable, although when par- 
 tially regarded he is found in necessary inferiority to him in 
 whom nature acts in her whole perfection. But in so far as 
 the final goal of humanity can only be reached through that 
 progress, and the natural man can only proceed 'according as 
 he cultivates himself, and consequently passes over into the 
 other condition — there is no question to which of the two the 
 preference is to be awarded, with respect to that final goal. 
 
 What has here been said of the two distinct forms of hu- 
 manity may also be applied to both those poetic forms cor- 
 responding to them. 
 
 ' Perhaps it is not superfluous to style entirely pure ; and there is no 
 
 mention, that if the modern poets are want of the sentimental among the old 
 
 here set opposite to the ancient, we Latin, and even Grecian poets. We fre- 
 
 are to understand not so much the dif- quently find both kinds united, not only 
 
 ference in time as the difference in in the same poet, but even in the same 
 
 manner. We have also in modern and work, as for example in the " Sorrows 
 
 even in the latest times, naive poems of Werther." Productions of this kind 
 
 in all classes, though no longer of a will always have a superior effect. 
 
276 ' SCHILLER 
 
 For this reason we ought not to compare together ancient 
 and modern — naive and sentimental — poets, or, if we do, only 
 beneath a higher conception common to both: for such a one 
 there really is. For certainly, if we have once partially ab- 
 stracted the generic conception of poetry from the old poets, 
 nothing is easier, but nothing also is more trivial, than to un- 
 dervalue the moderns in comparison. If we only call that 
 poetry which has uniformly affected simple nature in all times, 
 the only result will be to render dubious the name of poet as 
 applied to moderns exactly in their highest and most peculiar 
 beauty, because it is precisely here that they speak only to the 
 disciple of art, and have nothing to say to simple nature.^ The 
 richest contents will be empty show, and the highest flight of 
 poetry will be exaggeration to him whose mind is not already 
 prepared to pass out of reality into the province of ideas. The 
 wish can never occur to a reasonable man to set a modern side 
 by side with that in which Homer is great; and it sounds 
 laughable enough to hear a Milton or a Klopstock styled the 
 modern Homer. And just as little would any ancient poet, 
 least of all Homer, be able to maintain a comparison with the 
 modern poet in his characteristics. The former, if I may so 
 express it, is powerful through the art of limitation ; the latter 
 through the art of illimitation. 
 
 And from the fact that the strength of the ancient artist (for 
 what has here been said of the poet, can also be applied in gen- 
 eral to the liberal artist, under the restrictions which naturally 
 occur) consisted in limitation, we may explain the high su- 
 periority which the plastic art of antiquity asserts over that 
 of modern times ; and, in general, the unequal relation of value 
 in which modern poetry and modern plastic art stand to both 
 species of art in antiquity. A work for the eye finds its per- 
 fection only in limitation : a work for the imagination can also 
 attain it through the unlimited. Hence a modern's prepon- 
 derance in ideas helps him little in plastic works ; he is com- 
 
 * It became Moliere at any rate, as a " Nathan the Wise," and many other 
 
 naive poet, to leave to the decision of pieces. But what do I say? This test 
 
 his maid-servant what should stand in is actually applied, and Moliere's maid 
 
 his comedies and what should be sub- reasons at full sweep, in our critical li- 
 
 tracted. It were to be wished that the braries, philosophical and literary an- 
 
 masters of the French cothurn had also nals and travels, upon poetry, art, and 
 
 tried that test upon their tragedies. But the like; only as is reasonable, a little 
 
 I do not mean to propose that a similar more insipidly on German than on 
 
 test should be applied to the odes of French soil, and in keeping with the 
 
 Klopstock, to the finest passages in the style in the savants* hall of German lit- 
 
 *' Messiah," in " Paradise Lost," in erature. 
 
UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY 277 
 
 pelled here to define in space most rigidly the image of his 
 fancy, and consequently to measure himself with the ancient 
 artist precisely in that quality, in which the latter holds the 
 indisputable palm. It is otherwise in poetic works; and 
 though the ancient poets conquer here also in the simplicity 
 of their means, and in that which is sensuously presentable and 
 corporeal — the moderns in their turn leave them behind in 
 profusion of material, in that which is irrepresentable and in- 
 effable, and in short, in that which we call spirit in a work of 
 art. 
 
 As the naive poet follows only simple nature and perception, 
 and confines himself only to imitation of reality, he can only 
 hold a single relation to his subject, and in this respect, he 
 has no choice in his mode of handling. The different impres- 
 sion of naive poems depends (presupposing that we abstract 
 all therein which pertains to the contents, and regard that im- 
 pression only as the pure effect of the poetic handling) only, 
 I remark, upon the different degree of one and the same per- 
 ceptive method. Even the difference in the external forms 
 can make no alteration in the quality of that aesthetic impres- 
 sion. Let the form be lyric or epic, dramatic or descriptive, 
 we may indeed experience emotions more or less powerful, 
 but never of different kinds, supposing the contents abstracted. 
 Our emotion is altogether the same, composed entirely of one 
 element, so that we can distinguish in it nothing else. Even 
 the difference of tongues and times makes no alteration in this 
 respect ; for this pure unity of their origin and their effect is 
 precisely one characteristic of naive poetry. 
 
 The case is entirely different with the sentimental poet. He 
 reflects upon the impression which the objects make upon 
 him, and the emotion into which he throws us and is thrown 
 himself, is only based upon that reflection. Here the object is 
 related to an idea, and its poetic power only rests upon that 
 relation. Hence the sentimental poet is always involved with 
 two conflicting representations and perceptions, with reality 
 as a limit and with his idea as the unlimited : and the mingled 
 feeling which he excites will always betray this twofold 
 source.® Since, then, a plurality of principles here occurs, it 
 
 ® Whoever notices the impression and is able to disconnect therefrom the 
 which naive poems make upon himself, sympathy created by the contents, will 
 
278 SCHILLER 
 
 depends upon which of the two predominates in the poet's per- 
 ception and in his representation, and a difference in the han- 
 dhng is consequently possible. For now the question arises 
 whether he will be more occupied with the real, or more with 
 the ideal, whether he will treat the former as an object of aver- 
 sion, or the latter as an object of inclination. Then his repre- 
 sentation will either be satirical, or it will be elegiac (in a wider 
 signification of this word, hereafter to be explained). Every 
 sentimental poet will conform to one of these two methods of 
 perception. 
 
 find this impression, even in very pa- living presence of the object in our im- 
 thetic subjects, always cheerful, always agination, and seek nothing more than 
 pure, always tranquil: while that of this— in the sentimental, on the con- 
 sentimental poems is always somewhat trary, we have to unite the presentation 
 grave and intensive. The reason is, of the imagination with an idea of the 
 that while in the case of naive repre- reason, which always leaves us irreso- 
 sentations, be the action what it will, lute between two different conditions. 
 we always rejoice at the truth, at the 
 
ON CONSOLATION 
 
 BY 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER 
 
 1763— 1825 
 
 The remarkable writer whose name, among his contemporaries and 
 admirers, has been shortened to " Jean Paul," but who was christened 
 Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was born in the village of Wunsiedel, 
 in the heart of the Franconian mountains, in 1763. He was the son 
 of a poor clergyman blessed with a large family, and his early years 
 were passed amid grinding poverty. Part of his education was obtained 
 in the gymnasium of Hof; later he studied at Leipsic. During the 
 two years spent there he was seriously hampered in his studies by the 
 struggle to obtain the bare necessities of life. His first book was 
 written in 1783 — a collection of witty, satirical sketches entitled " The 
 Greenland Lawsuits." It was only after long search that he found a 
 publisher for the book. Owing to its extravagantly eccentric style, 
 the book was little read and less appreciated. His next book was the 
 " Selections from the Devil's Papers," which no publisher would 
 consider. Still his determination to devote himself to literature re- 
 mained unshaken. His mother was now living at Hof, as poor as 
 himself, and he joined in the effort to keep the family from starvation. 
 As buying books was out of the question, he borrowed them, making 
 copious extracts from others, and combining the sheets thus gathered 
 into a most extraordinary sort of " cyclopaedia." Everything was 
 there. Bayard Taylor tells us — theology and tinware, art and artichokes, 
 science, cookery, ideas of heaven, making of horse-shoes, aesthetics, 
 edible mushrooms, mythology, millinery. This magnum opus Richter 
 kept always at his side when working, and from it he, no doubt, drew 
 many of his seemingly far-fetched and incongruous allusions and illus- 
 trations. 
 
 In 1793 Richter wrote "The Invisible Lodge." His next book, 
 " Hesperus," brought him to the knowledge of every author and critic 
 in Germany. In 1796 he visited Weimar and met its literary celebrities. 
 In 1800 he married, and before long settled permanently in Bayreuth, 
 where he remained till his death, in 1825. He was comparatively pros- 
 perous during the latter part of his life. He was the guest of princes 
 and the idol of the somewhat limited circle of his admirers. Besides 
 " Hesperus," his most important romances were " Titan," " Flegel- 
 jahre" (Wild Oats), and " Siebenkas." He also wrote a number of 
 essays, of which " On Consolation " is a good example, and he achieved 
 a considerable degree of success in his numerous shorter tales. 
 
 Richter's style is the despair of readers and translators. As Carlyle 
 has said, there is " probably not in any modern language so intricate 
 a writer; abounding, without measure, in obscure allusions, in the 
 most twisted phraseology; perplexed into endless entanglements and 
 dislocations, parenthesis within parenthesis; not forgetting elisions, 
 sudden whirls, quips, conceits, and all manner of inexplicable crotchets; 
 the whole moving on in the gayest manner." His fine humor, his deep 
 and tender humanity, his rich poetical imagination, the exquisite deli- 
 cacy and sprightliness of his fancy are, however, qualities that have 
 rescued Richter's work from oblivion in spite of his style. And, after 
 all, the style is a part of the man. It is the amazing combination of 
 strength and weakness, delicacy and coarseness, knowledge and ig- 
 norance, sentiment and grotesque humor that make " Jean Paul " 
 what his admirers love to call him — " the Unique" (" Der Einzige"). 
 
 280 
 
ON CONSOLATION 
 
 A TIME will come, that is, must come, when we shall be 
 commanded by morality not only to cease tormenting 
 others, but also ourselves. A time must come when 
 man, even on earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it 
 only from pride. 
 
 Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of 
 the breast, so quickly, that the wise man can never wholly lay 
 aside the garb of mourning from his body ; but let his soul wear 
 none. For if it is over a merit to bear a small suffering with 
 cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the 
 worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one; 
 as the same reason which is valid for the forgiveness of small 
 injuries is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest. 
 
 The first thing that we have to contend against and despise, 
 in sorrow as in anger, is its poisonous enervating sweetness, 
 which we are so loath to exchange for the labor of consoling 
 ourselves, and to drive away by the effort of reason. 
 
 We must not exact of philosophy, that with one stroke of the 
 pen it shall reverse the transformation of Rubens, who, with one 
 stroke of his brush, changed a laughing child into a weeping 
 one. It is enough if it change the full-mourning of the soul 
 into half-mourning ; it is enough if I can say to myself, I will be 
 content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me ; with- 
 out it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be a wasp's 
 sting. 
 
 Even physical pain shoots its sparks upon us out of the 
 electrical condenser of the imagination. We could endure the 
 most acute pangs calmly if they only lasted the sixtieth part of 
 a second ; but, in fact, we never have to endure an hour of pain, 
 but only a succession of the sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty 
 beams of which are collected into the burning focus of a second, 
 and directed upon our nerves by the imagination alone. The 
 
 281 
 
282 RICHTER 
 
 most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless, 
 or immaterial, namely, our impatience, and the delusion that it 
 will last forever. 
 
 There is many a loss over which we all know for certain that 
 we shall no longer grieve in twenty — ten — two years. Why do 
 we not say to ourselves : I will at once then, to-day, throw away 
 an opinion which I shall abandon in twenty years ? Why should 
 I be able to abandon errors of twenty years' standing, and not 
 of twenty hours ? 
 
 When I awake from a dream which an Otaheite has painted 
 for me on the dark ground of the night, and find the flowery 
 land melted away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, " It was 
 only a dream." Why is it that if I had really possessed this 
 island while awake, and it had been swallowed up by an earth- 
 quake, why is it that I do not then exclaim, " The island was 
 only a dream " ? Wherefore am I more inconsolable at the loss 
 of a longer dream than at the loss of a shorter ? — for that is the 
 difference ; and why does man find a great loss less probable and 
 less a matter of necessity, when it occurs, than a small one ? 
 
 The reason is, that every sentiment and every emotion is 
 mad, and exacts and builds its own world. A man can vex 
 himself that it is already, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly ! 
 The mood not only exacts its own world, its own individual ^ 
 consciousness, but its own time. I beg everyone to let his pas- 
 sions, for once, speak out plainly within himself, and to probe 
 and question them to the bottom, as to what they really desire. 
 He will be terror-struck at the enormity of these hitherto only 
 half-muttered wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had only 
 one neck; love, that it had only one heart; grief, two tear- 
 glands ; and pride, two bent knees. 
 
 When I read in Widman's " Court Chronicle " of the terrible 
 bloody times of the Thirty Years' War, and as it were lived them 
 over again ; when I heard once more the cries of the tortured 
 for help, as they struggled in the Danube- whirlpools of their 
 age, and again beheld the clasping of hands, and the delirious 
 wandering to and fro on the several pillars of the crumbling 
 bridges, against which struck foaming billows and fiercely- 
 driven fields of ice — and thus reflected, " All the waves have sub- 
 sided, the ice has melted, the storm is mute, and the human 
 
 * " Sein eignes ich." 
 
ON CONSOLATION 283 
 
 beings also with their sighs," I was filled with a peculiar melan- 
 choly feeling of consolation for all times ; and I asked, " Was 
 and is, then, this fleeting misery beneath the churchyard-gate 
 of life, which three steps into the nearest cavern could put an end 
 to, worth all this cowardly lamentation?" Verily, if there be, 
 as I believe there is, true constancy under an eternal sorrow, 
 then is patience under a fleeting one scarcely worthy of the 
 name. 
 
 A great and unmerited national calamity should not humble 
 us, as the theologians demand, but rather make us proud. 
 When the long heavy sword of war falls upon humanity, and 
 when a thousand pale hearts are riven and bleeding; or when, 
 on a blue serene, evening, the hot smoky cloud of a city, cast on 
 the funereal pyre, hangs darkly on the sky — as though it were 
 the cloud of ashes of a thousand consumed hearts and joys — 
 then be thy spirit lifted up in pride, and let it contemn the tear 
 and that for which it falls, saying, " Thou art much too insig- 
 nificant, thou every-day life, for the inconsolableness of an im- 
 mortal — thou tattered, misshapen, wholesale existence ! Upon 
 this sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of thousands of 
 years, amid the storms of earth, made up of vapors, it is a dis- 
 grace that the sigh should only be dissipated together with the 
 bosom that gives it birth, and not sooner; and that the tear 
 should not perish except with the eye whence it flows." 
 
 But then, moderate thy sublime indignation, and put this ques- 
 tion to thyself : If the hidden Infinite One, who is encompassed 
 by gleaming abysses without bounds, and who himself creates 
 the bounds, were now to lay immensity open to thy view, and 
 to reveal himself to thee in his distribution of the suns, the 
 lofty spirits, the little human hearts, and our days and some 
 tears therein — wouldst thou rise up out of thy dust against him, 
 and say, " Almighty ! be other than Thou art ! " 
 
 But be one sorrow alone forgiven thee, or made good to thee 
 — the sorrow for thy dead ones ; for this sweet sorrow for the 
 lost is itself but another form of consolation. When the heart 
 is full of longing for them, it is but another mode of continuing 
 to love them ; and we shed tears as well when we think of their 
 departure, as when we picture to ourselves our joyful reunion 
 and the tears, methinks, differ not. 
 
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CHOICE EXAMPLES, OF EARLY PRINTING AND 
 . ENGRAVING. 
 
 Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books. 
 
 DE BOEC DES GULDEN THRO ENS. 
 
 The clearness and regularity of early Dutch printing are finely exemplified in 
 this work, which issued from the press of Otto van Passau at Haarlem in 1484. 
 Haarlem, the native place of the great printing pioneer, Koster, kept her special 
 pre-eminence as the cradle of the art up to the end of the fifteenth century, as is 
 testified by the very handsome typography of this book. This fragment of typog- 
 raphy exhibits the style of Dutch printing in its second epoch. The miniature is a 
 wood engraving, and represents a kneeling woman making a petition to a King. 
 The initial capital is red, and inserted by hand, while a touch of the same color 
 rubricates the capitals throughout the text. 
 
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 tael mtlQoM 
 
 mttmi boegbtoS 
 bmn leuenfeltoo 
 Denmffcbentot 
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SOPHOCLES 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL 
 
AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL 
 
 1767— 1845 
 
 August Wilhelm von Schlegel, who, with his younger brother Fried- 
 rich, contributed so largely to the literary and aesthetic culture of 
 Germany, was born at Hanover in 1767. He was educated at the 
 Lyceum of his native city and later at the University of Gottingen. 
 In 1798 he took up his residence at Jena, where he soon became pro- 
 fessor of literature and aesthetics at the university. His lectures on 
 aesthetics gained for him a favorable reputation throughout Europe. 
 Between 1797 and 1801 he translated sixteen of Shakespeare's plays, 
 and these were followed by others in 1810. His translation has not 
 only become classical in Germany, but is regarded as a most remark- 
 able achievement in German literature, reproducing throughout the 
 spirit and, wherever possible, the form of the original. In 1804 Schlegel 
 travelled extensively with Madame de Stael, residing successively in 
 various countries of Europe. In 1808 he delivered, at Vienna, his 
 celebrated " Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature." These lect- 
 ures, from which that on " Sophocles " has been selected as an example, 
 were delivered when Schlegel was at the height of his powers and in 
 the fullest maturity of judgment. In 1818 he received an appointment 
 as professor of aesthetics and literature at the new University of Bonn, 
 which he held until his death, in 1845. 
 
 During his lifetime Schlegel was regarded as one of the great figures 
 in the world of letters; his recognized position as a critic made him 
 almost a " literary dictator," which, indeed, he was sometimes called. 
 Several of the writers whose works he affected to despise have since 
 far surpassed him in literary reputation. His original poetry, al- 
 though perfect in form, is cold and lifeless, while even his dramatic 
 and literary criticisms are now read by students rather than by the gen- 
 eral public. His style is notably clear and precise — a model of succinct 
 and luminous exposition. His learning was considered great, even in 
 Germany, and his study of Sanskrit, which he began late in life, helped 
 to further prepare the way for the development of " a science of lan- 
 guage " by those that followed him. 
 
 His lectures on dramatic art and literature and his translation of 
 Shakespeare have secured for him a lasting and honorable place in the 
 literature of Germany. 
 
 286 
 
SOPHOCLES 
 
 THE birth-year of Sophocles was nearly at an equal dis- 
 tance between that of his predecessor and of Euripides, 
 so that he was about half a lifetime from each : in this 
 all the accounts are found to coincide. He was, however, dur- 
 ing the greater part of his life the contemporary of both. He 
 frequently contended for the tragic garland with ^schylus, and 
 he outlived Euripides, who himself attained a good age. If I 
 may speak in the spirit of the ancient religion, it seems that a 
 beneficent Providence wished to evince to the human race, in 
 the instance of this individual, the dignity and felicity of their 
 lot, as he was endowed with every divine gift, with all that can 
 adorn and elevate the mind and heart, and crowned with every 
 blessing imaginable in this life. Descended from rich and hon- 
 ored parents, and born a free citizen of the most cultivated state 
 of Greece, such were the advantages with which he entered the 
 world. Beauty of body and of soul, and the uninterrupted en- 
 joyment of both in the utmost perfection, till the extreme limits 
 of human existence ; an education the most extensive, yet select, 
 in gymnastics and music, the former so important in the de- 
 velopment of the bodily powers, and the latter in the communi- 
 cation of harmony ; the sweet blossom of youth, and the ripe fruit 
 of age ; the possession and continued enjoyment of poetry and 
 art, and the exercise of serene wisdom ; love and respect among 
 his fellow-citizens, fame in other countries, and the countenance 
 and favor of the gods ; these are the general features of the life 
 of this pious and virtuous poet. It would seem as if the gods, 
 in return for his dedicating himself at an early age to Bacchus, 
 as the giver of all joy, and the author of the cultivation of the 
 human race, by the representation of tragical dramas for his 
 festivals, had wished to confer immortality on him, so long did 
 they delay the hour of his death ; but as this was impossible they 
 extinguished his life as gently as possible, that he might imper- 
 
 287 
 
288 SCHLEGEL 
 
 ceptibly change one immortality for another, the long duration 
 of his earthly existence for an imperishable name. When a 
 youth of sixteen, he was selected, on account of his beauty, to 
 play on the lyre, and to dance in the Greek manner before the 
 chorus of youths who, after the battle of Salamis (in which 
 ^schylus fought, and which he has so nobly described), ex- 
 ecuted the paean round the trophy erected on that occasion ; so 
 that the fairest development of his youthful beauty coincided 
 with the moment when the Athenian people had attained the 
 epoch of their highest glory. He held the rank of general along 
 with Pericles and Thucydides, and, when arrived at a more ad- 
 vanced age, the priesthood of a native hero. In his twenty-fifth 
 year he began to represent tragedies ; twenty times he was vic- 
 torious; he often gained the second place, and he never was 
 ranked in the third. In this career he proceeded with increas- 
 ing success till he reached his ninetieth year ; and some of his 
 greatest works were even the fruit of a still later period. There 
 is a story of an accusation brought against him by one or more 
 of his elder sons, of having become childish from age, because he 
 was too fond of a grandchild by a second wife, and of being no 
 longer in a condition to manage his own affairs. In his defence 
 he merely read to his judges his " CEdipus in Colonos," which 
 he had then composed in honor of Colonos, his birth-place ; and 
 the astonished judges, without further consultation, conducted 
 him in triumph to his house. If it be true that the second 
 " CEdipus " was written at so late an age, as from its mature 
 serenity and total freedom from the impetuosity and violence of 
 youth we have good reason to conclude that it actually was, it 
 affords us at once a pleasing picture of the delight and reverence 
 which attended his concluding years. Although the various 
 accounts of his death appear fabulous, they all coincide in this, 
 that he departed without a struggle, while employed in his art, 
 or something connected with it, and that like an old swan of 
 Apollo, he breathed out his life in song. I consider also the 
 story of the Lacedaemonian general who had fortified the bury- 
 ing-ground of his fathers, and who, twice exhorted by Bacchus 
 in a vision to allow Sophocles to be there interred, despatched 
 a herald to the Athenians on the subject, with a number of other 
 circumstances, as the strongest possible proof of the established 
 reverence in which his name was held. In calling him virtuous 
 
SOPHOCLES 289 
 
 and pious, I spoke in the true sense of the words ; for although 
 his works breathe the real character of ancient grandeur, sweet- 
 ness and simplicity, of all the Grecian poets he is also the indi- 
 vidual whose feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit of 
 our religion. 
 
 One gift alone was refused to him by nature : a voice at- 
 tuned to song. He could only call forth and direct the harmo- 
 nious effusions of other voices ; he was therefore compelled to 
 depart from the established practice of the poet acting a part in 
 his own pieces, and only once (a very characteristic trait) made 
 his appearance in the character of the blind singer Thamyris 
 playing on the cithara. 
 
 As ^schylus, who raised tragic poetry from its rude begin- 
 nings to the dignity of the cothurnus, was his predecessor ; the 
 historical relations in which he €tood to Sophocles enabled the 
 latter to avail himself of the inventions of his original master, 
 so that yEschylus appears as the rough designer, and Sophocles 
 as the finished successor. The more artful construction of the 
 dramas of the latter is easily perceived: the limitation of the 
 chorus with respect to the dialogue, the polish of the rhythmus, 
 and the pure Attic diction, the introduction of a greater number 
 of characters, the increase of contrivance in the fable, the multi- 
 plication of incidents, a greater degree of development, the more 
 tranquil continuance of all the moments of the action, and the 
 greater degree of theatrical effect given to incidents of a de- 
 cisive nature, the more perfect rounding of the whole, even 
 considered in a mere external point of view. But he excelled 
 yEschylus in somewhat still more essential, and proved himself 
 deserving of the good fortune of having such a preceptor, and of 
 entering into competition with him in the same subjects: I 
 mean the harmonious perfection of his mind, by which he ful- 
 filled from incHnation every duty prescribed by the laws of 
 beauty, and of which the impulse was in him accompanied by 
 the most clear consciousness. It was impossible to exceed 
 ^schylus in boldness of conception ; I am inclined, however, to 
 "believe that Sophocles appears only less bold from his wisdom 
 and moderation, as he always goes to work with the greatest 
 energy, and perhaps with even a more determined severity, like 
 a man who knows the extent of his powers, and is determined, 
 when he does not exceed them, to stand up with the greater con- 
 19 
 
290 SCHLEGEL 
 
 fidence for his rights. As .^Eschylus delights in transporting 
 us to the convulsions of the primary world of the Titans, Sopho- 
 cles, on the other hand, never avails himself of the gods but 
 when their appearance is necessary ; he formed men, according 
 to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not more 
 moral, or exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than 
 they appeared in real life ; and while he took everything in the 
 most human signification, he was at the same time aware of their 
 superior destination. According to all appearance he was also 
 more moderate than ^schylus in his scenic ornaments ; he dis- 
 played perhaps more taste and selection in his objects, but did 
 not attempt the same colossal pomp.^ 
 
 To characterize the native sweetness and affection so eminent 
 in this poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic 
 bee. Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this 
 property may flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has 
 arisen within him ; for the affected sentimentality of the present 
 day, far from coinciding with him in this opinion, would both 
 in the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the language 
 and economy of the tragedies of Sophocles, find much of an 
 unsupportable austerity. 
 
ON AUTHORSHiP AND STYLE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 
 
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 1788— 1860 
 
 Arthur Schopenhauer was born at Dantzic in 1788. His father, a 
 member of the mercantile aristocracy of the city, was successful in 
 business and a man of unusual intelligence, but was afflicted with hered- 
 itary mental disorder, which culminated in suicide. His mother, who 
 was twenty years younger than her husband, was a woman of con- 
 siderable intellectual power, a novelist of some reputation among her 
 contemporaries, and a friend of Goethe. During his boyhood Schopen- 
 hauer travelled extensively with his parents. In 1805 he entered his 
 father's business, but this proved so extremely distasteful to him that 
 his mother gave him permission to attend the lectures at the Univer- 
 sity of Gottingen, where he devoted himself chiefly to the study of 
 Kant and Plato. He had, when still young, determined that his life 
 should be one given to philosophical speculation, saying to Wieland, 
 who once suggested doubts as to the wisdom of his choice: " Life is 
 a ticklish business; I have resolved to spend it in reflecting upon it." 
 
 After two years spent at Gottingen, Schopenhauer went to Berlin, 
 where Fichte and Schleiermacher were his teachers, and in 1813 sub- 
 mitted as a thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy a treatise 
 " On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason." In 
 1819 he published his magnum opus, " The World as Will and Idea." 
 
 After this he led an eccentric and solitary existence in various Ger- 
 man cities, interrupted only by a journey to Italy, finally settling in 
 Frankfort, in 1831, where he lived till his death, in i860. 
 
 In 1836 Schopenhauer published a book entitled " Will in Nature," 
 and in 1841 " The Two Main Problems of Ethics " — both works of 
 minor importance and of interest chiefly to students of his philosophy. 
 In 1844 a second edition of " The World as Will and Idea " was pub- 
 lished, a new volume being added, consisting of commentaries on the 
 first. Although Schopenhauer's work now holds a high place in Ger- 
 man philosophical literature and has profoundly influenced certain 
 channels of modern thought, it was many years before its merits were 
 recognized. This undeserved neglect intensified Schopenhauer's psy- 
 chological peculiarities and made him still more retired and morose. 
 The old philosopher, waiting for a sign that his great message to 
 mankind had at last found appreciative hearers, living meanwhile 
 alone with his dog and his daily paper as the only visible means of 
 his intercourse with the world without, is one of the most striking fig- 
 ures in the annals of literature. During his last years the importance 
 of his system began to be recognized, and he suddenly became famous, 
 his death being a sort of apotheosis. As a thinker Schopenhauer ranks 
 among the first of the post-Kantian philosophers. His literary style 
 is perhaps superior to that of any of the other German writers on 
 philosophy, being notably clear and brilliant. His illustrations are 
 especially apt and forcible. The essay on " Authorship and Style " 
 is a characteristic example of his literary method. 
 
 292 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 
 
 THERE are, first of all, two kinds of authors : those who 
 write for the subject's sake, and those who write for 
 writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or 
 experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while 
 the second kind need money and consequently write for money. 
 They think in order to write, and they may be recognized by 
 their spinning out their thoughts to the greatest possible length, 
 and also by the way they work out their thoughts, which are 
 half-true, perverse, forced, and vacillating; then also by their 
 love of evasion, so that they may seem what they are not ; and 
 this is why their writing is lacking in definiteness and clearness. 
 Consequently, it is soon recognized that they write for the 
 sake of filling up the paper, and this is the case sometimes with 
 the best authors ; for example, in parts of Lessing's " Drama- 
 turgic," and even in many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon 
 as this is perceived the book should be thrown away, for time 
 is precious. As a matter of fact, the author is cheating the 
 reader as soon as he writes for the sake of filling up paper; 
 because his pretext for writing is that he has something to im- 
 part. Writing for money and preservation of copyright are, 
 at bottom, the ruin of literature. It is only the man who writes 
 absolutely for the sake of the subject that writes anything worth 
 writing. What an inestimable advantage it would be, if, in 
 every branch of literature, there existed only a few but excellent 
 books ! This can never come to pass so long as money is to be 
 made by writing. It seems as if money lay under a curse, for 
 every author deteriorates directly he writes in any way for the 
 sake of money. The best works of great men all come from 
 the time when they had to write either for nothing or for very 
 little pay. This is confirmed by the Spanish proverb : " Honra 
 y provecho no caben en un saco" (Honor and money are not 
 to be found in the same purse). The deplorable condition of 
 
 293 
 
294 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 the literature of to-day, both in Germany and other countries, 
 is due to the fact that books are written for the sake of earning 
 money. Everyone who is in want of money sits down and 
 writes a book, and the pubHc is stupid enough to buy it. The 
 secondary effect of this is the ruin of language. 
 
 A great number of bad authors eke out their existence en- 
 tirely by the foolishness of the public, which only will read what 
 has just been printed. I refer to journalists, who have been 
 appropriately so called. In other words it would be " day 
 laborer." 
 
 Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors. 
 In the first place, there are those who write without thinking. 
 They write from memory, from reminiscences, or even direct 
 from other people's books. This class is the most numerous. 
 In the second, those who think whilst they are writing. They 
 think in order to write ; and they are numerous. In the third 
 place, there are those who have thought before they begin to 
 write. They write solely because they have thought ; and they 
 are rare. 
 
 Authors of the second class, who postpone their thinking until 
 they begin to write, are like a sportsman who goes out at ran- 
 dom — he is not likely to bring home very much. While the 
 writing of an author of the third, the rare class, is like a chase 
 where the game has been captured beforehand and cooped up 
 in some enclosure from which it is afterwards set free, so many 
 at a time, into another enclosure, where it is not possible for it 
 to escape, and the sportsman has now nothing to do but to aim 
 and fire — that is to say, put his thoughts on paper. This is 
 the kind of sport which yields something. 
 
 But although the number of those authors who really and 
 seriously think before they write is small, only extremely few 
 of them think about the subject itself ; the rest think only about 
 the books written on this subject, and what has been said by 
 others upon it, I mean. In order to think, they must have 
 the more direct and powerful incentive of other people's 
 thoughts. These become their next theme, and therefore they 
 always remain under their influence and are never, strictly 
 speaking, original. On the contrary, the former are roused 
 to thought through the subject itself, hence their thinking is 
 directed immediately to it. It is only among them that we find 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 
 
 ^95 
 
 the authors whose names become immortal. Let it be under- 
 stood that I am speaking here of writers of the higher branches 
 of Hterature, and not of writers on the method of distiUing 
 brandy. 
 
 It is only the writer who takes the material on which he writes 
 direct out of his own head that is worth reading. Book man- 
 ufacturers, compilers, and the ordinary history writers, and 
 others like them, take their material straight out of books; it 
 passes into their fingers without its having paid transit ddty or 
 undergone inspection when it was in their heads, to say nothing 
 of elaboration. (How learned many a man would be if he 
 knew everything that was in his own books ! ) Hence their talk 
 is often of such a vague nature that one racks one's brains in 
 vain to understand of what they are really thinking. They are 
 not thinking at all. The book -from which they copy is some- 
 times composed in the same way : so that writing of this kind 
 is like a plaster cast of a cast of a cast, and so on, until finally 
 all that is left is a scarcely recognizable outline of the face of 
 Antinous. Therefore, compilations should be read as seldom 
 as possible: it is difficult to avoid them entirely, since com- 
 pendia, which contain in a small space knowledge that has been 
 collected in the course of several centuries, are included in 
 compilations. 
 
 No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what 
 has been written latest is always the more correct ; that what is 
 written later on is an improvement on what was written pre- 
 viously; and that every change means progress. Men who 
 think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their 
 subject earnestly, ajre all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule 
 everywhere in the world : it is always at hand and busily en- 
 gaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature 
 deliberations of the thinkers. So that if a man wishes to im- 
 prove himself in any subject he must guard against imme- 
 diately seizing the newest books written upon it, in the assump- 
 tion that science is always advancing and that the older books 
 have been made use of in the compiling of the new. They 
 have, it is true, been used ; but how ? The writer often does 
 not thoroughly understand the old books ; he will, at the same 
 time, not use their exact words, so that the result is he spoils 
 and bungles what has been said in a much better and clearer 
 
296 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 way by the old writers ; since they wrote from their own lively 
 knowledge of the subject. He often leaves out the best things 
 they have written, their most striking elucidations of the matter, 
 their happiest remarks, because he does not recognize their 
 value or feel how pregnant they arc. It is only what is stupid 
 and shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book 
 is frequently shelved for new and bad ones ; which, written for 
 the sake of money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulo- 
 gized by the authors' friends. In science, a man who wishes 
 to distinguish himself brings something new to market; this 
 frequently consists in his denouncing some principle that has 
 been previously held as correct, so that he may establish a 
 wrong one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful 
 for a short time, when a return is made to the old and correct 
 doctrine. These innovators are serious about nothing else in 
 the world than their own priceless person, and it is this that 
 they wish to make its mark. They bring this quickly about by 
 beginning a paradox ; the sterility of their own heads suggests 
 their taking the path of negation; and truths that have long 
 been recognized are now denied — for instance, the vital power, 
 the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's 
 distinction between the working of the passions and the work- 
 ing of intelligence, or they return to crass atomism, etc., etc. 
 Hence the course of science is often retrogressive. 
 
 To this class of writers belong also those translators who, 
 besides translating their author, at the same time correct and 
 alter him, a thing that always seems to me impertinent. Write 
 books yourself which are worth translating and leave the books 
 of other people as they are. One should read, if it is possible, 
 the real authors, the founders and discoverers of things, or at 
 any rate the recognized great masters in every branch of learn- 
 ing, and buy second-hand books rather than read their contents 
 in new ones. 
 
 It is true that inventis aliquid addere facile est, therefore a 
 man, after having studied the principles of his subject, will have 
 to make himself acquainted with the more recent information 
 written upon it. In general, the following rule holds good here 
 as elsewhere, namely : what is new is seldom good ; because a 
 good thing is only new for a short time. 
 
 What the address is to a letter the title should be to a book— 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 
 
 297 
 
 that is, its immediate aim should be to bring the book to that 
 part of the ptibHc that will be interested in its contents. ' There- 
 fore, the title should be effective, and since it is essentially short, 
 it should be concise, laconic, pregnant, and if possible express 
 the contents in a word. Therefore a title that is prolix, or 
 means nothing at all, or that is indirect or ambiguous, is bad ; 
 so is one that is false and misleading : this last may prepare for 
 the book the same fate as that which awaits a wrongly addressed 
 letter. The worst titles are those that are stolen, such titles that 
 is to say that other books already bear ; for in the first place they 
 are a plagiarism, and in the second a most convincing proof of 
 an absolute want of originality. A man who has not enough 
 originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less 
 capable of giving it new contents. Akin to these are those titles 
 which have been imitated, in other words, half stolen ; for in- 
 stance, a long time after I had written " On Will in Nature," 
 Oersted wrote " On Mind in Nature." 
 
 A book can never be anything more than the impression of 
 its author's thoughts. The value of these thoughts lies either 
 in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in 
 which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has 
 thought about it. 
 
 The matter of books is very various, as also are the merits 
 conferred on books on account of their matter. All matter that 
 is the outcome of experience, in other words everything that is 
 founded on fact, whether it be historical or physical, taken by 
 itself and in its widest sense, is included in the term matter. 
 It is the motif that gives its peculiar character to the book, so 
 that a book can be important whoever the author may have 
 been ; while with form the peculiar character of a book rests with 
 the author of it. The subjects may be of such a nature as to be 
 accessible and well known to everybody ; but the form in which 
 they are expounded, what has been thought about them, gives 
 the book its value, and this depends upon the author. There- 
 fore if a book, from this point of view, is excellent and without 
 a rival, so also is its author. From this it follows that the merit 
 of a writer worth reading is all the greater the less he is de- 
 pendent on matter — and the better known and worn out this 
 matter, the greater will be his merit. The three great Grecian 
 tragedians, for instance, all worked at the same subject. 
 
298 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 So that when a book becomes famous one should carefully 
 distinguish whether it is so on account of its matter or its 
 form. 
 
 Quite ordinary and shallow men are able to produce books of 
 very great importance because of their matter, which was ac- 
 cessible to them alone. Take, for instance, books which give 
 descriptions of foreign countries, rare natural phenomena, ex- 
 periments that have been made, historical events of which they 
 were witnesses, or have spent both time and trouble in inquiring 
 into and specially studying the authorities for them. 
 
 On the other hand, it is on form that we are dependent where 
 the matter is accessible to everyone or very well known; and 
 it is what has been thought about the matter that will give any 
 value to the achievement ; it will only be an eminent man who 
 will be able to write anything that is worth reading. For the 
 others will only think what is possible for every other man to 
 think. They give the impress of their own mind; but every- 
 one already possesses the original of this impression. 
 
 However, the public is very much more interested in matter 
 than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand 
 in any high degree of culture. It is most laughable the way 
 the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works ; it care- 
 fully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of 
 the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works ; nay, 
 finally, it finds these more interesting than the works them- 
 selves ; it reads more about Goethe than what has been written 
 by Goethe, and industriously studies .the legend of Faust in 
 preference to Goethe's " Faust " itself. And when Biirger said 
 that " people would make learned expositions as to who Leonora 
 really was," we see this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case, for we 
 now have many learned expositions on Faust and the Faust 
 legend. They are and will remain of a purely material charac- 
 ter. This preference for matter to form is the same as a man 
 ignoring the shape and painting of a fine Etruscan vase in 
 order to make a chemical examination of the clay and colors 
 of which it is made. The attempt to be effective by means of 
 the matter used, thereby ministering to this evil propensity of 
 the public, is absolutely to be censured in branches of writing 
 where the merit must lie expressly in the form ; as, for instance, 
 in poetical writing. However, there are numerous bad dra- 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 299 
 
 matic authors striving to fill the theatre by means of the matter 
 they are treating. For instance, they place on the stage any 
 kind of celebrated man, however stripped of dramatic incidents 
 his life may have been, nay, sometimes without waiting until 
 the persons who appear with him are dead. 
 
 The distinction between matter and form, of which I am here 
 speaking, is true also in regard to conversation. It is chiefly 
 intelligence, judgment, wit, and vivacity that enable a man to 
 converse; they give form to the conversation. However, the 
 matter of the conversation must soon come into notice — in 
 other words, that about which one can talk to the man, namely, 
 his knowledge. If this is very small, it will only be his pos- 
 sessing the above-named formal qualities in a quite exception- 
 ally high degree that will make his conversation of any value, 
 for his matter will be restricted to things concerning humanity 
 and nature which are known generally. It is just the reverse 
 if a man is wanting in these formal qualities, but has, on the 
 other hand, knowledge of such a kind that it lends value to his 
 conversation ; this value, however, will then entirely rest on the 
 matter of his conversation, for, according to the Spanish 
 proverb, "Mas sabe el necio en su casa, que el sabio en la 
 agena/' 
 
 A thought only really lives until it has reached the boundary 
 line of words ; it then becomes petrified and dies immediately ; 
 yet it is as everlasting as the fossilized animals and plants of 
 former ages. Its existence, which is really momentary, may 
 be compared to a crystal the instant it becomes crystallized. 
 
 As soon as a thought has found words it no longer exists in 
 us or is serious in its deepest sense. 
 
 When it begins to exist for others it ceases to live in us; 
 just as a child frees itself from its mother when it comes into 
 existence. The poet has also said : 
 
 ** I/^r musst mich nicht durch Wider spruch verwirren / 
 Sobald man spricht^ beginnt man schon zu irrenP 
 
 The pen is to thought what the stick is to walking, but one 
 walks most easily without a stick, and thinks most perfectly 
 when no pen is at hand. It is only when a man begins to get 
 old that he likes to make use of a stick and his pen. 
 
 A hypothesis that has once gained a position in the mind. 
 
300 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 or been born in it, leads a life resembling that of an organism, 
 in so far as it receives from the outer world matter only that 
 is advantageous and hornogeneous to it; on the other hand, 
 matter that is harmful and heterogeneous to it is either rejected, 
 or if it must be received, cast off again entirely. 
 
 Abstract and indefinite terms should be employed in satire 
 only as they are in algebra, in place of concrete and specified 
 quantities. Moreover, it should be used as sparingly as the dis- 
 secting knife on the body of a living man. At the risk of for- 
 feiting his life it is an unsafe experiment. 
 
 For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excel- 
 lences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands 
 and values them all ; so that there will be in all ages men who 
 recognize and appreciate some of these excellences; by this 
 means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the 
 long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it 
 is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is 
 never exhausted. 
 
 An author like this, in other words, an author who has a claim 
 to live on in posterity, can only be a man who seeks in vain his 
 like among his contemporaries over the wide world, his marked 
 distinction making him a striking contrast to everyone else. 
 Even if he existed through several generations, like the Wander- 
 ing Jew, he would still occupy the same position ; in short, he 
 would be, as Ariosto has put it, " lo fece natura, e poi ruppe to 
 stampo." If this were not so, one would not be able to under- 
 stand why his thoughts should not perish like those of other 
 men. 
 
 In almost every age, whether it be in literature or art, we 
 find that if a thoroughly wrong idea, or a fashion, or a manner 
 is in vogue, it is admired. Those of ordinary intelligence 
 trouble themselves inordinately to acquire it and put it in prac- 
 tice. An intelligent man sees through it and despises it, con- 
 sequently he remains out of the fashion. Some years later 
 the public sees through it and takes the sham for what it is 
 worth ; it now laughs at it, and the much-admired color of all 
 these works of fashion falls off like the plaster from a badly- 
 built wall : and they are in the same dilapidated condition. We 
 should be glad and not sorry when a fundamentally wrong 
 notion of which we have been secretly conscious for a long time 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 
 
 301 
 
 finally gains a footing and is proclaimed both loudly and openly. 
 The falseness of it will soon be felt and eventually proclaimed 
 equally loudly and openly. It is as if an abscess had burst. 
 
 The man who publishes and edits an article written by an 
 anonymous critic should be held as immediately responsible for 
 it as if he had written it himself; just as one holds a manager 
 responsible for bad work done by his workmen. In this way 
 the fellow would be treated as he deserves to be — namely, with- 
 out any ceremony. 
 
 An anonymous writer is a literary fraud against whom one 
 should immediately cry out, " Wretch, if you do not wish to 
 admit what it is you say against other people, hold your slander- 
 ous tongue." 
 
 An anonymous criticism carries no more weight than an 
 anonymous letter, and should ^therefore be looked upon with 
 equal mistrust. Or do we wish to accept the assumed name 
 of a man, who in reality represents a societe anonyme, as a 
 guarantee for the veracity of his friends? 
 
 The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in 
 the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of 
 others. I find whole passages in my works wrongly quoted, 
 and it is only in my appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that 
 an exception is made. The misquotation is frequently due to 
 carelessness, the pen of such people has been used to write down 
 such trivial and banal phrases that it goes on writing them out 
 of force of habit. Sometimes the misquotation is due to im- 
 pertinence on the part of someone who wants to improve upon 
 my work; but a bad motive only too often prompts the mis- 
 quotation — it is then horrid baseness and roguery, and, like a 
 man who commits forgery, he loses the character for being an 
 honest man forever. 
 
 Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is a more reliable 
 key to character than the physiognomy of the body. To imi- 
 tate another person's style is like wearing a mask. However 
 fine the mask, it soon becomes insipid and intolerable because it 
 is without life; so that even the ugliest living face is better. 
 Therefore authors who write in Latin and imitate the style of 
 the old writers essentially wear a mask; one certainly hears 
 what they say, but one cannot watch their physiognomy—that 
 is to say their style. One observes, however, the style in the 
 
302 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 Latin writings of men who think for themselves, those who 
 have not deigned to imitate, as, for instance, Scotus Erigena, 
 Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, etc. 
 
 Affectation in style is like making grimaces. The language 
 in which a man writes is the physiognomy of his nation; it 
 establishes a great many differences, beginning from the lan- 
 guage of the Greeks down to that of the Caribbean islanders. 
 
 We should seek for the faults in the style of another author's 
 works, so that we may avoid committing the same in our own. 
 
 In order to get a provisional estimate of the value of an au- 
 thor's productions it is not exactly necessary to know the mat- 
 ter on which he has thought or what it is he has thought about 
 it — this would compel one to read the whole of his works — but 
 it will be sufficient to know how he has thought. His style is 
 an exact expression of how he has thought, of the essential state 
 and general quality of his thoughts. It shows the formal nat- 
 ure — which must always remain the same — of all the thoughts 
 of a man, whatever the subject on which he has thought or what 
 it is he has said about it. It is the dough out of which all his 
 ideas are kneaded, however various they may be. When Eulen- 
 spiegel was asked by a man how long he would have to walk 
 before reaching the next place, and gave the apparently absurd 
 answer, " Walk," his intention was to judge from the man's 
 walking how far he would go in a given time. And so it is 
 when I have read a few pages of an author, I know about how 
 far he can help me. 
 
 In the secret consciousness that this is the condition of things, 
 every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style. 
 This instantly necessitates his giving up all idea of being naive, 
 a privilege which belongs to superior minds sensible of their 
 superiority, and therefore sure of themselves. For instance, 
 it is absolutely impossible for men of ordinary intelligence to 
 make up their minds to write as they think ; they resent the idea 
 of their work looking too simple. It would always be of some 
 value, however. If they would only go honestly to work and in 
 a simple way express the few and ordinary ideas they have 
 really thought, they would be readable and even instructive in 
 their own sphere. But instead of that they try to appear to 
 have thought much more deeply than is the case. The result 
 is, they put what they have to say into forced and involved Ian- 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 303 
 
 guage, create new words and prolix periods which go round 
 the thought and cover it up. They hesitate between the two 
 attempts of communicating the thought and of concealing it. 
 They want to make it look grand so that it has the appearance 
 of being learned and profound, thereby giving one the idea that 
 there is much more in it than one perceives at the moment. Ac- 
 cordingly, they sometimes put down their thoughts in bits, in 
 short, equivocal, and paradoxical sentences which appear to 
 mean much more than they say (a splendid example of this kind 
 of writing is furnished by ScheUing's treatises on natural phi- 
 losophy) ; sometimes they express their thoughts in a crowd of 
 words and the most intolerable diffuseness, as if it were neces- 
 sary to make a sensation in order to make the profound meaning 
 of their phrases intelligible — while it is quite a simple idea if not 
 a trivial one (examples without number are supplied in Fichte's 
 popular works and in the philosophical pamphlets of a hundred 
 other miserable blockheads that are not worth mentioning), or 
 else they endeavor to use a certain style in writing which it has 
 pleased them to adopt — for example, a style that is so thoroughly 
 Kar e^oxnv profound and scientific, where one is tortured to 
 death by the narcotic effect of long-spun periods that are void 
 of all thought (examples of this are specially supplied by those 
 most impertinent of all mortals, the Hegelians in their Hegel 
 newspaper commonly known as " Jahrbiicher der wissenschaft- 
 lichen Literatur ") ; or again, they aim at an intellectual style 
 where it seems then as if they wish to go crazy, and so on. All 
 such efforts whereby they try to postpone the nascetur ridiculus 
 mus make it frequently difficult to understand what they really 
 mean. Moreover, they write down words, nay, whole periods, 
 which mean nothing in themselves, in the hope, however, that 
 someone else will understand something from them. Nothing 
 else is at the bottom of all such endeavors but the inexhaustible 
 attempt which is always venturing on new paths, to sell words 
 for thoughts, and by means of new expressions, or expressions 
 used in a new sense, turns of phrases and combinations of all 
 "kinds, to produce the appearance of intellect in order to com- 
 pensate for the want of it which is so painfully felt. It is 
 amusing to see how, with this aim in view, first this mannerism 
 and then that is tried ; these they intend to represent the mask 
 of intellect : this mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced 
 
304 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 for a while, until it is recognized as being nothing but a dead 
 mask, when it is laughed at and exchanged for another. 
 
 We find a writer of this kind sometimes writing in a dithyram- 
 bic style, as if he were intoxicated ; at other times, nay, on the 
 very next page, he will be high-sounding, severe, and deeply 
 learned, prolix to the last degree of dulness, and cutting every- 
 thing very small, like the late Christian Wolf, only in a modern 
 garment. The mask of unintelligibility holds out the longest ; 
 this is only in Germany, however, where it was introduced by 
 Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and attained its highest climax 
 finally in Hegel, always with the happiest results. And yet 
 nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand ; 
 on the other hand, nothing is more difficult than to express 
 learned ideas so that everyone must understand them. All the 
 arts I have cited above are superfluous if the writer really pos- 
 sesses any intellect, for it allows a man to show himself as he is 
 and verifies for all time what Horace said: " Scribendi recte 
 sapere est et principium et fons" 
 
 But this class of authors is like certain workers in metal, 
 who try a hundred different compositions to take the place of 
 gold, which is the only metal that can never have a substitute. 
 On the contrary, there is nothing an author should guard 
 against more than the apparent endeavor to show more intellect 
 than he has ; because this rouses the suspicion in the reader that 
 he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its 
 nature what it may, that he does not really possess. And this is 
 why it is praise to an author to call him naive, for it signifies 
 that he may show himself as he is. In general, naivete attracts, 
 while anything that is unnatural everywhere repels. We also 
 find that every true thinker endeavors to express his thoughts as 
 purely, clearly, definitely, and concisely as ever possible. This 
 is why simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not 
 only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty 
 from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only 
 pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine be- 
 cause of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought ; 
 and to write in a vague or bad style means a stupid or confused 
 mind. 
 
 Hence, the first rule — nav, this in itself is almost sufficient 
 for a good style — is this, that the author should have something 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 305 
 
 to say. Ah! this impHes a great deal. The neglect of this 
 rule is a fundamental characteristic of the philosophical, and 
 generally speaking of all the reflective authors in Germany, 
 especially since the time of Fichte. It is obvious that all these 
 writers wish to appear to have something to say, while they 
 have nothing to say. This mannerism was introduced by the 
 pseudo-philosophers of the universities and may be discerned 
 everywhere, even among the first literary notabilities of the 
 age. It is the mother of that forced and vague style which 
 seems to have two, nay, many meanings, as well as of that 
 prolix and ponderous style, le stile empese; and of that no less 
 useless bombastic style, and finally of that mode of concealing 
 the most awful poverty of thought under a babble of inexhausti- 
 ble chatter that resembles a clacking mill and is just as stupefy- 
 ing : one may read for hours together without getting hold of 
 a single clearly defined and definite idea. The " Halleschen," 
 afterwards called the " Deutschen Jahrbiicher," furnishes al- 
 most throughout excellent examples of this style of writing. 
 The Germans, by the way, from force of habit read page after 
 page of all kinds of such verbiage without getting any definite 
 idea of what the author really means: they think it all very 
 proper and do not discover that he is writing merely for the 
 sake of writing. On the other hand, a good author who is 
 rich in ideas soon gains the reader's credit of having really and 
 truly something to say; and this gives the intelligent reader 
 patience to follow him attentively. An author of this kind will 
 always express himself in the simplest and most direct man- 
 ner, for the very reason that he really has something to say; 
 because he wishes to awaken in the reader the same idea he 
 has in his own mind and no other. Accordingly he will be able 
 to say with Boileau — 
 
 " Ma pens ie au grand jour partout s' off re et s* expose ^ 
 Et tnon vers. Men ou mat, dit toujour s quelque chose ; ** 
 
 while of those previously described writers it may be said, in 
 the words of the same poet, " et qui parlant beaucoup ne disent 
 jamais rien." It is also a characteristic of such writers to avoid, 
 if it is possible, expressing themselves definitely, so that they 
 may be always able in case of need to get out of a difficulty; 
 this is why they always choose the more abstract expressions : 
 20 
 
3o6 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 while people of intellect choose the more concrete ; because the 
 latter bring the matter closer to view, which is the source of all 
 evidence. This preference for abstract expressions may be con- 
 firmed by numerous examples: a specially ridiculous example 
 is the following. Throughout German literature of the last 
 ten years we find " to condition " almost everywhere used in 
 place of " to cause " or " to effect." Since it is more abstract 
 and indefinite it says less than it implies, and consequently 
 leaves a little back door open to please those whose secret con- 
 sciousness of their own incapacity inspires them with a con- 
 tinual fear of all definite expressions. While with other people 
 it is merely the effect of that national tendency to immediately 
 imitate everything that is stupid in literature and wicked in life ; 
 this is shown in either case by the quick way in which it spreads. 
 The Englishman depends on his own judgment both in what he 
 writes and what he does, but this applies less to the German 
 than to any other nation. In consequence of the state of things 
 referred to, the words " to cause " and " to effect " have almost 
 entirely disappeared from the literature of the last ten years, 
 and people everywhere talk of " to condition." The fact is 
 worth mentioning because it is characteristically ridiculous. 
 Every-day authors are only half conscious when they write, a 
 fact which accounts for their want of intellect and the tedious- 
 ness of their writings ; they do not really themselves understand 
 the meaning of their own words, because they take ready-made 
 words and learn them. Hence they combine whole phrases 
 more than words — phrases banales. This accounts for that 
 obviously characteristic want of clearly defined thought ; in fact, 
 they lack the die that stamps their thoughts, they have no clear 
 thought of their own ; in place of it we find an indefinite, ob- 
 scure interweaving of words, current phrases, worn-out terms 
 of speech, and fashionable expressions. The result is that 
 their foggy kind or writing is like print that has been done with 
 old type. On the other hand, intelligent people really speak to 
 us in their writings, and this is why they are able to both move 
 and entertain us. It is only intelligent writers who place in- 
 dividual words together with a full consciousness of their use 
 and select them with deliberation. Hence their style of writing 
 bears the same relation to that of those authors described above, 
 as a picture that is really painted does to one that has been 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 307 
 
 executed with stencil. In the first instance every word, just as 
 every stroke of the brush, has some special significance, while in 
 the other everything is done mechanically. The same distinction 
 may be observed in music. For it is the omnipresence of in- 
 tellect that always and everywhere characterizes the works of 
 the genius ; and analogous to this is Lichtenberg's observation, 
 namely, that Garrick's soul was omnipresent in all the muscles 
 of his body. With regard to the tediousness of the writings 
 referred to above, it is to be observed in general that there are 
 two kinds of tediousness — an objective and a subjective. The 
 objective form of tediousness springs from the deficiency of 
 which we have been speaking — that is to say, where the author 
 has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate. 
 For if a writer possesses any clear thought or knowledge it will 
 be his aim id communicate it, and he will work with this end in 
 view ; consequently the ideas he furnishes are everywhere clearly 
 defined, so that he is neither diffuse, unmeaning, nor confused, 
 and consequently not tedious. Even if his fundamental idea 
 is wrong, yet in such a case it will be clearly thought out and 
 well pondered; in other words, it is at least formally correct, 
 and the writing is always of some value. While, for the same 
 reason, a work that is objectively tedious is at all times without 
 value. Again, subjective tediousness is merely relative: tKis 
 is because the reader is not interested in the subject of the work, 
 and that what he takes an interest in is of a very limited nature. 
 The most excellent work may therefore be tedious subjectively 
 to this or that person, just as, vice versa, the worst work may 
 be subjectively diverting to this or that person : because he is 
 interested in either the subject or the writer of the book. 
 
 It would be of general service to German authors if they 
 discerned that while a man should, if possible, think like a 
 great mind, he should speak the same language as every other 
 person. Men should use common words to say uncommon 
 things, but they do the reverse. We find them trying to envelop 
 trivial ideas in grand words and to dress their very ordinary 
 thoughts in the most extraordinary expressions and the most 
 outlandish, artificial, and rarest phrases. Their sentences per- 
 petually stalk about on stilts. With regard to their delight in 
 bombast, and to their writing generally in a grand, puffed-up, 
 unreal, hyperbolical, and acrobatic style, their prototype is Pis- 
 
3o8 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 tol, who was once impatiently requested by Falstaff, his friend, 
 to " say what you have to say, hke a man of this world !" ^ 
 
 There is no expression in the German language exactly cor- 
 responding to stile empese; but the thing itself is all the more 
 prevalent. When combined with unnaturalness it is in works 
 what affected gravity, grandness, and unnaturalness are in 
 social intercourse; and it is just as intolerable. Poverty of in- 
 tellect is fond of wearing this dress ; just as stupid people in 
 every-day life are fond of assuming gravity and formality. 
 
 A man who writes in this prestos style is like a person who 
 dresses himself up to avoid being mistaken for or confounded 
 with the mob ; a danger which a gentleman, even in his worst 
 clothes, does not run. Hence just as a plebeian is recognized 
 by a certain display in his dress and his tire a quatre epingles, 
 so is an ordinary writer recognized by his style. 
 
 If a man has something to say that is worth saying, he need 
 not envelop it in affected expressions, involved phrases, and 
 enigmatical innuendoes; but he may rest assured that by ex- 
 pressing himself in a simple, clear, and naive manner he will 
 not fail to produce the right effect. A man who makes use of 
 such artifices as have been alluded to betrays his poverty of 
 ideas, mind, and knowledge." 
 
 Nevertheless, it is a mistake to attempt to write exactly as 
 one speaks. Every style of writing should bear a certain trace 
 of relationship with the monumental style, which is, indeed, 
 the ancestor of all styles; so that to write as one speaks is just 
 as faulty as to do the reverse, that is to say, to try and speak 
 as one writes. This makes the author pedantic, and at the 
 same time difficult to understand. 
 
 Obscurity and vagueness of expression are at all times and 
 everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
 dred they arise from vagueness of thought, which, in its turn, 
 is almost always fundamentally discordant, inconsistent, and 
 therefore wrong. When a right thought springs up in the 
 mind it strives after clearness of expression, and it soon attains 
 it, for clear thought easily finds its appropriate expression. A 
 man who is capable of thinking can express himself at all times 
 in clear, comprehensible, and unambiguous words. Those 
 
 * [Schopenhauer here gives an example of this bombastic style which w 
 be of little interest to English readers.] 
 
 ould 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 309 
 
 writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambigu- 
 ous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they 
 wish to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, which 
 is still struggling to put itself into thought; they also often 
 wish to conceal from themselves and other people that in reality 
 they have nothing to say. Like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, 
 they wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think 
 what they do not think, and to say what they do not say. 
 
 Will a man, then, who has something real to impart endeavor 
 to say it in a clear or an indistinct way ? Quintilian has already 
 said, '' plerumque accidit ut faciliora sint ad intelligendum et 
 lucidiora mtilto, qucc a doctissimo quoque dicuntur. . . - . 
 Erit ergo etiam obscurior, quo quisque deterior." 
 
 A man's way of expressing himself should not be enigmatical, 
 but he should know whether he has something to say or whether 
 he has not. It is an uncertainty of expression which makes 
 German writers so dull. The only exceptional cases are those 
 where a man wishes to express something that is in some respect 
 of an illicit nature. As anything that is far-fetched generally 
 produces the reverse of what the writer has aimed at, so do 
 words serve to make thought comprehensible ; but only up to a 
 certain point. If words are piled up beyond this point they 
 make the thought that is being communicated more and more 
 obscure. To hit that point is the problem of style and a matter 
 of discernment; for every superfluous word prevents its pur- 
 pose being carried out. Voltaire means this when he says: 
 " L'adjectif est Vennemi du suhstantif," (But, truly, many au- 
 thors try to hide their poverty of thought under a superfluity of 
 words.) 
 
 Accordingly, all prolixity and all binding together of un- 
 meaning observations that are not worth reading should be 
 avoided. A writer must be sparing with the reader's time, 
 concentration, and patience ; in this way he makes him believe 
 that what he has before him is worth his careful reading, and 
 will repay the trouble he has spent upon it. It is always better 
 to leave out something that is good than to write down some- 
 thing that is not worth saying. Hesiod's irXeov rjfiL(Tv irdvTo^ ' 
 finds its right application. In fact, not to say everything ! Le 
 secret pour etre ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire. Therefore, if 
 
 * •* Opera et dies," v. 40. 
 
3IO SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 possible, the quintessence only ! the chief matter only ! nothing 
 that the reader would think for himself. The use of many 
 words in order to express little thought is everywhere the in- 
 fallible sign of mediocrity ; while to clothe much thought in a 
 few .words' is the infallible sign of distinguished minds. 
 
 Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler 
 its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is 
 partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer's mind 
 without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly 
 because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived 
 by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the 
 thing itself. For instance, what declamation on the emptiness 
 of human existence could be more impressive than Job's: 
 " Homo, natus de muliere, brevi vivit tempore, repletus miiltis 
 miseriis, qui, tanquam Uos, egreditur et conteritur, et fugit 
 velut umbra.'* It is for this very reason that the naive poetry 
 of Goethe is so incomparably greater than the rhetorical of 
 Schiller. This is also why many folk-songs have so great an 
 effect upon us. An author should guard against using all un- 
 necessary rhetorical adornment, all useless amplification, and 
 in general, just as in architecture he should guard against an 
 excess of decoration, all superfluity of expression — in other 
 words, he must aim at chastity of style. Everything that is re- 
 dundant has a harmful effect. The law of simplicity and 
 naivete applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is 
 most sublime. 
 
 True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying 
 what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations 
 of things which everyone can think out for himself ; that is, it 
 consists in his correctly distinguishing between what is neces- 
 sary and what is superfluous. On the other hand, one should 
 never sacrifice clearness, to say nothing of grammar, for the 
 sake of being brief. To impoverish the expression of a thought, 
 or to obscure or spoil the meaning of a period for the sake of 
 using fewer words shows a lamentable want of judgment. And 
 this is precisely what that false brevity nowadays in vogue is 
 trying to do, for writers not only leave out words that are to the 
 purpose, but even grammatical and logical essentials. 
 
 Subjectivity, which is an error of style in German literature, 
 is, through the deteriorated condition of literature and neglect 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE 311 
 
 of old languages, becoming more common. By subjectivity 
 I mean when a writer thinks it sufficient for himself to know 
 what he means and wants to say, and it is left to the reader 
 to discover what is meant. Without troubling himself about 
 his reader, he writes as if he were holding a monologue ; where- 
 as it should be a dialogue, and, moreover, a dialogue in which 
 he must express himself all the more clearly as the questions of 
 the reader cannot be heard. And it is for this very reason that 
 style should not be subjective, but objective, and for it to be ob- 
 jective the words must be written in such a way as to directly 
 compel the reader to think precisely the same as the author 
 thought. This will only be the case when the author has borne in 
 mind that thoughts, inasmuch as they follow the law of gravity, 
 pass more easily from head to paper than from paper to head. 
 Therefore the journey from paj)er to head must be helped by 
 every means at his command. When he does this his words have 
 a purely objective effect, like that of a completed oil painting; 
 while the subjective style is not much more certain in its effect 
 than spots on the wall, and it is only the man whose fantasy is 
 accidentally aroused by them that sees figures; other people 
 only see blurs. The difference referred to applies to every 
 style of writing as a whole, and it is also often met with in 
 particular instances; for example, I read in a book that has 
 just been published : "I have not written to increase the number 
 of existing books." This means exactly the opposite of what 
 the writer had in view, and is nonsense into the bargain. 
 
 A man who writes carelessly at once proves that he himself 
 puts no great value on his own thoughts. For it is only by 
 being convinced of the truth and importance of our thoughts 
 that there arises in us the inspiration necessary for the inex- 
 haustible patience to discover the clearest, finest, and most pow- 
 erful expression for them ; just as one puts holy relics or price- 
 less works of art in silvern or golden receptacles. It was for 
 this reason that the old writers — whose thoughts, expressed in 
 their own words, have lasted for thousands of years and hence 
 bear the honored title of classics — wrote with universal care. 
 Plato, indeed, is said to have written the introduction to his 
 " Republic " seven times with different modifications. On the 
 other hand, the Germans are conspicuous above all other nations 
 for neglect of style in writing, as they are for neglect of dress, 
 
312 
 
 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 both kinHs of slovenliness which have their source in the Ger- 
 man national character. Just as neglect of dress betrays con- 
 tempt for the society in which a man moves, so does a hasty, 
 careless, and bad style show shocking disrespect for the reader, 
 who then rightly punishes it by not reading the book. 
 
I 
 
 THE ACADEMY OF SYLLOGRAPHS 
 
 BY 
 
 GIACOMO LEOPARDI 
 
GIACOMO LEOPARDI 
 1798—1837 
 
 Giacomo Leopardi was born in 1798 in the ancestral mansion of 
 his family at Recanati, a small town not far from Ancona, in Italy. 
 Both his parents were of ancient and patrician lineage, but of irn- 
 paired worldly fortunes. They appear never to have understood their 
 gifted son, and much of his lifelong misery was due to their narrow- 
 ness and severity. During his boyhood Leopardi was taught by the 
 two priests of his village, but at fourteen he had mastered all they 
 could teach him and had begun to absorb a vast store of erudition by 
 omnivorous reading in his father's library. The amazing industry 
 with which he read was only equalled by his tenacity of memory. While 
 in his teens he had mastered Latin, Greek, English, French, and 
 Spanish, and had acquired a considerable knowledge of Hebrew. All 
 this was the more remarkable, as he was largely self-taught. In 
 1814 he wrote a revision of Porphyry's " Life of Plotinus," with a 
 commentary which was found serviceable by the ablest scholars of the 
 day. In 1815 he wrote a treatise on "The Popular Errors of the 
 Ancients," in which he displayed a profound erudition. During the 
 next few years he wrote many volumes of philological research and 
 criticism, but his constitution, never strong, broke down under the 
 excessive strain this work involved. From the age of seventeen he was 
 a hopeless invalid; at times even his eyesight failed him, while his 
 mental tortures were terribly acute. His parents, meanwhile, were 
 deaf to his appeals to be permitted to leave Recanati, until, goaded 
 to madness, he actually ran away. He was soon brought back, and fell 
 for a time into a stupor of despair. At length, in 1822, his father per- 
 mitted him to visit Rome, where he was cordially received by men 
 of letters. The next ten years he devoted to poetry and philosophy, 
 residing for varying periods at Bologna, Pisa, Florence, Milan, and 
 Recanati. In 1830 he was elected an academician of the Accademia 
 della Crusca. Soon afterwards he settled in Naples, where some of his 
 best works were written. For a time his health improved ; but he suf- 
 fered a relapse in 1836, and died the following year. His grave is not 
 far from the reputed resting-place of Vergil, in a suburb of Naples. 
 
 As a poet, Leopardi is universally recoginzed as one of the greatest 
 of modern Italy. Some of his odes rank among the most finished in 
 all literature, and all his poetical writings are distinguished for a 
 felicity of expression and a perfection in style that raise them to the 
 rank of masterpieces. His most celebrated prose works are his " Dia- 
 logues" and " Thoughts." " The Academy of Syllographs " is a repre- 
 sentative example of his work as an essayist and gives an excellent idea 
 of his prose stvle. which is noted for its simplicity and chasteness, and 
 is on a par with the excellence of his poetry. 
 
 314 
 
THE ACADEMY OF SYLLOGRAPHS 
 
 THE Academy of Syllographs,ever mindful of the primary 
 aim of its constitution, and having always at heart the 
 promotion of the public good, has come to the conclu- 
 sion that it could not more effectually conduce to this end than 
 by aiding in the development of the distinguishing tendencies 
 of what an illustrious poet has characterized as the happy age 
 in which we live. 
 
 For this reason it has diligently diagnosed the genius of the 
 present time, and after prolonged and searching investigation 
 it has arrived at the conviction that the present age ought to 
 be characterized as preeminently the age of machines. And 
 this not only because the men of to-day live and move more 
 mechanically than did those of any former period, but also by 
 reason of the infinite number of mechanical contrivances con- 
 tinually being invented, and daily being applied to so many 
 various purposes, that nowadays it may almost be said that 
 human affairs and all the operations of life are governed and 
 regulated, riot by men at all, but by machines. 
 
 This feature of the age is hailed by the Academy with pe- 
 culiar satisfaction, not only in view of the manifest general ^y]^Kjky)Aj^ 
 convenience which flows from it, but also for two special rea- . /r>^-^ . 
 sons of a most important character, though not generally {^ /Owi^tf^ 
 recognized by society. In the first place, the Academy feels 
 confident that in course of time the agency of mechanism may 
 be so extended as to embrace not only the material but the 
 moral world ; and that, just as mechanical inventions now pro- 
 tect us from lightning and other atmospherical disturbances, 
 so, in time, some sort of apparatus may be invented calculated 
 to shield us from envy, calumny, perfidy, and fraud ; some 
 species of moral lightning-conductors, so to speak, which may 
 protect us from the effects of egotism, from the dominion of 
 mediocrity, from the arrogance of bloated imbecility, from the 
 
 315 
 
 9 
 
3i6 LEOPARDI 
 
 ribaldry of the base, from the cynical pessimism of pedants, 
 from the indifferentism engendered by over-culture, and from 
 numerous other such-like inconveniences, which of late have 
 become as difficult to ward off as formerly were the lightnings 
 and storms of the physical world. 
 
 The next consideration just referred to is this ; and it is one 
 of paramount importance. It is well known that philosophers 
 have come to despair of remedying the manifold defects of hu- 
 manity, and are convinced that it would be more difficult to 
 amend these than it would be to recast things on an entirely 
 fresh basis, and to substitute an entirely fresh agency as the 
 motive power of life. The Academy of Syllographs, concur- 
 ring in this opinion, hold that it would be in the highest de- 
 gree expedient that men should retire as far as possible from 
 the conduct of the business of the world, and should gradually 
 give place to mechanical agency for the direction of human 
 affairs. Accordingly, resolved to contribute as far as lies in 
 its power to this consummation, it has determined to offer 
 three prizes to be awarded to the persons who shall invent the 
 best examples of the three machines now to be described. 
 
 The scope and object of the first of these automata shall be 
 to represent the person and discharge the functions of a 
 friend who shall not calumniate or jeer at his absent associate ; 
 who shall not fail to take his part when he hears him censured 
 or ridiculed ; who shall not prefer a reputation for wit, and the 
 applause of men, to his duty to friendship; who Shall never, 
 from love of gossip or mere ostentation of superior knowledge, 
 divulge a secret committed to his keeping ; who shall not abuse 
 the intimacy or confidence of his fellow in order to supplant 
 or surpass him ; who shall harbor no envy against his friend ; 
 who shall guard his interests and help to repair his losses, and 
 shall be prompt to answer his call, and minister to his needs 
 more substantially than by empty professions. 
 
 In the construction of this piece of mechanism it will be well 
 to study, among other things, the treatise on friendship by 
 Cicero, as well as that of Madame de Lambert. The Academy 
 is of opinion that the manufacture of such a machine ought not 
 to prove impracticable or even particularly difficult, for, be- 
 sides the automata of Regiomontanus and Vaucanson, there 
 was at one time exhibited in London a mechanical figure which 
 
THE ACADEMY OF SYLLOGRAPHS 317 
 
 drew portraits, and wrote to dictation ; while there have been 
 more than one example of such machines capable of playing 
 at chess. Now, in the opinion of many philosophers human 
 life is but a game ; nay, some hold that it is more shallow and 
 more frivolous than many other games, and that the principles 
 of chess, for example^ are more in accordance with reason, and 
 that its various moves are more governed by wisdom, than are 
 the actions of mankind ; while we have it on the authority of 
 Pindar that human action is no more substantial than the 
 shadow of a dream ; and this being so, the intelligence of an 
 automaton ought to prove quite equal to the discharge of the 
 functions which have just been described. 
 
 As to power of speech, it seems unreasonable to doubt that 
 men should have the power of communicating it to machines 
 constructed by themselves, seeing that this may be said to have 
 been established by sundry precedents, such, for example, as 
 in the case of the statue of Memnon, and of the human head 
 manufactured by Albertus Magnus, which actually became so 
 loquacious that Saint Thomas Aquinas, losing all patience with 
 it, smashed it to pieces. Then, too, there was the instance of 
 the parrot of Nevers, though it was a living creature ; but if it 
 could be taught to converse reasonably, how much more may 
 it be supposed that a machine devised by the mind of man, 
 and constructed by his hands, should do as much; while it 
 would have the advantage that it might be made less garrulous 
 than the parrot of Nevers or the head of Albertus, and there- 
 fore it need not irritate its acquaintances and provoke them to 
 smash it. 
 
 The inventor of the best example of such a machine shall be 
 decorated with a gold medallion of four hundred zecchins in 
 weight, bearing on its face the images of Pylades and Orestes, 
 and on the reverse the name of the successful competitor, sur- 
 rounded by the legend. First Realizer of the Fables of Antiq- 
 uity. 
 
 The second machine called for by the Academy is to be an 
 artificial steam man, so constructed and regulated as to per- 
 form virtuous and magnanimous actions. The Academy is of 
 opinion that in the absence of all other adequate motive power 
 to that end, the properties of steam might prove effective to 
 inspire an automaton, and direct it to the attainment of virtue 
 
3i8 LEOPARDI 
 
 and true glory. The inventor who shall undertake the con- 
 struction of such a machine should study the poets and the 
 writers of romance, who will best guide him as to the quali- 
 ties and functions most essential to such a piece of mechanism. 
 The prize shall be a gold medal weighing four hundred and 
 fifty zecchins, bearing on its obverse a figure symbolical of the 
 golden age, and on its reverse the name of the inventor, with 
 the following inscription borrowed from the fourth eclogue of 
 Vergil : 
 
 ''Quo Ferrea Primum 
 Desinet Ac Toto Surget Gens Aurea Mundo." 
 
 The third automaton should be so constituted as to perform 
 the duties of woman such as she was conceived by the Count 
 Baldassar Castiglione, and described by him in his treatise en- 
 titled " The Courtier," as well as by other writers in other 
 works on the subject, which will be readily found, and which, 
 as well as that of the count, will have to be carefully consulted 
 and followed. The construction of a machine of this nature, 
 too, ought not to appear impossible to the inventors of our 
 time, when they reflect on the fact that in the most ancient 
 times, and times destitute of science, Pygmalion was able to 
 fabricate for himself, with his own hands, a wife of such rare 
 gifts that she has never since been equalled down to the present 
 day. The successful inventor of this machine shall be re- 
 warded with a gold medal weighing five hundred zecchins, 
 bearing on one face the figure of the Arabian Phoenix of Metas- 
 tasio, couched on a tree of a European species, while its other 
 side will bear the name of the inventor, with the title, Inventor 
 of Faithful Women and of Conjugal Happiness. 
 
 Finally, the Academy has resolved that the funds necessary 
 to defray the expenses incidental to this competition shall be 
 supplemented by all that was found in the purse of Diogenes, 
 its first secretary, together with one of the three golden asses 
 which were the property of three of its former members — 
 namely, Apuleius, Firenzuola, and Machiavelli, but which 
 came into the possession of the Academy by the last wills and 
 testaments of the aforementioned, as duly recorded in its min- 
 utes. 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 ' BY 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC 
 1799— 1850 
 
 Born at Tours in 1799, Honore de Balzac was at first destined for 
 his father's profession, the law. He attended the College of Vendome, 
 but while there he devoted far more time to reading fiction and mystic 
 books than to the law. He then attended the law school at the Sor- 
 bonne, and studied also in one or two law offices, where he learned 
 much about the chicanery of disreputable practice. At the age of 
 twenty he gave up the study of law altogether and devoted himself to 
 literature, for which he incurred for a time the disfavor of his father. 
 Ten years of poverty followed, during which he found " three sous 
 for bread, two for milk, and three for fuel " sufficed for his daily sub- 
 sistence. In spite of his untiring activity, however, Balzac produced 
 nothing during these years that received or deserved recognition. 
 
 It was not until 1829 that his genius found its true expression. In 
 that year he wrote his first successful book, " Le dernier Chouan," 
 and in the following year he began the amazing series of volumes that 
 followed one after another in rapid succession down to the year of his 
 death. This series he has been pleased to call the '* Comedie Humaine." 
 His manner of working was extraordinary. It is said of him that 
 he usually retired at six in the evening, rising to begin work at mid- 
 night, and, stimulated by copious draughts of black coffee, worked 
 without intermission till noon. Sometimes he would shut himself up 
 for months with his manuscripts, seeing no one except his printer. 
 Then again for months he would disappear, studying at first hand the 
 life he sought to portray in his pages, in all its varied forms and sur- 
 roundings. He had a mania for speculative enterprises, prompted by 
 the desire, no doubt, to be relieved of the anxiety of providing im- 
 mediate necessities. For the greater part of his life, however, he was 
 burdened with a mountain of debt. At last, on March 14, 1850, he mar- 
 ried a wealthy Russian lady, and now a rest seemed possible. His debts 
 were paid, and he now looked forward to some years of ease and con- 
 tentment. His iron constitution, sapped by overwork, however, suc- 
 cumbed suddenly, and he died six months after his marriage on August 
 18, 1850. 
 
 It is impossible to give in brief space an adequate estimate of the 
 literary genius of Balzac. In his writings he scales every height and 
 sounds every depth of human character. His own ambition was " by 
 infinite patience and courage, to compose for the France of the nine- 
 teenth century that history of morals which the old civilizations of 
 Rome, Athens, Memphis, and India have left untold." He aimed to 
 give a complete picture of human life of his day in all its phases. " The 
 administration of government, the church, the army, the judiciary, the 
 aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the peasantry ; artists, 
 journalists, men of letters, actors, shopkeepers of every station, crim- 
 inals," all play their part in his vast " Human Comedy." This work 
 he left in a sense incomplete, for, when death ended his career, he had 
 plans in his fertile brain for more than thirty additional novels. But as 
 it stands it is a lasting monument to his genius. Of his novels the 
 most powerful are " Le Pere Goriot," " Eugenie Grandet," " La 
 Cousine Bette," " La peau de chagrin," " La recherche de I'absolu," 
 " Seraphita," and " Le medecin de campagne," His short stories, 
 some of which are of the highest literary merit, deserve mention here. 
 Balzac's style is at times clumsy and inelastic. He has succeeded never- 
 theless in giving life to the two thousand characters that move in his 
 works. And his great genius, in leaving us what is without question 
 the greatest and most comprehensive portrayal of human life and pas- 
 sion ever attempted, cannot be disputed. 
 
 320 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 WHEN men of learning are struck by a historical blun- 
 der, and try to correct it, " Paradox ! " is generally 
 the cry; but to those who thoroughly examine the 
 history of modern times it is evident that historians are priv- 
 ileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs, exactly as 
 most of the newspapers of the day express nothing but the 
 opinions of their readers.^ 
 
 Historical independence of thought has been far less con- 
 spicuous among lay writers than^ among the priesthood. The 
 purest light thrown on history has come from the Benedictines, 
 one of the glories of France — so long, that is to say, as the 
 interests of the monastic orders are not in question. Since the 
 middle of the eighteenth century some great and learned con- 
 troversialists have arisen who, struck by the need for rectifying 
 certain popular errors to which historians have lent credit, have 
 published some remarkable works. Thus Monsieur Launoy, 
 nicknamed the Evicter of Saints, made ruthless war on certain 
 saints who have sneaked into the Church Calendar. Thus the 
 rivals of the Benedictines, the too little known members of the 
 Academic dcs Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, began their me- 
 moires, their studious notes, full of patience, erudition, and 
 logic, on certain obscure passages of history. Thus Voltaire, 
 with an unfortunate bias, and sadly perverted passions, often 
 brought the light of his intellect to bear on historical preju- 
 dices. Diderot, with this end in view, began a book — much too 
 long — on a period of the history of Imperial Rome. But for 
 the French Revolution, criticism, as applied to history, might 
 perhaps have laid up the materials for a good and true history 
 of France, for which evidence had long been amassed by the 
 great French Benedictines. Louis XVI, a man of clear mind, 
 himself translated the English work which so much agitated 
 
 * This essay was written as an in- of historical novelettes and published un- 
 troduction to Balzac's three historical der the 8:eneral title of "Catherine de Med- 
 studies which were written in the form icis Expliqufee." 
 
 21 321 
 
322 BALZAC 
 
 the last century, in which Walpole tried to explain the career 
 of Richard III. 
 
 How is it that persons so famous as kings and queens, so im- 
 portant as generals of great armies, become objects of aversion 
 or derision? Half the world hesitates between the song on 
 Marlborough and the history of England, as they do between 
 popular tradition and history as concerning Charles IX. 
 
 At all periods when great battles are fought between the 
 masses and the authorities the populace creates an ogresque 
 figure — to coin a word for the sake of its exactitude. Thus in 
 our own time, but for the " Memorials of Saint Helena," and 
 the controversies of Royalists and Bonapartists, there was 
 scarcely a chance but that Napoleon would have been misun- 
 derstood. Another Abbe de Pradt or two, a few more news- 
 paper articles, and Napoleon from an emperor would have be- 
 come an ogre. 
 
 How is error propagated and accredited? The mystery is 
 accomplished under our eyes without our discerning the pro- 
 cess. No one suspects how greatly printing has helped to give 
 body both to the envy which attends persons in high places, and 
 to the popular irony which sums up the converse view of every 
 great historical fact. For instance, every bad horse in France 
 that needs flogging is called after the Prince de Polignac ; and 
 so who knows what opinion the future may hold as to the Prince 
 de Polignac's coup d'etat? In consequence of a caprice of 
 Shakespeare's — a stroke of revenge perhaps, like that of Beau- 
 marchais on Bergasse (Begearss) — FalstaiT, in England, is a 
 type of the grotesque ; his name raises a laugh, he is the King 
 of Buffoons. Now, instead of being enormously fat, ridicu- 
 lously amorous, vain, old, drunken, and a corrupter of youth, 
 Falstaff was one of the most important figures of his time, a 
 Knight of the Garter, holding high command. At the date of 
 Henry V's accession Falstaff was at most four-and-thirty. 
 This general, who distinguished himself at the battle of Agin- 
 court, where he took the Due d'Alengon prisoner, in 1420 took 
 the town of Montereau, which was stoutly defended. Finally, 
 under Henry VI, he beat ten thousand Frenchmen with fifteen 
 hundred men who were dropping with fatigue and hunger. So 
 much for valor ! 
 
 If we turn to literature, Rabelais, among the French, a sober 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 323 
 
 man who drank nothing but water, is thought of as a lover of 
 good cheer and a persistent sot. Hundreds of absurd stories 
 have been coined concerning the author of one of the finest 
 books in French literature, " Pantagruel." 
 
 Aretino, Titian's friend, and the Voltaire of his day, is now 
 credited with a reputation, in complete antagonism with his 
 works and character, which he acquired by his over-free wit, 
 characteristic of the writings of an age when gross jests were 
 held in honor, and queens and cardinals indited tales which are 
 now considered licentious. Instances might be infinitely multi- 
 plied. 
 
 In France, and at the most important period of our history, 
 Catherine De Medici has suffered more from popular error 
 than any other woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde ; 
 while Marie De Medici, whose every action was prejudicial to 
 France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name. 
 Marie dissipated the treasure amassed by Henri IV ; she never 
 purged herself of the suspicion that she was cognizant of his 
 murder ; Epernon, who had long known Ravaillac, and who did 
 not parry his blow, was in favor with the queen ; she compelled 
 her son to banish her from France, where she was fostering the 
 rebellion of her other son, Gaston ; and Richelieu's triumph Over 
 her on the Journee des Dupes was due solely to the Cardinal's 
 revealing to Louis XIII certain documents secreted after the 
 death of Henry IV. 
 
 Catherine De Medici, on the contrary, saved the throne of 
 France, she maintained the royal authority under circumstances 
 to which more than one great prince would have succumbed. 
 Face to face with such leaders of the factions and ambitions of 
 the Houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two Cardinals de 
 Lorraine and the two " Balafres," the two Princes de Conde, 
 Queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, the Connetable de Mont- 
 morency, Calvin, the Colignys, and Theodore de Beze, she was 
 forced to put forth the rarest fine qualities, the most essential 
 gifts of statesmanship, under the fire of the Calvinist press. 
 These, at any rate, are indisputable facts. And to the student 
 who digs deep into the history of the sixteenth century in 
 France, the figure of Catherine De Medici stands out as that of 
 a great king. 
 
 When once calumnies are undermined by facts laboriously 
 
324 BALZAC 
 
 brought to light from under the contradictions of pamphlets 
 and false anecdotes, everything is explained to the glory of this 
 wonderful woman, who had none of the weakness of her sex, 
 who lived chaste in the midst of the gallantries of the most li- 
 centious Court in Europe, and who, notwithstanding her lack 
 of money, erected noble buildings, as if to make good the losses 
 caused by the destructive Calvinists, who injured art as deeply 
 as they did the body politic. 
 
 Hemmed in between a race of princes who proclaimed them- 
 selves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger branch 
 that was eager to bury the Connetable de Bourbon's treason 
 under the throne ; obliged, too, to fight down a heresy on the 
 verge of devouring the monarchy, without friends, and aware 
 of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of republi- 
 canism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dangerous 
 but the surest of political weapons — craft. She determined to 
 deceive by turns the party that was anxious to secure the down- 
 fall of the House of Valois, the Bourbons who aimed at the 
 Crown, and the Reformers — the Radicals of that day, who 
 dreamed of an impossible republic, like those of our own day, 
 who, however, have nothing to reform. Indeed, so long as she 
 lived, the Valois sat on the throne. The great De Thou under- 
 stood the worth of this woman when he exclaimed, on hearing 
 of her death : 
 
 ** It is not a woman, it is royalty that dies in her ! " 
 
 Catherine had, in fact, the sense of royalty in the highest de- 
 gree, and she defended it with admirable courage and persist- 
 ency. The reproaches flung at her by Calvinist writers are in- 
 deed her glory ; she earned them solely by her triumphs. And 
 how was she to triumph but by cunning? Here lies the whole 
 question. 
 
 As to violence — ^that method bears on one of the most hotly 
 disputed points of policy, which, in recent days, has been an- 
 swered here, on the spot where a big stone from Egypt has been 
 placed to wipe out the memory of regicide, and to stand as an 
 emblem of the materialistic policy which now rules us ; it was 
 answered at Les Carmes and at the Abbaye; it was answered 
 on the steps of Saint Roch ; it was answered in front of the 
 Louvre in 1830, and again by the people against the King, as 
 it has since been answered once more by La Fayette's " best of 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 325 
 
 all republics " against the republican rebellion, at Saint-Merri 
 and the Rue Transnonnain. 
 
 Every power, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must de- 
 fend itself when it is attacked; but, strange to say, while the 
 people is heroic when it triumphs over the nobility, the au- 
 thorities are murderers when they oppose the people! And, 
 finally, if after their appeal to force they succumb, they are re- 
 garded as effete idiots. The present Government (1840) will 
 try to save itself, by two laws, from the same evil as attacked 
 Charles X, and which he tried to scotch by two decrees. Is 
 not this a bitter mockery ? May those in power meet cunning 
 with cunning ? Ought they to kill those who try to kill them ? 
 
 The massacres of the Revolution are the reply to the mas- 
 sacre of Saint-Bartholomew. The People, being King, did 
 by the nobility and the King as the King and the nobility did 
 by the rebels in the sixteenth century. And popular writers, 
 who know full well that, under similar conditions, the people 
 would do the same again, are inexcusable when they blame 
 Catherine De Medici and Charles IX. 
 
 " All power is a permanent conspiracy," said Casimir Perier, 
 when teaching what power ought to be. We admire the anti- 
 social maxims published by audacious writers ; why, then, are 
 social truths received in France with such disfavor when they 
 are boldly stated? This question alone sufficiently accounts 
 for historical mistakes. Apply the solution of this problem to 
 the devastating doctrines which flatter popular passion, and to 
 the conservative doctrines which would repress the ferocious 
 or foolish attempts of the populace, and you will see the reason 
 why certain personages are popular or unpopular. Laubarde- 
 mont and Laflfemas, like some people now living, were devoted 
 to the maintenance of the power they beHeved in. Soldiers 
 and judges, they obeyed a royal authority. D'Orthez, in our 
 day, would be discharged from office for misinterpreting or- 
 ders from the ministry, but Charles X left him to govern his 
 province. The power of the masses is accountable to no one ; 
 the power of one is obHged to account to its subjects, great 
 and small alike. 
 
 Catherine, like Philip II and the Duke of Alva, like the 
 Guises and Cardinal Granvelle, foresaw the future to which the 
 Reformation was dooming Europe. They saw monarchies. 
 
326 BALZAC 
 
 religion, and power all overthrown. Catherine, from the cabi- 
 net of the French kings, forthwith issued sentence of death on 
 that inquiring spirit which threatened modern society — a sen- 
 tence which Louis XIV finally carried out. The revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes was a measure that proved unfortunate, 
 simply in consequence of the irritation Louis XIV had aroused 
 in Europe. At any other time England, Holland, and the 
 German Empire would not have encouraged on their territory 
 French exiles and French rebels. 
 
 Why, in these days, refuse to recognize the greatness which 
 the majestic adversary of that most barren heresy derived from 
 the struggle itself? Calvinists have written strongly against 
 Charles IX's stratagems ; but travel through France : as you 
 see the ruins of so many fine churches destroyed, and consider 
 the vast breaches made by religious fanatics in the social body ; 
 when you learn the revenges they took, while deploring the 
 mischief of individualism — the plague of France to-day, of 
 which the germ lay in the questions of liberty of conscience 
 which they stirred up — you will ask yourself on which side 
 were the barbarians. There are always, as Catherine says 
 " unluckily, in all ages, hypocritical writers ready to bewail 
 two hundred scoundrels killed in due season." Caesar, who 
 tried to incite the senate to pity for Catiline's party, would very 
 likely have conquered Cicero if he had had newspapers and an 
 Opposition at his service. 
 
 Another consideration accounts for Catherine's historical and 
 popular disfavor. In France the Opposition has always been 
 Protestant, because its policy has never been anything but neg- 
 ative ; it has inherited the theories of the Lutherans, the Cal- 
 vinists, and the Protestants on the terrible texts of liberty, tol- 
 erance, progress, and philanthropy. The opponents of power 
 spent two centuries in establishing the very doubtful doctrine 
 of free-will. Two more were spent in working out the first 
 corollary of free-will — liberty of conscience. Our age is striv- 
 ing to prove the second — political liberty. 
 
 Standing between the fields already traversed and the fields 
 as yet untrodden, Catherine and the Church proclaimed the 
 salutary principle of modern communities, Una fides, units 
 Dominus, but asserting their right of life and death over all 
 innovators. Even if she had been conquered, succeeding times 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 327 
 
 have shown that Catherine was right. The outcome of free- 
 will, religious liberty, and political liberty (note, this does not 
 mean civil Hberty) is France as we now see it. 
 
 And what is. France in 1840? A country exclusively ab- 
 sorbed in material interests, devoid of patriotism, devoid of 
 conscience ; where authority is powerless ; where electoral 
 rights, the fruit of free-will and poHtical liberty, raise none but 
 mediocrities ; where brute force is necessary to oppose the 
 violence of the populace; where discussion, brought to bear 
 on the smallest matter, checks every action of the body politic ; 
 and where individuahsm — the odious result of the indefinite 
 subdivision of property, which destroys family cohesion — will 
 devour everything, even the nation, which sheer selfishness 
 will some day lay open to invasion. Men will say, " Why not 
 the Czar? " as they now say, " Why not the Due d'Orleans? " 
 We do not care for many things even now; fifty years hence 
 we shall care for nothing. 
 
 Therefore, according to Catherine — and according to all who 
 wish to see society soundly organized — man as a social unit, 
 as a subject, has no free-will, has no right to accept the dogma 
 of liberty of conscience, or to have political liberty. Still, as 
 no community can subsist without some guarantee given to 
 the subject against the sovereign, the subject derives from that 
 certain liberties under restrictions. Liberty — no, but liberties 
 — yes ; well defined and circumscribed liberties. This is in the 
 nature of things. For instance, it is beyond human power to 
 fetter freedom of thought ; and no sovereign may ever tamper 
 with money. 
 
 The great politicians who have failed in this long contest — 
 it has gone on for five centuries — have allowed their subjects 
 wide liberties ; but they never recognize their liberty to pubHsh 
 anti-social opinions, nor the unHmited freedom of the subject. 
 To them the words subject and free are, politically speaking, a 
 contradiction in terms ; and, in the same way, the statement 
 that all citizens are equal is pure nonsense, and contradicted 
 by Nature every hour. To acknowledge the need for religion, 
 the need for authority, and at the same time to leave all men 
 at liberty to deny religion, to attack its services, to oppose the 
 exercise of authority by the public and pubhshed expression 
 of opinion, is an impossibility such as the Catholics of the 
 
328 BALZAC 
 
 sixteentn century would have nothing to say to. Alas! the 
 triumph of Calvinism will cost France more yet than it has 
 ever done ; for the sects of to-day — religious, political, humani- 
 tarian, and levelling — are the train of Calvinism ; and when 
 we see the blunders of those in power, their contempt for in- 
 telligence, their devotion to those material interests in which 
 they seek support, and which are the most delusive of all props, 
 unless by the special aid of Providence the genius of destruc- 
 tion must certainly win the day from the genius of conservatism. 
 The attacking forces, who have nothing to lose, and every- 
 thing to win, are thoroughly in agreement; whereas their 
 wealthy opponents refuse to make any sacrifice of money or of 
 self-conceit to secure defenders. 
 
 Printing came to the aid of the resistance inaugurated by 
 the Vaudois and the Albigenses. As soon as human thought 
 — no longer condensed, as it had necessarily been in order to 
 preserve the most communicable form — had assumed a multi- 
 tude of garbs and become the very people, instead of remain- 
 ing in some sense divinely axiomatic, there were two vast armies 
 to contend with — that of ideas and that of men. Royal power 
 perished in the struggle, and we, in France, at this day are 
 looking on at its last coalition with elements which make it 
 difficult, not to say impossible. 
 
 Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No 
 political action is possible when discussion is permanently 
 established. So we ought to regard the woman as truly great 
 who foresaw that future, and fought it so bravely. The House 
 of Bourbon was able to succeed to the House of Valois, and 
 owed it to Catherine De Medici that it found that crown to 
 wear. If the second Balafre had been alive it is very doubtful 
 that the Bearnais, strong as he was, could have seized the 
 throne, seeing how dearly it was sold by the Due de Mayenne 
 and the remnant of the Guise faction. The necessary steps 
 taken by Catherine, who had the deaths of Francis H and 
 Charles IX on her soul — ^both dying opportunely for her safety 
 — are not, it must be noted, what the Calvinist and modern 
 writers blame her for! Though there was no poisoning, as 
 some serious authors have asserted, there were other not less 
 criminal plots. It is beyond question that she hindered Pare 
 from saving one, and murdered the other morally by inches. 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 329 
 
 But the swift death of Francis II and the skilfully contrived 
 end of Charles IX did no injury to Calvinist interests. The 
 causes of these two events concerned only the uppermost 
 sphere, and were never suspected by writers or by the lower 
 orders at the time; they were guessed only by De Thou, by 
 L'Hopital, by men of the highest talents, or the chiefs of the 
 two parties who coveted and clung to the Crown, and who 
 thought such means indispensable. 
 
 Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Cath- 
 erine, and the Calvinists made that able woman responsible 
 for all the inevitable disasters of the struggle, she must be 
 judged by posterity, like Robespierre at a future date. 
 
 And Catherine was cruelly punished for her preference for 
 the Due d'Anjou, which made her hold her two elder sons so 
 cheap. Henri III having ceased, like all spoilt children, to 
 care for his mother, rushed voluntarily into such debauchery 
 as made him what the mother had made Charles IX, a child- 
 less husband, a king without an heir. Unhappily, Catherine's 
 youngest son, the Due d'Alenc^on, died — a natural death. The 
 Queen-mother made every effort to control her son's pas- 
 sions, but she did not cure Henri III of his bad habits. 
 
 This great Queen's last words summed up her policy, which 
 was indeed so governed by good sense that we see the Cabinets 
 of every country putting it into practice in similar circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " Well cut, my son," said she, when Henri III came to her, 
 on her death-bed, to announce that the enemy of the throne had 
 been put to death. " Now you must sew up again." 
 
 She thus expressed her opinion that the sovereign must 
 make friends with the House of Lorraine, and make it useful, 
 as the only way to hinder the effects of the Guises' hatred, by 
 giving them a hope of circumventing- the King. But this in- 
 defatigable cunning of the Italian and the woman was incom- 
 patible with Henri Ill's life of debauchery. When once the 
 great mother, was dead, the mother of armies (Mater castro- 
 rum), the policy of the Valois died too. 
 
 Before attempting to write this picture of manners in action, 
 the author patiently and minutely studied the principal reigns 
 of French history, the quarrels of the Burgundians and the 
 Armagnacs, and those of the Guises and the Valois, each in the 
 
330 BALZAC 
 
 forefront of a century. His purpose was to write a picturesque 
 history of France. Isabella of Bavaria, Catherine and Marie 
 De Medici, each fills a conspicuous place, dominating from the 
 fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and leading up to Louis 
 XIV. 
 
 Of these three queens, Catherine was the most interesting 
 and the most beautiful. Hers was a manly rule, while neither 
 of the others had any political genius. 
 
 In the course of these studies and comparisons, the author 
 became convinced of Catherine's greatness ; by initiating him- 
 self into the peculiar difficulties of her position, he discerned 
 how unjust historians, biassed by Protestantism, had been to 
 this queen ; and the outcome was three sketches, in which some 
 erroneous opinions of her, of those who were about her, and of 
 the aspect of the times, are combated. 
 
 The work is placed among my philosophical studies, because 
 it illustrates the spirit of a period, and plainly shows the in- 
 fluence of opinions. 
 
 But before depicting the political arena on which Catherine 
 comes into collision with the two great obstacles in her career, 
 it is necessary to give a short account of her previous life from 
 the point of view of an impartial critic, so that the reader may 
 form a general idea of this large and royal life up to the time 
 when the first part of this narrative opens. 
 
 Never at any period, in any country, or in any ruling family 
 was there more contempt felt for legitimacy than by the famous 
 race of the Medici (in French commonly written and pro- 
 nounced Medicis). They held the same opinion of monarchy 
 as is now professed in Russia : The ruler on whom the crown 
 devolves is the real and legitimate monarch. Mirabeau was 
 justified in saying, " There has been but one mesalliance in my 
 family — that with the Medici " ; for, notwithstanding the ex- 
 ertions of well-paid genealogists, it is certain that the Medici, 
 till the time of Averardo De Medici, gonfaloniere of Florence 
 in 1 3 14, were no more than Florentine merchants of great 
 wealth. The first personage of the family who filled a con- 
 spicuous place in the history of the great Tuscan Republic was 
 Salvestro De Medici, gonfaloniere in 1378. This Salvestro had 
 two sons — Cosmo and Lorenzo De Medici. 
 
 From Cosmo descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Due 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 331 
 
 de Nemours, the Duke of Urbino, Catherine's father, Pope 
 Leo X, Pope Clement VII, and Alessandro, not indeed Duke 
 of Florence, as he is sometimes called, but Duke delta citta di 
 Penna, a title created by Pope Clement VII as a step towards 
 that of Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 
 Lorenzo's descendants were Lorenzino — the Brutus of Flor- 
 ence — who killed Duke Alessandro; Cosmo, the first Grand 
 Duke, and all the rulers of Florence till 1737, when the family 
 became extinct. 
 
 But neither of 'the two branches — that of Cosmo or that of 
 Lorenzo — succeeded in a direct Hne, till the time when Marie 
 De Medici's father subjugated Tuscany, and the Grand Dukes 
 inherited in regular succession. Thus Alessandro De Medici, 
 who assumed the title of Duke della cit'td di Penna, and whom 
 Lorenzino assassinated, was tlie son of the Duke of Urbino, 
 Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. Hence Lorenzino, the 
 legitimate son of Lorenzo, had a double right to kill Alessan- 
 dro, both as a usurper in the family and as an oppressor of the 
 city. Some historians have indeed supposed that Alessandro 
 was the son of Clement VII. The event that led to the recog- 
 nition of this illegitimate son as head of the republic was his 
 marriage with Margaret of Austria, the natural daughter of 
 Charles V. 
 
 Francesco De Medici, the husband of Bianca Capello, rec- 
 ognized as his son a child of low birth bought by that notorious 
 Venetian lady; and, strange to say, Fernando, succeeding 
 Francesco, upheld the hypothetical rights of this boy. In- 
 deed, this youth, known as Don Antonio De Medici, was recog- 
 nized by the family during four ducal reigns ; he won the 
 affection of all, did them important service, and was universally 
 regretted. 
 
 Almost all the early Medici had natural children, whose lot 
 was in every case splendid. The Cardinal Giulio De Medici, 
 Pope Clement VII, was the illegitimate son of Giuliano I. Car- 
 dinal Ippolito De Medici was also illegitimate, and he was 
 within an ace of being pope and head of the family. Lorenzo 
 De Medici, Catherine's father, had married, for the second time, 
 in 1518, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, and died in 15 19, a 
 few days after his wife, who died in giving birth to Catherine. 
 Catherine was thus fatherless and motherless as soon as she 
 
332 BALZAC 
 
 saw the light. Hence the strange events of her childhood, 
 checkered by the violent struggles of the Florentines, in the 
 attempt to recover their liberty, against the Medici who were 
 determined to govern Florence, but who were so circumspect 
 in their policy that Catherine's father took the title of Duke 
 of Urbino. 
 
 At his death the legitimate head of the House of the Medici 
 was Pope Leo X, who appointed Giuliano's illegitimate son, 
 Giulio De Medici, then Cardinal, Governor of Florence. Leo 
 X was Catherine's grand-uncle, and this Cardinal Giulio, 
 afterwards Clement VII, was her left-handed uncle only. 
 
 During the siege by the Medici to regain possession of 
 Florence, the Republican party, not satisfied with having shut 
 up Catherine, then nine years old, in a convent, after stripping 
 her of all her possessions, proposed to expose her to the fire of 
 the artillery, between two battlements — the suggestion of a 
 certain Battista Cei. Bernardo Castiglione went even further 
 in a council held to determine on some conclusion to the busi- 
 ness ; he advised that, rather than surrender Catherine to the 
 Pope who demanded it, she should be handed over to the 
 tender mercies of the soldiers. All revolutions of the popu- 
 lace are alike. Catherine's policy, always in favor of royal 
 authority, may have been fostered by such scenes, which an 
 Italian girl of nine could not fail to understand. 
 
 Alessandro's promotion, to which Clement VII (himself il- 
 legitimate), largely contributed, was no doubt owing partly to 
 the fact of Alessandro's illegitimacy, and to Charles V's affection 
 for his famous natural daughter Margaret. Thus the Pope 
 and the Emperor were moved by similar feehngs. At this 
 period Venice was mistress of the commerce of the world; 
 Rome governed its morals; Italy was still supreme, by the 
 poets, the generals, and the statesmen who were her sons. At 
 no other time has any one country had so curious or so various 
 a multitude of men of genius. There were so many that the 
 smallest princelings were superior men. Italy was overflow- 
 ing with talent, daring, science, poetry, wealth, and gallantry, 
 though rent by constant internal wars, and at all times the 
 arena on which conquerors met to fight for her fairest prov- 
 inces. 
 
 When meu are so great they are not afraid to confess their 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 333 
 
 weakness ; hence, no doubt, this golden age for illegitimate sons. 
 And it is but justice to declare that these illegitimate sons of the 
 Medici were ardent for the glory and the advancement of the 
 family, alike in possessions and in power. And as soon as the 
 Duke della cittd di Penna, the Moorish slave's son, was estab- 
 lished as Tyrant of Florence, he took up the interest shown by 
 Pope Clement VII for Lorenzo II's daughter, now eleven 
 years of age. 
 
 As we study the march of events and of men in that 
 strange sixteenth century, we must never forget that the chief 
 element of political conduct was unremitting craft, destroying 
 in every nature the upright conduct, the squareness which 
 imagination looks for in eminent men. In this, especially, lies 
 Catherine's absolution. This observation, in fact, disposes of 
 all the mean and foolish accusations brought against her by 
 the writers of the reformed faith. It was indeed the golden 
 age of this type of policy, of which Machiavelli and Spinoza 
 formulated the code, and Hobbes and Montesquieu; for the 
 dialogue of " Sylla and Eucrates " expresses Montesquieu's 
 real mind, which he could not set forth in any other form, in 
 consequence of his connection with the Encyclopaedists. These 
 principles are to this day the unconfessed morality of every 
 Cabinet where schemes of vast dominion are worked out. In 
 France we were severe on Napoleon when he exerted this 
 Italian genius which was in his blood, and its plots did not 
 always succeed; but Charles V, Catherine, Philip II, Giulio 
 II, would have done just as he did in the affairs of Spain. 
 
 At the time when Catherine was born, history, if related 
 from the point of view of honesty, would seem an impossible 
 romance. Charles V, while forced to uphold the Catholic 
 Church against the attacks of Luther, who by threatening the 
 tiara threatened his throne, allowed Rome to be besieged, and 
 kept Pope Clement VII in prison. This same Pope, who had 
 no more bitter foe than Charles V, cringed to him that he might 
 place Alessandro De Medici at Florence, and the Emperor 
 gave his daughter in marriage to the bastard duke. No sooner 
 was he firmly settled than Alessandro, in concert with the 
 Pope, attempted to injure Charles V by an alliance, through 
 Catherine De Medici, with Francis I, and both promised to 
 assist the French king to conquer Italy. 
 
334 BALZAC 
 
 Lorenzino De Medici became Alessandro's boon compan- 
 ion, and pandered to him to get an opportunity of killing 
 him; and Filippo Strozzi, one of the loftiest spirits of that 
 age, regarded this murder with such high esteem that he vowed 
 that each of his sons should marry one of the assassin's daugh- 
 ters. The sons religiously fulfilled the father's pledge at a 
 time when each of them, under Catherine's protection, could 
 have made a splendid alliance ; for one was Doria's rival, and 
 the other Marshal of France. 
 
 Cosmo De Medici, Alessandro's successor, avenged the 
 death of the Tyrant with great cruelty, and persistently for 
 twelve years, during which his hatred never flagged against 
 the people who had, after all, placed him in power. He was 
 eighteen years of age when he succeeded to the government ; 
 his first act was to annul the rights of Alessandro's legitimate 
 sons, at the time when he was avenging Alessandro ! Charles 
 V confirmed the dispossession of his grandson, and recognized 
 Cosmo instead of Alessandro's son. 
 
 Cosmo, raised to the throne by Cardinal Cibo, at once sent 
 the prelate into exile. Then Cardinal Cibo accused his 
 creature, Cosmo, the first Grand Duke, of having tried to 
 poison Alessandro's son. The Grand Duke, as jealous of his 
 authority as Charles V was of his, abdicated, like the Emperor, 
 in favor of his son Francesco, after ordering the death of Don 
 Garcias, his other son, in revenge for that of Cardinal Giovanni 
 De Medici, whom Garcias had assassinated. 
 
 Cosmo I and his son Francesco, who ought to have been 
 devoted, soul and body, to the royal house of France, the only 
 power able to lend them support, were the humble servants of 
 Charles V and Philip II, and consequently the secret, per- 
 fidious, and cowardly foes of Catherine De Medici, one of the 
 glories of their race. 
 
 Such are the more important features — contradictory and 
 illogical indeed — the dishonest acts, the dark intrigues of the 
 House of the Medici alone. From this sketch some idea may 
 be formed of the other princes of Italy and Europe. Every 
 envoy from Cosmo I to the Court of France had secret instruc- 
 tions to poison Strozzi, Queen Catherine's relation, when he 
 should find him there. Charles V had three ambassadors from 
 Francis I murdered. 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 335 
 
 It was early in October 1533 that the Duke delta cittd de 
 Penna left Florence for Leghorn, accompanied by Catherine 
 De Medici, sole heiress of Lorenzo IL The Duke and the 
 Princess of Florence, for this was the title borne by the girl, 
 now fourteen years of age, left the city with a large following 
 of serv^ants, officials, and secretaries, preceded by men-at-arms, 
 and escorted by a mounted guard. The young Princess as yet 
 knew nothing of her fate, excepting that the Pope and Duke 
 Alessandro were to have an interview at Leghorn; but her 
 uncles, Filippo Strozzi, soon told her of the future that lay 
 before her. 
 
 Flippo Strozzi had married Clarissa De Medici, whole sister 
 to Lorenzo De Medici, Duke of Urbino, Catherine's father; 
 but this union, arranged quite as much with a view to convert- 
 ing one of the stoutest champions of the popular cause to the 
 support of Medici as to secure the recall of that then exiled 
 family, never shook the tenets of the rough soldier who was 
 persecuted by his party for having consented to it. In spite 
 of some superficial change of conduct, somewhat overruled by 
 this alliance, he remained faithful to the popular side, and de- 
 clared against the Medici as soon as he perceived their scheme 
 of subjugating Florence. This great man even refused the 
 offer of a principality from Leo X. At that time Filippo 
 Strozzi was a victim to the policy of the Medici, so shifty in 
 its means, so unvarying in its aim. 
 
 After sharing the Pope's misfortunes and captivity, when, 
 surprised by Colonna, he took refuge in the castle of Saint- 
 Angelo, he was given up by Clement VII as a hostage and 
 carried to Naples. As soon as the Pope was free he fell upon 
 his foes, and Strozzi was then near being killed ; he was forced 
 to pay an enormous bribe to get out of the prison, where he 
 was closely guarded. As soon as he was at liberty, with the 
 natural trustfulness of an honest man, he was simple enough 
 to appear before Clement VII, who perhaps had flattered him- 
 self that he was rid of him. The Pope had so much to be 
 ashamed of that he received Strozzi very ungraciously. Thus 
 Strozzi had very early begun his apprenticeship to the life of 
 disaster, which is that of a man who is honest in politics, and 
 whose conscience will not lend itself to the caprices of op- 
 portunity, whose actions are pleasing only to virtue, which 
 
336 BALZAC 
 
 is persecuted by all — by the populace, because it withstands 
 their blind passions ; by authority, because it resists its usur- 
 pations. 
 
 The life of these great citizens is a martyrdom, through which 
 they have nothing to -support them but the strong voice of con- 
 science, and the sense of social duty, which in all cases dictate 
 their conduct. 
 
 There were many such men in the republic of Florence, all 
 as great as Strozzi and as masterly as their adversaries on the 
 Medici side, though beaten by Florentine cunning. In the con- 
 spiracy of the Pazzi, what can be finer than the attitude of the 
 head of that house ? His trade was immense, and he settled all 
 his accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe before carrying 
 out that great plot, to the end that his correspondents should 
 not be the losers if he should fail. 
 
 And the history of the rise of the Medici family in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries is one of the finest that remains 
 unwritten, though men of great genius have attempted it. It 
 is not the history of a republic, or of any particular community 
 or phase of civilization ; it is the history of political man, and 
 the eternal history of political developments, that of usurpers 
 and conquerors. 
 
 On his return to Florence, Filippo Strozzi restored the an- 
 cient form of government, and banished Ippolito De Medici, 
 another bastard, as well as Alessandro, with whom he was 
 now acting. But he then was afraid of the inconstancy of the 
 populace; and as he dreaded Pope Clement's vengeance, he 
 went to take charge of a large commercial house he had at 
 Lyons in correspondence with his bankers at Venice and Rome, 
 in France, and in Spain. A strange fact! These men, who 
 bore the burden of public affairs as well as that of a perennial 
 struggle with the Medici, to say nothing of their squabbles 
 with their own party, could also endure the cares of com- 
 merce and speculation, of banking with all its complications, 
 which the vast multiplicity of coinages and frequent forgeries 
 made far more difficult then than now. The word banker is 
 derived from the bench on which they sat, and which served 
 also to ring the gold and silver pieces on. Strozzi found in his 
 adored wife's death a pretext to offer to the Republican party, 
 whose police is always all the more terrible because everybody 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 337 
 
 is a voluntary spy in the name of liberty, which justifies all 
 things. 
 
 Filippo's return to Florence happened just at the time when 
 the city was compelled to bow to Alessandro's yoke; but he 
 had previously been to see Pope Clement, with whom matters 
 were so promising that his feelings towards Strozzi had 
 changed. In the moment of triumph the Medici so badly 
 needed such a man as Strozzi, were it only to lend a grace to 
 Alessandro's assumption of dignity, that Clement persuaded 
 him to sit on Alessandro's council, which was about to take 
 oppressive measures, and Filippo had accepted a diploma as 
 senator. But for the last two years and a half — like Seneca 
 and Burrhus with Nero — he had noted the beginnings of 
 tyranny. He found himself the object of distrust to the pop- 
 ulace, and so little in favor with the Medici, whom he opposed, 
 that he foresaw a catastrophe. And as soon as he heard from 
 Alessandro of the negotiations for the marriage of Catherine 
 with a French prince, which were perhaps to be concluded at 
 Leghorn, where the contracting powers had agreed to meet, 
 he resolved to go to France and follow the fortunes of his niece, 
 who would need a guardian. Alessandro, delighted to be quit 
 of a man so difficult to manage in what concerned Florence, 
 applauded this decision, which spared him a murder, and ad- 
 vised Strozzi to place himself at the head of Catherine's house- 
 hold. 
 
 In point of fact, to dazzle the French Court, the Medici had 
 constituted a brilliant suite for the young girl whom they quite 
 incorrectly styled the Princess of Florence, and who was also 
 called the Duchess of Urbino. The procession, at the head 
 of it Duke Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi, consisted of 
 more than a thousand persons, exclusive of the escort and 
 serving-men ; and when the last of them were still at the gate 
 of Florence, the foremost had already got beyond the first vil- 
 lage outside the town-7-where straw plait for hats is now made. 
 
 It was beginning to be generally known that Catherine was 
 to marry a son of Francis I, but as yet it was no more than a 
 rumor which found confirmation in the country from this tri- 
 umphant progress from Florence to Leghorn. From the prep- 
 arations required, Catherine suspected that her marriage was 
 in question, and her uncle revealed to her the abortive scheme 
 22 
 
338 BALZAC 
 
 of her ambitious family, who had aspired to the hand of the 
 Dauphin. Duke Alessandro still hoped that the Duke of Al- 
 bany might succeed in changing the determination of the 
 French king, who, though anxious to secure the aid of the 
 Medici in Italy, would only give them the Due d'Orleans. 
 This narrowness lost Italy to France, and did not hinder Cath- 
 erine from being Queen. 
 
 This Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander Stuart, brother 
 of James III of Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de 
 Boulogne, sister to Madeleine, Catherine's mother; he was 
 thus her maternal uncle. It was through her mother that 
 Catherine was so rich and connected with so many families; 
 for, strangely enough, Diane de Poitiers, her rival, was also 
 her cousin. Jean de Poitiers, Diane's father, was son of Jeanne 
 de la Tour de Boulogne, the Duchess of Urbino's aunt. Cath- 
 erine was also related to Mary Stuart, her daughter-in-law. 
 
 Catherine was now informed that her dower in money would 
 amount to a hundred thousand ducats. The ducat was a gold 
 piece as large as one of our old louis d'or, but only half as thick. 
 Thus a hundred thousand ducats in those days represented, in 
 consequence of the high value of gold, six millions of francs 
 at the present time, the ducat being worth about twelve francs. 
 The importance of the banking-house of Strozzi, at Lyons, may 
 be imagined from this, as it was his factor there who paid over 
 the twelve hundred thousand livres in gold. The counties of 
 Auvergne and Lauraguais also formed part of Catherine's por- 
 tion, and the Pope Clement VII made her a gift of a hundred 
 thousand ducats more in jewels, precious stones, and other 
 wedding gifts, to which Duke Alessandro contributed. 
 
 On reaching Leghorn, Catherine, still so young, must have 
 been flattered by the extraordinary magnificence displayed by 
 Pope Clement VII, her "left-handed uncle," then the head 
 of the House of Medici, to crush the Court of France. He 
 had arrived at the port in one of his gall^s hung with crimson 
 satin trimmed with gold fringe, and covered with an awning 
 of cloth of gold. This barge, of which the decorations had 
 cost nearly twenty thousand ducats, contained several rooms 
 for the use of Henri de France's future bride, furnished with 
 the choicest curiosities the Medici had been able to collect. 
 The oarsmen, magnificently dressed, and the seamen were un- 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 339 
 
 der the captaincy of a prior of the Order of the Knights of 
 Rhodes. The Pope's household filled three more barges. 
 
 The Duke of Albany's galleys, moored by the side of the 
 Pope's, formed, with these, a considerable flotilla. 
 
 Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine's house- 
 hold to the Pope, with whom he held a secret conference, 
 introducing to him, as seems probable. Count Sebastian Mon- 
 tecuculi, who had just left the Em2eror's service — rather sud- 
 denly, it was said — and the two generals, Antonio de Leyva 
 and Fernando Gonzaga. Was there a premeditated plan be- 
 tween these two bastards to make the Due d'Orleans the Dau- 
 phin? What was the reward promised to Count Sebastian 
 Montecuculi, who, before entering the service of Charles V, 
 had studied medicine ? History is silent on these points. We 
 shall see indeed in what obscurity' the subject is wrapped. It 
 is so great that some serious and conscientious historians have 
 recently recognized MontecucuH's innocence. 
 
 Catherine was now officially informed by the Pope himself 
 of the alliance proposed for her. The Duke of Albany had had 
 great difficulty in keeping the King of France to his promise 
 of giving even his second son to Catherine De Medici ; and 
 Clement's impatience was so great, he was so much afraid 
 of seeing his schemes upset either by some intrigue on the part 
 of the Emperor, or by the haughtiness of France, where the 
 great nobles cast an evil eye on this union, that he embarked 
 forthwith and made for Marseilles. He arrived there at the 
 end of October, 1533. 
 
 In spite of his splendor, the House of the Medici was eclipsed 
 by the sovereign of France. To show to what a pitch these 
 great bankers carried their magnificence, the dozen pieces 
 given by the Pope in the bride's wedding purse consisted of 
 gold medals of inestimable historical interest, for they were at 
 that time unique. But Francis I, who loved festivity and dis- 
 play, distinguished himself on this occasion. The wedding 
 feasts for Henri de Valois and Catherine went on for thirty-four 
 days. It is useless to repeat here details which may be read 
 in every history of Provenge and Marseilles as to this famous 
 meeting between the Pope and the King of France, which 
 was the occasion of a jest of the Duke of Albany's as to the 
 duty of fasting; a retort recorded by Brantome which vastly 
 
340 BALZAC 
 
 amused the Court, and shows the tone of manners at that 
 time. 
 
 Though Henri de Valois was but three weeks older than 
 Catherine, the Pope insisted on the immediate consummation 
 of the marriage between these two children, so greatly did he 
 dread the subterfuges of diplomacy and the trickery commonly 
 practised at that period. Many facts show that the history of 
 Catherine De Medici remains to be entirely rewritten; and 
 that, as Napoleon very shrewdly remarked, the history of 
 France should be in one volume only, or in a thousand. 
 
 When we compare the conduct of Charles V with that of the 
 King of France during the Pope's stay at Marseilles, it is greatly 
 to the advantage of Francis — as indeed in every instance. Here 
 is a brief report of this meeting as given by a contemporary : 
 
 " His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the palace 
 prepared for him, as I have said, outside the port, each one 
 withdrew to his chamber until the morrow, when his said Holi- 
 ness prepared to make his entry. Which was done with great 
 sumptuousness and magnificence, he being set on a throne borne 
 on the shoulders of two men in his pontifical habit, saving only 
 the tiara, while before him went a white palfrey bearing the 
 Holy Sacrament, the said palfrey being led by two men on foot 
 in very fine raiment holding a bridle of white silk. After him 
 came all the cardinals in their habit, riding their pontifical mules, 
 and Madame the Duchess of Urbino in great magnificence, with 
 a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen alike of France and 
 of Italy. And the Pope, with all this company, being come to 
 the place prepared where they should lodge, each one with- 
 drew ; and all this was ordered and done without any disorder 
 or tumult. Now, while as the Pope was making his entry, the 
 King crossed the water in his frigate and went to lodge there 
 whence the Pope had come, to the end that on the morrow he 
 might come from thence to pay homage to the Holy Father, as 
 beseemed a most Christian King. 
 
 " The King being then ready, set forth to go to the palace 
 where the Pope was, accompanied by the princes of his blood, 
 Monseigneur the Due de Vendosmois ( father of the Vidame de 
 Chartres), the Comte de Saint-Pol, Monsieur de Montmorency, 
 and Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, the Due de Nemours 
 (brother to the Duke of Savoy, who died at that place), the 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
 341 
 
 Duke of Albany, and many others, counts, barons, and nobles, 
 the Due de Montmorency being at all times about the King's 
 person. The King, being come to the palace, was received by 
 the Pope and all the College of Cardinals assembled in con- 
 sistor>% with much civility (fort himiainement). This done, 
 each one went to the place appointed to him, and the King took 
 with him many cardinals to feast them, and among them Car- 
 dinal De Medici, the Pope's nephew, a very magnificent lord 
 with a fine escort. On the morrow those deputed by his Holi- 
 ness and by the King began to treat of those matters whereon 
 they had met to agree. First of all, they treated of the ques- 
 tion of faith, and a bull was read for the repression of heresy, 
 and to hinder things from coming to a greater combustion (une 
 plus grande combustion) than they are in already. Then was 
 performed the marriage ceremony between the Due d'Orleans, 
 the King's second son, and Catherine De Medici, Duchess of 
 Urbino, his Holiness's niece, under conditions the same, or near- 
 ly the same, as had been formerly proposed to the Duke of 
 Albany. The said marriage was concluded with great mag- 
 nificence, and our Holy Father married them.^ This marriage 
 being thus concluded, the Holy Father held a consistory, where- 
 in he created four cardinals to wait on the King, to wit : Cardinal 
 le Veneur, heretofore Bishop of Lisieux and High Almoner; 
 Cardinal de Boulogne, of the family of La Chambre, half- 
 brother on his mother's side to the Duke of Albany ; Cardinal 
 de Chatillon, of the family of Coligny, nephew to the Sire de 
 Montmorency ; and Cardinal de Givry." 
 
 When Strozzi paid down the marriage portion in the pres- 
 ence of the Court he observed some surprise on the part of the 
 French nobles ; they said pretty loudly that it was a small price 
 for such a mesalliance — what would they say to-day ? Cardinal 
 Ippolito replied : 
 
 " Then you are not informed as to your King's secrets. His 
 Holiness consents to bestow on France three pearls of inestima- 
 ble price — Genoa, Milan, and Naples." 
 
 The Pope left Count Sebastian Montecuculi to present him- 
 self at the French Court, where he made an offer of his services, 
 complaining of Antonio de Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga, for 
 
 * At that time in French, as in Italian, the ing. " Marier " was the fact of being mar- 
 words " marry " and " espouse " were used ried, " epouser " was the priestly function, 
 in a contrary sense to their present mean- 
 
342 BALZAC 
 
 which reason he was accepted. MontecucuH was not one of 
 Catherine's household, which was composed entirely of French 
 ladies and gentlemen ; for, by a law of the realm which the Pope 
 was rejoiced to see carried out, Catherine was naturalized by 
 letters patent before her marriage. MontecucuH was at first 
 attached to the household of the Queen, Charles V's sister. 
 Then, not long after, he entered the Dauphin's service in the 
 capacity of cup-bearer. 
 
 The Duchesse d'Orleans found herself entirely swamped at 
 the Court of Francis I. Her young husband was in love with 
 Diane de Poitiers, who was certainly her equal in point of birth, 
 and a far greater lady. The daughter of the Medici took rank 
 below Queen Eleanor, Charles V's sister, and the Duchesse 
 d'Etampes, whose marriage to the head of the family of De 
 Brosse had given her one of the most powerful positions and 
 highest titles in France. Her aunt, the Duchess of Albany, the 
 Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse de Guise, the Duchesse de Ven- 
 dome, the wife of the Connetable, and many other women, by 
 their birth and privileges as well as by their influence in the 
 most sumptuous Court ever held by a French king — not except- 
 ing Louis XIV — wholly eclipsed the daughter of the Florentine 
 merchants, who was indeed more illustrious and richer through 
 the Tour de Boulogne family than through her descent from 
 the Medici. 
 
 Filippo Strozzi, a republican at heart, regarded his niece's 
 position as so critical and difficult that he felt himself incapable 
 of directing her in the midst of conflicting interests, and de- 
 serted her at the end of a year, being indeed recalled to Italy by 
 the death of Clement VII. Catherine's conduct, when we re- 
 member that she was but just fifteen, was a marvel of prudence. 
 She very adroitly attached herself to the King, her father-in- 
 law, leaving him as rarely as possible; she was with him on 
 horseback, in hunting, and in war. 
 
 Her adoration of Francis I saved the House of Medici from 
 all suspicion when the Dauphin died poisoned. At that time 
 Catherine and the Due d'Orleans were at the King's head-quar- 
 ters in Provenqe, for France had already been invaded by 
 Charles V, the King's brother-in-law. The whole Court had 
 remained on the scene of the wedding festivities, now the the- 
 atre of the most barbarous war. Just as Charles V, compelled 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 343 
 
 to retreat, had fled, leaving the bones of his army in Provence, 
 the Dauphin was returning to Lyons by the Rhone. Stopping 
 at Tournon for the night, to amuse himself, he went through 
 some athletic exercises, such as formed almost the sole educa- 
 tion he or his brother received, in consequence of their long 
 detention as hostages. The Prince being very hot — it was in 
 the month of August — was so rash as to ask for a glass of 
 water, which was given to him, iced, by Montecuculi. The 
 Dauphin died almost instantaneously. 
 
 The King idolized his son. The Dauphin was indeed, as his- 
 torians are agreed, a very accomplished prince. His father, in 
 despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings against 
 Montecuculi, and placed the matter in the hands of the most 
 learned judges of the day. 
 
 After heroically enduring the" first tests of torture without 
 confessing anything, the Count made an avowal by which he 
 fully implicated the Emperor and his two generals, Antonio de 
 Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga. This, however, did not satisfy 
 Francis I. Never was a case more solemnly thrashed out than 
 this. An eye-witness gives the following account of what the 
 King did : 
 
 "The King called all the princes of the blood, and air the 
 knights of his order, and many other high personages of the 
 realm, to meet at Lyons ; the Pope's legate and nuncio, the car- 
 dinals who were of his Court, and the ambassadors of Eng- 
 land, Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others ; together 
 with all the princes and great nobles of foreign countries, both 
 of Italy and of Germany, who were at that time residing at his 
 Court, to wit: The Duke of Wittemberg, in Allemaigne; the 
 Dukes of Somma, of Arianna, and of Atria; the Princes of 
 Melphe [Malfi?] (who had desired to marry Catherine), and 
 of Stilliano, Neapolitan ; the Marquis di Vigevo, of the House 
 of Trivulzio, Milanese ; the Signor Giovanni Paolo di Ceri, Ro- 
 man; the Signor Cesare Fregose, Genoese; the Signor Anni- 
 bale Gonzaga, Mantuan, and many more. Who being assem- 
 bled, he caused to be read in their presence, from the beginning 
 to the end, the trial of that wretched man who had poisoned 
 his late Highness the Dauphin, with all the interrogations, con- 
 fessions, confrontings, and other proceedings usual in criminal 
 trials, not choosing that the sentence should be carried out un- 
 
344 BALZAC 
 
 til all those present had given their opinion on this monstrous 
 and miserable matter." 
 
 Count Montecuculi's fidelity and devotion may seem extra- 
 ordinary in our day of universal indiscretion, when everybody, 
 and even ministers, talk over the most trivial incidents in which 
 they have put a finger; but in those times princes could com- 
 mand devoted servants, or knew how to choose them. There 
 were monarchical Moreys then, because there was faith. Never 
 look for great things from self-interest : interests may change ; 
 but look for anything from feeling, from religious faith, mon- 
 archical faith, patriotic faith. These three beliefs alone can 
 produce a Berthereau of Geneva, a Sydney or a Strafford in 
 England, assassins to murder Thomas a Becket, or a Monte- 
 cuculi ; Jacques Coeur and Jeanne d'Arc, or Richelieu and Dan- 
 ton ; a Bonchamp, a Talmont, or a Clement, a Chabot. 
 
 Charles V made use of the highest personages to carry out 
 the murder of three ambassadors from Francis I. A year later 
 Lorenzino, Catherine's cousin, assassinated Duke Alessandro 
 after three years of dissimulation, and in circumstances which 
 gained him the surname of the Florentine Brutus. The rank 
 of the victim was so little a check on such undertakings that 
 neither Leo X nor Clement VII seems to have died a natural 
 death. Mariana, the historian of Philip II, almost jests in 
 speaking of the death of the Queen of Spain, a princess of 
 France, saying that " for the greater glory of the Spanish throne 
 God suffered the blindness of the doctors who treated the Queen 
 for dropsy." When King Henri II allowed himself to utter a 
 scandal which deserved a sword-thrust, he could find La Cha- 
 taignerie willing to take it. At that time royal personages had 
 their meals served to them in padlocked boxes of which they 
 had the key. Hence the droit de cadenas, the right of the pad- 
 lock, an honor which ceased to exist in the reign of Louis XIV 
 
 The Dauphin died of poison, the same perhaps as caused the 
 death of Madame, under Louis XIV. Pope Clement had been 
 dead two years; Duke Alessandro, steeped in debauchery, 
 seemed to have no interest in the Due d'Orleans's elevation. 
 Catherine, now seventeen years old, was with her father-in-law, 
 whom she devotedly admired ; Charles V alone seemed to have 
 an interest in the Dauphin's death, because Francis I intended 
 his son to form an alliance which would have extended the 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 345 
 
 power of France. Thus the Count's confession was very in- 
 geniously based on the passions and poHcy of the day. Charles 
 V had fled after seeing his troops overwhelmed in Provence, 
 and with them his good fortune, his reputation, ^nd his hopes 
 of aggrandizement. And note, that even if an innocent man 
 had confessed under torture, the King afterwards gave him 
 freedom of speech before an august assembly, and in the pres- 
 ence of men with whom innocence had a fair chance of a hear- 
 ing. The King wanted the truth, and sought it in good faith. 
 
 In spite of her now brilliant prospects, Catherine's position 
 at court was unchanged by the Dauphin's death ; her childless- 
 ness made a divorce seem probable when her husband should 
 become king. The Dauphin was now enslaved by Diane de 
 Poitiers, who had dared to be the rival of Madame d'Etampes. 
 Catherine was therefore doubly attentive and insinuating to 
 her father-in-law, understanding that he was her sole main- 
 stay. 
 
 Thus the first ten years of Catherine's married life were spent 
 in the unceasing regrets caused by repeated disappointments 
 when she hoped to have a child, and the vexations of her rivalry 
 with Diane. Imagine what the life must be of a princess con- 
 stantly spied on by a jealous mistress who was favored by the 
 Catholic party, and by the strong support the Senechale had 
 acquired through the marriage of her daughters — one to Robert 
 de la Mark, Due de Bouillon, Prince de Sedan; the other to 
 Claude de Lorraine, Due d'Aumale. 
 
 Swamped between the party of the Duchesse d'Etampes and 
 that of the Senechale (the title borne by Diane de Poitiers dur- 
 ing the reign of Francis I), who divided the Court and political 
 feeling between the two mortal foes, Catherine tried to be the 
 friend of both the Duchess and Diane de Poitiers. She, who 
 was to become so great a queen, played the part of a subaltern. 
 Thus she served her apprenticeship to the double-faced policy 
 which afterwards was the secret clew to her life. At a later 
 date the Queen found herself between the Catholics and the 
 Calvinists, as the woman had been, for ten years, between Ma- 
 dame d'Etampes and Madame de Poitiers. 
 
 She studied the contradictions of French policy. Francis 
 upheld Calvio and the Lutherans, to annoy Charles V. Then, 
 after having covertly and patiently fostered the Reformation in 
 
346 BALZAC 
 
 Germany, after tolerating Calvin's presence at the Court of 
 Navarre, he turned against it with undisguised severity. So 
 Catherine could see the Court and the women of the Court play- 
 ing with the fire of heresy ; Diane at the head of the Catholic 
 party with the Guises, only because the Duchesse d'Etampes 
 was on the side of Calvin and the Protestants. 
 
 This was Catherine's political education; and in the King's 
 private circle she could study the mistakes made by the Medici. 
 The Dauphin was antagonistic to his father on every point ; he 
 was a bad son. He forgot the hardest but the truest axiom of 
 royalty, namely, that the throne is a responsible entity, and that 
 a son who may oppose his father during his lifetime must carry 
 out his policy on succeeding to the throne. Spinoza, who was 
 as deep a politician as he was a great philosopher, says, in 
 treating of the case of a king who has succeeded to another by 
 a revolution or by treason : *' If the new king hopes to secure 
 his throne and protect his life, he must display so much zeal in 
 avenging his predecessor's death that no one shall feel tempted 
 to repeat such a crime. But to avenge him worthily it is not 
 enough that he should shed the blood of his subjects; he must 
 confirm the maxims of him whose place he fills, and walk in 
 the same ways of government." 
 
 It was the application of this principle which gave the Medici 
 to Florence. Cosmo I, Alessandro's successor, eleven years 
 later instigated the murder, at Venice, of the Florentine Brutus, 
 and, as has been said, persecuted the Strozzi without mercy. It 
 was the neglect of this principle that overthrew Louis XVI. 
 That king was false to every principle of government when he 
 reinstated the Parlements suppressed by his grandfather. Louis 
 XV had been clear-sighted ; the Parlements, and especially that 
 of Paris, were quite half to blame for the disorders that neces- 
 sitated the assembling of the States-General. Louis XV's mis- 
 take was that when he threw down that barrier between the 
 throne and the people, he did not erect a stronger one, that he 
 did not substitute for the Parlements a strong constitutional rule 
 in the provinces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the 
 monarchy, the voting power for taxation and the incidence of 
 the taxes, with consent gradually won to the reforms needed in 
 the monarchical rule. 
 
 Henri H's first act was to give all his confidence to the Con- 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 347 
 
 netable de Montmorency, whom his father had desired him to 
 leave in banishment. The Connetable de Montmorency, with 
 Diane de Poitiers, to whom he was closely attached, was mas- 
 ter of the kingdom. Hence Catherine was even less powerful 
 and happy as Queen of France than she had been as the Dau- 
 phiness. 
 
 At first, from the year 1543, she had a child every year for 
 ten years, and was fully taken up by her maternal functions dur- 
 ing that time, which included the last years of Francis I's reign, 
 and almost the whole of her husband's. Being thus kept out of 
 the tide of affairs, this clever woman spent her time in observ- 
 ing all the interests of the persons at Court, and all the parties 
 formed there. The Italians who had followed her excited vio- 
 lent suspicions. After the execution of Montecuculi, the Con- 
 netable de Montmorency, Diane, and most of the crafty politi- 
 cians at Court were racked with doubts of the Medici; but 
 Francis I always scouted them. Still the Gondi, the Biraguas, 
 the Strozzi, the Ruggieri, the Sardini, in short, all who were 
 classed as the Italians who had arrived in Catherine's wake, 
 were compelled to exercise every faculty of wit, policy, and 
 courage to enable them to remain at Court under the burden of 
 disfavor that weighed on them. During the supremacy of Di- 
 ane de Poitiers, Catherine's obligingness went so far that some 
 clever folks have seen in it an evidence of the profound dis- 
 simulation to which she was compelled by men and circum- 
 stances, and by the conduct of Henri II. But it is going too 
 far to say that she never asserted her rights as a wife and a 
 queen. Her ten children (besides one dead born) were a 
 sufficient explanation of the King's conduct, who was thus set 
 free to spend his time with Diane de Poitiers. But the King 
 certainly never fell short of what he owed to himself; he gave 
 the Queen an entry worthy of any that had previously taken 
 place, on the occasion of her coronation. The records of the 
 Parlement and of the Exchequer prove that these two important 
 bodies went to meet Catherine outside Paris, as far as Saint- 
 Lazare. Here, indeed, is a passage from du Tillet's narrative : 
 
 " A scaffolding had been erected at Saint-Lazare, whereon 
 was a throne (which du Tillet calls a chair of state, chair e de 
 pavement). Catherine seated herself on this, dressed in a sur- 
 coat, or sort of cape of ermine, covered with jewels ; beneath 
 
348 BALZAC 
 
 it a bodice, with a court train, and on her head a crown of pearls 
 and diamonds ; she was supported by the Marechale de la Mark, 
 her lady of honor. Around her, standing, were the princes of 
 the blood and other princes and noblemen richly dressed, with 
 the Chancellor of France in a robe of cloth of gold in a pattern 
 on a ground of red cramoisy/^ In front of the Queen and on 
 the same scaffolding were seated, in two rows, twelve duchesses 
 and countesses, dressed in surcoats of ermine, stomachers, 
 trains, and fillets, that is to say, coronets, whether duchesses or 
 countesses. There were the Duchesses d'Estouteville, de Mont- 
 pensier — the elder and the younger — the Princesse de la Roche- 
 sur-Yon; the Duchesses de Guise, de Nivernois, d'Aumale, de 
 Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers) ; the King's daughter Di- 
 ane, who became Duchesse de Castro-Farnese, and afterwards 
 Duchesse de Montmorency-Damville), Madame la Connetable, 
 and Mademoiselle de Nemours, not to mention the other ladies 
 who could find no room. The four capped Presidents (a 
 mortier), with some other members of the Court and the chief 
 clerk, Du Tillet, went up on to the platform and did their ser- 
 vice, and the First President Lizet, kneeling on one knee, ad- 
 dressed the Queen. The Chancellor, likewise on one knee, 
 made response. She made her entrance into Paris at about 
 three in the afternoon, riding in an open litter, Madame Mar- 
 guerite de France sitting opposite to her, and by the side of the 
 litter came the Cardinals d'Amboise, de Chatillon, de Boulogne, 
 and de Lenoncourt, in their rochets. She got out at the Church 
 of Notre-Dame, and was received by the clergy. After she had 
 made her prayer, she was carried along the Rue de la Calandre 
 to the palace, where the royal supper was spread in the great 
 hall. She sat there in the middle at a marble table, under a 
 canopy of velvet powdered with gold fleurs-de-lys." 
 
 It will here be fitting to controvert a popular error which 
 some persons have perpetuated, following Sauval in the mis- 
 take. It has been said that Henri II carried his oblivion of 
 decency so far as to place Diane's initials even on the build- 
 ings which Catherine had advised him to undertake or to 
 carry on at such lavish expense. But the cipher, which is to 
 be seen at the Louvre, amply refutes those who have so little 
 
 ' The old French word "cramoisi" did a special excellence of the dye. (See Ra- 
 not mean merely a crimson red, but denoted belais.) 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 349 
 
 comprehension as to lend credit to such nonsense, a gratuitous 
 slur on the honor of our kings and queens. The H for Henri 
 and the two C's, face to face, for Catherine seem indeed to make 
 two D's for Diane ; and this coincidence was no doubt pleasing 
 to the King. But it is not the less certain that the royal cipher 
 was officially constructed of the initials of the King and the 
 Queen. And this is so true, that the same cipher is still to be 
 seen on the corn-market in Paris which Catherine herself had 
 built. It may also be found in the crypt of Saint-Denis on 
 Catherine's tomb, which she caused to be constructed during 
 her lifetime by the side of that of Henri H, and on which she 
 is represented from life by the sculptor to whom she sat. 
 
 On a solemn occasion, when he was setting out on an expedi- 
 tion to Germany, Henri H proclaimed Catherine Regent during 
 his absence, as also in the event of his death — on March 25, 
 1552. Catherine's bitterest enerhy, the author of the " Disc ours 
 merveilleux sur les deportements de Catherine II," admits that 
 she acquitted herself of these functions to the general approba- 
 tion, and that the King was satisfied with her administration. 
 Henri H had men and money at the right moment. And after 
 the disastrous day of Saint-Quentin, Catherine obtained from 
 the Parisians considerable sums, which she forwarded to Com- 
 piegne, whither the King had come. 
 
 In politics Catherine made immense efforts to acquire some 
 little influence. She was clever enough to gain over to her in- 
 terests the Connetable de Montmorency, who was all-powerful 
 under Henri II. The King's terrible reply to Montmorency's 
 insistency is well known. This answer was the result of the 
 good advice given by Catherine in the rare moments when she 
 was alone with the King, and could explain to him the policy 
 of the Florentines, which was to set the magnates of a kingdom 
 by the ears and build up the sovereign authority on the ruins 
 — Louis XFs system, subsequently carried out by Richelieu. 
 Henri II, who saw only through the eyes of Diane and the Con- 
 netable, was quite a feudal king, and on friendly terms with the 
 great houses of the realm. 
 
 After an ineflFectual effort in her favor made by the Conne- 
 table, probably in the year 1556, Catherine paid great court to 
 the Guises, and schemed to detach them from Diane's party so 
 as to set them in opposition to Montmorency. But, unfortu- 
 
350 BALZAC 
 
 nately, Diane and the Connetable were as virulent against the 
 Protestants as the Guises were. Hence their antagonism 
 lacked the virus which religious feeling would have given it. 
 Besides, Diane boldly defied the Queen's plans by coquetting 
 with the Guises and giving her daughter to the Due d'Aumale. 
 
 The signs of grief and the ostentatious regret displayed by 
 Catherine on the King's death cannot be regarded as genuine. 
 The fact that Henri H had been so passionately and faithfully 
 attached to Diane de Poitiers made it incumbent on Catherine 
 that she should play the part of a neglected wife who idolized 
 her husband ; but, like every clever woman, she carried on her 
 dissimulation, and never ceased to speak with tender regret 
 of Henri II. Diane herself, it is well known, wore mourning 
 all her life for her husband, Monsieur de Breze. Her colors 
 were black and white, and the King was wearing them at the 
 tournament where he was fatally wounded. Catherine, in im- 
 itation no doubt of her rival, wore mourning for the King to 
 the end of her life. 
 
 On the King's death the Duchesse de Valentinois was shame- 
 lessly deserted and dishonored by the Connetable de Mont- 
 morency, a man in every respect beneath his reputation. Diane 
 sent to offer her estate and chateau of Chenonceaux to the 
 Queen. Catherine then replied in the presence of witnesses, 
 " I can never forget that she was all the joy of my dear Henri ; 
 I should be ashamed to accept, I will give her an estate in ex- 
 change. I would propose that of Chaumont-on-the-Loire." 
 The deed of exchange was, in fact, signed at Blois in 1559. 
 Diane, whose sons-in-law were the Due d'Aumale and the Due 
 de Bouillon, kept her whole fortune and died peacefully in 1566 
 at the age of sixty-six. She was thus nineteen years older than 
 Henri II. These dates, copied from the epitaph on her tomb 
 by a historian who studied the question at the end of the last 
 century, clear up many historical difficulties ; for many writers 
 have said she was forty when her father was sentenced in 1523, 
 while others ha;^e said she was but sixteen. She was, in fact, 
 four-and-twenty. 
 
 After reading everything both for and against her conduct 
 with Francis I, at a time when the House of Poitiers was in the 
 greatest danger, we can neither confirm nor deny anything. It 
 is a passage of history that still remains obscure. We can see 
 
ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI 351 
 
 by what happens in our own day how history is falsified, as it 
 were, in the making. 
 
 Catherine, who founded great hopes on her rival's age, sev- 
 eral times made an attempt to overthrow her. On one occasion 
 she was very near the accomplishment of her hopes. In I554> 
 Madame Diane, being ill, begged the King to go to Saint-Ger- 
 main pending her recovery. This sovereign coquette would 
 not be seen in the midst of the paraphernalia of doctors, nor 
 bereft of the adjuncts of dress. To receive the King on his 
 return, Catherine arranged a splendid ballet, in which five or 
 six young ladies were to address him in verse. She selected 
 for the purpose Miss Fleming, related to her uncle, the Duke of 
 Albany, and one of the loveliest girls imaginable, fair and gold- 
 en-haired ; then a young connection of her own, Clarissa Strozzi, 
 with magnificent black hair and rarely fine hands ; Miss Lewis- 
 ton, maid of honor to Mary Stuart; Mary Stuart herself; 
 Madame Elisabeth de France, the unhappy Queen of Spain; 
 and Madame Claude. Elisabeth was nine years old, Claude 
 eight, and Mary Stuart twelve. Obviously, the Queen aimed 
 at showing off Clarissa Strozzi and Miss Fleming without other 
 rivals in the King's eyes. The King succumbed ; he fell in love 
 with Miss Fleming, and she bore him a son, Henri de Valois, 
 Comte d'Angouleme, Grand Prior of France. 
 
 But Diane's influence and position remained unshaken. Like 
 Madame de Pompadour later with Louis XV, the Duchesse de 
 Valentinois was forgiving. But to what sort of love are we 
 to ascribe this scheme on Catherine's part ? Love of power or 
 love of her husband ? Women must decide. 
 
 A great deal is said in these days as to the license of the press ; 
 but it is difficult to imagine to what a pitch it was carried 
 when printing was a new thing. Aretino, the Voltaire of his 
 time, as is well known, made monarchs tremble, and foremost 
 of them all Charles V. But few people know perhaps how far 
 the audacity of pamphleteers could go. This chateau of Che- 
 nonceaux had been given to Diane, nay, she was entreated to 
 accept it, to induce her to overlook one of the most horrible pub- 
 lications ever hurled at a woman, one which shows how violent 
 was the animosity between her and Madame d'Etampes. In 
 1537, when she was eight-and-thirty, a poet of Champagne, 
 named Jean Voute, published a collection of Latin verses, and 
 
352 BALZAC 
 
 among them three epigrams aimed at her. We must conclude 
 that the poet was under high patronage from the fact that his 
 volume is introduced by a eulogium written by Simon Macrin, 
 the King's first Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber. 
 
 This volume, printed by Simon de Colines, was dedicated 
 " To a Bishop ! " — To Francois Bohier, the brother of the man 
 who, to save his credit at Court and atone for his crime, made 
 an offering on the accession of Henri II of the chateau of Che- 
 nonceaux, built by his father, Thomas Bohier, Councillor of 
 State under four kings: Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, 
 and Francis I. What were the pamphlets published against 
 Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette in comparison 
 with verses that might have been written by Martial ! Voiite 
 must have come to a bad end. Thus the estate and chateau of 
 Chenonceaux cost Diane nothing but the forgiveness of an of- 
 fence — a duty enjoined by the Gospel. Not being assessed by 
 a jury, the penalties inflicted on the press were rather severer 
 then than they are now. 
 
 The widowed Queens of France were required to remain for 
 forty days in the King's bed-chamber, seeing no light but that 
 of the tapers; they might not come out till after the funeral. 
 This inviolable custom annoyed Catherine greatly; she was 
 afraid of cabals. She found a way to evade it. The Cardinal 
 de Lorraine walking one morning in the Rue Culture- Sainte- 
 Catherine, was roughly handled by a party of roisterers. 
 " Whereat his Holiness was much amazed," says Henri Esti- 
 enne, " and gave it out that heretics were lying in wait for him." 
 And on this account the Court moved from Paris to Saint-Ger- 
 main. The Queen would not leave the King her son behind, 
 but took him with her. 
 
 The accession of Francis II, the moment when Catherine pro- 
 posed to seize the reins of power, was a disappointment that 
 formed a cruel climax to the twenty-six years of endurance she 
 had already spent at the French Court. The Guises, with in- 
 credible audacity, at once usurped the sovereign power. The 
 Due de Guise was placed in command of the army, and the Con- 
 netable de Montmorency was shelved. The Cardinal took the 
 control of the finances and the clergy. 
 
 Catherine's political career opened with one of those dramas 
 which, though it was less notorious than some others, was not 
 
About Catherine de medici 353 
 
 the idss horrible, and initiated her no doubt into the agitating 
 shocks of her life. Whether it was that Catherine, after vainly 
 trying the most violent remedies, had thought she might bring 
 the King back to her through jealousy; whether on coming to 
 her second youth she had felt it hard never to have known love, 
 she had shown a warm interest in a gentleman of royal blood, 
 Frangois de Vendome, son of Louis de Vendome — the parent 
 House of the Bourbons — the Vidame de Chartres, the name by 
 which he is known to history. Catherine's covert hatred of Di- 
 ane betrayed itself in many ways, which historians, studying 
 only political developments, have failed to note with due atten- 
 tion. Catherine's attachment to the Vidame arose from an in- 
 sult offered by the young man to the favorite. Diane looked 
 for the most splendid matches for her daughters, who were in- 
 deed of the best blood in the kingdom. Above all, she was 
 ambitious of an alliance with the royal family. And her second 
 daughter, who became the Duchesse d'Aumale, was proposed 
 in marriage to the Vidame, whom Francis I, with sage policy, 
 kept in poverty. For, in fact, when the Vidame de Chartres 
 and the Prince de Conde first came to Court, Francis I gave 
 them appointments! What? the office of chamberlains in or- 
 dinary, with twelve hundred crowns a year, as much as he be- 
 stowed on the humblest of his gentlemen. And yet, though 
 Diane offered him immense wealth, some high office under the 
 Crown, and the King's personal favor, the Vidame refused. 
 And then this Bourbon, factious as he was, married Jeanne, 
 daughter of the Baron d'Estissac, by whom he had no children. 
 
 This proud demeanor naturally commended the Vidame to 
 Catherine, who received him with marked favor, and made him 
 her devoted friend. Historians have compared the last Due de 
 Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse, with the Vidame 
 de Chartres for his power of charming, his merits, and his tal- 
 ents. 
 
 Henri H was not jealous ; he did not apparently think it pos- 
 sible that a Queen of France could fail in her duty, or that a 
 Medici could forget the honor done her by a Valois. When 
 the Queen was said to be flirting with the Vidame de Chartres, 
 she had been almost deserted by the King since the birth of her 
 last child. So this attempt came to nothing — as the King died 
 wearing the colors of Diane de Poitiers. 
 23 
 
354 BALZAC 
 
 Henri IFs four sons nullified every pretension of the Bout* 
 bons, who were all miserably poor, and crushed under the scorn 
 brought upon them by the Connetable de Montmorency's trea- 
 son, in spite of the reasons which had led him to quit the coun- 
 try. The Vidame de Chartres, who was to the first Prince de 
 Conde what Richelieu was to Mazarin, a father in politics, a 
 model, and yet more a master in gallantry, hid the vast ambi- 
 tion of his family under a semblance of levity. Being unable 
 to contend with the Guises, the Montmorencys, the Princes of 
 Scotland, the Cardinals, and the Bouillons, he aimed at dis- 
 tinction by his gracious manners, his elegance, and his wit, 
 which won him the favor of the most charming women, and 
 the heart of many he never thought about. He was a man 
 privileged by nature, whose fascinations were irresistible. 
 
 During the first twenty days of mourning for Henri Ha sud- 
 den change came over the Vidame's prospects. Courted by the 
 Queen-mother, and courting her as a man may court a queen, 
 in the utmost secrecy, he seemed fated to play an important part ; 
 and Catherine, in fact, resolved to make him useful. The 
 Prince received letters from her to the Prince de Conde, in 
 which she pointed out the necessity for a coalition against the 
 Guises. The Guises, informed of this intrigue, made their way 
 into the Queen's chamber to compel her to sign an order con- 
 signing the Vidame to the Bastille, and Catherine found herself 
 under the cruel necessity of submitting. The Vidame died af- 
 ter a few months' captivity, on the day when he came out of 
 prison, a short time before the Amboise conspiracy. 
 
 This was the end of Catherine De Medici's first and only love- 
 afifair. Protestant writers declared that the Queen had him 
 poisoned to bury the secret of her flirtation in the tomb. 
 
 Such was this woman's apprenticeship to the exercise of royal 
 power. 
 
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DON QUIXOTE 
 
 BY 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 
 
HEINRICH HEINE 
 1799— 1856 
 
 Heinrich Heine vvas born of Hebrew parents at Diisseldorf on the 
 Rhine, in 1799. His favorite books in childhood, he tells us, were 
 " Gulliver's Travels," Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," and " Don 
 Quixote." Later in life he made Don Quixote the subject of one of 
 his most charming and characteristic essays. His parents desiring 
 him to follow a business career, he was sent to Hamburg to serve an 
 apprenticeship in the banking house of his uncle, Solomon Heine. 
 This proving distasteful to him, he was enabled through pecuniary 
 assistance froni his uncle to study law at Bonn, Berlin, and Gottingen. 
 He received his degree at Gottingen in 1825, after embracing Chris- 
 tianity. The first collection of his poems, " Gedichte," was published 
 in 1822. This was followed by a volume of verse called " Buch des Lie- 
 der," in 1827, which received favorable notice from the critics, and was 
 translated into Eaglish by Sir Walter Scott. " Neue Gedichte," 
 which contains some of his finest lyrics, appeared in 1844. From 1826 
 to 183 1 the four books of the " Reisebilder " were published. They 
 were characterized at that time as " the most brilliant, the wittiest, 
 the most entertaining, the most immoral, the coarsest, the most dan- 
 gerous, the most revolutionary, the most atheistic books that any 
 German author had ever printed." The work was interdicted in Ger- 
 many, Austria, and other monarchical countries on account of its 
 strong revolutionary sympathies, but was, nevertheless, widely circu- 
 lated. While the " Reisebilder " greatly increased Heine's fame, the 
 work also made for him a host of bitter enemies. 
 
 In 183 1 Heine left Germany and settled in Paris. For sixteen years, 
 he mingled with the society of authors and artists in that literary and 
 artistic capital, met and finally married his " Mathilde," and did much 
 literary work, both good and bad. His " History of Religion and 
 Philosophy in Germany," and essays on the Romantic school, appeared 
 during this period, in addition to the volume of poems referred to above. 
 
 In 1847 his uncle, Solomon Heine, died, and the heirs attempted to 
 deprive Heine of the small annual allowance he had always received 
 from his generous relative, and also of a legacy he had been promised. 
 Their greed ultimately failed of its purpose, but the excitement broke 
 down the poet's enfeebled constitution and brought on a terrible disease 
 of the spine that made his last years a period of physical agony. Yet, 
 during the eight years of suffering on his " mattress-grave," Heine's 
 spirit never yielded, nor did his courage and gayety ever flag. From 
 1850 to 1851 he produced the wonderful series of poems entitled " Ro- 
 manzero," and from 1852 to 1854 dictated his " Last Poems " and 
 " Confessions." He died in 1856, and was buried in the cemetery of 
 Montmarte, in accordance with his expressed wish. 
 
 Heine was pre-eminently a poet, his lyrics ranking with the best of 
 Schiller and Goethe. His prose sparkles with wit and satire, and has, 
 therefore, won enduring popularity. His style is lucid and incisive 
 and marked by a purity and directness of diction unsurpassed in Ger- 
 man literature. 
 
 356 
 
DON QUIXOTE 
 
 THE first book that I read after I arrived at boyhood's 
 years of discretion, and had tolerably mastered my let- 
 ters, was " The Life and Deeds of the Sagacious Knight, 
 Don Quixote de la Mancha," written by Miguel Cervantes de 
 Saavedra.^ Well do I remember the time, when, early in the 
 morning, I stole away from home and hastened to the court- 
 garden, that I might read " Don Quixote " without being dis- 
 turbed. It was a beautiful day in May, the blooming spring 
 lay basking in the silent morning light, listening to the com- 
 pliments of that sweet flatterer, the nightingale, who sang so 
 softly and caressingly, with such a melting fervor, that even 
 the shyest of buds burst into blossom, and the lusty grasses 
 and the fragrant sunshine kissed more rapturously, and the trees 
 and flowers trembled from very ecstasy. But I seated myself 
 on an old moss-covered stone bench in the so-called Avenue of 
 Sighs, not far from the water-fall, and feasted my little heart 
 with the thrilling adventures of the valiant knight. In my child- 
 ish simplicity I took everything in sober earnest ; no matter how 
 ridiculous the mishaps which fate visited upon the poor hero, I 
 thought it must be just so, and imagined that to be laughed at 
 was as much a part of heroism as to be wounded ; and the former 
 vexed me just as sorely as the latter grieved my heart. I was 
 a child, and knew nothing of the irony God has interwoven 
 into the world, and which the great poet has imitated in his 
 miniature world; and I wept most bitterly, when, for all his 
 chivalry and generosity, the noble knight gained only ingrati- 
 tude and cudgels. As I was unpractised in reading, I spoke 
 every word aloud, and so the birds and the trees, the brooks and 
 the flowers, could hear all I read, and as these innocent beings 
 know as little as children of the irony of the world, they too 
 took it all for sober earnest, and wept with me over the sor- 
 
 * [The admirable account of " Don duction to an edition de luxe of Cef- 
 Quixote " embodied in this essay was vantes's masterpiece.] 
 written by Heine in 1837, as the intro- 
 
 357 
 
358 HEINE 
 
 rows of the unfortunate knight ; an old worn-out oak sobbed 
 even; and the water-fall shook more vehemently his white 
 beard, and seemed to scold at the wickedness of the world. 
 We felt that the heroism of the knight was none the less 
 worthy of admiration because the lion turned tail without 
 fighting, and that if his body was weak and withered, his armor 
 rusty, his steed a miserable jade, his deeds were all the more 
 worthy of praise. We despised the vulgar rabble who beat 
 the poor hero so barbarously, and still more the rabble of 
 higher rank, who were decked in silk attire, gay courtly 
 phrases, and grand titles, and jeered at the man who was so 
 far their superior in powers of mind and noBility of soul. Dul- 
 cinea's knight rose ever higher in my esteem, and my love for 
 him grew stronger and stronger the longer I read in that won- 
 derful book, which I continued to do daily in that same garden, 
 so that when autumn came I had reached the end of the story, 
 and I shall never forget the day when I read the sorrowful 
 combat, in which the knight came to so ignominious an end. 
 
 It was a gloomy day; dismal clouds swept over a leaden 
 sky, the yellow leaves fell sorrowfully from the trees, heavy 
 tear-drops hung on the last flowers that drooped down in a 
 sad faded way their dying little heads, the nightingales had 
 long since died away, from every side the image of transitori- 
 ness stared at me — and my heart was ready to break as I read 
 how the noble knight lay on the ground, stunned and bruised, 
 and through his closed visor said, in tones faint and feeble, as 
 if he was speaking from the grave, " Dulcinea is the fairest 
 lady in the world, and I the unhappiest knight on earth, but 
 it is not meet that my weakness should disown this truth — 
 strike with your lance, Sir Knight." 
 
 Ah me ! that brilliant knight of the silver moon, who van- 
 quished the bravest and noblest man in the world, was a dis- 
 guised barber! 
 
 That was long ago. Many new springs have bloomed forth 
 since then, yet their mightiest charm has always been want- 
 ing, for, alas! I no longer believe the sweet deceits of the 
 nightingale, spring's flatterer ; I know how soon his magnifi- 
 cence fades ; and when I look at the youngest rosebuds I see 
 them in spirit bloom to a sorrowful red, grow pale, and be 
 scattered by the winds. Everywhere I see a disguised winter, 
 
DON QUIXOTE 359 
 
 In my breast, however, still blooms that flaming love, which 
 soared so ardently above the earth, to revel adventurously in 
 the broad yawning spaces of heaven, and which, pushed back 
 by the cold stars, and sinking home again to the little earth, 
 was forced to confess, with sighing and triumph, that there is 
 in all creation nothing fairer or better than the heart of man. 
 This love is the inspiration that fills me, always divine, whether 
 it does foolish or wise deeds. And so the tears the little boy 
 shed over the sorrows of the silly knight were in nowise spent 
 in vain, any more than the later tears of the youth, as on many 
 a night he wept in the study over the deaths of the holy heroes 
 of freedom — ^over King Agis of Sparta, over Caius and Tiberius 
 Gracchus of Rome, over Jesus of Jerusalem, and over Robes- 
 pierre and Saint- Just of Paris. Now that I have put on the 
 toga virilis, and myself desire -to be a man, the tears have come 
 to an end, and it is necessary to act like a man, imitating my 
 great predecessors ; in the future, if God will, to be wept also 
 by boys and youths. Yes, upon these one can still reckon in 
 our cold age ; for they can still be kindled by the breezes that 
 blow to them from old books, and so they can comprehend 
 the flaming hearts of the present. Youth is unselfish in its 
 thoughts and feelings, and on that account it feels truth most 
 deeply, and is not sparing, where a bold sympathy is wanted, 
 with confession or deed. Older people are selfish and narrow- 
 minded ; they think more of the interest of their capital than 
 of the interest of mankind ; they let their little boat float quietly 
 down the gutter of life, and trouble themselves little about the 
 sailor who battles with the waves on the open sea; or they 
 creep with clinging tenacity up to the heights of mayoralty or 
 the presidency of their club, and shrug their shoulders over 
 the heroic figures which the storm throws down from the col- 
 umns of fame; and then they tell, perhaps, how they them- 
 selves also in their youth ran their heads against the wall, but 
 that later on they reconciled themselves to the wall, for the 
 wall was the absolute, existing by and for itself, which, be- 
 cause it was, was also reasonable, on which account he is un- 
 reasonable who will not endure a high, reasonable, inevitable, 
 eternally ordained absolutism. Ah, these objectionable peo- 
 ple, who wish to philosophize us into a gentle slavery, are yet 
 more worthy of esteem than those depraved ones who do not 
 
360 HEINE 
 
 even admit reasonable grounds for the defence of despotism, 
 but being learned in history fight for it as a right of custom, 
 to which men in the course of time have gradually accustomed 
 themselves, and which has so become incontestably valid and 
 lawful. 
 
 Ah, well ! I will not, like Ham, lift up the garment of my 
 fatherland's shame; but it is terrible how slavery has been 
 made with us a matter for prating about, and how German phi- 
 losophers and historians have tormented their brains to defend 
 despotism, however silly or awkward, as reasonable and law- 
 ful. Silence is the honor of slaves, says Tacitus ; these philoso- 
 phers and historians maintain the contrary, and exhibit the 
 badge of slavery in their button-holes. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, you are right, and I am only a Don Qui- 
 xote, and the reading of all sorts of wonderful books has turned 
 my head, as it was with the Knight of La Mancha, and Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau was my Amadis of Gaul, Mirabeau my Ro- 
 land or Agramante; and I have studied too much the heroic 
 deeds of the French Paladins and the round-table of the Na- 
 tional Convention. Indeed, my madness and the fixed ideas 
 that I created out of books are of a quite opposite kind to the 
 madness and the fixed ideas of him of La Mancha. He wished 
 to establish again the expiring days of chivalry ; I, on the con- 
 trary, wish to annihilate all that is yet remaining from that 
 time, and so we work with altogether different views. My 
 colleague saw windmills as giants ; I, on the contrary, can see 
 in our present giants only vaunting windmills. He took 
 leather wine-skins for mighty enchanters, but I can see in the 
 enchanters of to-day only leather wine-skins. He held beg- 
 garly pot-houses for castles, donkey-drivers for cavaliers, 
 stable wenches for court ladies ; I, on the contrary, hold our 
 castles for beggarly pot-houses, our cavaliers for mere donkey- 
 drivers, our court ladies for ordinary stable wenches. As he 
 took a puppet-show for a state ceremony, so I hold our state 
 ceremonies as sorry puppet-shows, yet as bravely as the brave 
 Knight of La Mancha I strike out at the clumsy machinery. 
 Alas ! such heroic deeds often turn out as badly for me as for 
 him, and like him I must suffer much for the honor of my 
 lady. If I denied her from mere fear or base love of gain, I 
 rnight live conifortably in this reasonably constructed world. 
 
DON QUIXOTE 361 
 
 and I should lead a fair Maritorna to the altar, and let myself 
 be blessed by fat enchanters, and banquet with noble donkey- 
 drivers, and engender harmless romances as well as other little 
 slaves ! Instead of that, wearing the three colors of my lady, 
 I must strike through unspeakable opposition, and fight bat- 
 tles, every one of which costs me my heart's blood. Day and 
 night I am in straits, for those enemies are so artful that many 
 I struck to death still give themselves the appearance of being 
 alive, changing themselves into all forms, and spoiling day and 
 night for me. How many sorrows have I suffered by such fatal 
 spectres! Where anything lovely bloomed for me then they 
 crept in, those cunning ghosts, and broke even the most in- 
 nocent buds. Everywhere, and when I should least suspect 
 it, I discovered on the ground the traces of their silvery slime, 
 and if I took no care, I might have a dangerous fall even in the 
 house of my love. You may smile and hold such anxieties for 
 idle fancies Hke those of Don Quixote. But fancied pains hurt 
 all the same ; and if one fancies that he has drunk hemlock he 
 may get into a consumption, and he certainly will not get fat. 
 And the report that I have got fat is a calumny ; at least I have 
 not yet received any fat sinecure, even if I possess the requisite 
 talents. I fancy that everything has been done to keep me 
 lean ; when I was hungry they fed me with snakes, when I was 
 thirsty they gave me wormwood to drink; they poured hell 
 into my heart, so that I wept poison and sighed fire; they 
 crouched near me even in my dreams; and I see horrible 
 spectres, noble lackey faces with gnashing teeth and threaten- 
 ing noses, and deadly eyes glaring from cowls, and white ruf- 
 fled hands with gleaming knives. 
 
 And even the old woman who lives near me in the next room 
 considers me to be mad, and says that I talk the maddest non- 
 sense in my sleep ; and the other night she plainly heard me 
 calling out — " Dulcinea is the fairest woman in the world, and 
 I the unhappiest knight on earth ; but it is not meet that my 
 weakness should disown this truth. Strike with your lance, 
 Sir Knight!" 
 
 It is now eight years since I wrote the foregoing lines ^ for 
 
 2 [Heine only quotes the first part of the passage from the " Reisebilder," 
 which has here been given in full.] 
 
362 HEINE 
 
 the fourth part of the " Reisebilder," in which I described the 
 impression which the reading of " Don Quixote " had made 
 on my mind many years ago. Good Heavens ! how swiftly 
 time flies ! It seems to me as if it were but yesterday that, 
 in the Avenue of Sighs, in the court-garden at Diisseldorf, I 
 finished reading the book, and my heart is still moved with 
 admiration for the deeds and sufferings of the noble knight. 
 Has my heart remained constant in this ever since, or has it, 
 after passing through a wonderful cycle, returned to the emo- 
 tions of childhood ? The latter may well be the case, for I re- 
 member that during each lustrum of my life " Don Quixote " 
 has made a different impression upon me. When I was blos- 
 soming into adolescence, and with inexperienced hands sought 
 to pluck the roses of life, climbed the loftiest peaks in order 
 to be nearer to the sun, and at night dreamed of naught else 
 but eagles and chaste maidens, then " Don Quixote " was to 
 me a very unsatisfactory book, and if it chanced to fall in 
 my way I involuntarily shoved it aside. At a later period, when 
 I had ripened into manhood, I became to a certain degree rec- 
 onciled to Dulcinea's luckless champion, and I began to laugh 
 at him. The fellow is a fool, said I. And yet, strange to say, 
 the shadowy forms of the lean knight and his fat squire have 
 ever followed me in all the journeyings of my life, particuarly 
 when I came to any critical turning-point. Thus I recollect 
 that while making the journey to France, one morning in the 
 post-chaise I awakened from a half-feverish slumber, and saw 
 in the early morning mist two well-known figures riding by 
 my side. The one on my right was Don Quixote de la Man- 
 cha, mounted on his lean, abstract Rosinante, the other on my 
 left was Sancho Panza, on his substantial, positive gray donkey. 
 We had just reached the French frontier. The noble Manchean 
 bowed his head reverently before the tri-colored flag, which 
 fluttered towards us from the high post that marks the bound- 
 ary line. Our good Sancho saluted with a somewhat less cor- 
 dial nod the first French gendarmes whom we saw approaching 
 near by. At last my two friends pushed on ahead, and I lost 
 sight of them, only now and then I caught the sound of Rosi- 
 nante's spirited neighing, and the donkey's responsive bray. 
 
 At that time I was of the opinion that the ridiculousness of 
 Don Quixotism consisted in the fact that the noble knight 
 
DON QUIXOTE 363 
 
 endeavored to recall a long-perished past back to life, and his 
 poor limbs and back came into painful contact with the harsh 
 realities of the present. Alas ! I have since learned that it is 
 an equally ungrateful folly to endeavor to bring the future 
 prematurely into the present, and that for such an assault upon 
 the weighty interests of the day, one possesses but a very sorry 
 steed, a brittle armor, and an equally frail body ! And the wise 
 man dubiously shakes his sage head at the one, as well as at 
 the other, of these Quixotisms. But Dulcinea del Toboso is 
 still the most beautiful woman in the world; although I lie 
 stretched upon the earth, helpless and miserable, I will never 
 take back that assertion, I cannot do otherwise — on with your 
 lances, ye Knights of the Silver Moon, ye disguised barbers ! 
 
 What leading idea guided Cervantes when he wrote his great 
 book? Was his purpose merely the destruction of the ro- 
 mances of knight-errantry, the reading of which at that time 
 was so much the rage in Spain that both clerical and secular 
 ordinances against them were powerless? Or did he seek to 
 hold up to ridicule all manifestations of human enthusiasm in 
 general, military heroism in particular? Ostensibly he aimed 
 only to satirize the romances above referred to, and through 
 the exposition of their absurdities deliver them over ta univer- 
 sal derision, and thus put an end to them. In this he succeeded 
 most brilliantly ; for that which neither the exhortations from 
 the pulpit, nor the threats of the authorities could effect, that 
 a poor writer accomplished with his pen. He destroyed the 
 romances of chivalry so effectually that soon after the appear- 
 ance of " Don Quixote " the taste for that class of literature 
 wholly died out in Spain, and no more of that order were 
 printed. But the pen of a man of genius is always greater than 
 he himself ; it extends far beyond his temporary purpose, and 
 without being himself clearly conscious of it, Cervantes wrote 
 the greatest satire against human enthusiasm. He had not 
 the least presentiment of this, for he himself was a hero, who 
 had spent the greater portion of his life in chivalrous conflicts, 
 and who in his old age was wont to rejoice that he had partici- 
 pated in the battle of Lepanto, although he paid for this glory 
 with the loss of his left hand. 
 
 The biographers can tell us but little concerning the person 
 or private life of the poet who wrote " Don Quixote." We do 
 
364 HEINE 
 
 not lose much by the omission of such details, which are gen- 
 erally picked up from the female gossips of the neighborhood. 
 They see only the outer shell ; but we see the man, his true, 
 sincere, unslandered self. 
 
 He was a handsome, powerful man, Don Miguel Cervantes 
 de Saavedra. He had a high forehead, and a large heart. His 
 eyes possessed a wonderful magic; just as there are people 
 who can look into the earth, and see the hidden treasures and 
 the dead that lie buried there, so the eye of the great poet could 
 penetrate the breasts of men, and see distinctly all what was con- 
 cealed there. To the good his look was as a ray of sunlight 
 gladdening and illuminating the heart ; to the bad his glance 
 was a sword, sharply piercing their souls. His searching eyes 
 penetrated to the very soul of a person, and questioned it, 
 and if it refused to answer, he put it to the torture, and the soul 
 lay stretched bleeding on the rack, while perhaps the body as- 
 sumed an air of condenscending superiority. Is it to be won- 
 dered at that many formed a dislike for him, and gave him but 
 scant assistance in his journey through life ? He never achieved 
 rank or position, and from all his toilsome pilgrimages he 
 brought back no pearls, but only empty shells. It is said that 
 he could not appreciate the value of money, but I assure you 
 he fully appreciated its worth when he had no more. But he 
 never prized it as highly as he did his honor. He had debts, 
 and in one of his writings, in which Apollo is supposed to grant 
 to the poets a charter of privileges, the first paragraph de- 
 clares : When a poet says he has no money, his simple assur- 
 ance shall suffice, and no oath shall be required of him. He 
 loved music, flowers, and women, but in his love for the latter 
 he sometimes fared very badly, particularly in his younger 
 days. Did the consciousness of future greatness console him, 
 when pert young roses stung him with their thorns ? Once on 
 a bright summer afternoon, while yet a young gallant, he 
 walked along the banks of the Tagus in company with a pretty 
 girl of sweet sixteen, who continually mocked at his tender 
 speeches. The sun had not yet set, it still glowed with all its 
 golden splendor, but high up in the heavens was the moon, 
 pale and insignificant, like a little white cloud. " Seest thou," 
 said the young poet to his sweetheart, " seest thou yonder 
 small pale disc ? The river by our side in which it mirrors it- 
 
t)6M OUIXOTE 3^5 
 
 self seems to receive its pitiful reflex on its proud bosom mere- 
 ly out of compassion, and the curling billows at times cast 
 it disdainfully aside, towards the shore. But wait until day 
 fades into twilight ; as soon as darkness descends, yonder pale 
 orb will grow brighter and brighter, and will flood the whole 
 stream with its silvery light, and the haughty billows that be- 
 fore were so scornful will then tremble with ecstasy at sight of 
 the lovely moon, and roll rapturously towards it." 
 
 The history of poets must be sought for in their works, for 
 there are to be found their most confidential confessions. In 
 all his writings, in his dramas even more than in " Don Qui- 
 xote," we see, as I have before mentioned, that Cervantes had 
 long been a soldier. In fact, the Roman proverb, " Living 
 means fighting," finds a double application in his case. He 
 took part as a common soldier in most of those fierce games 
 of war which King Philip II carried on in all countries for the 
 honor of God and his own pleasure. The circumstance that 
 Cervantes devoted his whole youth to the service of the great- 
 est champion of Catholicism, and that he fought to advance 
 Catholic interests, warrants the assumption that he had those 
 interests at heart, and hence refutes the widely spread opinion 
 that only the fear of the Inquisition withheld him from discuss- 
 ing in " Don Quixote " the great Protestant questions of the 
 time. No, Cervantes was a faithful son of the Roman Church, 
 and he not only bled physically in knightly combats for her 
 blessed banner, but his whole soul suffered a most painful 
 martyrdom during his many years of captivity among the un- 
 believers. 
 
 We are indebted to accident for most of the details of Cer- 
 vantes's doings while in Algiers, and here we recognize in the 
 great poet an equally great hero. The history of his captivity 
 gives a most emphatic contradiction to the melodious lie of 
 that polished man of the world, who made Augustus and the 
 German pedants believe that he was a poet, and that poets are 
 cowards. No, the true poet is also a true hero, and in his 
 breast dwells that god-like patience, which, as the Spaniards 
 say, is a second fount of courage. There is no more elevating 
 spectacle than that of the noble Castilian who serves the Dey 
 of Algiers as a slave, constantly meditating an escape, with un- 
 flagging energy preparing his bold plans, composedly facing 
 
366 HEINE 
 
 all dangers, and when the enterprise miscarries, is ready to 
 submit to torture and death rather than betray his accomplices. 
 The bloodthirsty master . of his body becomes disarmed by 
 such grand magnanimity and virtue. The tiger spares the 
 fettered lion, and trembles before the terrible " One-Arm," 
 whom with but a single word he could despatch to his death. 
 Cervantes is known in all Algiers as " One-Arm," and the 
 Dey confesses that only when he knows that the one-armed 
 Spaniard is in safe-keeping can he sleep soundly at night, as- 
 sured of the safety of his city, his army, and his slaves. 
 
 I have referred to the fact that Cervantes was always a com- 
 mon soldier, but even in so subordinate a position he succeeded 
 in distinguishing himself to such a degree as to attract the 
 notice of the great general, Don John of Austria, and on his 
 return from Italy to Spain he was furnished with the most com- 
 plimentary letters of recommendation to the King, in which 
 his advancement was most emphatically urged. When the 
 Algerine corsairs, who captured him on the Mediterranean 
 Sea, beheld these letters, they took him to be a person of the 
 highest rank and importance, and hence demanded so large a 
 ransom that notwithstanding all their efforts and sacrifices his 
 family were not able to purchase his freedom, and the unfortu- 
 nate poet's captivity was thereby prolonged and embittered. 
 Thus the recognition of his merits became an additional source 
 of misfortune, and thus to the very end of his days was he 
 mocked by that cruel dame, the goddess Fortuna, who never 
 forgives genius for having achieved fame and honor without 
 her assistance. 
 
 But are the misfortunes of a man of genius always the work 
 of blind chance, or do they necessarily follow from his inner 
 nature and environment ? Does his soul enter into strife with 
 the world of reality, or do the coarse realities begin the un- 
 equal conflict with his noble soul ? 
 
 Society is a republic. When an individual strives to rise, 
 the collective masses press him back through ridicule and 
 abuse. No one shall be wiser or better than the rest. But 
 against him, who by the invincible power of genius towers 
 above the vulgar masses, society launches its ostracism, and 
 persecutes him so mercilessly with scoffing and slander, that 
 
DON QUIXOTE 367 
 
 he is finally compelled to withdraw into the solitude of his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 Verily, society is republican in its very essence. Every 
 sovereignty, intellectual as well as material, is hated by it. The 
 latter oftener gives aid to the former than is generally im- 
 agined. We ourselves came to this conclusion soon after the 
 revolution of July, when the spirit of republicanism manifested 
 itself in all social relations. Our republicans hated the laurels 
 of a great poet even as they hated the purple of a great king. 
 They sought to level the intellectual inequalities of mankind, 
 and inasmuch as they regarded all ideas that had been pro- 
 duced on the soil of the State as general property, nothing 
 remained to be done but to decree an equality of style also. 
 In sooth, a good style was decried as something aristocratic, 
 and we heard manifold assertions : " A true democrat must 
 write in the style of the people — sincere, natural, crude." Most 
 of the party of action succeeded easily in doing this, but not 
 everyone possesses the gift of writing badly, especially if one 
 has previously formed the habit of writing well, and then it 
 was at once said, " That is an aristocrat, a lover of style, a friend 
 of art, an enemy of the people." They were surely honest in 
 their views, like Saint Hieronymus, who considered his good 
 style a sin, and gave himself sound scourgings for it. 
 
 Just as little as we find anti-Catholic, so also do we fail 
 to discover anti-absolutist strains in " Don Quixote." The 
 critics who think that they scent such sentiments therein are 
 clearly in error. Cervantes was the son of a school which 
 went so far as to poetically idealize the idea of unquestioning 
 obedience to the sovereign. And that sovereign was the King 
 of Spain at a time when its majesty dazzled the whole world. 
 The common soldier felt himself a ray in that halo of glory, 
 and willingly sacrificed his individual freedom to gratify the 
 national pride of the Castilian. 
 
 The political grandeur of Spain at that time contributed not 
 a little to exalt and enlarge the hearts of her poets. In the 
 mind of a Spanish poet, as in the realm of Charles V, the sun 
 never set. The fierce wars against the Moors were ended, 
 and as after a storm the flowers are most fragrant, so poesy 
 ever blooms most grandly after a civil war. We witness the 
 same phenomenon in England at the time of Elizabeth, and 
 
36§ ntm^ 
 
 Sit the same time as in Spain there arose a galaxy of poet^, 
 which invites the most remarkable parallelisms. There we see 
 Shakespeare, here Cervantes, as the flower of the school. 
 
 Like the Spanish poets under the three Philips, so also the 
 English poets under Elizabeth present a certain family like- 
 ness, and neither Shakespeare nor Cervantes has claim to 
 originality in our sense of the word. They by no means differ 
 from their contemporaries through peculiar modes of thought ^ 
 or feeling, or by an especial manner of portrayal, but only 
 through greater depth, fervor, tenderness, and power. Their 
 creations are more infused and penetrated with the divine 
 spark of poetry. 
 
 But both poets were not only the flowers of their time, but 
 they were also the germs of the future. As Shakespeare, by 
 the influence of his works, particularly on Germany and the 
 France of to-day, is to be regarded as the creator of the later 
 dramatic art, so must we honor in Cervantes the author of the 
 modern novel. I shall allow myself a few passing observa- 
 tions on the subject. 
 
 The older novels, the so-called romances of chivalry, sprang 
 from the poetry of the Middle Ages. They were at first prose 
 versions of those epic poems whose heroes are derived from 
 the mythical traditions of Charlemagne and the Holy Grail. 
 The subject was always knightly adventures. It was the ro- 
 mance of the nobility, and the personages that figured therein 
 were either fabulous, fantastic beings, or knights with golden 
 spurs; nowhere an allusion to the people. These romances 
 of knighthood, which degenerated into the most ridiculous 
 absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by his " Don Quixote." 
 But while by his satire he destroyed the earlier romances, he 
 also furnished a model for a new school of fiction, which we 
 call the modern novel. Such is always the wont of great poets ; 
 while they tear down the old, they at the same time build up 
 the new; they never destroy without replacing. Cervantes 
 created the modern novel by introducing into his romances of 
 knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, by inter- 
 mingling with it phases of folk-life. This partiality for de- 
 scribing the doings of the common rabble, of the vilest tatter- 
 demalions, is not only found in Cervantes, but in all his literary 
 contemporaries, and among the Spanish painters as well as 
 
DON QUIXOTE 369 
 
 among the poets of that period. A Murillo, who stole heaven's 
 loveliest tints with which to paint his beautiful Madonnas, 
 painted with the same love the filthiest creatures of this earth. 
 It was perhaps the enthusiasm for art itself that made these 
 noble Spaniards find as much pleasure in the faithful portrayal 
 of a beggar lad scratching his head as in the representation 
 of the Blessed Virgin. Or, perhaps, it was the charm of 
 contrast that led noblemen of the highest rank, a dapper cour- 
 tier like Quevedo, or a powerful minister like Mendoza, to fill 
 their romances with ragged beggars and vagabonds. They 
 perhaps sought to relieve the monotony of their lofty rank by 
 putting themselves in imagination into a quite different sphere 
 of life ; as we find a similar tendency among some of our Ger- 
 man authors, whose novels contain naught else but descrip- 
 tions of the nobility, and who a4ways make their heroes counts 
 and barons. We do not find in Cervantes this one-sided ten- 
 dency to portray the vulgar only; he intermingles the ideal 
 and the common ; one serves as light or as shade to the other, 
 and the aristocratic element is as prominent in it as the popu- 
 lar. But this noble, chivalrous, aristocratic element disappears 
 entirely from the novels of the English, who were the first to 
 imitate Cervantes, and to this day always keep him in view as 
 a model. These English novelists since Richardson's reign 
 are prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even 
 ^ithy descriptions of the life of the common people are repug- 
 nant, and we see on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeois 
 novels arise, wherein the petty, humdrum life of the middle 
 classes is depicted. The public was surfeited with this de- . 
 plorable class of literature until recently, when appeared the* 
 great Scot, who effected a revolution, or rather a restoration, 
 in novel-writing. As Cervantes introduced the democratic ele- 
 ment into romance, at a time when one-sided knight-errantry 
 ruled supreme, so Walter Scott restored the aristocratic ele- 
 ment to romance when it had wholly disappeared, and only a 
 prosaic bourgeoisie was to be found there. By an opposite 
 course Walter Scott again restored to romance that beautiful 
 symmetry which we admire in Cervantes's " Don Quixote." 
 
 I believe that the merits of England's second great poet have 
 never in this respect been recognized. His Tory proclivities, 
 his partiality for the past, were wholesome for literature, and 
 24 
 
37o \ HEINE 
 
 for those masterpieces of his genius that everywhere found 
 favor and imitators, and which drove into the darkest corners 
 of the circulating libraries those ashen-gray, ghostly remains 
 of the bourgeoisie romances. It is an error not to recognize 
 Walter Scott as the founder of the so-called historical romance, 
 and to endeavor to trace the latter to German initative. This 
 error arises from the failure to perceive that the characteristic 
 feature of the historical romance consists just in the harmony 
 between the aristocratic and democratic elements, and that 
 Walter Scott through the reintroduction of the aristocratic 
 element, most beautifully restored that harmony which had 
 been overthrown during the absolutism of the democratic ele- 
 ment, whereas our German romanticists eliminated the demo- 
 cratic element entirely from their novels, and returned again 
 to the ruts of those crazy romances of knight-errantry that 
 flourished before Cervantes. Our De la Motte-Fouque is only 
 a straggler from the ranks of those poets who gave to the 
 world " Amadis de Gaul," and similar extravagant absurdities. 
 I admire not only the talent, but also the courage of the noble 
 baron who, two centuries after the appearance of " Don Qui- 
 xote," has written his romances of chivalry. It was a peculiar 
 period in Germany when the latter appeared and found favor 
 with the public. What was the significance in literature of 
 that partiality for knight-errantry, and for those pictures of 
 the old feudal times? I believe that the German people de- 
 sired to bid an eternal farewell to the Middle Ages, but moved 
 with emotion as we Germans are so apt to be, we took our 
 leave with a kiss. For the last time we pressed our lips to the 
 old tombstone. True, some of us behaved in a very silly man- 
 ner on that occasion. Ludwig Tieck, the smallest boy in 
 school, dug the dead ancestors out of their grave, rocked the 
 coffin as if it were a cradle, and in childish, lisping accents sang, 
 " Sleep, little grandsire, sleep." 
 
 I have called Walter Scott England's second great poet, and 
 his novels masterpieces; but it is to his genius only that I 
 would give the highest praise. His novels I can by no means 
 place on an equality with the great romance of Cervantes. The 
 latter surpasses him in epic spirit. Cervantes was, as I have 
 already stated, a Catholic poet, and it is perhaps to this cir- 
 cumstance that he is indebted for that grand epic composure 
 
DON QUIXOTE 37 1 
 
 of soul, which, Hke a crystalHne firmament, overarches those 
 picturesque and poetical creations; nowhere is there a rift of 
 scepticism. Added to this is the calm dignity which is the na- 
 tional characteristic of the Spaniard. But Walter Scott be- 
 longs to a Church which subjects even divine matters to a sharp 
 examination; as an advocate and as a Scotchman he is ac- 
 customed to action and to debate, and we find the dramatic 
 element most prominent in his novels, as well as in his life and 
 his temperament. Hence his works can never be regarded as 
 the pure model of that style of fiction which we denominate 
 the romance. To the Spaniards is due the honor of having 
 produced the best novel, as England is entitled to the credit 
 of having achieved the highest rank in the drama. 
 
 And the Germans, what palm remains for them? Well, 
 then, we are the best lyric poets on earth. No people possesses 
 such beautiful songs as the Germans. At present the nations 
 are too much occupied with political affairs, but when these 
 are once laid aside, then let us Germans, English, Spaniards, 
 French, Italians, all go out into the green forests and chant 
 our lays, and the nightingale shall be umpire. I am convinced 
 that in this tournament of minstrelsy the songs of Wolfgang 
 Goethe will win the prize. 
 
 Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe form the triumvirate 
 of poets, who, in the three great divisions of poetry, epic, dra- 
 matic, and lyric, have achieved the greatest success. The 
 writer of these pages is perhaps peculiarly fitted to sound the 
 praises of our great countryman as the most perfect of lyric 
 poets. Goethe stands midway between tHe two classes of song- 
 writers, between those two schools, of which one, alas! is 
 known by my own name, the other as the Suabian school. 
 Both have their merits; they have indirectly promoted the 
 welfare of German poetry. The first effected a wholesome re- 
 action against the one-sided idealism of German poetry, it led 
 the intellect back to stern realities, and uprooted that senti- 
 mental Petrarchism that has always seemed to us as a Quixot- 
 ism in verse. The Suabian school also contributed indirectly 
 to the weal of German poetry. If in northern Germany strong 
 and healthy poetical productions came to light, thanks are 
 perhaps due to the Suabian school, which attracted to itself 
 all the sickly chlorotic, mawkishly-pious, clumsy votaries of 
 
372 
 
 HEINE 
 
 the German muse. Stuttgart was the fontanel, as it were, for 
 the German muse. 
 
 While I ascribe the highest achievements in drama, in ro- 
 mance, and in lyric poetry to this great triumvirate, far be it 
 from me to depreciate the poetical merits of other great poets. 
 Nothing is more foolish than tl]e query, " Which poet is 
 greater than the other ? " Flame is flame, and its weight can- 
 not be determined in pounds and ounces. Only a narrow shop- 
 keeper mind will attempt to weigh genius in its miserable 
 cheese scales. Not only the ancients, but some of the modems, 
 have written works in which the fire of poetry burns with a 
 splendor equal to that of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, 
 Cervantes, and Goethe. Nevertheless, these names hold to- 
 gether as if through some secret bond. A kindred spirit shines 
 forth from their creations, an immortal tenderness exhales 
 from them like the breath of God, the modesty of nature blooms 
 in them. Goethe not only constantly reminds one of Shake- 
 speare, but also of Cervantes, and he resembles the latter even 
 in the details of style, and in that charming prose diction 
 which is tinged with a vein of the sweetest and most harm- 
 less irony. Cervantes and Goethe resemble each other even 
 in their faults, in diffusiveness of style, in those long sen- 
 tences that we occasionally find in their writings, and which 
 may be compared to a procession of royal equipages. Not in- 
 frequently but a single thought sits in one of those long, wide- 
 spreading sentences that rolls majestically along like a great, 
 gilded court-chariot, drawn by six plumed steeds. But that 
 single idea is always something exalted, perhaps even royal. 
 
 My remarks concerning the genius of Cervantes and the in- 
 fluence of his book have been necessarily scant. Concerning 
 the true value of his romance from an artistic standpoint, I 
 must express myself still more briefly, as otherwise questions 
 might arise which would lead to wide digressions into the 
 sphere of aesthetics. I may only call attention in a general 
 way to the form of the romance, and to the two figures that 
 constitute its central point. The form is that of a description 
 of travels which has ever been the most natural for this class 
 of writings. I am reminded of " The Golden Ass " of Apu- 
 leius, the first romance of antiquity. Later poets sought to 
 relieve the monotony of this form through what we to-day call 
 
DON QUIXOTE 373 
 
 fabliaux. But on account of poverty of invention the majority 
 of romance writers have borrowed each other's fables ; at least, 
 part have always used the same tales, making but slight varia- 
 tions. Hence, through the resulting sameness of characters, 
 situations, and complications, the public became at last some- 
 what wearied of romance-reading. To escape from the tedi- 
 ousness of hackneyed tales and fables, they sought refuge in 
 the ancient, original form of narratives of travels. But this 
 form will again be wholly supplanted just as soon as some 
 creative genius shall arise with a new and original style of 
 romance. In literature, as well as in politics, all things are 
 subject to the law of action and reaction. 
 
 As regards the two figures that are called Don Quixote and 
 Sancho Panza, that so constantly burlesque, and yet so won- 
 derfully complement each other, so that together they form 
 the one true hero of the romance — these two figures give evi- 
 dence equally of the poet's artistic taste and of his intellectual 
 profundity. If other authors, in whose romances the hero 
 journeys solitary and alone through the world, are compelled 
 to have recourse to monologues, letters, or diaries in order to 
 communicate the thoughts and emotions of their heroes, Cer- 
 vantes can always let a natural dialogue arise ; and, inasmuch 
 as the one figure always parodies the other, the author's pur- 
 pose is the more clearly shown. Manifold have been the imi- 
 tations of this double figure which lends to the romance of 
 Cervantes such an artistic naturalness, and out of which, as 
 from a single seed, has grown the whole novel, with all its 
 wild foliage, its fragrant blossoms, its glowing fruits, its apes 
 and marvellous birds that cluster amid its branches, resembling 
 one of those giant trees of India. 
 
 But it would be unjust to charge all this to a servile imita- 
 tion; on the surface, as it were, lay the introduction of two 
 such figures as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, of which the 
 one, the poetical nature, seeks adventures, and the other, half 
 out of affection, half out of selfish motives, follows through 
 sunshine and rain, as we often meet them in real life. In order 
 to recognize this couple anywhere, under the most varied dis- 
 guises, in art as well as in life, one must keep in view only the 
 essential, the spiritual characteristics, not the incidental or ex- 
 ternal. I could offer innumerable instances of this. Do we 
 
374 HEINE 
 
 not find Don Quixote and Sancho Panza clearly repeated in 
 Don Juan and Leperello, and to a certain degree also in the 
 persons of Lord Byron and his servant Fletcher ? Do we not 
 recognize these two types and their changed relations in the 
 figures of the Knight von Waldsee ^nd his Caspar Larifari, as 
 also in the form of many an author and his publisher? The 
 latter clearly discerns his author's follies, but in order to reap 
 pecuniary profit out of them, faithfully accompanies him in all 
 his ideal vagaries. And Master Publisher Sancho, even if at 
 times he gains only bufifets in the transaction, yet always re- , 
 mains fat, while the noble knight grows daily more and more 
 emaciated. But not only among men, but also among women, - 
 have I often met the counterparts of Don Quixote and his 
 henchman. I particularly remember a beautiful English lady, 
 an impulsive, enthusiastic blonde, who, accompanied by her 
 friend, had run away from a London boarding-school, to roam 
 the wide world over in search of a noble, true-hearted lover, 
 such as she had dreamed of on soft moonlight nights. Her 
 friend, a short, plump brunette, also hoped through this op- 
 portunity to gain, if not so rare and high an ideal, at least a 
 husband of good appearance. Still do I see her, with her 
 slender figure, and blue, love-longing eyes, standing on the 
 beach at Brighton, casting wistful glances over the billowy 
 sea towards the French coast; meanwhile her companion 
 cracked hazel-nuts, munched the sweet kernels with relish, and 
 threw the shells into the water. 
 
 And yet neither in the masterpieces of other artists, nor in 
 nature herself, do we find these two types in their varying re- 
 lations so minutely elaborated as in Cervantes. Every trait in 
 the character and appearance of the one answers to a contrast- 
 ing, and yet kindred, trait in the other. Here every detail has 
 a burlesque signification; yes, even between Rosinante and 
 Sancho's gray donkey there exists the same ironic parallelism 
 as between the squire and the knight, and the two beasts are 
 made to convey symbolically the same idea. As in their modes 
 of thought, so also in their speech, do master and servant re- 
 veal a most marvellous contrast, and I cannot here omit to refer 
 to the difficulties with which the translator has had to con- 
 tend in order to reproduce in German the homely gnarled dia- 
 lect of our good Sancho. Through his blunt, frequently vulgar 
 
DON QUIXOTE 375 
 
 speeches, and his fondness for proverbializing, our good San- 
 cho reminds us of King Solomon's fool, and of Marculfe, who, 
 also, in opposition to a somewhat pathetic idealism, expresses 
 in short and pithy sayings the practical wisdom of the com- 
 mon people. Don Quixote, on the contrary, speaks the lan- 
 guage of culture, of the higher classes, and in the solemn grav- 
 ity of his well-rounded periods, he fairly represents the high- 
 born hidalgo. At times his sentences are spun out too broadly, 
 and the knight's language resembles a haughty court dame, 
 attired in a much bepuffed silken robe, with a long rustling 
 train. But the graces, disguised as pages, laughingly carry 
 the tips of this train, and the long sentences end with the most 
 charming turns. 
 
 The character of Don Quixote's language and that of Sancho 
 Panza may be briefly summarized in the words: the former, 
 when he speaks, seems always mounted on his high horse; 
 the latter, as if seated on his humble donkey. 
 
 It is remarkable that a book which is so rich as " Don Qui- 
 xote " in picturesque matter has as yet found no painter who has 
 taken from it subjects for a series of independent art works. 
 Is the spirit of the book so volatile and fanciful that the varie- 
 gated colors elude the artist's skill? I do not think sp, for 
 *' Don Quixote," light and fanciful as it is, is still based on 
 rude, earthly realities, as must necessarily be the case to make 
 it a book of the people. Is it, perhaps, because behind the 
 figures brought before us by the poet, deeper ideas lie hidden, 
 which the artist cannot produce again, so that he can give only 
 the outward features, salient though they be, but fails to grasp 
 and reproduce the deeper meaning? 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 
 
 BY 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
VICTOR MARIE HUGO 
 1802— 1885 
 
 Victor Marie Hugo was born at Besangon in 1802. His father was 
 a general of some note in the Napoleonic wars. Some years of the 
 poet's childhood were passed in Spain, where his father held an im- 
 portant command, and some in Italy. His early education was super- 
 intended by his mother. While a mere boy Victor Hugo showed a 
 precocious talent for poetry. He began serious literary work at the 
 age of seventeen by contributions to the " Conservateur Litteraire," 
 a literary publication founded by himself. In 1822 " Odes et poesies 
 diverses " appeared. This collection was received with considerable 
 favor and secured for him a pension from Louis XVIII which he deemed 
 sufficient to justify him to assume^ the responsibilities of matrimonial 
 life. Other volumes of poetry, chiefly lyrical, followed in rapid suc- 
 cession, the most notable being " Odes et ballades " in 1826 and " Les 
 orientales " in 1829. The first of Hugo's romances was " Han d'is- 
 lande " in 1823, followed by " Bug-Jargal " three years later. '* Notre 
 Dame de Paris " appeared in 1831. During the next ten years four 
 new volumes of verse appeared and six dramas, among the latter 
 " Hernani," " Le roi s'amuse," and " Ruy Bias." In 1841 Hugo was 
 elected a member of the Academy, and four years later he became a 
 peer. In 1848 he served as a deputy from Paris, his sympathies being 
 ardently republican. The empire and the hostility of Napoleon drove 
 him into years of exile, spent first at Brussels, then in Jersey, and 
 finally in Guernsey. 
 
 During this period appeared the bitter attack on Napoleon III, en- 
 titled " Les chatiments," and another notable book of lyrics, " Les 
 contemplations." The long romance of " Les miserables " was also 
 written at this time and published in 1862. Although of uneven merit 
 in its parts, this is without doubt Victor Hugo's greatest prose work. 
 In 1866 the exquisite tale "Les travailleurs de la mer " appeared. 
 With the fall of Napoleon his exile came to an end. Victor Hugo 
 returned to France and was elected to the National Assembly. He 
 resigned his seat, however, not long after his election, and again 
 spent some time in Brussels. On his return to France in 1876 he was 
 elected senator for life. His later years were spent quietly in Paris. 
 His eightieth birthday was celebrated all over the world. His death 
 occurred three years later, and his body was laid to rest in the Pantheon 
 with great pomp and ceremony. 
 
 As a lyrical poet Victor Hugo ranks as one of the greatest of all 
 ages. His prose writings alone would entitle him to rank as one of the 
 beacon lights in the annals of the world's literature. In America and 
 England he is undoubtedly better known as a writer of fiction than of 
 verse, perhaps because his prose is susceptible of adequate translation, 
 while his poetry, like most French poetry, is not. Of Hugo's style it 
 is difficult to speak in a few words. As a vehicle of thought — now 
 delicate, now profound — as a means for expressing emotion — now calm 
 and peaceful, now tempestuous — his style is always dignified and natural. 
 Victor Hugo has no superior in adaptibility and force of expression. The 
 selection given here, " The Funeral of Napoleon," is a characteristic 
 example of his prose. , 
 
 378 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 
 
 Notes taken on the spot, December 15^ 1840 
 
 I HAVE heard the drums beat to arms in the streets since 
 half-past six o'clock in the morning. I go out at eleven. 
 The streets are deserted, the shops shut; no passer-by is 
 to be seen, save, perhaps, an old woman here and there. It is 
 evident that all Paris has poured forth towards one side of the 
 city like fluid in a slanting vessel. It is very cold ; a bright sun, 
 slight mists overhead. The gutters are frozen. As I reach the 
 Louis-Philippe bridge a cloud descends, and a few snow-flakes, 
 driven by the northerly wind, lash me in the face. Passing near 
 Notre-Dame I notice that the great bell does not ring. 
 
 In the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts the fevered commotion of 
 the fete begins to manifest itself. Ay, it is a fete, the fete of 
 an exiled coflin returning in triumph. Three men of the. lower 
 classes, of those poor workmen in rags who are cold and hun- 
 gry the whole winter-time, walk in front of me rejoicing. One 
 of them jumps about, dances, and goes through a thousand ab- 
 surd antics, crying, " Vive VEmpereur! " Pretty grisettes, 
 smartly dressed, pass by, led by their student companions. 
 Hired carriages are making rapidly in the direction of the In- 
 valides. In the Rue du Four the snow thickens. The sky be- 
 comes black. The snow-flakes are interspersed with white 
 tear-drops. Heaven itself seems to wish to hang out signs of 
 mourning. 
 
 The storm, however, lasts but a short time. A pale streak 
 of light illumines the angle of the Rue de Crenelle and the Rue 
 du Bac, and there the municipal guards stop the vehicles. I 
 pass by. Two great empty wagons conducted by artillerymen 
 come from behind me, and return to their quarters at the end 
 of the Rue de Crenelle just as I come out on the Place des In- 
 valides. Here I fear at first that all is over, and that the Em- 
 peror has passed by, so many are the passers-by coming towards 
 
 379 
 
38o HUGO 
 
 me who appear to be returning. It is only the crowd flowing 
 back, driven by a cordon of municipal guards on foot. I show 
 my ticket for the first platform on the left, and pass the barrier. 
 
 These platforms are immense wooden structures, covering, 
 from the quay to the dome-shaped building, all the grass-plots 
 of the esplanade. There are three of these on each side. 
 
 At the moment of my arrival the side of the platforms on 
 the right as yet hides the square from my view. I hear a for- 
 midable and dismal noise. It seems like innumerable hammers 
 beating time upon the boarding. It is the hundred thousand 
 spectators crowded upon the platforms, who, being frozen by 
 the northerly wind, are stamping to keep themselves warm until 
 such time as the procession shall arrive. I climb up on the plat- 
 form. The spectacle is no less strange. The women, nearly 
 all of them wearing heavy boots, and veiled like the female bal- 
 lad-singers of the Pont-Neuf, are hidden beneath great heaps of 
 furs and cloaks ; the men display neckerchiefs of extraordinary 
 size. 
 
 The decoration of the square, good and bad. Shabbiness 
 surmounting magnificence. On the two sides of the avenue 
 two rows of figures, heroic, colossal, pale in this cold sunlight, 
 producing rather a fine impression. They appear to be of white 
 marble ; but this marble is of plaster. At the extremity opposite 
 the building the statue of the Emperor in bronze ; this bronze 
 is also of plaster. In each gap between the statues a pillar of 
 painted cloth, and gilded in rather bad taste, surmounted by a 
 brazier, just now filled with snow. Behind the statues the plat- 
 forms and the crowd ; between the statues a straggling file of 
 the National Guard ; above the platforms masts, on top of which 
 grandly fluttered sixty long tricolored pennants. 
 
 It appears that there has been no time to finish the decoration 
 of the principal entrance to the building. Above the railings 
 has been roughly constructed a sort of funeral triumphal arch 
 of painted cloth and crape, with which the wind plays as with 
 old linen clothes hung out from the garret of a hovel. A row 
 of poles, plain and bare, rise above the cannon, and from a dis- 
 tance look like those small sticks which little children plant in 
 the sand. Clothes and rags, which are supposed to be black 
 drapery with silver spangles, flutter and flap together feebly 
 between these poles. At the end the dome, with its flag and 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 381 
 
 mourning drapery, sparkling with a metallic lustre, subdued by 
 the mist in a brilliant sky, has a sombre and splendid appearance. 
 
 It is mid-day. 
 
 The cannon at the building is fired at quarter-hour intervals. 
 The crowd stamp their feet. Gendarmes disguised in plain 
 clothes, but betraying themselves by their spurs and the stocks 
 of their uniforms, walk hither and thither. In front of me a 
 ray of light shows up vividly a rather poor statue of Joan of 
 Arc, who holds in her hand a palm-branch, which she appears 
 to use as a shade, as though the sun affected her eyes. 
 
 At a few steps from the statue a fire, at which a number of 
 men of the National Guard warm their feet, is alight in a heap 
 of sand. 
 
 From time to time military bandsmen invade an orchestra, 
 raised between the two platforms on the opposite side, perform 
 a funeral flourish, then come down again hastily and disappear 
 in the crowd, only to reappear the moment after. They leave 
 the music for the wine-shop. 
 
 A hawker passes along the platform selling dirges at a half- 
 penny each, and accounts of the ceremony. I buy two of these 
 documents. 
 
 All eyes are fixed upon the corner of the Quai d'Orsay, 
 whence the procession is to come out. The cold adds to the 
 feeling of impatience. Black and white lines of vapor ascend 
 here and there through the thick mist of the Champs-Elysees, 
 and detonations are heard in the distance. 
 
 Of a sudden the National Guards hasten to arms. An orderly 
 officer crosses the avenue at a gallop. A line is formed. Work- 
 men place ladders against the pillars and begin to light the 
 braziers. A salvo of heavy artillery explodes loudly at the east 
 corner of the Invalides; a dense yellow smoke, mingled with 
 golden flashes, fills this whole corner. From the position in 
 which I am placed the firing of the guns can be seen. They 
 are two fine old engraved cannon of the seventeenth century, 
 which one hears from the noise are of bronze. The procession 
 approaches. 
 
 It is half-past twelve. 
 
 At the far end of the esplanade, near the river, a double row 
 of mounted grenadiers, with yellow shoulder-belts, solemnly 
 debouch. This is the gendarmerie of the Seine. It is the head 
 
382 HUGO 
 
 of the procession. At this moment the sun does its duty, and 
 appears in its glory. It is the month of Austerlitz. 
 
 After the bear-skins, of the gendarmerie of the Seine, the 
 brass helmets of the Paris municipal guard, then the tricolored 
 pennants of the lancers, fluttering in the air in charming fash- 
 ion. Flourishes of trumpets and beating of drums. 
 
 A man in a blue blouse climbs over the outside wood-work, 
 at the risk of breaking his neck, on the platform in front of 
 me. No one assists him. A spectator in white gloves looks 
 at him as he does so, and does not hold out a hand to him. The 
 man, however, reaches his destination. 
 
 The procession, including generals and marshals, has an ad- 
 mirable effect. The sun, striking the cuirasses of the carabi- 
 neers, lights up the breast of each of them with a dazzling star. 
 The three military schools pass by with erect and solemn bear- 
 ing, then the artillery and infantry, as though going into ac- 
 tion. The ammunition wagons have the spare wheel at the rear, 
 the soldiers carry their knapsacks upon their backs. A short 
 distance off, a great statue of Louis XIV, of ample dimensions 
 and tolerably good design, gilded by the sun, seems to view with 
 amazement all this splendor. 
 
 The mounted National Guard appear. Uproar in the crowd. 
 It is sufficiently well disciplined notwithstanding, but it is an 
 inglorious regiment, and this detracts from the effect of a pro- 
 cession of this kind. People laugh. I hear this conversation : 
 "Just look at that fat colonel! How strangely he holds his 
 sword ! " " Who is that fellow? " " That is Montalivet." 
 
 Interminable legions of the infantry of the National Guard 
 now march past, with arms reversed, like the line regiments, 
 beneath the shadow of this gray sky. A mounted National 
 Guard who lets fall his shako, and so gallops bareheaded for 
 some time, although successful in catching it, causes much 
 amusement to the gallery, that is to say, to a hundred thousand 
 people. 
 
 From time to time the procession halts, then continues on its 
 way. The lighting of the braziers is completed, and they smoke 
 between the statues like great bowls of punch. 
 
 Expectation rises higher. Here is the black carriage with 
 silver ornamentation of the chaplain of the Belle- Poule, in the 
 inside of which is seen a priest in mourning; then the great 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 383 
 
 black velvet coach with mirror panels of the St. Helena Com- 
 mission, four horses to each of these two carriages. 
 
 Suddenly the cannon are discharged simultaneously from 
 three different points on the horizon. This triple sound hems 
 in the ear in a sort of triangle, formidable and superb. Drums 
 beat a salute in the distance. The funeral carriage of the Em- 
 peror appears. The sun, obscured until this moment, reappears 
 at the same time. The effect is prodigious. 
 
 In the distance is seen, in the mist and sunlight, against the 
 gray and russet background of the trees in the Champs-Elysees, 
 beyond the great white phantom-like statues, a kind of golden 
 mountain slowly moving. All that can be distinguished of it 
 as yet is a sort of luminous glistening, which makes now stars, 
 now lightning sparkle over the whole surface of the car. A 
 mighty ftar follows this apparition. It would seem as though 
 this draws after it the acclamation of the whole city, as a torch 
 draws after it its smoke. 
 
 As it turns in the avenue of the esplanade it remains for a 
 few moments at a stand-still, through some contingency, before 
 a statue which stands at the corner of the avenue and of the 
 quay. I have since ascertained that this statue was that of 
 Marshal Ney. 
 
 At the moment when the funeral car appeared it was half- 
 past one. 
 
 The procession resumes its progress. The car advances 
 slowly. The shape begins to display itself. 
 
 Here are the saddle-horses of the marshals and generals who 
 hold the cords of the imperial pall. Here are the eighty-six 
 subaltern legionaries bearing the banners of the eighty-six de- 
 partments. Nothing prettier to be conceived than this square, 
 above which flutters a forest of flags. It might be supposed that 
 a gigantic field of dahlias is on the march. 
 
 Here comes a white horse covered from head to foot with a 
 violet pall, accompanied by a chamberlain in pale blue, em- 
 broidered with silver, and led by two footmen, dressed in green, 
 with gold lace. It is the Emperor's livery. A shudder goes 
 through the crowd. It is Napoleon's charger! The majority 
 firmly believed it. Had the horse been ridden only for two years 
 by the Emperor, he "^ould be thirty years old, which is a good 
 age for a horse. 
 
384 HUGO 
 
 The fact is that this palfrey is a good old supernumerary 
 horse, who has filled for some ten years the office of charger m 
 all the military burials over which the Funeral Administration 
 presides. This charger of straw carries on his back the gen- 
 uine saddle of Bonaparte at Marengo: a crimson velvet sad- 
 dle with a double row of gold lace, tolerably well worn. 
 
 After the horse come, in close and regular formation, the five 
 hundred sailors of the Belle-Poule, youthful faces for the most 
 part, dressed for action, with round jackets, round varnished 
 hats, each with his pistol in his belt, his boarding axe in hand, 
 and at his side a sword, a cutlass with a large handle of polished 
 iron. 
 
 The salvoes continue. At this moment the story goes the 
 round of the crowd that the first discharge of cannon at the 
 Invalides has cut off the legs of a municipal guard at the thighs. 
 "By an oversight the gun had not been unloaded. It is added 
 that a man has fallen down in the Place Louis XV under the 
 wheels of the cars, and has been crushed to death. 
 
 The car is now very near. It is almost immediately pre- 
 ceded by the officers of the Belle-Poule, under the command 
 of the Prince de Joinville, on horseback. The Prince de Join- 
 ville's face is covered with a beard (fair), which appears to me 
 contrary to the rules of the naval forces. He wears for the 
 first time the grand ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Hitherto 
 he figured upon the roll of the Legion only as a plain knight. 
 
 Arriving immediately in front of me, a slightly momentary 
 interruption, I know not from what cause, takes place ; the car 
 halts. It remains stationary for a few minutes between the 
 statue of Joan of Arc and the statue of Charles V. 
 
 I can survey it at leisure. The effect, as a whole, is not want- 
 ing in grandeur. It is an enormous mass, gilt all over, of which 
 the tiers rise pyramid-like above the four great gilt wheels which 
 bear it. Under the violet pall, studded with bees, which covers 
 it from top to bottom, some tolerably fine details may be ob- 
 served ; the wild-looking eagles of the base, the fourteen Vic- 
 tories of the top-piece bearing upon a golden support the repre- 
 sentation of a coffin. The real coffin is invisible. It has been 
 deposited inside the basement, which detracts from the sensa- 
 tional effect. That is the grave defect of this car. It con- 
 ceals what one would wish to see, what France has demanded. 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 385 
 
 what the people expect, what every eye seeks — the coffin of 
 Napoleon. 
 
 Upon the sham sarcophagus have been deposited the insignia 
 of the Emperor — the crown, the sword, the sceptre, and the 
 robe. In the gilded orifice which divides the Victories on the 
 summit from the eagles at the base can be distinctly seen, in 
 spite of the gilding already partly chipped oif, the joints in the 
 deal planks. Another defect. This gold is merely imitation. 
 Deal and pasteboard, that is the reality. I could have wished 
 for the Emperor's funeral car a splendor of a genuine character. 
 
 Nevertheless, the greater part of this sculptural composition 
 has some boldness and artistic merit, although the conception 
 of the design and the ornamentation hesitate between the Re- 
 naissance and the rococo. 
 
 Two immense bundles of flags, conquered from all the na- 
 tions of Europe, rise in glorious splendor from the front and 
 rear of the car. 
 
 The car, with all its load, weighs twenty-six thousand pounds. 
 The coffin alone weighs five thousand pounds. 
 
 Nothing more surprising and more superb could be imagined 
 than the set of sixteen horses which draw the car. They are ter- 
 rific creatures, adorned with white plumes flowing down to the 
 haunches, and covered from head to foot with a splendid capar- 
 ison of gold cloth, leaving only their eyes visible, which gives 
 them an indescribable air of phantom steeds. 
 
 Valets in the imperial livery lead this imposing cavalcade. 
 
 On the other hand, the worthy and venerable generals who 
 hold the cords of the pall have an appearance as far removed 
 from the fantastic as could well be conceived. At the head two 
 marshals — the Duke de Reggio,^ diminutive and blind in one 
 eye, to the right; to the left Count Molitor; in the rear, on 
 the right, an admiral, Baron Duperre, a stout and jovial sailor ; 
 
 1 The Duke de Reggio is not really his general. He made the journey from 
 
 blind in one eye. A few years ago, as Courbevoie to the Invalides on foot, on 
 
 the result of a cold, the marshal had an his three broken legs, as the Duchess 
 
 attack of local paralysis which affected de Reggio wittily said to me. The mar- 
 
 the right cheek and pupil. Since that shal, in fact, having suffered two frac- 
 
 time he cannot open the right eye. How- tures of the right leg and one of the 
 
 ever, throughout this ceremony he dis- left, has really had three legs broken, 
 
 played wonderful courage. Covered After all, it is remarkable that, out of 
 
 with wounds, and seventy-five years of so many veterans exposed for so great 
 
 age, he remained in the open air, in a a length of time to this severe cold, no 
 
 temperature of fourteen degrees, from mishap should have happened to any 
 
 eight o'clock in the morning until two one of them. Strange to say, this 
 
 o'clock in the afternoon, in full uniform, funeral did not bury anybody, 
 and without a cloak, out of respect for 
 
 25 
 
386 HUGO 
 
 on the left a lieutenant-general, Count Bertrand — old, ex- 
 hausted, broken-down, a noble and illustrious figure. All four 
 wear the red ribbon. 
 
 The car, let it be said, by the way, was not intended to be 
 drawn by more than eight horses. Eight horses is a symbolical 
 number which has a significance in the ceremonial. Seven 
 horses, nine horses, are a wagoner's team ; sixteen horses are 
 for a stone-mason's dray ; eight horses are for an Emperor.^ 
 
 The spectators upon the platforms have continued without 
 intermission to stamp with the soles of their boots, except at 
 the moment when the catafalque passed before them. Then 
 only are the feet silent. One can tell that a great thought flashes 
 through the crowd. 
 
 The car has resumed its progress, the drums beat a salute, 
 the firing of the cannon is more rapid. Napoleon is at the gates 
 of the Invalides. It is ten minutes to two. 
 
 Behind the bier come in civilian dress all the survivors of 
 the Emperor's household, then all the survivors of the soldiers 
 of the Guard, clad in their glorious uniforms, already unfamiliar 
 to us. 
 
 The remainder of the procession, made up of regiments of 
 the regular army and the National Guard, occupies, it is said, 
 the Quai d'Orsay, the Louis XVI bridge, the Place de la Con- 
 corde, and the Avenue des Champs-Elysees as far as the Arc 
 de I'Etoile. 
 
 The car does not enter the court-yard of the Invalides ; the 
 railings planted by Louis XIV are too low. It turns off to 
 the right ; sailors are seen to enter into the basement and issue 
 forth again with the coffin, then disappear beneath the porch 
 erected at the entrance to the enclosure. They are in the court- 
 yard. 
 
 2 December 29, 1840.— It has since been a souvenir of the great ceremony by 
 ascertained that the magnificent saddle- buying a few eagles from this mantle, 
 cloths of gold brocade which capari- The manager of the establishment, who, 
 soned the sixteen horses were of spun in obedience to the command of the 
 glass. An unworthy saving. An un- government, was obliged to refuse them, 
 seemly deception. This singular an- is now in a position to accede to their 
 nouncement now appears in the news- reqii.est." So we have a bronze statue 
 papers: "A large number of persons in plaster, solid gold Victories in paste- 
 who came to the spun-glass warehouse board, an imperial mantle in spun glass, 
 at No. 97 Rue de Charonne. to see the nnd— a fortnight after the ceremony- 
 mantle which adorned the sides of the eagles for sale, 
 funeral car of Napoleon, wished to keep 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 387 
 
 All is over for the spectators outside. They descend very 
 noisily and hurriedly from the platforms. Knots of people 
 stop at short distances apart before some posters stuck to the 
 boards, and running thus : "Leroy, refreshment contractor, Rue 
 de la Serpe, near the Invalides. Choice wines and hot pastry." 
 
 I can now examine the decoration of the avenue. Nearly all 
 these statues in plaster are bad. Some are ridiculous. The 
 Louis XIV, which at a distance had solidity, is grotesque at 
 near sight. Macdonald is a good likeness. Mortier the same. 
 Ney would be so if he had not had so high a forehead given to 
 him. In fact, the sculptor has made it exaggerated and ridicu- 
 lous in the attempt to be melancholy. The head is too large. In 
 reference to this, it is said that in the hurry of improvising the 
 statues the measurements have been given incorrectly. On the 
 day when they had to be delivered, the statuary sent in a Mar- 
 shal Ney a foot too tall. What did the people of the Fine Arts 
 department do? They sawed out of the statue a slice of the 
 stomach twelve inches wide, and stuck the two pieces together 
 again as well as they were able. 
 
 The bronze-colored plaster of the statue of the Emperor is 
 stained and covered with spots, which make the imperial robe 
 look like a patchwork of old green baize. 
 
 This reminds me, for the generation of ideas is a strange 
 mystery, that this summer, at the residence of M. Thiers, I 
 heard Marchand, the Emperor's valet-de-chamhre, say how Na- 
 poleon loved old coats and old hats. I understand and share 
 this taste. For a brain which works the pressure of a new hat 
 is insupportable. 
 
 The Emperor, said Marchand, took away with him when he 
 quitted France three coats, two surtouts, and two hats ; he got 
 through his six years at St. Helena with this wardrobe ; he did 
 not wear any uniform. 
 
 Marchand added other curious details. The Emperor, at the 
 Tuileries, often appeared to rapidly change his attire. In re- 
 ality this was not so. The Emperor usually wore civilian dress, 
 that is to say, breeches of white kerseymere, white silk stock- 
 ings, shoes with buckles. But there was always in the next 
 apartment a pair of riding-boots, lined with white silk up to 
 the knees. When anything happened which made it necessary 
 for the Emperor to mount on horseback, he took off his slip- 
 
388 HUGO 
 
 pers, put on his boots, got into his uniform, and was trans- 
 formed into a soldier. Then he returned home, took off his 
 boots, put on his sHppers again, and became once more a civiHan. 
 The white breeches, the stockings, and the shoes were never 
 worn more than one day. On the morrow these imperial cast-off 
 clothes belonged to the valet-de-chamhre. 
 
 It is three o'clock. A salvo of artillery announces that the 
 
 ceremony at the Invalides is at an end. I meet B . He has 
 
 just come out. The sight of the coffin has produced an ineffa- 
 ble impression. 
 
 The words which were spoken were simple and grand. The 
 Prince de Joinville said to the King, " Sire, I present to you 
 the body of the Emperor Napoleon." The King replied, " I 
 receive it in the name of France." Then he said to Bertrand, 
 " General, place upon the coffin the glorious sword of the Em- 
 peror." And to Gourgaud, " General, place upon the coffin the 
 hat of the Emperor." 
 
 Mozart's " Requiem " had but little effect. Beautiful music 
 already faded with age. Music too, alas, becomes faded with 
 age! 
 
 The catafalque was only finished one hour before the arrival' 
 
 of the coffin. B was in the church at eight o'clock in the 
 
 morning. It was as yet only half draped, and ladders, tools, 
 and workmen encumbered it. The crowd were coming in dur- 
 ing this time. Large gilt palms of five or six feet in height 
 were tried on the four corners of the catafalque ; but after being 
 put in position they were seen to produce but a poor effect. 
 They were removed.^ 
 
 The Prince de Joinville, who had not seen his family for six 
 months, went up and kissed the hand of the Queen, and heartily 
 shook hands with his brothers and sisters. The Queen received 
 him in stately fashion, without demonstration, as a Queen rather 
 than as a mother. 
 
 During this time the archbishops, cures, and priests sang the 
 Requiescat in pace around the coffin of Napoleon. 
 
 « December 23d.— Since the transfer of evening. The lighting of the chapel 
 
 the coffin the church of the Invalides costs the State 350 francs a day. M. 
 
 is open to the crowd who visit it. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior (who, 
 
 There pass through it daily a hundred it may be stated, by the way, is said to 
 
 thousand persons, from ten o'clock in be a son of the Emperor), groans aloud 
 
 the morning until four o'clock in the at this expense. 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 389 
 
 The procession was fine, but too exclusively military, suffic- 
 ing for Bonaparte, not for Napoleon. All the bodies in the State 
 should have figured in it, at least by deputy. The fact is, the 
 thoughtlessness of the government has been extreme. It was 
 in haste to be done with the aflfair. Philippe de Segur, who fol- 
 lowed the car as a former aide-de-camp of the Emperor, told 
 me how at Courbevoie, on the banks of the river, in an atmos- 
 phere of fourteen degrees, this morning, there was not even a 
 waiting-room with a fire in it. These two hundred veterans of 
 the Emperor's household had to wait for an hour and a half in 
 a kind of Greek temple, exposed to the wind from all quarters 
 of the compass. 
 
 The same neglect was shown with respect to the steamboats 
 which took the body from Havre to Paris, a journey remark- 
 able, nevertheless, for the earnest and solemn demeanor of the 
 riverside populations. None of these boats was suitably fitted 
 up. Victuals were wanting. No beds. Orders given that no 
 one should land. The Prince de Joinville was obliged to sleep, 
 one of a party of twenty, in a common room upon a table. 
 Others slept underneath. The men slept on the ground, and 
 the more fortunate upon benches or chairs. It seemed as 
 though those in authority were in ill-humor. The Prince com- . 
 plained openly of it, and said, '' In this affair all that emanates 
 from the people is great, all that emanates from the govern- 
 ment is paltry.'^ 
 
 Wishing to reach the Champs-Elysees, I crossed the suspen- 
 sion-bridge, where I paid my half-penny. A real act of gener- 
 osity, for the mob which crowds the bridge neglects to pay. 
 
 The legions and regiments are in battle array in the Avenue 
 de Neuilly. The avenue is decorated, or rather dishonored, 
 along its entire length by fearful statues in plaster represent- 
 ing figures of Fame, and triumphal columns crowned with 
 golden eagles and placed in a blank space upon gray marble 
 pedestals. The street-boys amuse themselves by making holes 
 in this marble, which is made of cloth. 
 
 Upon each column are seen, between two bundles of tricol- 
 ored flags, the name and the date of one of the victories of 
 Bonaparte. 
 
390 HUGO 
 
 An inferior theatrical-looking group occupies the top of the 
 Arc de Triomphe: the Emperor erect upon a car surrounded 
 by figures of Fame, haying on his right Glory, and on his left 
 Grandeur. What is the meaning of a statue of grandeur ? How 
 can grandeur be expressed by means of a statue ? Is it in mak- 
 ing it larger than the others ? This is monumental nonsense. 
 
 This scenic effect, poorly gilt, is turned towards Paris. By 
 going to the other side of the Arc one can see the back of it. 
 It is a regular theatrical set piece. On the side looking towards 
 Neuilly, the Emperor, the Glories, and the Fames become sim- 
 ply pieces of framework clumsily shaped. 
 
 With regard to this matter, the figures in the Avenue des 
 Invalides have been strangely chosen, be it said by the way. 
 The published list gives bold and singular conjunctions of 
 names. Here is one : Lobau, Charlemagne, Hugues Capet. 
 
 A few months ago I was taking a walk in these same Champs- 
 Elysees with Thiers, then Prime Minister. He would, with- 
 out doubt, have managed the ceremony with greater success. 
 He would have put his heart into it. He had ideas. He loves 
 and appreciates Napoleon. He told me some anecdotes of 
 the Emperor. M. de Remusat allowed him to see the unpub- 
 lished memoirs of his mother. There are in them a hundred 
 details. The Emperor was good-natured, and loved to tease 
 people. To tease is the malice of good men. Caroline, his 
 sister, wanted to be a Queen. He made her a Queen — Queen 
 of Naples. But the poor woman had many troubles from the 
 moment she had a throne, and became, as she sat on it, some- 
 what careworn and faded. One day Talma was breakfasting 
 with Napoleon — etiquette permitted Talma to come only to 
 breakfast. Hereupon Queen Caroline, just arrived from Naples, 
 pale and fatigued, calls upon the Emperor. He looks at her, 
 then turns towards Talma, much embarrassed between these 
 two majesfies. " My dear Talma," he said, " they all want to be 
 Queens ; they lose their beauty in consequence. Look at Caro- 
 line. She is a Queen ; she is ugly." 
 
 As I pass, the demolition is just being finished of the innu- 
 merable stands, draped with black, and filled with seats, which 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 
 
 391 
 
 have been erected by speculators at the entrance to the Avenue 
 de Neuilly. Upon one of them, facing the Beau j on garden, I 
 read this inscription : " Seats to let, Austerlitz grand stand. 
 Apply to M. Berthellemot, confectioner." 
 
 On the other side of the avenue, upon a showman's booth 
 adorned with frightful pictorial signs representing, one of them 
 the death of the Emperor, the other the encounter at Mazagran, 
 I read another inscription : " Napoleon in his coffin. Three 
 half-pence." 
 
 Men of the lower classes pass by and sing, " Long live my 
 great Napoleon ! " '' Long live old Napoleon ! " Hawkers make 
 their way through the crowd, shouting tobacco and cigars! 
 Others offer to the passers-by some kind of hot and steaming 
 liquor out of a copper tea-urn covered with a black cloth. An 
 old woman at a stall coolly puts on an undergarment in the 
 midst of the hurly-burly. Towards five o'clock the funeral car, 
 now empty, returns by way of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, 
 to be put up under the Arc de Triomphe. This is a capital 
 idea. But the magnificent spectre-horses are tired. They walk 
 with difficulty, and slowly, notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
 drivers. Nothing stranger can be imagined than the shouts of 
 hu-ho and dia-hu lavished upon this imperial, but at the same 
 time fantastic, team. 
 
 I return home by the boulevards. The crowd there is im- 
 mense; suddenly it falls back and looks round with a certain 
 air of respect. A man passes proudly by in its midst. He is 
 an old hussar of the Imperial Guard, a veteran of great height 
 and lusty appearance. He is in full uniform, with tight-fitting 
 red trousers, a white waistcoat with gold braid, a sky-blue pe- 
 lisse, a busby with a grenade and plaited loop, his sword at his 
 side, his sabre-tache beating upon his thighs, an eagle upon his 
 satchel. All round him the little children cry, '' Vive VEmpe- 
 reur!" 
 
 It is certain that all this ceremony has been curiously like a 
 juggle. The government appeared to fear the phantom which 
 it had raised. It seemed as though the object was both to 
 show and to hide Napoleon. Everything which would have 
 been too grand or too touching was left out of sight. The real 
 and the grandiose were concealed beneath more or less splendid 
 coverings, the imperial procession was juggled into the military 
 
392 HUGO 
 
 procession, the army was juggled into the National Guard, the 
 Chambers were juggled into the Invalides, the coffin was jug- 
 gled into the cenotaph. 
 
 What was wanted, on the contrary, was that Napoleon should 
 be taken up, frankly honored, treated royally and popularly as 
 Emperor, and then strength would have been found just where 
 a failure almost took place. 
 
 To-day, the eighth of May, I return to the Invalides to see 
 the St. Jerome chapel, where the Emperor is temporarily placed. 
 All traces of the ceremony of the fifteenth of December have 
 disappeared from the esplanade. The quincunxes have been 
 cut out afresh ; the grass, however, has not yet grown again. 
 There was some sunshine, accompanied now and then by clouds 
 and rain. The trees were green and lusty. The poor old pen- 
 sioners were talking quietly to a group of youngsters, and walk- 
 ing in their little gardens full of bouquets. It is that delightful 
 period of the year when the late lilacs have shed their petals, 
 when the early laburnums are in bloom. The great shadows 
 of the clouds pass rapidly across the forecourt, where stands 
 under an archivault on the first floor a plaster equestrian statue 
 of Napoleon, a rather pitiful counterpart to the equestrian Louis 
 XIV, boldly chiselled in stone over the great portal. 
 
 All round the court, below the eaves of the building, are still 
 stuck up, as the last vestiges of the funeral, the long narrow 
 strips of black cloth upon which had been painted in golden 
 letters, three by three, the names of the generals of the Revolu- 
 tion and the Empire. The wind begins, however, to tear them 
 down here and there. On one of these strips, of which the 
 torn end floated in mid-air, I read these three names : 
 
 Sauret — Chamhure — Hug — 
 
 The end of the third name had been torn and carried off by 
 the wind. Was it Hugo or Huguet ? 
 
 Some young soldiers were entering the church. I followed 
 these tourlourous, as the phrase goes nowadays. For in time 
 of war the soldier calls the citizen a pekin; in time of peace the 
 citizen calls the soldier a tourlourou. 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 
 
 393 
 
 The church was bare and cold, almost deserted. At the end 
 a large gray cloth covering, stretched from top to bottom, hid 
 the enormous archivault of the dome. Behind this covering 
 could be heard the muffled and almost funereal sound of ham- 
 mers. 
 
 I walked about for an instant or two, reading upon the pillars 
 the names of all the warriors buried there. 
 
 All along the nave above our heads the flags conquered from 
 the enemy, that accumulation of splendid tatters, were gently 
 wafted near the roof. In the intervals between the blows of 
 the hammers I heard a muttering in a corner of the church. It 
 was an old woman at confession. 
 
 The soldiers went out, and myself behind them. They turned 
 to the right along the Metz corridor, and we mixed with a 
 tolerably large and very well-dressed crowd going in that direc- 
 tion. The corridor leads to the inner court in which the minor 
 entrance to the dome is situated. 
 
 There I found three more statues, of lead, taken I know not 
 where from, which I remember to have seen on this same spot 
 as a little child in 1815, at the time of the mutilation of build- 
 ings, dynasties, and nations, which took place at that period. 
 These three statues, in the worst style of the Empire, cold as 
 allegory, gloomy as mediocrity, stand alongside the wall there, 
 on the grass, amid a mass of architectural capitals, with an in- 
 describable suggestion of tragedies which have been damned. 
 One of them leads a lion by a chain, and represents Might. 
 Nothing can appear so much out of place as a statue standing 
 upon the ground without a pedestal ; it looks like a horse with- 
 out a rider, or a king without a throne. There are but two 
 alternatives for the soldier — battle or death ; there are but two 
 for the king — empire or the tomb ; there are but two for the 
 statue — to stand erect against the sky or to lie flat upon the 
 ground. A statue on foot puzzles the mind and bothers the 
 eye. One forgets that it is of plaster or bronze, and that bronze 
 does not walk any more than plaster; and one is tempted to 
 say to this poor creature with a human face so awkward and 
 wretched-looking in its ostentatious attitude : " Now then, go 
 on, be off with you, march, keep going, move yourself! The 
 ground is beneath your feet. What stops you? Who hinders 
 you ? '' The pedestal, at least, explains the want of motion. For 
 
394 HUGO 
 
 statues as for men a pedestal is a small space, narrow and re- 
 spectable, with four precipices around it. 
 
 After having passed by the statues I turned to the right and 
 entered the church by the great door at the rear, facing the 
 boulevard. Several young women pass through the doorway 
 at the same time as myself, laughing and calling to each other. 
 The sentry allowed us to pass. He was a bent and melancholy- 
 looking old soldier, sword in hand, perhaps an old grenadier of 
 the Imperial Guard, silent and motionless in the shadow, and 
 resting the end of his worn wooden leg upon a marble fleur-de- 
 lis, half chipped out of the stone. 
 
 To get to the chapel where Napoleon is one has to walk over 
 a pavement tessellated with fleurs-de-lis. The crowd, women 
 and soldiers, were in haste. I entered the church with slow 
 steps. 
 
 A light from above, wan and pale, the light of a workshop 
 rather than of a church, illuminated the interior of the dome. 
 Immediately under the cupola, at the spot where the altar was 
 and the tomb will be, stood, covered on the side of the aisle 
 by the mass of black drapery, the immense scaffolding used in 
 pulling down the baldachin erected under Louis XIV. No trace 
 of this baldachin remained save the shafts of six great wooden 
 columns supporting the head. These columns, destitute of 
 capital or abacus, were still supported vertically by six shaped 
 logs which had been put in place of the pedestals. The gold 
 foliage, the spirals of which gave them a certain appearance of 
 twisted columns, had already disappeared, leaving a black mark 
 upon the six gilt shafts. The workmen perched up here and 
 there inside the scaffolding looked like great birds in an enor- 
 mous cage. 
 
 Others, below, were tearing up the stone floor. Others again 
 passed up and down the church, carrying their ladders, whis- 
 tling and chatting. 
 
 On my right the chapel of Saint- Augustin was full of debris. 
 Huge blocks, broken and in heaps, of that splendid mosaic work 
 in which Louis XIV had set his fleurs-de-lis and sun-flowers 
 concealed the feet of Saint Monica and Saint Alipa, looking 
 wonder-stricken and shocked in their niches. The statue of Re- 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 395 
 
 ligion, by Girardon, erect between the two windows, looked 
 gravely down upon this confusion. 
 
 Beyond the chapel of Saint-Augustin some large marble 
 slabs which had formed the covering of the dome, placed ver- 
 tically against each other, half hid a white, war-like, recumbent 
 figure of a warrior beneath a rather high pyramid of black mar- 
 ble fixed in the wall. Underneath this figure, in a gap between 
 the flagstones, could be read the three letters • 
 
 UBA 
 
 It was the tomb of Va.uban. 
 
 On the opposite side of the^ church, in front of the tomb of 
 Vauban, was the tomb of Turenne. The latter had been treated 
 with greater respect than the other. No accumulation of ruins 
 rested against that great sculptural design, more pompous than 
 funereal, made for the stage rather than the church, in harmony 
 with the frigid and exalted etiquette which ruled the art of 
 Louis XIV. No palisade, no mound of rubbish prevented the 
 passer-by from seeing Turenne, attired as a Roman Emperor, 
 dying of an Austrian bullet above the bronze bas-relief of the 
 battle of Turckheim, or from deciphering this memorable date, 
 1675 — the year in which Turenne died, the Duke de Saint- 
 Sin;on was born, and Louis XIV laid the foundation-stone of 
 the Hotel des Invalides. 
 
 On the right, against the scaffolding of the dome and the tomb 
 of Turenne, between the silence of this sepulchre and the noise 
 of the workmen, in a little barricaded and deserted chapel, I 
 could discern behind a railing, through the opening of a white 
 arch, a group of gilt statues, placed there pell-mell, and doubt- 
 less torn from the baldachin, conversing apparently in whispers 
 on the subject of all this devastation. There were six of them — 
 six-winged and luminous angels, six golden phantoms, gloomily 
 illuminated by a pale stream of sunlight. One of these statues 
 indicated to the others with uplifted finger the chapel of Saint- 
 Jerome, gloomy, and in mourning drapery, and seemed to utter 
 with consternation the word Napoleon. Above these six spec- 
 tres, upon the cornice of the little roof of the chapel, a great 
 angel in gilt wood was playing upon a violoncello, with eyes 
 upturned to heaven, almost in the attitude which Veronese as- 
 cribes to Tintoretto in the " Marriage at Cana." 
 
396 HUGO 
 
 By this time I had arrived at the threshold of the chapel of 
 Saint-Jerome. 
 
 A great archivault, with a lofty door-curtain of rather paltry 
 violet cloth, stamped with a fretwork pattern, and with golden 
 palm-leaves; at the top of the door-curtain the imperial es- 
 cutcheon in painted wood ; on the left two bundles of tricolored 
 flags, surmounted with eagles looking like cocks touched up 
 for the occasion; pensioners, wearing the Legion of Honor, 
 carrying pikes ; the crowd, silent and reverential, entering un- 
 der the archway ; at the extrerqity, eight or ten paces distant, 
 an iron gate-way, bronzed; upon the gate- way, which is qf a 
 heavy and feeble style of ornamentation, lions' heads, gilt N's 
 with a tinsel-like appearance, the arms of the empire, the main- 
 de- justice and sceptre, the latter surmounted by a seated minia- 
 ture of Charlemagne, crowned, and globe in hand ; beyond the 
 gate-way the interior of the chapel, a something indescribably 
 august, formidable, and striking: a swinging lamp alight, a 
 golden eagle with wide-spread wings, the stomach glistening 
 in the gloomy reflection of the lamplight, and the wings in the 
 reflection of the sunlight ; under the eagle, beneath a vast and 
 dazzling bundle of enemies' flags, the coffin, the ebony 'supports 
 and brass handles of which were visible ; upon the coffin the 
 great imperial crown, like that of Charlemagne, the gold laurel 
 diadem, like that of Caesar, the violet velvet pall studded with 
 bees; in front of the coffin, upon a credence-table, the hat of 
 St. Helena and the sword of Eylau ; upon the wall, to the right 
 of the coffin, in the centre of a silver shield, the word Wagram ; 
 on the left, in the centre of another shield, another word — 
 Austerlitz ; all round upon the wall a hanging of violet velvet, 
 embroidered with bees and eagles ; at the top, on the spandrel 
 of the nave, above the lamp, the eagle, the crown, the sword, 
 and the coffin, a fresco, and in this fresco the angel of judgment 
 sounding the trumpet over Saint-Jerome asleep — that is what 
 I saw at a glance, and that is what a minute sufficed to engrave 
 upon my memory for life. 
 
 The hat, low - crowned, wide - brimmed, but little worn, 
 trimmed with a black ribbon, out of which appeared a small tri- 
 colored cockade, was placed upon the sword, of which the 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 397 
 
 chased gold hilt was turned towards the entrance to the chapel 
 and the point towards the coffin. 
 
 There was some admixture of meanness amid all this gran- 
 deur. It was mean on account of the violet cloth, which was 
 stamped and not embroidered; of the pasteboard painted to 
 look like stone; of the hollow iron made to look like bronze; 
 of that wooden escutcheon; of those N's in tinsel; of that 
 canvas Roman column, painted to look like granite; of those 
 eagles almost like cocks. The grandeur was in the spot, in the 
 man, in the reality, in the sword, in the hat, in that eagle, in 
 those soldiers, in that assemblage of people, in that ebony coffin, 
 in that ray of sunlight. 
 
 The people were there as before an altar in which the Su- 
 preme Being should be visible. But in leaving the chapel, 
 after having gone a hundred steps, they entered to see the 
 kitchen and the great saucepan. Such is the nature of the peo- 
 ple. 
 
 It was with profound emotion that I contemplated that coffin. 
 I remembered that, less than a twelvemonth previously, in the 
 
 month of July, a M. presented himself at my house, and 
 
 after having told me that he was in business as a cabinetmaker 
 in the Rue des Tourelles, and a neighbor of mine, begged me 
 to give him my advice respecting an important and precious 
 article which he was commissioned to make just then. As I 
 am greatly interested in the improvement of that small internal 
 architecture which is called furniture, I responded favorably to 
 
 the request, and accompanied M. to the Rue des Tourelles. 
 
 There, after having made me pass through several large, well- 
 filled rooms, and shown me an immense quantity of oak and 
 mahogany furniture, Gothic chairs, writing-tables with carved 
 rails, tables with twisted legs, among which I admired a genu- 
 ine old sideboard of the Renaissance, inlaid with mother-of- 
 pearl and marble, very dilapidated and very charming, the 
 cabinetmaker showed me into a great workshop full of activ- 
 ity, bustle, and noise, where some twenty workmen were at work 
 upon some kind or other of pieces of black wood which they 
 had in their hands. I saw in a corner of the workshop a kind 
 of large black ebony box, about eight feet long and three feet 
 
398 HUGO 
 
 wide, ornamented at each end with big brass rings. I went 
 towards it. " That is precisely," said the employer, " what I 
 wanted to show to you." This black box was the coffin of the 
 Emperor. I saw it then, I saw it again to-day. I saw it empty, 
 hollow, wide open. I saw it once more full, tenanted by a great 
 souvenir, forever closed. 
 
 I remember that I contemplated the inside for a long time. 
 I looked especially at a long pale streak in the ebony which 
 formed the left-hand side, and I said to myself, " In a few 
 months the lid will be closed upon this coffin, and my eyes will 
 perhaps have been closed for three or four thousand years be- 
 fore it will be given to any other human eyes to see what I see 
 at this moment — the inside of the coffin of Napoleon." 
 
 I then took all the pieces of the coffin which were not yet 
 fastened, I raised them and weighed them in my hands. The 
 ebony was very fine and very heavy. The head of the estab- 
 lishment, in order to give me an idea of the general effect, had 
 the lid put on the coffin by six men. I did not like the com- 
 monplace shape given to the coffin, a shape given nowadays to 
 all coffins, to all altars, and to all wedding caskets. I should 
 have preferred that Napoleon should have slept in an Egyptian 
 tomb like Sesostris, or in a Roman sarcophagus like Merovee. 
 That which is simple is also imposing. 
 
 Upon the lid shone in tolerably large characters the name 
 Napoleon. " What metal are these letters made of ? " I asked 
 the man. He replied, " In copper, but they will be gilded." 
 " These letters," I rejoined, " must be in gold. In less than a 
 hundred years copper letters will have become oxydized, and 
 will have eaten into the wood-work of the coffin. How much 
 would gold letters cost the State ? " " About twenty thousand 
 francs, sir." The same evening I called on M. Thiers, who was 
 then President of the Council, and I explained the matter to 
 him. " You are right," said M. Thiers, " the letters shall be of 
 gold ; I will go and give the necessary order for them." Three 
 days afterwards the treaty of the fifteenth of July burst upon 
 us ; I do not know whether M. Thiers gave the order, whether 
 it was executed, or whether the letters on the coffin are gold 
 letters. 
 
 I left the chapel of Saint-Jerome as four o'clock was strik- 
 ing, and I said to myself as I left, " To all appearance, here is 
 
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 399 
 
 a tinsel N which smashes, ecHpses, and supersedes the marble 
 L's, with their crowns and fleurs-de-lis, of Louis XIV ; but in 
 reality it is not so. If this dome is narrow, history is wide. A 
 day will come when Louis XIV will have his dome restored to 
 him, and a sepulchre will be given to Napoleon. The great 
 King and the great Emperor will each be at home, in peace the 
 one with the other, both venerated, both illustrations — the one 
 because he personifies royalty in the eyes of Europe, the other 
 because he represents France in the eyes of the world." 
 
 To-day, March 11, 1841, three months afterwards, I saw 
 once more the Esplanade of the Invalides. 
 
 I went to see an old officer who was ill. The weather was 
 the finest imaginable ; the sun -yvas warm and young ; it was a 
 day for the end rather than the beginning of spring. 
 
 The whole esplanade is in confusion. It is encumbered with 
 the ruins of the funeral. The scaffolding of the platforms has 
 been removed. The squares of grass which they covered have 
 reappeared, hideously cut up by the deep ruts of the builder's 
 wagons. Of the statues which lined the triumphal avenue, two 
 only remain standing — Marceau and Duguesclin. Here and 
 there heaps of stone, the remains of the pedestals. Soldiers, 
 pensioners, apple-women, wander about amid this fallen poetry. 
 
 A merry crowd was passing rapidly in front of the Invalides, 
 going to see the artesian well. In a silent corner of the es- 
 planade stood two omnibuses, painted a chocolate color (Bear- 
 naises)y bearing this inscription in large letters : 
 
 Puits de V Abattoir de Crenelle. 
 
 Three months ago they bore this one : 
 
 Funeral of Napoleon at the Invalides. 
 
 In the court-yard of the building the sun cheered and warmed 
 -a crowd of youngsters and old men, the most charming sight 
 imaginable. It was public visiting-day. The curious presented 
 themselves in great numbers. Gardeners were clipping the 
 hedges. The lilacs were bursting into bud in the little gardens 
 of the pensioners. A little boy of fourteen years of age was 
 
400 
 
 HUGO 
 
 singing at the top of his voice while sitting up on the carriage 
 of the last cannon on the right, the same one which killed a 
 gendarme in firing the first funeral salvo on the fifteenth of De- 
 cember. 
 
 I may mention, by the way, that during the last three months 
 these excellent sixteenth and seventeenth century pieces have 
 been perched upon hideous little cast-iron carriages, producing 
 a most mean and wretched effect. The old wooden carriages, 
 enormous, squat, massive, worthily supported these gigantic and 
 magnificent bronzes. A bevy of children, languidly looked 
 after by their nurses, each of whom was leaning against her 
 soldier, were playing among the twenty-four great culverins 
 brought from Constantine and Algiers. 
 
 These gigantic engines, at least, have been spared the aif ront 
 of uniform carriages. They lie flat on the ground on the two 
 sides of the gate-way. Time has painted the bronze a light 
 and pretty green color, and they are covered with arabesques 
 on large plates. Some of them, the least handsome, it must be 
 admitted, are of French manufacture. Upon the breech is the 
 inscription : " Francois Durand, metal-founder to the King of 
 France, Algiers." 
 
 While I copied the inscription, a tiny little girl, pretty and 
 fresh-colored, dressed all in white, amused herself by filling 
 with sand, with her ruddy little fingers, the touchhole of one 
 of these great Turkish cannon. A pensioner, with bare sword, 
 standing upon two wooden legs, and no doubt guarding this 
 artillery, looked at her as she did so, and smiled. 
 
 Just as I was leaving the esplanade, towards three o'clock, a 
 little group walked slowly across it. It was composed of a 
 man dressed in black, with a band of crape on his arm and hat, 
 followed by three others, of whom one, clad in a blue blouse, 
 held a little boy by the hand. The man with the crape had 
 under his arm a kind of box of a lightish color, half hidden 
 under a black cloth, which he carried as a musician carries the 
 case in which his instrument is kept. I approached them. The 
 black man was an undertaker's mute; the box was a child's 
 coffin. 
 
 The course taken by the little procession, parallel with the 
 front of the Invalides, intersected at a right angle that which, 
 three months ago, had been followed by the hearse of Napoleon. 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 
 
 RABELAIS 
 
 BALZAC 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 
 1804—1869 
 
 The great literary critic of France, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, 
 was born at Boulogne in 1804. He began the study of medicine, but 
 soon turned to literature as a pursuit more congenial to his tastes. 
 His first book, published in 1827, was entitled " Tableau de la poesie 
 frangaise au seizieme siecle." During this period he also wrote some 
 creditable poetry. He, however, soon devoted himself entirely to liter- 
 ary criticism, contributing weekly articles to the " Constitution," the 
 " Moniteur," and other periodicals. His feuilletons were published 
 every Monday and came to be regarded as an important weekly liter- 
 ary event. He continued this series of feuilletons to the time of his 
 death, which took place in 1869. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's system of work was extremely methodical. " As- 
 sisted by his secretary," says one of his biographers, " he began each 
 Monday to prepare the article for the following week. Having selected 
 his subject, he dictated a rough outline of the article, filling in blanks 
 and making corrections with his own hand. This first draft was then 
 copied, revised, and sometimes rewritten. For twelve hours daily this 
 continued, until Thursday, when the manuscript was sent to the prin- 
 ter. The proof was then subjected to a revision as minute and thor- 
 ough as that which the manuscript had undergone before everything 
 was pronounced ready for publication on Monday. When it did ap- 
 pear, the accuracy and aptness of every quotation, the correctness of 
 every name and date, were as noteworthy as its general finish and 
 effect as a whole." These articles formed a series of literary mono- 
 graphs covering the widest possible range, from the classic writers of 
 antiquity to the writers of his own day. They have been republished 
 under the various titles of " Critiques et portraits litteraires," " Por- 
 traits contemporains," " Causeries de lundi," and " Nouveaux lundis." 
 The essays on " Alfred de Musset," " Rabelais," " Balzac," and " Mon- 
 taigne," given here, are characteristic examples of Saint-Beuve's lit- 
 erary style and method. In 1845 he was elected a member of the 
 Academy, and in 1865 became a senator of the second empire. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's style is a model of French prose, being clear, digni- 
 fied, and precise. His work, not only on account of its volume and 
 scope, but because of its sound insight and discriminating judgment, 
 entitles Sainte-Beuve to rank as one of the greatest critics in all litera- 
 ture. 
 
 402 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 
 
 IN a few days a collection of new poems, written by M. Al- 
 fred de Musset, from 1840 to 1849, will appear ; his former 
 delightful collection contained only the poems composed 
 before 1840. A number of lyrics and others (songs, sonnets, 
 epistles) have been pubHshed since that date in the " Revue des 
 Deux Mondes " and elsewhere : they are those which have just 
 been collected, with the addition of a few unpublished pieces. 
 Thus I have a pretext of which, after all, there is scarcely any 
 need for speaking of M. Alfred de Musset, and for forming a 
 general opinion of the character of his talent, and of his place 
 and influence in our poetry. 
 
 About ten years ago M. de Musset addressed a " Letter," in 
 verse, to M. de Lamartine, in which he turned for the first time 
 to the prince of the poets of the age, and made him the public 
 and direct declaration that the singer of Elvire had for a long 
 time been accustomed to receive from anyone entering on the 
 career of poet, but which M. de Musset, in defiance of etiquette, 
 had delayed longer than most to make him. The poet of " Na- 
 mouna " and " Rolla " told him in very fine lines that after 
 doubting, denying, and blaspheming, a sudden light mani- 
 fested itself within him. " I write, O poet ! to tell you of 
 my love — A ray of light has penetrated my soul — And at a 
 time of grief and supreme sorrow — The tears I shed brought 
 thought of thee to me." 
 
 In the midst of his passion and suffering, a sentiment of 
 divine elevation, an idea of immortality, was, he said, awak- 
 ened in his soul ; the " angels of sorrow " spoke to him, and he 
 naturally thought first of him who revealed the sacred sources 
 of inspiration in French poetry. M. de Musset opportunely 
 recalled the lines which the young Lamartine had addressed 
 to Lord Byron when he was on the point of setting out for 
 Greece ; and without aspiring to an ambitious comparison, he 
 
 403 
 
404 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 asked Lamartine to welcome him and his offering now, as he 
 had formerly been received by the " Great Byron." 
 
 A journal has just published the reply in verse which M. de 
 Lamartine made to M. de Musset, a reply bearing the date 
 1840. Its appearance now has almost an air of injustice, for it 
 is many a long day since M. de Musset was the mere beginner 
 that M. de Lamartine was pleased to see in him. He evidently 
 took M. de Musset's modesty too Hterally. He forgot that in 
 1840 the " fair-haired child," the " youth with heart of wax," 
 as he calls him, had written the " May Night " and the " Oc- 
 tober Night," poems that will survive as long as the " Lake," 
 and that are equally passionate, and almost as pure. M. de 
 Lamartine's criticisms on poetry are superficial; I remember 
 his early criticisms of Petrarch and of Andre Chenier. In the 
 poem to M. de Musset he stopped at the Musset of the songs, 
 of the "Marquise," and the " Andalouse." He- tells him 
 things disagreeable to hear when spoken by any other than 
 one's self. In the " Confession of a Child of the Century," and 
 in many other places, M. de Musset made confessions that po- 
 etry in our age sanctions and defends. M. de Lamartine turns 
 them into a moral lesson ; he quotes himself as an example, and 
 ends, according to custom, by insensibly suggesting himself 
 as a model. This is to what we expose ourselves in addressing 
 our homage to the illustrious men in whose footprints we tread. 
 M. de Lamartine himself was not so cordially received by By- 
 ron as M. de Musset seems to think. In his " Memoirs," 
 Byron speaks of the fine epistle " On Man " very lightly, of 
 the early " Meditations " as the work of someone who thought 
 fit to compare him to the devil, and to call him the " singer of 
 hell." In fact, it is useless to demand justice and attention 
 from illustrious predecessors when we are ourselves of their 
 race ; they are too full of themselves. How, I ask you, would 
 Byron have welcomed advances from Keats, from the young 
 wounded eagle who fell so soon, and whom he always treats 
 so cavalierly — from the heights of his pity or contempt ? How 
 would M. de Chateaubriand himself, who so cleverly kept up 
 appearances, have criticised the underlying principle of M. de 
 Lamartine, the poet, if not as a man of great talent and melody 
 who had had success with women and in drawing-rooms? 
 Poets, go straight to the people for your diploma, and among 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 405 
 
 them, to those who feel, whose minds and hearts are free, to 
 the youths or to men who were youths yesterday and are old 
 to-day, to those who read and sing you, to those, too, who read 
 you again. It is among them that you will find faithful and 
 sincere friends who will love you for your fine qualities and 
 not for your faults ; who will not admire you because it is the 
 fashion, and who, when it shall change, will defend you against 
 the fashion. 
 
 M. de Musset came before the public when scarcely twenty 
 years old, and from the very first wished to mark emphatically 
 his unlikeness to the other poets then famous. In order that 
 there should be no mistake he assumed from the first a mask, 
 a fantastic costume, a manner ; he disguised himself as a Span- 
 iard and an ItaHan, although he had not yet seen Spain and 
 Italy: hence ensued disadvantages which were not easily 
 thrown off. I am certain that, endowed as he was with orig- 
 inal power and an individual genius, even if he had begun more 
 simply and without taking so much pains to make himself 
 singular, he would soon have been distinguished from the poets 
 whose society he disclaimed and whose sentimental and melan- 
 choly, solemn and serious temperaments were so different from 
 his. He possessed a feeling for raillery which the others 
 lacked, and a need of true passion they felt but rarely. " My 
 first verses are those of a child, my second those of a youth," 
 he said, criticising himself. M. de Musset wrote his juvenile 
 poems, but with a brilliance, an insolence of animation (as Re- 
 gnier says), with a more than virile audacity, with a page's 
 charm and effrontery: he was Cherubino at a masked ball, 
 playing the part of Don Juan. The early manner, in which 
 we note a vein of affectation and traces of reminiscences, is 
 crowned by two poems (if we may call poems things not com- 
 posed as such), by two wondrous divagations, " Namouna " 
 and " RoUa," in which, under the pretext of relating a story 
 he always forgets, the poet breathed forth his dreams and fan- 
 cies, and abandoned himself to unrestrained freedom. Wit, 
 nudities and crudities, lyrical power, a charm and refinement 
 at times adorable, the highest poetry for no reason, debauch 
 along with the ideal, sudden whiffs of lilac that bring back 
 freshness, here and there a scrap of chic (to speak the language 
 of the studio), all these things mingled and compounded, pro- 
 
4o6 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 duced the strangest and certainly the most astonishing thing 
 that French poetry, the virtuous girl who, already elderly, had 
 formerly espoused M. de Malherbe, had yet furnished. It 
 may be said that in " Namouna " we find the faults and fine 
 qualities of Alfred de Musset, the poet. But the latter are so 
 great and of such a high order that they compensate for every- 
 thing. 
 
 Byron wrote to his publisher, Murray : " You say that a half 
 of * Don Juan ' is very fine : you are mistaken, for if it was true 
 it would be the most beautiful poem that exists. Where is the 
 poem of which a half is of worth ? " Byron was right in speak- 
 ing thus about himself and his contemporaries; but opposite 
 and above is the school of Vergil, the poet who wanted to burn 
 his poem because he did not find it perfect enough as a whole. 
 It was the same Byron who wrote : " I am like the tiger (in 
 poetry) : if I fail at the first leap I go back muttering to my 
 cave." As a rule, modern French poets, Beranger excepted, 
 have only aspired to making the first leap in poetry, and what 
 they did not reach then they never attained. 
 
 I need not then hesitate to say that in the poems of " Rolla " 
 and of " Namouna '* there is a good half that does not corre- 
 spond with the other. The fine part of " Namouna," the part in 
 which the poet reveals himself with full power, is the second 
 canto. It is there that M. de Musset unfolds his theory of 
 Don Juan, and contrasts the two sorts of libertines who, ac- 
 cording to him, share the stage of the world: the heartless 
 libertine, ideal, full of egoism and vanity, finding it difficult to 
 get pleasure out of anything, and only desirous of inspiring 
 love without returning it, Lovelace, in fact; and the other 
 type of libertine, amiable and loving, almost innocent, passing 
 through all phases of inconstancy in order to reach an ideal 
 that eludes him, believing he loves, the dupe of none but him- 
 self in his seductions, and changing only because he ceases to 
 love. There, according to M. de Musset, is the real poetical 
 Don Juan, " whom no one succeeded in drawing, whom 
 Mozart dreamed of, whom Hoffmann saw pass before him to 
 the sound of music — In a divine lightning flash on one of his 
 fantastic nights — An excellent portrait he never finished — And 
 which in our time a Shakespeare might have painted." And 
 M. de Musset attempts to paint him in the brightest and most 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 407 
 
 charming colors, in colors which remind me (Heaven forgive 
 me !) of those used by Milton when painting his happy couple 
 in Eden. He shows him to us, handsome, twenty years of age, 
 sitting by a meadow-side near his sleeping mistress, and watch- 
 ing over her slumber like an angel. " There he is, young and 
 handsome, under the sky of France . . . Bringing to nature 
 a heart full of hope — Loving, loved by all, open as a flower; 
 So candid and fresh that the angel of innocence — Would kiss 
 on his brow the beauty of his heart — There he is, look at him, 
 divine his life for him — What fate can be predicted for that 
 child of heaven? — Love, in approaching him, swears to be 
 everlasting! Fortune thinks of him. . . ." And all that fol- 
 lows. From a poetical point of view nothing could be more 
 delightful, better imagined, and better carried out. Neverthe- 
 less, in vain has the poet created^ in vain has he desired to draw 
 for us an unique Don Juan, a contradiction as he makes him, 
 living almost innocent in the midst of his crimes ; the ** inno- 
 cent corrupter " does not exist. He succeeded in evoking him, 
 in giving momentary life by his magic to an impossible ab- 
 straction. It is said that words do no harm on paper. Such 
 a combination and contrast of virtues and vices in the same 
 being is all very well to write about, and especially to celebrate 
 in verse, but it is true neither according to humanity nor nat- 
 ure. And then, why put us to the absolute alternative of 
 choosing between the two sorts of libertines ? Would poetry 
 suffer, O poet! if there were no libertines? In the divine 
 company of Vergil's Elysian Fields, in which the greatest of 
 mortals hold a place, there is room in the first rank for the 
 virtuous poets, for the poets who were entirely human, who 
 uttered with emotion and tenderness the large accents of nat- 
 ure: 
 
 ''Quiquepiivates et Phcebo digna locuti" 
 
 How distant such subtleties were from those lofty and whole- 
 some thoughts ! 
 
 - So much for my reservations. There are, however, in " Na- 
 mouna " two or three hundred consecutive lines quite beyond 
 comparison. Be incredulous, and turn them about in every 
 sense ; apply the surgeon's knife ; cavil at your pleasure ; a few 
 stains, a little loud coloring may be discovered ; but if you 
 
4o8 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 possess true poetic feeling, and if you are sincere, you will 
 recognize the strength and power of the inspiration ; the god 
 — or if you prefer it, the devil — has touched it. 
 
 Young men, who in such a matter are scarcely ever mis- 
 taken, were the first to recognize it. When the poems of ** Na- 
 mouna " and " Rolla " had only appeared in the reviews, and 
 before they were collected in a volume, law students and med- 
 ical students knew them by heart from beginning to end, and 
 recited them to their friends, the new arrivals. Many of them 
 still know the splendid exordium of " Rolla," the apostrophe 
 to Christ, the other apostrophe to Voltaire (for there are many 
 apostrophes), especially the enchanting slumber of the fifteen- 
 year-old girl : " Oh ! the flower of Eden, why hast thou let it 
 fade — Careless child, beautiful fair-haired Eve ? . . ." I speak 
 of young men as they were ten years ago. Then the whole 
 of these youthful poems were recited; now, perhaps, a selec- 
 tion is already beginning to be made. 
 
 After " Namouna " and " Rolla," there remained one step 
 for M. de Musset to take. He had gone as far as was possible 
 in the attempt and anticipation of passion without being 
 touched by passion itself. But by means of talking of it, by 
 attribthting to himself the desire and torment of it, patience! 
 it will come. In spite of his insults and blasphemies, his heart 
 was worthy of it. He who had described in burning stanzas 
 the odious and selfish Lovelace, and had made a show of lib- 
 ertine pretensions, had at base the heart of an honest man and 
 of a poet. For, observe carefully, that even with the author 
 of " Namouna," coxcombry (if I dare say it) is only on the 
 surface : he throws it off as soon as the flame of his poetry is 
 kindled. 
 
 At length M. de Musset loved. He told and repeated it so 
 often in his verse, his passion has made so much noise, and 
 has been so loudly proclaimed on both sides and in all tones, 
 that we commit no indiscretion in stating it here in simple 
 prose. Besides, it is never a dishonor for a woman to have 
 been loved and sung by a true poet, even when afterwards 
 she seems to be cursed for it. The malediction is a supreme 
 homage. A far-sighted confidant could say : " Take care, you 
 love her still." 
 
 That love was the great event of M. de Musset's life, I mean 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 
 
 409 
 
 of his poetic life. His talent was suddenly purified and en- 
 nobled ; the sacred flame seemed on a sudden to reject all im- 
 pure alloy. In the poems composed under that powerful star 
 almost all the faults disappeared ; his finer qualities, till then, 
 as it were, scattered and fragrnentary, were combined, assem- 
 bled, and grouped in a powerful although sad harmony. The 
 four poems M. de Musset called '* Nights " are short, complex, 
 meditative poems, marking the loftiest height of his lyrical 
 genius. The " May Night " and the " October Night " are 
 the finest for the flow and the inexhaustible vein of the poetry, 
 for the expression of violent and unmasked passion. But the 
 " December Night " and the " August Night " are also delight- 
 ful — the latter for action and sentiment, the former for grace 
 and flexibility of expression. The four, taken together, make 
 one work, animated by the same sentiment, possessing har- 
 mony and skilfully contrived relations. 
 
 Parallel with De Musset's " Nights " I read over again the 
 famous poems of Milton's youth, " L'AUegro," and especially 
 " II Penseroso." But in those compositions of supreme and 
 somewhat cold beauty the poet was passionless ; he waited for 
 an impulse from without ; he received his impressions succes- 
 sively from nature; he carried to it a grave, noble, sensible 
 temperament, but calm like a mirror slightly ruffled. The 
 " Penseroso " is the masterpiece of meditative and contem- 
 plative poems ; it resembles a magnificent oratorio, in which 
 by degrees prayer slowly ascends to the Eternal. The con- 
 trast to the subject in hand is very noticeable. I am not in- 
 stituting a comparison. Let us not displace august names 
 from their proper sphere. All that is fine in Milton is beyond 
 comparison ; it reveals the calm habitude of high regions and a 
 continuity of power. However, in the more terrestrial, and at 
 the same time more human, " Nights " of M. de Musset, it is 
 from within that the inspiration, the passion that paints and 
 the breeze that makes nature fragrant, springs ; or, rather, the 
 charm consists in the combination and alliance of the two 
 sources of impressions — that is to say, of a deep sorrow and 
 of a soul still open to vivid impressions. The poet, wounded 
 to the heart, shedding real tears, is conscious of a renewal of 
 youth, and is almost intoxicated by the spring. He is more 
 sensitive than before to the innumerable beauties of the uni- 
 
4IO SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 verse, to the verdure and the flowers, to the morning sunUght, 
 to the birds' songs, and fresh as at the age of fifteen, he brings 
 us his poesy of Hlies and eglantine. M. de Musset's muse will 
 always, even at the least happy moments, be conscious of such 
 renewals; but in no other place will the natural freshness be 
 so happily wedded, as in this case, to bleeding passion and 
 sincere grief. Poetry, chaste consoler, was there treated al- 
 most with adoration and affection. 
 
 Which of the poets of this age will survive ? Rash would be 
 the man who should at the present time take upon himself the 
 task of assigning lots and making a division. But in our day 
 time runs on so swiftly that even now we can recognize its 
 different effects on works which at their birth seemed equally 
 likely to live. Consider the works that were at first most 
 warmly greeted and applauded : how many places are already 
 empty, how many colors already pale and faded ! One of the 
 poets most certain to survive, Beranger, said to me one day: 
 " You all began too young, and before you arrived at ma- 
 turity." He might easily speak thus. It is not every man's 
 good fortune to meet obstacles which restrain and keep him 
 back until the right moment — the moment at which the fruit 
 as well as the flowers can be produced. Beranger (he or his 
 good fairy) had the sense to let the poetry of the Empire die 
 away before his came into being ; had he planned his life him- 
 self, he could not have had a greater success. The others, a 
 little sooner, a little later, all very young, some still children, 
 entered the lists pell-mell entirely at hazard. What may be 
 stated with certainty is that a rich lyrical poetry, richer than 
 France until then had suspected, but an unequal and motley 
 poetry, resulted during several seasons from that assemblage 
 of talent. The greater number of the poets abandoned them- 
 selves without curb or bridle to all the instincts of their nature, 
 and moreover to all the pretensions of their pride and the fool- 
 ishness of their vanity. Faults and fine qualities came out in 
 all their freedom, and posterity will have to do the sorting. 
 We feel it has begun already. Which among the poems writ- 
 ten between 1819 and 1830 are read now with emotion and 
 pleasure? I merely state the proposition, and have no inten- 
 tion of solving it, nor of following closely the faint yet visible 
 line that, among illustrious men most sure of themselves, al- 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 411 
 
 ready divides the quick from the dead. Poets of to-day, there 
 are three or four of you who will claim the sceptre, who be- 
 lieve that each is the first ! Who knows which is he, who with 
 our indifferent descendants will have the last word ? Some of 
 your accents will surely reach posterity, and therein lies your 
 honor; it will cover the rest of them in a kindly oblivion. 
 Nothing complete of the poets of the time will survive. M. de 
 Musset will not escape that fate, and on that score he has per- 
 haps little reason to complain ; for his accents will reach much 
 farther, and we may believe will pierce time the better, be- 
 cause they will have been thus purified. His accents are ac- 
 cents of pure passion, and it is in the " Nights " that they are 
 specially to be found. 
 
 M. de Musset has quite a small school of imitators. What 
 do they imitate in him? That which imitators usually copy, 
 form, surface, the smart tone, the sprightly gesture, the dash- 
 ing faults, everything that he knew how to carry off with a 
 certain charm and ease, they religiously set to work to copy. 
 They imitated his vocabulary in the names of gallants, " Ma- 
 non, Ninon, Marion," his jingle of courtesans and marquises. 
 They imitated his weak lines and his affectations of careless- 
 ness. They took the form and the bad habit ; but the fire, the 
 passion, the elevation, and the lyrical power they did not care, 
 and for good reasons, to borrow from him. 
 
 Sometimes the French public criticises poetry in strange 
 fashion. I mentioned above those who in the young genera- 
 tion were the first to admire M. de Musset with sincerity and 
 candor. A piquant chapter concerning manners might be 
 written, taking as a text the fine ladies and gentlemen and the 
 enthusiasts who, following the rest, have fully adopted him, 
 the same who five-and-twenty years ago would have admired 
 Alexandrines, because they believed them to be cast in the 
 mould of Racine, and who now extol the slightest trifles of the 
 brilliant poet equally with his best and really good work. It 
 was not when he was at his best that he became the fashion 
 and the vogue; as usually happens, it came later, but is now 
 a fact. He is the favorite poet of the day ; the boudoir out- 
 does the inns of court. When we are young, and n^w to the 
 world, it is by Musset we prefer to attack modern poetry. 
 Mothers do not advise their daughters to read it; husbands 
 
412 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 read it to their young wives from the first year of marriage. 
 I beHeve I once saw a volume of his poems slipped among the 
 wedding presents, an amusing circumstance, and not alto- 
 gether displeasing to the poet. He should hasten to enjoy it, 
 and should not rely on it. 
 
 The lyrics produced by M. de Musset since the " Nights," 
 and which have just been collected, contain some remarkable 
 poems. I point out one called " A Lost Evening," where he 
 charmingly mingles a motive of Andre Chenier with a thought 
 of Moliere, a satire " On Idleness," in which the poet was in- 
 fluenced by reading Regnier ; a pretty tale, *' Simone," savor- 
 ing of Boccaccio and La Fontaine ; but especially a " Recol- 
 lection," full of charm and feeling, where the inspiration came 
 from himself alone. The poet once again revisited places dear 
 to him, some forest, Fontainebleau maybe, where he had spent 
 happy days. His friends feared the effect of the pilgrimage 
 and of the awakening of his memories. There is no greater 
 woe, says Dante, than the remembrance of past happy days in 
 misery. But M. de Musset experienced the contrary ; and he 
 tells us how he found the awakening of the past that was feared 
 for him, and that he himself feared, consoling and sweet. To 
 be frank, that is the kind of poem I like in M. de Musset, and 
 by no means the little verses " On Three Steps of Rose-colored 
 Marble," and other gew-gaws which savor of their source. 
 
 M. de Musset's taste has reached maturity, and it would be 
 best henceforth for his talent to obey his taste and not to allow 
 itself any more weaknesses. After so many varied attempts 
 and experiences, after trying to love many things in order to 
 discover the only and supreme one worthy of love, that is to 
 say simple truth clothed at the same time with beauty, it is 
 not wonderful that when we return to it and recognize it, we 
 find ourselves less animated and more fatigued in its presence 
 than we were in the presence of the idols. Howeve-r, his 
 genius possesses power of renewal, sources of youth of which 
 he has more than once shown that he knew the secret, and 
 which he has not yet exhausted. For a few years his genius 
 has exhibited itself to the public in a new form, and the poet 
 has triumphed in a somewhat hazardous experiment. The 
 delicate sketches, charming proverbs that he did not intend 
 for the stage, suddenly became delightful little comedies that 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 413 
 
 arose and walked before us. The success of his " Caprice " 
 did honor, I do not fear to say it, to the public, and proves that 
 for him who can awaken it, it still possesses delicate literary 
 feeling. He has seen the circle of his admirers extend as if 
 by magic. Many minds that would never have dreamed of 
 seeking him out for his lyrical talent learned to appreciate him 
 in his easy and graceful proverbs. He had more than ever the 
 suffrages of men of the world, and of young women ; he made 
 eccentric and inelegant critics angry; nothing wanted to his 
 success. For all that, I cannot say I am mad for his " Loui- 
 son " ; it is only a style. M. de Musset as a dramatic poet has 
 still much to learn. On the stage a happy situation, ingenious 
 dialogue are not enough ; invention, fertility, development, 
 above all, action, are necessary to consummate, as it has been 
 said, the work of the devil. But it is time to conclude, and 
 without asking too much, without making more ceremony 
 than M. de Musset himself, I shall end with a line of his own 
 that puts a stop to argument : 
 
 " What do I say ! Such as he is, the world loves him still." 
 
RABELAIS 
 
 A WRITER, as yet little known, who, judging from his 
 ideas, must be young, has just published a pleasant little 
 book on Rabelais, whom he places in a sort of gallery 
 of French legends. The word legend sufficiently indicates that 
 the young author has not attempted to give an accurate, exact, 
 and critical biography of Rabelais, and has welcomed the Rabe- 
 lais of tradition, such as popular imagination has transformed 
 him. Later on, when I have talked for a space with the master, 
 and tried to refresh my memory of him, I shall say a word of the 
 spirit in which the little pamphlet is written. 
 
 If only it could be accomplished, what would we not give to 
 talk with Rabelais, to come for an instant into contact with 
 him in his habit as he lived, to hear him? Everyone has his 
 ideal in the past. I believe the nature and bent of each mind 
 would be best shown in the choice of the person first sought if 
 we went back to a bygone age. Some, I know, would have no 
 particular choice, but would wander indifferently from one to 
 the other, or would not even go at all. Let us leave minds like 
 those, wanting in love, passion, and desire ; they are lukewarm 
 spirits who lack the sacred fire of literature. I know others 
 who would rush to many at one time, and, in their eagerness 
 and affection, would embrace a crowd of favorite authors with- 
 out knowing by whom to commence. Those minds are not in- 
 different like the others, they are not lukewarm ; they are vola- 
 tile, unsettled, and I fear we critics have something in common 
 with them. But the wise and praiseworthy minds are those 
 who have a decided taste in the past, an avowed preference; 
 who would, for example, make straight for Moliere without 
 stopping even at Bossuet. They are those, in fact, who have 
 the courage of their passion, and do not seek to disguise their 
 highly placed affection. At that price, were it possible to spend 
 
 415 
 
4l6 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 a whole day in the sixteenth century, and to talk every man with 
 his author, to whom would you go ? 
 
 Calvin, Rabelais, Amyot, and Montaigne are the four great 
 prose writers of the sixteenth century ; Rabelais and Montaigne 
 might rather be called two poets. I do not here include a num- 
 ber of secondary writers, worthy to be mentioned and saluted 
 at their side. On the day which I suppose we might spend in 
 the sixteenth century with our chosen author, I scarcely think 
 at the present time Calvin would find many friends. Good 
 Amyot, with his kindly old man's smile and his somewhat lan- 
 guid charms, would have some attraction for us. But all would 
 flock to Montaigne — all except a numerous and decided com- 
 pany who, while regretting the necessity of choosing between 
 the two, would elect to pay their respects to Rabelais. 
 
 In the taste of certain persons for Rabelais and their worship 
 of him, there is more even than admiration, there is the alert 
 curiosity which belongs to a spice of the unknown and myste- 
 rious. We almost know in advance what Montaigne would be 
 like ; we picture him almost as he would appear at first view ; 
 but Rabelais, who knows him? Rabelais's life and true charac- 
 ter have been much discussed. I believe, and every thoughtful 
 reader will believe with me, that those who expected to find in 
 him exactly the man of his book, a sort of jovial priest-physi- 
 cian, a half-drunken buffoon living like a fighting-cock, would 
 be vastly disappointed. Rabelais's debauches were held en- 
 tirely in his imagination and humor; they were studious de- 
 bauches, debauches of a very learned man, full of good sense, 
 who, pen in hand, gave himself up to them without restraint. 
 I am none the less convinced, however, that after a very short 
 time passed in intercourse with him, in associating with the 
 man of science and the student — doubtless very good company 
 for his time — the inimitable jester would as a matter of fact be 
 very quickly discovered. It was impossible that the natural 
 flow of such a vein could be restrained and not allowed to come 
 out. The man's person, however noble in bearing, and how- 
 ever venerable its first aspect, would at times grow animated 
 and rejoice in the thousand sallies of the inner genius, the irre- 
 sistible good humor which frolics in his romance or rather in his 
 drama. I say that of Rabelais as of Moliere. The latter was 
 not always gay and amusing, quite the contrary ; he was called 
 
RABELAIS 417 
 
 " the contemplative man " ; when he was alone, he was even sad 
 and melancholy. But it is certain that excited and urged to 
 converse, he would again become the Moliere we know. So 
 doubtless would it be with Rabelais. There is a charming piece 
 .of Latin verse on Rabelais, physician and anatomist, by Etienne 
 Dolet, the man who was burnt alive for the crime of heresy. 
 In it Dolet makes a criminal, who had the honor of being dis- 
 sected after his execution in the public amphitheatre of Lyons, 
 by Rabelais himself, and at any rate furnished the subject of a 
 good lesson in anatomy, speak : " In vain did an adverse for- 
 tune desire to cover me with outrage and shame," said the 
 criminal in Dolet's lines ; " it was otherwise decreed. If I died 
 in a disgraceful manner, there was a moment in which I gained 
 more than anyone would have dared to hope from great Jove's 
 favor. Exposed in a public theatre, I was dissected : a learned 
 physician describing me, explained to all how nature formed 
 the human body with beauty, art, and perfect harmony. A nu- 
 merous company surrounded me and contemplated all my parts, 
 and, while listening to him, admired the wonders of the human 
 structure." Truly, when Rabelais gave that public lecture on 
 anatomy in the Lyons amphitheatre, he must, like Vesalius, 
 have had the doctor's and master's venerable aspect of which 
 some of his contemporaries have spoken, and must have worthily 
 represented the dignity of science. 
 
 Son of a tavern-keeper or apothecary of Chinon, it is known 
 that he began life as a monk and a Franciscan. The seriousness 
 and elevation of his tastes, the natural and generous liberty of 
 his inclinations soon rendered him, in that age of decadence, an 
 unsuitable subject for a monastery of that order. He left, tried 
 the Benedictines, a less contemptible order, but fared no better 
 there ; then he put off the regular monastical habit, and donned 
 the costume of a secular priest. As we say, he threw his gown 
 to the dogs, and went to study medicine at Montpellier. The 
 little known with certainty of his actual and not legendary 
 biography has been well put together and set forth in the thirty- 
 second volume of Niceron's " Memoirs." If the honest biog- 
 rapher represents Rabelais with slightly austere, or at any rate 
 serious characteristics, and with much sobriety, he has the ad- 
 vantage of saying nothing problematical, and of being free from 
 prejudice. There, the bulls Rabelais was clever enough to ob- 
 27 
 
41 8 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 tain from the Holy See during one of his voyages to Rome in 
 Cardinal du Bellay's suite, by which he prudently set himself 
 right with his enemies in France, may be seen. In a bull dated 
 January 12, 1536, it is stated that he was permitted to practise 
 the art of medicine everywhere, gratuitously, however, and ex- 
 cluding the application of the knife and caustic ; those sort of 
 operations were forbidden to priests. But nothing was said 
 of the pantagruelic books he had already written and was going 
 to write ; and never did Rabelais think it incumbent on him to 
 forbid them to himself. 
 
 Nothing is less easy than to hit on the right way of speaking 
 of those books, for Rabelais takes licenses peculiarly his own, of 
 which the most enthusiastic critic cannot take the responsibility. 
 When we want to read Rabelais aloud, even before men (before 
 women it is impossible), we are always in the position of a man 
 wishing to cross a vast open space full of mud and filth : every 
 moment it is necessary to take a long stride, and to walk with- 
 out getting rather dirty is difficult. Once a lady reproached 
 Sterne for the nudities of his " Tristram Shandy." At the mo- 
 ment a three-year-old child was playing on the floor and ex- 
 hibiting himself in complete innocence. " Look," said Sterne, 
 " my book is that three-year-old child who is rolling on the car- 
 pet." But with Rabelais the child has grown up ; he is a man, 
 a monk, a giant Gargantua, Pantagruel, or at any rate Panurge, 
 and he still conceals nothing. Here there is no possibility of 
 saying to the ladies : Look ! And even when we are speaking 
 in the company of men only, and are perfectly cool-headed, it is 
 necessary to make a choice. I, too, shall choose. In M. 
 Rabelais's first book, " Gargantua," not perhaps the first accord- 
 ing to date, but which is the most consistent, the most complete 
 in itself, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, some admirable 
 chapters are to be found, neither too serious nor too comic, 
 where Rabelais's great powers of good sense are to be seen. I 
 intend to speak of the chapters dealing with Gargantua's edu- 
 cation. After all the extravagance of the beginning, the birth 
 of Gargantua by the left ear, the marvellous description of his 
 layette, the first signs he gives of his intelligence, and a certain 
 very nonsensical answer he gives his father, in which he recog- 
 nizes with admiration his son's marvellous wit, a master is 
 given him, a sophist in Latin learning. Then follows a very 
 
RABELAIS 419 
 
 clever and striking satire on the bad education of that time. 
 Gargantua was supposed to have been born in the latter half of 
 the fifteenth century, and was first subjected to the scholastic 
 and pedantic education, full of laborious and complicated puerili- 
 ties, an education which seemed to be formed expressly for cor- 
 rupting good and noble minds. However, his father Grand- 
 gousier perceived that his son studied hard, and yet grew more 
 stupid every day. He was greatly astonished to learn from one 
 of his friends, the viceroy of some neighboring country, that 
 any young man who had only studied for two years under a good 
 master, by means of a new method only just discovered, would 
 know more than all the little prodigies of olden times, given to 
 the care of masters " whose knowledge was nothing but brutish- 
 ness." Gargantua is brought into the company of the young 
 Endemon, a child of twelve, who addresses him with charm, 
 politeness, and a noble modesty that in no way injures his facil- 
 ity. Gargantua found nothing to reply to all the young page 
 so amiably and encouragingly said to him, " but all the counte- 
 nance he kept was that he fell to crying like a cow, and cast 
 down his face, hiding it with his cap." The father was griev- 
 ously vexed. In his rage he would have killed Maitre Jobelin, 
 the pedant who had furnished such a wretched education, but 
 he contented himself with kicking him out of doors, and intrust- 
 ing Gargantua to the charge of the tutor who had brought up 
 Endemon so successfully, and whose name was Ponocrates. 
 
 Here we touch on one of the parts of Rabelais's book which 
 contains much good sense, and up to a certain point a serious 
 meaning. But I speak with reserve ; because, while recognizing 
 the serious parts, it is necessary to be careful not to imagine 
 and create them, as so many commentators have done — a pro- 
 ceeding that must give Rabelais plenty to laugh at, if he takes 
 any heed of us in the shades. But in the present instance the 
 meaning is not to be doubted. We saw the young Gargantua 
 given up to the pedagogues of the old school, and the sad 
 results of the wretched, methodical, pedantic, and brutalizing 
 education, the last legacy of the expiring Middle Ages. Pono- 
 crates, on the contrary, is an innovation, a modem man, in 
 accord with the true renaissance. He accepts the pupil, takes 
 him away with him to Paris, and sets himself to form his man- 
 ners and character. 
 
420 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 And what merry tricks as they go along, what adventures by 
 the way, and on entering Paris ! What a welcome Gargantua 
 receives from the Parisians, over curious and always loafing! 
 Then in return he has to pay his footing ! Read all those things, 
 those miraculous, mischievous students' tricks, which make ex- 
 cellent scenes of comedy ; I take refuge in the semi-serious parts. 
 
 Ponocrates begins by examining his pupil ; he employs in ad- 
 vance Montaigne's method, who advises that " you should first 
 trot out " the young mind before you, to judge its pace. For 
 some time Ponocrates allows the young Gargantua to do as he 
 had been accustomed, and Rabelais describes the routine of 
 idleness, gluttony, and sloth, the result of a wrongly directed 
 early education. Let me briefly sum up the system. The 
 young Gargantua already conducts himself like one of the most 
 ignorant and gluttonous monks of that time, commencing his 
 day late, sleeping far into the morning, taking a plentiful break- 
 fast, hearing a number of masses which scarcely fatigue him, 
 entirely given up to good living, sleep, and idleness. In reading 
 the description, we thoroughly understand Rabelais's flisgust 
 for that ignoble life when he was a Franciscan ! 
 
 It was high time to reform the vicious education ; but Pono- 
 crates, like a wise man, did not make the change too sudden, 
 " considering that nature does not endure sudden changes with- 
 out great violence." The twenty-third and twenty- fourth chap- 
 ters of the first book are truly admirable, and present the sound- 
 est and most far-reaching system of education imaginable, a 
 better contrived system than that of the " Emile," Montaigne- 
 like, practical, formed for use, for developing the whole man, 
 the physical as well as the mental faculties. At every turn we 
 recognize the enlightened physician, physiologist, and phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 Gargantua rises at about four in the morning; during his 
 early toilet some chapter of the Holy Scriptures was read to 
 him, aloud and clearly, in such a way as to direct his mind to 
 the works and judgments of God from the morning. A few 
 hygienic details follow, for the physician in Rabelais forgets 
 nothing. Afterwards the tutor takes his pupil out, and they 
 consider the face of the sky, if it was such as they had observed 
 it the night before. He is made to note the difference of posi- 
 tion, the changes of the constellations and stars, for with Rabe- 
 
RABELAIS 421 
 
 lais the astronomer who had published almanacs was not less 
 clever than the doctor, and he considered no science, no human 
 or physical knowledge, irrelevant to his purpose. 
 
 In regard to physical knowledge of the heavens, education 
 has advanced little since Rabelais. Although Newton came, 
 and Arago led the way in his lectures at the observatory, ordi- 
 nary instruction has not improved. We, who should be ashamed 
 not to know geography and its chief divisions, need only lift our 
 eyes to the sky to perceive that we scarcely know anything of the 
 sublime cosmography. A few evenings with a professor would 
 suffice to teach us. Ponocrates would have been ashamed for 
 his pupil to be ignorant of so majestic and ordinary a spectacle. 
 
 After the lesson in the open air came lessons indoors, " three 
 good hours of reading ;" then games, ball, tennis, all that might 
 be useful in " gallantly exercising their bodies, as before they 
 had done their minds." According to Rabelais, such combina- 
 tion and accurate balance was what characterized real and com- 
 plete education: in every prescription you find in him the 
 physician, the man who understands the relation of the physical 
 to the moral world, and who in everything consults nature. 
 
 At table, at what was then called dinner (and what we call 
 luncheon), he only allowed his pupil to eat what was necessary 
 to appease " the demands of the appetite ;" he desired dinner, 
 the early meal, to be " sober and frugal," reserving him a more 
 extensive and plentiful supper. During the morning meal, in 
 reference to the dishes, conversation turned on the virtue, pro- 
 priety, and nature of the objects, the viands, herbs, and roots. 
 Passages on these subjects from the ancients were talked of; at 
 need books were fetched ; without knowing it, the pupil becomes 
 as learned as Pliny, " that in that time there was not a physician 
 that knew half so much as he did." 
 
 After the repast came cards, to learn under that novel pretext 
 a thousand pretty new tricks and inventions, all grounded upon 
 arithmetic and numbers. Thus the young Gargantua, so to 
 say, takes his mathematical instruction while amusing himself. 
 
 Digestion finished, after certain hygienic tasks I pass over 
 in silence, but which Rabelais never left to the imagination, they 
 recommence study for the second time, and seriously " for 
 three hours or more." Afterwards, about two or three hours 
 after midday, they leave the house in company of Squire Gym- 
 
422 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 nast, and practise the art of riding and gymnastics. Under so 
 accomplished a master, Gargantua profited boldly and usefully. 
 He did not amuse himself by breaking his lance, " for it is the 
 greatest foolishness in the world," observes Rabelais, " to say : 
 * I have broken ten lances at tilts or in fight :' a carpenter can do 
 even as much ; but it is a glorious and praiseworthy action with 
 one lance to break and overthrow ten of his enemies." Do you 
 not already perceive how good-sense is substituted for a false 
 point of honor, and how Rabelais, who does not believe in vain- 
 glory and swaggering, wants to reform the last of the Bayards ? 
 They were only too well reformed. 
 
 In describing the various exercises of riding, hunting, wres- 
 tling, and swimming, Rabelais amused himself. Master Gym- 
 nast's feats of strength became, under his pen, feats of strength 
 of language. French prose also performed gymnastics, and 
 the style became astounding in its copiousness, freedom, supple- 
 ness, suitability, and animation. Never before had language 
 had such a glorious time of it. 
 
 It is, in fact, an admirable picture of an ideal education, and, 
 reduced to proportions rather less than those of the giant Gar- 
 gantua, almost all of it is serious. There is excess, exaggera- 
 tion, assuredly, in the whole ; but it is an exaggeration easily 
 reduced to the truth and the correct sense of human nature. 
 The new character of the education lies in the combination of 
 play and study, in learning things by making use of them, in 
 putting books and the things of life side by side, theory and 
 practice, body and mind, gymnastics and music, as with the 
 Greeks, without, however, modelling ourselves on the past, but 
 having regard continually to the present and future. 
 
 If the weather was rainy, the employment of the time was 
 different, and the diet also varied. Taking less exercise in the 
 open air on those days, he feeds more soberly. On those days 
 the workshops and factories of different artificers, lapidaries, 
 goldsmiths, alchemists, money-coiners, watchmakers, printers, 
 not omitting the casting of great ordnance, then quite new, are 
 more particularly visited, and everywhere they give them wine ; 
 they learn the different industries. It is to be remarked that 
 Rabelais wants his royal pupil to examine and become ac- 
 quainted with all useful arts, every modern invention, so that 
 he may never find himself hindered or at a loss, like so many 
 
RABELAIS 423 
 
 poor learned men who know nothing but books. An education 
 d la Ponocrates reconciled the ancient and modern system. Per- 
 rault, Colbert's worthy clerk, would find nothing further to de- 
 sire there, and Madame Dacier, the worshipper of Homer, 
 would discover there all she liked best. 
 
 In the young Gargantua's course of education and study we 
 have the first plan of what Montaigne, Charron, in places and 
 parts the Port Royal School, the Christian school which did not 
 recognize itself so strong in the same path as Rabelais, strange 
 precursor! set forth with greater seriousness, but not with 
 more good sense. We have in advance at one glance, and with 
 brilliant genius, what Rousseau will expound later in " Emile," 
 reducing it to a system, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in his 
 " Studies of Nature," rendering it vapid. 
 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, melancholy and a dreamer by 
 choice, whose chaste and ideal genius seems to have little in com- 
 mon with Rabelais's mind, comprehended him marvellously on 
 the serious side we have been describing, and in a memorable 
 passage, not altogether chimerical, although giving a too uni- 
 form explanation, and too much embellished, said : 
 
 " It was all up with the happiness of nations, and even of 
 religion, when two men of letters, Rabelais and Miguel Cer- 
 vantes, arose, one in France, the other in Spain, and shook the 
 power of the monasteries and of chivalry. To overturn the two 
 giants, they made use of no arms, but ridicule, the natural an- 
 tithesis to human terror. [What more exact and happy ex- 
 planation could you have ?] Like children, the people laughed, 
 and were reassured. The only incentives to happiness they 
 possessed were those their princes liked to give them, had their 
 princes been capable of giving them any. ' Telemachus ' ap- 
 peared, and the book reminded Europe of the harmonies of 
 nature. It produced a great revolution in politics. . . ." 
 
 I do not dare to accept altogether the fashion of explaining 
 modern history by ascribing its chief results to two or three 
 names, to two or three books. In the intervals of " Gargantua," 
 " Don Quixote," and " Telemachus " more things than seem to 
 be dreamed of in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's philosophy hap- 
 pened. There is truth, however, in regarding Rabelais, the un- 
 trammelled jester, as having, at the end of the terrors of the 
 Middle Ages and the labyrinth of scholasticism, consoled and 
 reassured the human race. 
 
424 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 The system of education I admire in Rabelais, Montaigne, 
 Charron, and some of their followers, had a great opportunity, 
 when it was a question of emancipating the young, of freeing 
 them from servile and oppressive methods, and of leading their 
 minds into natural paths. 
 
 To realize that programme, even after three centuries, much 
 progress has yet to be made. We should, however, bear in 
 mind the new and, above all, pleasant modes of imparting 
 knowledge to children was by means of a preceptor or tutor for 
 each, and took no account of the inherent difficulties of pubHc 
 education nor of those difficulties which depend on the condi- 
 tion of society. Then, and in proportion as we advance in life, 
 what fatigues, struggles, and pains we have to endure ! It is 
 no bad thing to have become early accustomed to them by edu- 
 cation, and to have felt the consequences of things while young. 
 An eighteenth century philosopher, wiser than Rousseau 
 (Galiani), recommends two particular aims in education: to 
 teach children to support injustice, and to endure ennui. 
 
 But Rabelais's purpose was merely to advance certain sensi- 
 ble and appropriate notions in a jest : do not demand more of 
 him. His book contains everything, and each admirer can pride 
 himself on discovering in it what best suits his own mind. But 
 he also finds many comic, unreservedly diverting parts to justify 
 to all Rabelais's renown and glory. The rest is disputable, 
 equivocal, liable to controversy and commentary. To those 
 parts candid readers will confess they find a difficulty in paying 
 attention and in taking pleasure in them. What is indisputably 
 admirable is the form of the language, the fulness and richness 
 of the expressions, the abundant and inexhaustible flow of the 
 eloquence. His French, in spite of his scoffs at the " latiniz- 
 ings " and " graecizings " of the time, is full of, almost crammed 
 with, the ancient languages ; but it is so from a kind of interior 
 nourishment ; it does not seem strange in him, and in his mouth 
 everything has the ease of naturalness, familiarity, and genius. 
 With him, as with Aristophanes, although more rarely, pure, 
 charming, lucid, and truly poetic passages may be distinguished. 
 Here, for example, is one of those passages, full of grace and 
 beauty. There is talk of studies and of the Muses who turn 
 aside from love. In a dialogue between Venus and Cupid, 
 Lucian made the goddess ask her son why he so greatly re- 
 
RABELAIS 425 
 
 spected the Muses, and the boy replied much as Rabelais 
 summed it up, expanded and embellished it in the following 
 words : 
 
 " I remember reading that Cupid, when asked sometimes by 
 his mother why he did not attack the Muses, replied that he 
 found them so beautiful, so innocent, so virtuous, so modest, 
 and continually employed, one in contemplating the stars, an- 
 other in reckoning numbers, another in measuring geometrical 
 bodies, another in rhetorical invention, another in poetical com- 
 position, another in the disposition of music, that, approaching 
 them, he unbent his bow, closed his case of arrows, and extin- 
 guished his torch for shame and fear of harming them. Then 
 he tore the bandage from his eyes, in order to see them more 
 easily and to listen to their charming songs and poetic odes. 
 It gave him the greatest pleasure in the world. So much so he 
 was often conscious of feeling quite enchanted by their beauty 
 and grace, and was lulled to sleep by the sweet sounds of their 
 harmony." 
 
 That is Rabelais when he remembered Lucian, or rather Plato. 
 
 No author is more admired than Rabelais; but he is wor- 
 shipped in two ways, and by two races, as it were, very different 
 in intelligence and conduct. Some admire him less than they 
 enjoy him ; they read him, understand him where they can, and 
 console themselves for what they do not understand with the 
 exquisite pieces they extract like marrow from a bone and take 
 delight in. That is Montaigne's way of admiring Rabelais, 
 who ranks him among books " merely amusing " ; it is the way 
 of the whole of the seventeenth century, of Racine and La 
 Fontaine, who naively asked a doctor who was speaking to him 
 of St. Augustine if that great saint had as much wit as Rabelais. 
 Another method of admiring Rabelais is in desiring to be a 
 man of his party, of his set, to draw him to one side, to prove 
 him, as Ginguene did in a pamphlet, one of the harbingers and 
 apostles of the revolution of 1789, and of those which are still 
 to come. The latter way, which prides itself on being more 
 philosophical and logical, seems to me much less Rabelaisian. 
 
 The young author of the pamphlet I mentioned at the be- 
 ginning, M. Eugene Noel, somewhat favors the latter method, 
 applying it, however, according to the ideas and views of our 
 time — that is to say, in still further exaggerating it. He thus 
 
426 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 systematically spoils an otherwise valuable study, which implies 
 a great deal of reading, and a fairly intimate knowledge of his 
 subject. M. Michelet, carrying on at a distance of three cen- 
 turies the war against mediaeval times, a period, in his belief, 
 still fraught with danger to us, once began one of his lectures 
 at the College de France in these words : " God resembles a 
 mother who wishes her children to be strong and proud, and to 
 oppose her ; his favorites also are the strong, indomitable nat- 
 ures which wrestle with him like Jacob, the strongest and most 
 cunning of shepherds. Voltaire and Rabelais are his chosen 
 elect.'' M. Michelet's Rabelais, who wrestles with God to 
 give him pleasure, is a little like M. Eugene Noel's Rabelais. 
 " He rescued," says the biographer, " the men of his time from 
 the darkness and terrible fasts of the old world. . . . His 
 book, almost paternal, answers the cry of universal thirst of the 
 sixteenth century : ' Drink for the people ! ' . . . The great 
 river of the papal church of which the Middle Ages had drunk 
 for so long was exhausted : Drink ! drink ! was the universal 
 cry ; that was also Gargantua's first word." That is an allegori- 
 cal thirst for a new explanation of which commentators have not 
 yet thought. Every age has its hobby ; and his, which does not 
 jest, has the humanitarian craze, and thinks to do great honor 
 to Rabelais by attributing it to him. 
 
 I fancy when we try to explain Rabelais according to our own 
 ideas, he permits it merely to have a laugh over it. He might 
 well be astonished to find that under legendary form he is an 
 apostle, saint, what shall I say ? a future Christ of the Evangel. 
 Speaking of the manner in which he performed his duties as 
 priest at Meudon, and persisting in the symbolical mode of ex- 
 planation, the new biographer writes : 
 
 " How I should have liked to hear him ! How I should have 
 liked on a fine Easter day to assist him at his mass, to contem- 
 plate his majestic and serene face, while, hearing sung around 
 him, * Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum' he 
 remembered with a divine smile of satisfaction the infinite thirst 
 of his Pantagruel ! " 
 
 In concluding, let us return to common sense and modera- 
 tion ; Voltaire will help us. When young he cared very little 
 for Rabelais. He relates how one day the regent, the Due 
 d'Orleans, leaving the opera in conversation with him, began 
 
RABELAIS 427 
 
 a great eulogy of Rabelais. " I took him for a prince in bad 
 company," he said, " whose taste was spoiled. At that time I 
 had a supreme contempt for Rabelais." In his " Philosophical 
 Letters " he spoke very slightingly of him, putting him below 
 Swift, which is not just. " He is a drunken philosopher," he 
 concluded, " who only wrote when he was drunk." But five- 
 and-twenty years later, in writing to Madame du Deffand, he 
 made him reparation. 
 
 " After Clarissa Harlowe, I read over again some chapters of 
 Rabelais, such as the fight of Friar John des Entommeures and 
 Picrochole's council of war. I know them, indeed, almost by 
 heart, but I read them with the greatest pleasure, because they 
 are the most vivid descriptions in the world. It is not that I 
 regard Rabelais as equal to Horace. . . . Rabelais, when 
 he is in good humor, is the be^t of good buffoons : two of the 
 craft are not wanted in a nation, but there must be one. I re- 
 pent that I formerly spoke ill of him." 
 
 Yes, Rabelais is a buffoon, but a unique buffoon, a Homeric 
 buffoon ! Voltaire's latest opinion will remain that of all men 
 of sense and taste, of those who do not possess a decided in- 
 clination and particular predilection for Rabelais. But for the 
 rest, for the true amateur, for the real pantagruelist devotees, 
 Rabelais is something very different. At the bottom of Master 
 Frangois's cask, even in the dregs, there is a flavor not to be 
 explained, that they prefer to everything. If we are permitted 
 to have an opinion on so serious a subject, we believe that what 
 we most enjoy in him in his best places with a certain mystery 
 of debauch, is to be found in the same quality and without con- 
 cealment in Moliere. 
 
 I have sometimes asked myself what Moliere, learned, a 
 physician, enveloped in Greek and Latin, would have been like. 
 Moliere, physician (imagine such a miracle) and priest after 
 having been a monk; Moliere, born at a period when every 
 independent thinker had to preserve himself from the stakes of 
 Geneva as from those of the Sorbonne; Moliere, without a 
 theatre, and forced to hide his splendid comedy in torrents of 
 absurdities, burlesque rhapsodies, and drunken gossip, to safe- 
 guard, at every hour, the jest which touches society to the 
 quick, by laughing without cause, and it seems to me we should 
 get something very like Rabelais. However, he will always 
 
428 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 possess in himself the singular attraction which attaches us to 
 a difficulty overcome, to a freemasonry both bacchic and learned, 
 of which, in loving him, we feel ourselves a part. In a word, 
 there is in pure pantagruelism an air of initiation which always 
 pleases us. 
 
BALZAC 
 
 A CAREFUL study of the famous novelist who has just 
 been taken from us, and whose sudden loss has excited 
 universal interest, would require a whole work, and 
 the time for that, I think, has not yet come. Those sorts of 
 moral autopsies cannot be made over a freshly dug grave, es- 
 pecially when he who has been laid in it was full of strength 
 and fertility, and seemed stilLfuU of future works and days. 
 All that is possible and fitting in respect of a great contempo- 
 rary renown at the moment death lays it low, is to point out 
 by means of a few clear-cut lines the merits, the varied skill, 
 the delicate and powerful attraction, by which it charmed its 
 epoch and acquired influence over it. I shall attempt to do 
 this in respect to Balzac, with a feeling free from all personal 
 recollection,^ and in a spirit where criticism only reserves to 
 itself some few rights. 
 
 Balzac was a painter of the manners of this age, and he was 
 the most original, the most individual and penetrating of them 
 all. From the first he regarded the nineteenth century as his 
 subject and material, he eagerly threw himself into it, and 
 never left it. Society is like a woman— she desires a painter, 
 a painter all to herself : he was this ; no tradition was in his 
 painting of it ; he applied the methods and artifices of the brush 
 to the use of the ambitious and coquettish society, anxious 
 only to date from itself, and to resemble no other ; for that rea- 
 son it has had much more affection for him. Born in 1799, 
 he had fifteen years to the fall of the Empire ; he knew and felt 
 the imperial age with the clear-sightedness and quick penetra- 
 tion belonging to childhood ; reflection will perfect it later on, 
 but nothing will equal its youthful lucidity. Someone of the 
 
 * See in M. de Balzac's " Revue Paris- others remember it. Such opinions only 
 ienne " of August 25, 1840, the article reflect in the future on those who held 
 which concerns me. If I have forgot- them, 
 ten it, it is certain I do not doubt that 
 
 429 
 
43© SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 same period as himself said : " From my childhood I saw into 
 things with a sensibility that pierced my heart like a sharp 
 blade at every moment." He might have said the same him- 
 self. The impressions of childhood, put later into criticisms 
 and pictures, make themselves felt by a strange depth of emo- 
 tion, and are precisely what give delicacy and life. A young 
 man under the Restoration, he passed through it; he saw it 
 wholly from what is perhaps the best position for an observing 
 artist to see things, from below, in the crowd, in suffering and 
 struggle, with the immense covetousness of genius and nat- 
 ure, which causes forbidden things to be divined, imagined, 
 and penetrated a thousand times before they are obtained and 
 known ; he felt the Restoration like a lover. He began to ac- 
 quire reputation at the same time as the new regime, set on 
 foot in July, 1830, was established. That regime he saw from 
 the same plane and even from a little above it ; he criticized it 
 frankly, he painted it enchantingly in its most striking types 
 and commonplace forms. Thus the three very diverse epochs 
 of physiognomy which form the century, now in its middle, 
 were all known and lived through by Balzac, and up to a cer- 
 tain point his work is the reflection of them. Who, for in- 
 stance, has described better than he the old men and the beauti- 
 ful women of the Empire ? Who has more delightfully hit off 
 the duchesses and countesses of the end of the Restoration, 
 the women of thirty, who, already on the spot, were awaiting 
 their painter with a vague anxiety, so that when he and they 
 met there was a sort of magnetic thrill of recognition ? Who, 
 in fact, has better understood and described in all its fulness 
 the lower middle class triumphant under the dynasty of July, 
 the class ever immortal and already gone, alas ! of the Birot- 
 teaus and Crevels? 
 
 There was a vast field, and it must be said M. Balzac soon 
 made it his own in all its extent ; he traversed and penetrated 
 it in every sense, and found it too narrow for his valor and 
 ardor. Not content with observing and guessing, he very 
 often invented and dreamed. However it may be with his 
 dreams, it was at first by his delicate and keen observation that 
 he won the heart of the aristocratic society to which he as- 
 pired. The first picked troops he introduced into the fortress 
 were " The Woman of Thirty," " The Deserted Woman," 
 
BALZAC 431 
 
 " The Grenadier," and he was soon master of the citadel. The 
 woman of thirty is not altogether an unexpected creation. 
 Since civilized society has existed, women of that age have 
 held a large, perhaps the chief place in it. In the eighteenth 
 century, which had time to subtilize everything, a ball was 
 given at court on Shrove Tuesday, 1763, a ball which was 
 called " The Mothers' Ball " ; the young girls, to speak the 
 truth, were lookers-on, and only women of thirty danced. A 
 pretty song was composed on the subject, of which the refrain 
 was, " Girls of fifteen, let your mothers dance ! " It is seen 
 how the eighteenth century was doing something towards the 
 real rehabilitation of this matter which lasted only one even- 
 ing. But the nineteenth century was to improve on it, and 
 the theory of the woman of thirty, with all her advantages, 
 superiority, and definite perfection, only dates from the pres- 
 ent time. Balzac is the inventor of it, and it is one of his most 
 real discoveries in the order of familiar novels. The key of 
 his enormous success was wholly in that early little master- 
 piece.2 Afterwards women forgave him many things and al- 
 ways believed his word, because he had guessed so correctly 
 the first time. 
 
 However rapid and great was Balzac's success in France, it 
 was perhaps even greater and less contested in Europe. The 
 details that could be given in respect of it would seem fabulous, 
 and yet would be only true. Yes, Balzac described the man- 
 ners of his time, and his success is one of the most curious 
 pictures of it. It was already more than two centuries since, 
 in 1642, Honore d'Urfe (the author of the famous novel of 
 " Astree "), who lived in Piedmont, received a most serious 
 letter addressed to him by twenty-nine princes and princesses 
 and nineteen noblemen and noble ladies of Germany. Those 
 persons informed him that they had assumed the names of the 
 heroes and heroine* of " Astree," and had formed themselves 
 into an " Academy of true lovers ; " they earnestly entreated 
 him to continue the work. What happened to D'Urfe oc- 
 curred in exactly the same manner to Balzac. There was a 
 time when, at Venice for instance, the society gathered there 
 thought of assuming the names of his chief characters and of 
 
 2 Only read it, I beg of you, in the early editions. The author spoiled it 
 for me in enlarging it afterwards. 
 
432 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 playing their parts. During the whole of one season only 
 Rastignacs, Duchesses of Langeais and Manfrigneuse, were 
 seen ; and we are assured that more than one among the actors 
 and actresses in that comedy of society were anxious actually 
 to go through with their parts. Such is usually the case with 
 the reciprocal influences between the painter and his models : 
 the novelist begins, depicts it to the life ; exaggerates it a lit- 
 tle; society make it a point of honor and carries it out; and 
 it is thus that what at first appeared an exaggeration ends by 
 being only the truth. 
 
 What I said of Venice occurred in different degrees in other 
 places. In Hungary, Poland, Russia, Balzac's novels became 
 the law. At this distance, the slightly fantastic portions 
 mingled with reality which, seen close, prevented a perfect 
 success with difficult minds, have disappeared, and form an 
 extra attraction. For instance, the costly and strange furni- 
 ture where he heaped up the masterpieces of twenty countries 
 and twenty epochs became afterwards a reality; what seemed 
 to us the dream of an artistic millionaire was copied exactly. 
 People furnished a la Balzac. How could the artist remain 
 insensible and deaf to the thousand echoes of celebrity, and 
 not hear in it the accents of fame ? 
 
 He believed in it, and the sentiment of a certainly lofty am- 
 bition made him draw from his strong and fertile organization 
 all the resources and productions it contained. Balzac had 
 the body of an athlete and the soul of an artist in love with 
 fame; less would not have sufficed for his great task. It is 
 only in our time that we have seen vigorous and herculean 
 organizations lay themselves in some sense under the neces- 
 sity of deriving from themselves all they could produce, and 
 carry on the difficult wager for twenty years. When we read 
 Racine, Voltaire, Montesquieu, it does not particularly occur 
 to us to inquire if they were robust or not in frame, and of 
 strong physical organization. Buffon was an athlete, but his 
 style does not show it. The authors of the more or less classi- 
 cal ages only wrote with their thought, with their higher and 
 intellectual part, with the essence of their being. Now, as a 
 consequence of the enormous work the writer imposes on him- 
 self, and which society imposes on him at short date, as a con- 
 sequence of the necessity in which he finds himself of striking 
 
BALZAC 433 
 
 rapidly and forcibly, he has not time to be platonic and deli- 
 cate. The writer's person and whole organization are enlisted 
 and stand confessed in his works; he does not write them 
 only with his pure thought, but with his blood and muscle. A 
 writer's physiology and hygiene have become one of the in- 
 dispensable chapters in making an analysis of his genius. 
 
 Balzac prided himself on being a physiologist, and he cer- 
 tainly was one, although with less rigor and exactness than he 
 imagined ; but physical nature, his and that of others, plays a 
 great part, and continually reveals itself in his descriptions of 
 morals. I do not reproach him ; it is a feature which affects 
 and characterizes all the descriptive literature of the present 
 time. One day M. Villemain, then very young, read to Sieyes 
 his '' Eulogy of Montaigne," the delightful eulogy, the first 
 he wrote, full of charm and sweetness. When in his reading 
 he reached the passage where he said — " but I feared in read- 
 ing Rousseau, to let my eyes rest too long on those guilty 
 weaknesses from which we ought always to keep our dis- 
 tance.' — Sieyes interrupted him, saying, '' But no, it is bet- 
 ter to approach them in order to study them at closer quar- 
 ters." The physiologist, curious in everything, comes in the 
 way of the man of letters who desires taste above all. Shall I 
 confess it? I am hke Sieyes. 
 
 That is also saying I am a little like Balzac. But I hold 
 back, however. I dwell on two points. I like his style in the 
 finer parts — the efflorescence (I cannot find another word) by 
 which he gives the feeling of life to everything, and makes the 
 page itself thrill. But I cannot accept, under the cover of 
 physiology, the continual abuse of that quality, the style so 
 often unsteady and dissolvent, enervated, rosy and streaked 
 with all colors, the style of a delicious corruption ; Asiatic, as 
 our masters said ; in places more interrupted and more softened 
 than the body of an ancient mime. From the midst of the 
 scenes he describes does not Petronius somewhere regret what 
 he calls oratio pudica, the modest style which does not abandon 
 itself to the fluidity of every movement? 
 
 Another point on which I dwell in Balzac as physiologist 
 and anatomist, is that he at least imagined as much as he ob- 
 served. A fine anatomist morally, he certainly discovered new 
 veins ; he found, and as it were injected, lymph ducts, till then 
 
 28 
 
434 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 unperceived, and he also invented them. There is a point in 
 his analysis when the real and actual plexus ends and the il- 
 lusory plexus begins, and he does not distinguish between the 
 two. The greater part of his readers, especially of his lady 
 readers, confused them as he did. This is not the place to 
 insist on those points of separation. But it is known that 
 Balzac had an avowed weakness for the Swedenborgs, Van 
 Helmonts, Mesmers, Saint-Germains, and Cagliostros of all 
 sorts — that is to say, he was subject to illusion. In short, to 
 carry out my physical and anatomical metaphor, I shall say, 
 when he holds the carotid artery of his subject, he injects it at 
 bottom with firmness and vigor; but when he is at fault he 
 injects all the same, and always produces, creating, without 
 quite perceiving it, an imaginary net-work. 
 
 Balzac pretended to knowledge, but what he really possessed 
 was a sort of physiological intuition. M. Chasles said excel- 
 lently : " It has been repeated to excess that Balzac was an 
 observer, an analyst ; he was for good and all a seer." What 
 he did not see at a first glance he generally lacked ; reflection 
 did not give it him. But what things he could see and take in 
 at a single glance! He came, he talked with you; he, so 
 wrapped up in his work, and apparently so full of himself, knew 
 how to ask questions to advantage, how to listen; but even 
 when he had not listened, when he seemed to have been full 
 only of himself and his own idea, he ended by carrying away, 
 absorbing all he wanted to know, and he astonished you later 
 by describing it. 
 
 I said that he was as it were wrapped up in his work; in 
 truth, from his youth, he never came out of it, he lived in it. 
 The society he had partly observed, partly created in every 
 sense, the characters of every class and kind that he had en- 
 dowed with life were confused by him with real society and 
 people who were scarcely more than a weak copy of his own. 
 He saw them, talked to them, quoted them like people both 
 you and he were familiar with; he had so powerfully and 
 clearly formed them of flesh and blood that, once realized, 
 both they and he were never more parted : all the characters 
 surrounded him, and in moments of enthusiasm began to circle 
 round him and to hurry him into the immense rounds of the 
 human comedy ; it makes us a little giddy even to look at in 
 passing, and made its author so before us. 
 
BALZAC 
 
 435 
 
 Balzac's particular power requires definitionj it was that of 
 a rich, copious, opulent nature, full of ideas, types, and inven- 
 tions; a nature that repeats unceasingly and is never tired. 
 It was that power he possessed, and not the other, which is 
 doubtless the true strength; power that governs and rules a 
 work, and acts so that the artist is above it as he is above his 
 creation. It might be said of him that he was the prey of his 
 work, and his talent often carries him along Hke a chariot 
 drawn by four horses. I do not ask that a man should be 
 exactly like Goethe, and should always lift his marble brow 
 above the fiery cloud, but Balzac (and he has said so) desired 
 the artist to precipitate himself headlong into his work, like 
 Curtius into the gulf. A genius of that sort affords much ani- 
 mation and passion, but also danger and a great deal of smoke. 
 
 To set forth his real literary theory we need only borrow his 
 own words ; if, for instance, I take '' The Poor Relation," his 
 last and one of his most powerful novels, published in this 
 paper,^ I find, in the instance of the Polish artist, Wenceslas 
 Steinbock, the favorite ideas and all the secrets — if he could 
 be said to have secrets — of the author. According to him, 
 " a great artist nowadays is a prince without a title ; he is fame 
 and fortune." But the fame is not gained either by amusing 
 one's self or by dreaming ; it is the reward of persevering labor 
 and unceasing ardor. " You have ideas in your brain ? A 
 fine thing! I also have ideas. . . . But where's the use of 
 what may be in our minds if we derive no advantage from it ? " 
 That is what he thought, and he never spared himself in the 
 relentless labor of execution. " To imagine," he said, " is to 
 enjoy, to smoke enchanted cigarettes; but without execution 
 everything vanishes as a dream, as smoke." " Constant 
 labor," he said again, " is a law of art, as of life ; for art is 
 idealized creation. Great artists, poets, want neither for or- 
 ders nor customers ; they labor to-day, to-morrow, always. 
 From it results the habit of work, the ever-present knowledge 
 of the difficulties which keep artists en concubinage with the 
 Muse, with her creative strength. Canova lived in his studio, 
 like Voltaire lived in his study ; Homer and Phidias must have 
 lived in the same way." I wanted particularly to quote that 
 passage, because, side by side with the good qualities of cour- 
 
 « " Poor Relations " first appeared as a feuilleton in the " Constitutional." 
 
436 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 age and hard work shown in it, qualities that do Balzac honor, 
 we grasp his modern side — the strange inadvertence by which 
 he disparages and outrages the beauty he pretends to follow. 
 No, neither Homer nor Phidias lived en concubinage with the 
 Muse. They always received and knew her chaste and severe. 
 
 M. de Bonald said " Beauty is always severe." I need a 
 few words of such authority; they are unchangeable sacred 
 columns that I am anxious to point to in the distance, so that 
 even our admiration and our meed of regret for a man of mar- 
 vellous genius may not be carried beyond lawful bounds. 
 
 Balzac speaks somewhere of the artists who had " a pro- 
 digious success, a success likely to crush men whose backs 
 were not broad enough to support it " ; which, he adds paren- 
 thetically, often happens. Indeed, the day after victory is for 
 the artist a more terrible trial than the great battle he must 
 sooner or later fight. To uphold his victory, to carry on his 
 reputation, neither to be frightened nor discouraged, neither 
 to sink nor fall under the blow, as Leopold Robert did, it is 
 necessary to possess a real strength, and to be conscious of 
 reaching only one's level. Balzac has proved that he had that 
 sort of strength. 
 
 When people spoke of fame to him, he accepted the word 
 as well as the omen ; he sometimes spoke jestingly of it him- 
 self. " Fame," he said one day ; " to whom are you speaking? 
 I have known it, seen it. I was travelling with some friends 
 in Russia, night was coming on, we demanded hospitality at 
 a castle. On our arrival the chatelaine and her ladies-in-wait- 
 ing bustled about ; one of the latter left the room immediately 
 to fetch refreshments. In the interval my name was men- 
 tioned to the mistress of the house ; we entered into conversa- 
 tion. When the lady returned, with a tray in her hands, she 
 suddenly heard the words : * Well, M. de Balzac, you think, 
 then . . .' In an impulse of surprise and joy she let the tray 
 fall, and everything was broken. Was not that fame ? " 
 
 We smiled, he smiled himself, and yet he enjoyed it. The 
 feeling supported and encouraged him in his work. The wit- 
 tiest and most to be regretted of his disciples, Charles de Ber- 
 nard, dead but a short time since, lacked that incentive; he 
 suspected everything with irony and even with taste, and his 
 remarkable work is a witness of it. Balzac's work gained in 
 
BALZAC 437 
 
 animation and ardor from the artist's excitement. An exquis- 
 ite delicacy insinuated itself into the excitement. 
 
 All Europe was to him a park, in which he had only to take 
 a walk in order to meet friends, admirers, cordial and sumptu- 
 ous hospitality. The little flower he showed you, scarcely dry, 
 he gathered the other morning returning from the Villa-Dio- 
 dati; the picture he described to you he had seen yesterday 
 in the palace of a Roman prince. It seemed to him that from 
 one capital to another, from a Roman villa or from Isola-Bella 
 to a Polish or Bohemian castle was but a step. A stroke of 
 the wand transported him there. It cannot be said that it 
 was a dream to him, for a devoted woman, one of those he 
 deified in passing, fortunately realized for him what for a long 
 while seemed the poet's dream and illusion. 
 
 All the artists of the time were his friends, and he placed 
 them almost magnificently in his works. He possessed ex- 
 cellent taste and had a great love of works of art, painting, 
 sculpture, antique furniture. When he had leisure (and he 
 often found means of getting it, giving up his days to imagina- 
 tion, spending his nights in work), he liked to go on a hunt for 
 what he called fine pieces. In this way he knew all the bric-a- 
 brac shops of Europe, and he expatiated on them admifably. 
 When he afterwards put into a novel masses of objects, which, 
 in the hands of another writer, would have resembled an in- 
 ventory, it was with color and life, and with love. The furni- 
 ture he describes possesses a sort of life ; the tapestries rustle. 
 He describes too much, but usually the light falls in the right 
 place. Even when the result does not correspond to the care 
 he seems to have taken, the reader retains the impression of 
 having been moved. Balzac has the gift of color and mass- 
 ing. By it he attracted painters who recognized in him one 
 of themselves transplanted and strayed into literature. 
 
 He paid scant attention to criticism ; he had cut his way into 
 the world almost in spite of it, and his enthusiasm was not, I 
 think, of the sort that could be moderated or guided. He 
 said somewhere of a disheartened sculptor, fallen into idle- 
 ness : " Become again an artist in partibus; he had great suc- 
 cess in drawing-rooms, he was consulted by many amateurs, 
 he turned critic, like all weak men who do not fulfil their early 
 promise." The last characteristic may be true of a sculptor or 
 
438 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 painter who, instead of working, spends his time in discoursing 
 and arguing; but in the order of ideas, Balzac's saying, often 
 repeated by a whole school of young men of letters, is (I ask 
 their pardon) at once an injustice and an error. However, as 
 it is always a delicate matter to prove to people in what they 
 are or are not weak, let us pass on. 
 
 A true, sincere, intelligent Aristarchus, if he could have 
 tolerated him, would have been useful to Balzac; for his rich 
 and luxurious nature was lavish, and did not control itself. 
 In a novel three things are to be considered: the characters, 
 the action, the style. Balzac excels in the disposing of his 
 characters ; he makes them live, he chisels them in an indelible 
 manner. There is exaggeration and minuteness, what does it 
 matter? The characters have in them something enduring. 
 With him we make refined, charming, coquettish, and merry 
 acquaintances, at other times very unpleasant ones ; but once 
 made, we are sure of never forgetting either the one or the 
 other. He is not contented with drawing his characters well, 
 he names them after some strange, happy fashion, and so fixes 
 them forever in the memory. He attaches the greatest im- 
 portance to baptizing his men and women ; like Sterne, he at- 
 tributed a certain occult power to proper names in harmony 
 or in irony with the characters. The Marneffes, Bixious, 
 Birotteaus, Crevels are thus named by him in virtue of some 
 indescribable onomatopoeia which makes the man and the name 
 resemble each other. After the characters comes the action; 
 with Balzac it is often weak, it wanders about, it is exagger- 
 ated. He is less successful in that than in the creation of the 
 characters. His style is delicate, subtle, fluent, picturesque, 
 owing nothing to tradition. I have sometimes wondered what 
 effect a novel of Balzac would produce on an honest mind 
 brought up on good ordinary French prose in all its frugality, 
 on a mind of which there are no more, a mind formed by read- 
 ing Nicole, Bourdaloue, by the simple, serious, and scrupulous 
 style which goes far, as La Bruyere said ; such a mind would 
 be giddy for a month. La Bruyere said that for every thought 
 there is only one right expression, and it must be found. Bal- 
 zac in writing ignores La Bruyere's saying. He has series of 
 animated, unsatisfied, capricious, never definite expressions, 
 attempts at expressions, which ever seek. His printers knew 
 
BALZAC 
 
 439 
 
 it well. In the course of the printing of his books he altered, 
 he rewrote each proof in never-ending fashion. With him the 
 mould itself was always at boiling heat, and the metal did not 
 set. He had found the desired form, and sought it still. 
 
 Would the most friendly criticism, that of a friend, a com- 
 panion as he was of Louis Lambert, have ever induced him 
 to accept ideas of relative moderation, and to introduce them 
 into the torrent of his genius, so that he might have restrained 
 and regulated it a little? Without desiring to lose anything 
 of his fertile manner, I wish there had been present to his mind 
 a few axioms that are, I consider, essential to every art, to all 
 literature : 
 
 " Clearness is the varnish of masters." — ^Vauvenargues. 
 
 "A work of art ought only to express what elevates the 
 soul, nobly rejoices it, and nothing more. The artist's feeling 
 ought only to be directed to that, all the rest is false." — Bet- 
 tine to Goethe's mother. 
 
 " Good sense and genius are of the same family ; wit is only 
 a collateral." — Bonald. 
 
 In fact I wish that he who so much admired Napoleon, whom 
 that great example, transported and reflected into literature, 
 dazzled as it dazzled so many besides, had left aside the similes, 
 the foolish emulations fit only for children, and that, if he felt 
 absolutely obliged to seek his ideal of power in military mat- 
 ters, he had sometimes asked himself the question, eminently 
 fitted to find a place in every good French treatise on rhetoric : 
 " Which is finer, an Asiatic conqueror dragging countless 
 hordes behind him, or Turenne defending the Rhine at the 
 head of thirty thousand men ? " 
 
 Do not let us force nature, and since death has closed his 
 career, let us accept of the genius that is gone the rich and 
 complex inheritance it has left us. The author of " Eugenie 
 Grandet " will live. The father — I was going to say the lover 
 of Madame de Vieumenil-*— of Madame de Beauseant will re- 
 tain his place on the small tables of the most retired and select 
 boudoirs. Those who seek joy, gayety, expansion of heart, the 
 satirical and frank vein of the Rabelaisian Tourangeau cannot 
 despise the admirable Gaudissart, the excellent Birotteau, and 
 all their race. There is something, it seems, for everyone. If 
 I had the space, I should like to speak of Balzac's last novel, 
 
440 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 in my opinion one of his most remarkable books, although not 
 the most flattering to society. " Poor Relations " shows us 
 Balzac's vigorous genius in its ripest maturity, in its widest 
 scope. He is over-abundant, he swims, he seems completely 
 in his element. Never was the topsy-turvydom of human 
 worthlessness better displayed or put into motion. The first 
 part of the novel (Cousin Bette) presents characters of much 
 truth side by side with the exaggeration inseparable from this 
 author. Bette, who lends her name to the novel, is one of 
 the exaggerations ; it does not seem that the poor creature who 
 appears first as a simple Vosges peasant, ill-clothed, badly 
 dressed, rough, a little envious, but neither wicked nor a rogue, 
 could be the same who, at a given moment, is transformed into 
 an almost beautiful woman of society, and extremely obstinate 
 and wicked, a female lago or Richard III! Things do not 
 happen thus in real life ; that woman is of the race of Ferragus 
 and Treize. Our degenerate and vitiated society does not 
 admit of those atrocious hatreds and vengeances. Our sins are 
 certainly not small ; our crimes, however, are less great. But 
 other characters of the novel are true, profoundly true, and 
 especially that of Baron Hulot, with his immoderate love of 
 women that step by step leads the honorable man to dishonor 
 and the old man to degradation; and Crevel, excellent all 
 round, in tone, in gesture, in humor, all the vices of the bour- 
 geois clearly showing in his bearing and his self-importance. 
 For note we are not here confronted only with caprice, ec- 
 centricity, nor even with human folly : vice is the mainspring, 
 social depravity is the subject of the novel. The author 
 plunges into it ; to see his animation we might even say that 
 in parts he enjoys it. A few lofty, pathetic scenes move us 
 to tears ; but the horrible scenes predominate, the sap of im- 
 purity overflows, the infamous MarnefiFe infects everything. 
 The remarkable novel, studied by itself, would give rise to re- 
 flections which would affect not only Balzac but all of us, the 
 more or less secret or avowed children of a sensual literature. 
 Some men, sons of Rene, hide and envelop their sensualism 
 in mysticism, while others frankly strip off the mask. 
 
 Balzac often thought of Walter Scott, and he says the genius 
 of the great Scotch novelist roused his keenest interest. But 
 in the midst of the vast work of the delightful wizard, did he 
 
BALZAC 
 
 44X 
 
 not recognize, according to Lamartine's happy expression: 
 "The noble sentiments rising from the pages — Hke the per- 
 fume of odoriferous shores " ? Did he not breathe the univer- 
 sal charm of purity and health, salubrious breezes that blow 
 even athwart the conflict of human passions? After reading 
 "Poor Relations," we feel the need of new vigor, of throwing 
 ourselves into some healthful and limpid book, of plunging 
 into some song of Milton in lucid streams, as the poet says. 
 
 In a more complete work, and if we were free to give our- 
 selves full play, it would be interesting to establish and gradu- 
 ate the true relation of the genius of Balzac to that of his most 
 celebrated contemporaries — Madame Sand, Eugene Sue, 
 Alexandre Dumas. Of an entirely different style, but with a 
 view of human nature neither more favorable nor more flat- 
 tering, Merimee might be taken ^s sl contrast in tone and man- 
 ner. 
 
 Merimee has not perhaps a better opinion of human nature 
 than Balzac, and if it has been slandered it is certainly not he 
 who will reinstate it. But he is a man of taste, of nice discern- 
 ment, of exact and rigorous sense, who even in the excess of 
 the idea preserves a prudence and discretion of manner. He 
 possesses the personal feeling for ridicule as much as Balzac 
 lacked it, and in him, in the midst of the clearness, vigor of 
 line, and precision of burin that we admire, we cannot help 
 missing a little of the animation the other possessed in too 
 high a degree. It might be said of him that the accomplished 
 man of the world, the gentleman, as it was formerly said, held 
 the artist in check. 
 
 Is it necessary to recall to mind that Madame Sand is a 
 greater, surer, and stronger writer than Balzac? She never 
 hesitates in expresssion. She is a greater painter of nature 
 and landscape. As a novelist her characters in the beginning 
 are often well conceived, well designed; but they soon turn 
 to a Rousseau-like ideal which becomes almost a system. Her 
 characters are not entirely alive; at a certain point they be- 
 come types. She never calumniates human nature, neither 
 does she adorn it ; she tries to enrich it, but in aiming at en- 
 larging it, she forces and distends it. She lays the blame on 
 society, and disparages whole classes, and desires in any and 
 every case to bring into notice, individuals, who are, notwith- 
 
442 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 standing, half abstract. In short, the masterly precision which 
 she puts into expression and description is not found in an 
 equal degree in the realization of her characters. This is said, 
 however, with all the reservation due to so many charming and 
 natural situations and scenes. Her style, however, is a gift 
 of the first quality, and of the finest stamp. 
 
 M. Eugene Sue (let us turn from the socialist and speak only 
 of the novelist) is perhaps Balzac's equal in invention, fertility, 
 and composition. He constructs wonderfully big frames ; his 
 characters live, and we remember them against our will ; above 
 all, he possesses action and dramatic machinery of which he 
 thoroughly understands the manipulation. But the details are 
 often weak; they are numerous and varied enough, but less 
 delicate, of less research, showing less original and fresh ob- 
 servation than in Balzac. He also possesses gayety, and seizes 
 happy and natural types ; but in addition he loves and affects 
 eccentricities, and takes too much pleasure in describing them. 
 With one, as with the other, we must set no store by whole- 
 some nature ; they prefer to work on what is corrupt or arti- 
 ficial. Eugene Sue cannot write so much, nor so badly, nor 
 so subtly in regard to evil, as Balzac. He was wrong in not 
 entirely abandoning himself to the instincts of his own nature, 
 and in consulting the systems in vogue and in setting them 
 forth in his later novels — a thing Balzac never did. He at 
 least only obeyed his instincts, his favorite inspirations, and 
 abandoned himself to them more and more as an artist who 
 never makes compromises. As regards the stream, Balzac has 
 never followed any but his own. 
 
 Everybody knows M. Dumas's immense animation, high 
 spirits, happy set scenes, and witty and always living dialogue. 
 His graceful narrative runs on without stopping, and can re- 
 move obstacles and even space without becoming weak. He 
 covers enormous canvases, and neither his brush nor his reader 
 grows weary. He is amusing; he charms our imagination, 
 but does not take tight hold of it like Balzac. 
 
 Of the three last, Balzac lays hold of things most closely, and 
 sounds them most deeply. 
 
 The Revolution of February struck Balzac a keen blow. 
 The whole edifice of refined civilization, such as he had always 
 dreamed of it, seemed ruined. For a moment, Europe, his 
 
BALZAC 443 
 
 own Europe, was to fail him like France. However, he soon 
 took heart again, and meditated describing at close quarters 
 the new society in the fourth dress in which it presented itself 
 to him. I could sketch in his next novel, his last projected 
 novel, of which he spoke with ardor. But of what use is one 
 dream the more? He died of heart disease, as so many men 
 who have worked too ardently in life die nowadays. Scarcely 
 three years ago Frederic Soulie succumbed to the same mal- 
 ady, a man it would be unjust to forget in grouping together 
 the gods of that literature. 
 
 Perhaps, the place to repeat that that literature created its 
 school and served its time, is over the grave of one of the most 
 fertile of them, assuredly of the most inventive; the school 
 gave us its most vigorous, almost gigantic talents; for good 
 or bad it may be thought now that the best of its sap is ex- 
 hausted. Let it at least cry truce and rest; let it also leave 
 society time to recruit its strength after its excesses, to com- 
 pose itself into some sort of order, and to present new pictures 
 to painters of a fresher inspiration. There was latterly a ter- 
 rible rivalry and a keen competition between the strongest 
 men of that active, devouring, inflammatory literature. The 
 mode of publication in fenilletons, which necessitated in each 
 new chapter a striking situation that should impress itself on 
 the reader, drove the effects and tones of the novel to an ex- 
 treme pitch, discouraging and no longer tolerable. Let us 
 compose ourselves a little. .While admitting the advantage 
 derived by men whose talent lacked the conditions necessary 
 for a better development, let us desire for the future of our 
 society, pictures, not less vast, but more satisfying, more con- 
 soling, and let us hope for those who paint them a quieter life, 
 and an inspiration not more delicate, but more calm, more 
 soundly natural and serene. 
 
MONTAIGNE 
 
 WHILE the good ship France is taking a somewhat 
 haphazard course, getting into unknown seas, and 
 preparing to double what the pilots (if there is a pilot) 
 call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at the mast-head 
 thinks he sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor rising on the 
 horizon, many honorable and peaceable men continue their 
 work and studies all the same, and follow out to the end, or as 
 far as they can, their favorite hobbies. I know, at the present 
 time, a learned man who is collating more carefully than has 
 ever yet been done the different early editions of Rabelais — 
 editions, mark you, of which only one copy remains, of which 
 a second is not to be found : from the careful collation of the 
 texts some literary and maybe philosophical result will be 
 derived with regard to the genius of the French Lucian-Aris- 
 tophanes. I know another scholar whose devotion and wor- 
 ship is given to a very different man — to Bossuet : he is pre- 
 paring a complete, exact, detailed history of the life and works 
 of the great bishop. And as tastes differ, and " human fancy 
 is cut into a thousand shapes " (Montaigne said that), Mon- 
 taigne also has his devotees, he who, himself, was so little of 
 one: a sect is formed round him. In his lifetime he had 
 Mademoiselle de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who was 
 solemnly devoted to him ; and his disciple, Charron, followed 
 him closely, step by step, only striving to arrange his thoughts 
 with more order and method. In our time amateurs, intelli- 
 gent men, practise the religion under another form : they de- 
 vote themselves to collecting the smallest traces of the author 
 of the " Essays," to gathering up the slightest relics, and Dr. 
 Payen may be justly placed at the head of the group. For 
 years he has been preparing a book on Montaigne, of which 
 the title will be — 
 
 " Michel de Montaigne : a collection of unedited or little 
 
 445 
 
446 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 known facts about the author of the * Essays/ his book, and 
 his other writings, about his family, his friends, his admirers, 
 his detractors." 
 
 While awaiting the conclusion of the book, the occupation 
 and amusement of a lifetime, Dr. Payen keeps us informed in 
 short pamphlets of the various works and discoveries made 
 about Montaigne. 
 
 If we separate the discoveries made during the last five or six 
 years from the jumble of quarrels, disputes, cavilling, quack- 
 ery," and law-suits (for there have been all those), they con- 
 sist in this — 
 
 In 1846 M. Mace found in the (then) Royal Library, amongst 
 the " Collection Du Puys," a letter of Montaigne, addressed to 
 the King, Henri IV, September 2, 1590. 
 
 In 1847 M. Payen printed a letter, or a fragment of a letter, 
 of Montaigne of February 16, 1588, a letter corrupt and incom- 
 plete, coming from the collection of the Comtesse Boni de 
 Castellane. 
 
 But most important of all, in 1848, M. Horace de Viel- 
 Castel found in London, at the British Museum, a remarkable 
 letter of Montaigne, May 22, 1585, when Mayor of Bordeaux, 
 addressed to M. de Matignon, the King's lieutenant in the 
 town. The great interest of the letter is that it shows Mon- 
 taigne for the first time in the full discharge of his office with 
 all the energy and vigilance of which he was capable. The 
 pretended idler was at need much more active than he was 
 ready to own. 
 
 M. Detcheverry, keeper of the records to the mayoralty of 
 Bordeaux, found and published (1850) a letter of Montaigne, 
 while mayor, to the Jurats, or aldermen of the town, July 30, 
 
 1585. 
 
 M. Achille Jubinal found among the manuscripts of the 
 National Library, and published (1850), a long, remarkable 
 letter from Montaigne to the King, Henri IV, January 18, 
 1590, which happily coincides with that already found by M. 
 Mace. 
 
 Lastly, to omit nothing and to do justice to all, in a " Visit 
 to Montaigne's Chateau in Perigord," of which the account 
 appeared in 1850, M. Bertrand de Saint-Germain described 
 the place and pointed out the various Greek and Latin inscrip- 
 
MONTAIGNE 447 
 
 tions that may still be read in Montaigne's tower in the third- 
 story chamber (the ground floor counting as the first), which 
 the philosopher made his library and study. 
 
 M. Payen, collecting together and criticising in his last 
 pamphlet the various notices and discoveries, not all of equal 
 importance, allowed himself to be drawn into some little ex- 
 aggeration of praise ; but we cannot blame him. Admiration, 
 when applied to such noble, perfectly innocent and disin- 
 terested subjects, is truly a spark of the sacred fire : it produces 
 research that a less ardent zeal would quickly leave aside, and 
 sometimes leads to valuable results. However, it would be 
 well for those who, following M. Payen's example, intelli- 
 gently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to remem- 
 ber, even in their ardor, the advice of the wise man and the 
 master. 
 
 " There is more to do," said he, speaking of the commen- 
 tators of his time, " in interpreting the interpretations than 
 in interpreting the things themselves ; and more books about 
 books than on any other subject. We do nothing but every- 
 thing swarms with commentators ; of authors there is a great 
 rarity." Authors are of great price and very scarce at all 
 times — that is to say, authors who really increase the sum of 
 human knowledge. I should like all who write on Montaigne, 
 and give us the details of their researches and discoveries, to 
 imagine one thing — Montaigne himself reading and criticis- 
 ing them. " What would he think of me and of the manner in 
 which I am going to speak of him to the public ? " If such a 
 question was put, how greatly it would suppress useless phrases 
 and shorten idle discussions! M. Payen's last pamphlet was 
 dedicated to a man who deserves equally well of Montaigne — 
 M. Gustave Brunet, of Bordeaux. He, speaking of M. Payen, 
 in a work in which he pointed out interesting and various cor- 
 rections of Montaigne's text, said : " May he soon decide to 
 publish the fruits of his researches : he will have left nothing 
 for future Montaignologues." Montaignologues ! Great 
 Heaven ! what would Montaigne say of such a word coined in 
 his honor? You who occupy yourselves so meritoriously with 
 him, but who have, I think, no claim to appropriate him to 
 yourselves, in the name of him whom you love, and whom we 
 all love by a greater or lesser title, never, I beg of you, use 
 
448 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 such words; they smack of the brotherhood and the sect, of 
 pedantry and of the chatter of the schools — things utterly re- 
 pugnant to Montaigne. 
 
 Montaigne had a simple, natural, affable mind, and a very 
 happy disposition. Sprung from an excellent father, who, 
 though of no great education, entered with real enthusiasm into 
 the movement of the Renaissance and all the liberal novelties 
 of his time, the son corrected the excessive enthusiasm, vivac- 
 ity, and tenderness he inherited by a great refinement and just- 
 ness of reflection ; but he did not abjure the original ground- 
 work. It is scarcely more than thirty years ago that whenever 
 the sixteenth century was mentioned it was spoken of as a 
 barbarous epoch, Montaigne only excepted : therein lay error 
 and ignorance. The sixteenth century was a great century, 
 fertile, powerful, learned, refined in parts, although in some 
 aspects it was rough, violent, and seemingly coarse. What it 
 particularly lacked was taste, if by taste is meant the faculty of 
 clear and perfect selection, the extrication of the elements of 
 the beautiful. But in the succeeding centuries taste quickly 
 became distaste. If, however, in literature it was crude, in the 
 arts properly so called, in those of the hand and the chisel, the 
 sixteenth century, even in France, is, in the quality of taste, far 
 greater than the two succeeding centuries : it is neither Aieagre 
 nor massive, heavy nor distorted. In art its taste is rich and 
 of fine quality — at once unrestrained and complex, ancient and 
 modern, special to itself and original. In the region of morals 
 it is unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of con- 
 trasts in all their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, 
 of scepticism and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in 
 collision ; nothing was blended and united. Everything was in 
 ferment ; it was a period of chaos ; every ray of light caused a 
 storm. It was not a gentle age, or one we can call an age of 
 light, but an age of struggle and combat. What distinguished 
 Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him was, that in such 
 an age he should have possessed moderation, caution, and 
 order. 
 
 Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient 
 languages as a game while still a child, waked even in his 
 cradle by the sound of musical instruments, he seemed less 
 fitted for a rude and violent epoch than for the commerce 
 
MONTAIGNE 449 
 
 and sanctuary of the muses. His rare good sense corrected 
 what was too ideal and poetical in his early education ; but he 
 preserved the happy faculty of saying everything with freshness 
 and wit. Married, when past thirty, to an estimable woman 
 who was his companion for twenty-eight years, he seems to 
 have put passion only into friendship. He immortalized his 
 love for Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of 
 the sweetest and closest intimacy. For some time counsellor 
 in the Parliament of Bordeaux, Montaigne, before he was forty, 
 retired from public life and flung away ambition to live in his 
 tower of Montaigne, enjoying his own society and his own intel- 
 lect, entirely given up to his own observations and thoughts, 
 and to the busy idleness of which we know all the sports and 
 fancies. The first edition of the " Essays " appeared in 1580, 
 consisting of only two books, and in a form representing only 
 the first rough draft of what We have in the later editions. 
 The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to Switzerland 
 and Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of 
 Bordeaux elected him mayor of their town. At first he refused 
 and excused himself, but warned that it would be well to ac- 
 cept, and enjoined by the King, he.took'the office, " the more 
 beautiful," he said, '' that there was neither remuneration nor 
 gain other than the honor of its performance." He filled the 
 office for four years, from July, 1582, to July, 1586, being re- 
 elected after the first two years. Thus Montaigne, at the age 
 of fifty, and a little against his will, re-entered public life when 
 the country was on the eve of civil disturbances which, quieted 
 and lulled to sleep for a while, broke out more violently at 
 the cry of the League. Although, as a rule, lessons serve for 
 nothing, since the art of wisdom and happiness cannot be 
 taught, let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of listening to 
 Montaigne; let us look on his wisdom and happiness; let 
 him speak of public affairs, of revolutions and disturbances, 
 and of his way of conducting himself with regard to them. We 
 do not put forward a model, but we offer our readers an agree- 
 able recreation. 
 
 Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, 
 
 a period that a man who had lived through the Terror (M. 
 
 Daunou) called the most tragic century in all history, he by 
 
 no means regarded his age as the worst of ages. He was not 
 
 29 
 
450 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 of those prejudiced and afflicted persons, who, measuring every- 
 thing by their visual horizon, valuing everything according to 
 their present sensations, always declare that the disease they suf- 
 fer from is worse than any ever before experienced by a human 
 being. He was like Socrates, who did not consider himself a 
 citizen of one city but of the world ; with his broad and full 
 imagination he embraced the universality of countries and of 
 ages ; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which 
 he was witness and victim. " Who is it," he said, " that, see- 
 ing the bloody havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry 
 out that the machine of the world is near dissolution, and that 
 the day of judgment is at hand, without considering that many 
 worse revolutions have been seen, and that, in the mean time, 
 people are being merry in a thousand other parts of the earth 
 for all this? For my part, considering the license and im- 
 punity that always attend such commotions, I admire they are 
 so moderate, and that there is not more mischief done. To 
 him who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole 
 hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest." And rais- 
 ing his thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering 
 to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing there not 
 only himself, but whole kingdoms as mere specks in the infinite, 
 he added in words which foreshadowed Pascal, in words whose 
 outline and salient points Pascal did not disdain to borrow: 
 " But whoever shall reprjssent to his fancy, as in a picture, that 
 great image of our mother nature, portrayed in her full maj- 
 esty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read so general and so 
 constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in that figure, 
 and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least 
 touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole, that 
 man alone is able to value things according to their true esti- 
 mate and grandeur." 
 
 Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I 
 state it all the same, because among the many unprofitable 
 ones that have been written down, it is perhaps of greater 
 worth than most. I do not mean to underrate the gravity of 
 the circumstances in which France is just now Involved, for I 
 believe there is pressing need to bring together all the energy, 
 prudence, and courage she possesses in order that the country 
 may come out with honor.^ However, let us reflect, and re- 
 
 *■ This essay appeared April 28, 1851. 
 
MONTAIGNE 45 1 
 
 member that, leaving aside the Empire, which as regards in- 
 ternal affairs was a period of calm, and before 1812 of pros- 
 perity, we who utter such loud complaints, lived in peace from 
 1815 to 1830, fifteen long years; that the three days of July 
 only inaugurated another order of things that for eighteen 
 years guaranteed peace and industrial prosperity ; in all, thirty- 
 two years of repose. Stormy days came ; tempests burst, and 
 will doubtless burst again. Let us learn how to live through 
 them, but do not let us cry out every day, as we are disposed 
 to do, that never under the sun were such storms known as we 
 are enduring. To get away from the present state of feeling, 
 to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us 
 read every evening a page of Montaigne. 
 
 A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, 
 and it bears equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher 
 says somewhere that he knows a fair number of men possess- 
 ing various good qualities — one, intelligence ; another, heart ; 
 another, address, conscience or knowledge, or skill in lan- 
 guages, each has his share : " but of a great man as a whole, 
 having so many good qualities together, or one with such a 
 degree of excellence that we ought to admire him, or compare 
 him with those we honor in the past, my fortune has never 
 shown me one." He afterwards made an exception in favor of 
 his friend Etienne de la Boetie, but he belonged to the com- 
 pany of great men dead before attaining maturity, and showing 
 promise without having time to fulfil it. Montaigne's criticism 
 called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly great man 
 in his time, the age of L'Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. 
 Well ! how does ours seem to you ? We have as many great 
 men as in Montaigne's time, one distinguished for his intellect, 
 another for his heart, a third for skill, some (a rare thing) for 
 conscience, many for knowledge and language. But we too 
 lack the perfect man, and he is greatly to be desired. One of 
 the most intelligent observers of our day recognized and pro- 
 claimed it some years ago : " Our age," said M. de Remusat, 
 " is wanting in great men." ^ 
 
 How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first 
 magistrate of a great city? If we take him literally and on 
 a hasty first glance, we should believe he discharged them 
 
 * *' Essais de Philosophic," vol. i. p. 22. 
 
452 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 slackly and languidly. Did not Horace, doing the honors to 
 himself, say that in war he one day let his shield fall (relicta non 
 bene parmula) ? We must not be in too great a hurry to take 
 too literally the men of taste who have a horror of over-estimat- 
 ing themselves. Minds of a fine quality are more given to vig- 
 ilance and to action than they are apt to confess. The man who 
 boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost sure, be 
 less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the 
 council board than Montaigne. 
 
 On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the al- 
 dermen of Bordeaux not to expect to find in him more than 
 there really was ; he presented himself to them without affecta- 
 tion. " I represented to them faithfully and conscientiously all 
 that I felt myself to be — a man without memory, without vigi- 
 lance, without experience, and without energy ; but also, with- 
 out hate, without ambition, without avarice, and without vio- 
 lence." He should be sorry, while taking the affairs of the 
 town in hand, that his feelings should be so strongly affected as 
 those of his worthy father had been, who in the end had lost 
 his place and health. The eager and ardent pledge to satisfy 
 an impetuous desire was not his method. His opinion was 
 " that you must lend yourself to others, and only give yourself 
 to yourself." And repeating his thought, according to his 
 custom in all kinds of metaphors and picturesque forms, he 
 said again that if he sometimes allowed himself to be urged to 
 the management of other men's affairs, he promised to take 
 them in hand, not " into my lungs and liver/* We are thus 
 forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor and Mon- 
 taigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office 
 he reserved to himself a certain freedom and secret security. 
 He continued to judge things in his own fashion and impar- 
 tially, although acting loyally for the cause confided to him. 
 He was far from approving or even excusing all he saw in his 
 party, and he could judge his adversaries and say of them : " He 
 did that thing wickedly, and this virtuously." " I would have," 
 he added, " matters go well on our side ; but if they do not, I 
 shall not run mad. I am heartily for the right party ; but I do 
 not affect to be taken notice of for an especial enemy to others." 
 And he entered into some details and applications which at 
 that time were piquant. Let us remark, however, in order to 
 
MONTAIGNE 453 
 
 explain and justify his somewhat extensive profession of im- 
 partiality, that the chiefs of the party then in evidence, the 
 three Henris, were famous and considerable men on several 
 counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri, 
 King of Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King 
 Henri HI, in whose name Montaigne was mayor, who wavered 
 between the two. When parties have neither chief nor head, 
 when they are known by the body only, that is to say in their 
 hideous and brutal reality, it is more difficult and also more 
 hazardous to be just towards them and to assign to. each its 
 share of action. 
 
 The principle which guided him in his administration was to 
 look only at the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to 
 noise and outward show : " How much more a good effect 
 makes a noise, so much I abate of the goodness of it." For it 
 is always to be feared that it was more performed for the sake 
 of the noise than upon the account of goodness : " Being ex- 
 posed upon the stall, 'tis half sold." That was not Montaigne's 
 way : he made no show ; he managed men and affairs as quiet- 
 ly as he could; he employed in a manner useful to all alike 
 the gifts of sincerity and conciliation ; the personal attraction 
 with which nature endowed him was a quality of the highest 
 value in the management of men. He preferred to warn men 
 of evil rather than to take on himself the honor of repress- 
 ing it : " Is there any one who desires to be sick that he may 
 see his physician's practice? And would not that physician 
 deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst 
 us that he might put his art into practice ? " Far from desir- 
 ing that trouble and disorder in the affairs of the city should 
 rouse and honor his government, he had ever willingly, he 
 said, contributed all he could to their tranquillity and ease. 
 He is not of those whom municipal honors intoxicate and 
 elate, those " dignities of office " as he called them, and of 
 which all the noise " goes from one cross-road to another." 
 If he was a man desirous of fame, he recognized that it was of 
 a kind greater than that. I do not know, however, if even in a 
 vaster field he would have changed his method and manner of 
 proceeding. To do good for the public imperceptibly would 
 always seem to him the ideal of skill and the culminating point 
 of happiness. " He who will not thank me/' he said, " for the 
 
454 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 order and quiet calm that have accompanied my administration, 
 cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me 
 by the title of my good fortune." And he is inexhaustible in 
 describing in lively and graceful expressions the kinds of ef- 
 fective and imperceptible services he believed he had rendered 
 — services greatly superior to noisy and glorious deeds : " Ac- 
 tions which come from the workman's hand carelessly and 
 noiselessly have most charm, that some honest man chooses 
 later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into the 
 light for their own sake." Thus fortune served Montaigne to 
 perfection, and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult 
 conjunctures, he never had to belie his maxim, nor to step very 
 far out of the way of life he had planned : " For my part I 
 commend a gliding, solitary, and silent life." He reached the 
 end of his magistracy almost satisfied with himself, having ac- 
 complished what he had promised himself, and much more 
 than he had promised others. 
 
 The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel 
 corroborates the chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and 
 criticises himself in the period of his public life. " That letter," 
 says M. Payen, " is entirely on affairs. Montaigne is mayor ; 
 Bordeaux, lately disturbed, seems threatened by fresh agita- 
 tions; the King's lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 
 22, 1585; it is night, Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the 
 governor of the province." The letter, which is of too special 
 and local an interest to be inserted here, may be summed up 
 in these words: Montaigne regretted the absence of Marshal 
 de Matignon, and feared the consequences of its prolongation ; 
 he was keeping, and would continue to keep, him acquainted 
 with all that was going on, and begged him to return as soon 
 as his circumstances would permit. " We are looking after 
 our gates and guards, and a little more carefully in your ab- 
 sence. ... If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall 
 send you a messenger immediately, so that if you hear no 
 news from me, you may consider that nothing has happened." 
 He begs M. de Matignon to remember, however, that he might 
 not have time to warn him, " entreating you to consider that 
 such movements are usually so sudden, that if they do occur 
 they will take me by the throat without any warning." Be- 
 sides, he will do everything to ascertain the march of events 
 
MONTAIGNE 455 
 
 beforehand. *' I will do what I can to hear news from all 
 parts, and to that end shall visit and observe the inclinations 
 of all sorts of men." Lastly, after keeping the marshal in- 
 formed of everything, of the least rumors abroad in the city, 
 he pressed him to return, assuring him " that we spare neither 
 our care, nor, if need be, our lives to preserve everything in 
 obedience to the King." Montaigne was never prodigal of 
 protestations and praises, and what with others was a mere 
 form of speech was with him a real undertaking and the 
 truth. 
 
 Things, however, became worse and worse : civil war broke 
 out; friendly or hostile parties (the difference was not great) 
 infested the country. Montaigne, who went to his country 
 house as often as he could, whenever the duties of his office, 
 which was drawing near its term, did not oblige him to be in 
 Bordeaux, was exposed to every sort of insult and outrage. 
 *' I underwent," he said, " the inconveniences that moderation 
 brings along with it in such a disease. I was pitied on all 
 hands ; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph 
 a Ghibelline." In the midst of his personal grievances he 
 could disengage and raise his thoughts to reflections on the 
 public misfortunes and on the degradation of men's characters. 
 Considering closely the disorder of parties, and all the abject 
 and- wretched things which developed so quickly, he was 
 ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and debase themselves 
 by cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances we 
 know, like him, " that in the word of command to march, draw 
 up, wheel, and the like, we obey him indeed ; but all the rest 
 is dissolute and free." " It pleases me," said Montaigne ironi- 
 cally,," to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there 
 is in ambition ; by how abject and servile ways it must arrive 
 at its end." Despising ambition as he did, he was not sorry 
 to see it unmasked by such practices and degraded in his sight. 
 However, his goodness of heart overcoming his pride and con- 
 tempt, he adds sadly, " it displeases me to see good and gen- 
 erous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day cor- 
 rupted in the management and command of this confusion. 
 . . . We had ill-contrived souls enough without spoiling 
 those that were generous and good." He rather sought in 
 that misfortune an opportunity and motive for fortifying and 
 
456 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 Strengthening himself. Attacked one by one by many dis- 
 agreeables and evils, which he would have endured more cheer- 
 fully in a heap — that is to say, all at once — pursued by war, 
 disease, by all the plagues (July, 1585), in the course things 
 were taking, he already asked himself to whom he and his 
 could have recourse, of whom he could ask shelter and sub- 
 sistence for his old age ; and having looked and searched thor- 
 oughly all around, he found himself actually destitute and 
 ruined. For, " to let a man's self fall plumb down, and from 
 so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, 
 and fortunate friendship. They are very rare, if there be any." 
 Speaking in such a manner, we perceive that La Boetie had 
 been some time dead. Then he felt that he must after all rely 
 on himself in his distress, and must gain strength; now or 
 never was the time to put into practice the lofty lessons he 
 spent his life in collecting from the books of the philosophers. 
 He took heart again, and attained all the height of his virtue ; 
 " In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for 
 moderate and common accidents ; but in the confusion where- 
 in we have been for these thirty years, every Frenchman, 
 whether in particular or in general, sees himself every hour 
 upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his fortune." 
 And far from being discouraged and cursing fate for causing 
 him to be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly congratulated 
 himself : " Let us thank fortune that has not made us live in an 
 effeminate, idle, and languishing age." Since the curiosity of 
 wise men seeks the past for disturbances in States in order to 
 learn the secrets of history, and, as we should say, the whole 
 physiology of the body social, " so does my curiosity," he de- 
 clares, " make me in some sort please myself with seeing with 
 my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its 
 forms and symptoms; and, seeing I could not hinder it, am 
 content to be destined to assist in it, and thereby to instruct 
 myself." I shall not suggest a consolation of that sort to most 
 people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the 
 heroic and eager curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, 
 the two intrepid men who went straight to the volcanoes and 
 the disturbances of nature to examine them at close quarters, at 
 the risk of destruction and death. But to a man of Montaigne's 
 nature, the thought of that stoical observation gave him con- 
 
MONTAIGNE 457 
 
 solation even amid real evils. Considering the condition of 
 false peace and doubtful truce, the regime of dull and pro- 
 found corruption which had preceded the last disturbances, he 
 almost congratulated himself on seeing their cessation; for 
 " it was," he said of the regime of Henri III, " a universal 
 juncture of particular members, rotten to emulation of one an- 
 other, and the most of them with inveterate ulcers, that neither 
 required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore 
 did really more animate than depress me." Note that his 
 health, usually delicate, is here raised to the level of his moral- 
 ity, although what it had suffered through the various disturb- 
 ances might have been enough to undermine it. He had the 
 satisfaction of feeling that he had some hold against fortune, 
 and that it would take a greater shock still to crush him. 
 
 Another consideration, huml)ler and more humane, upheld 
 him in his troubles, the consolation arising from a common 
 misfortune, a misfortune shared by all, and the sight of the 
 courage of others. The people, especially the real people, they 
 who are victims and not robbers, the peasants of his district, 
 moved him by the manner in which they endured the same, or 
 even worse, troubles than his. The disease or plague which 
 raged at that time in the country pressed chiefly on the poor ; 
 Montaigne learned from them resignation and the practice of 
 philosophy. " Let us look down upon the poor people that we 
 see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon 
 their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example 
 nor precept. Even from these does nature every day extract 
 effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than 
 those we so inquisitively study in the schools." And he goes 
 on to describe them working to the bitter end, even in their 
 grief, even in disease, until their strength failed them. " He 
 that is now digging in my garden has this morning buried his 
 father, or his son. . . . They never keep their beds but to 
 die." The whole chapter is fine, pathetic, to the point, evincing 
 noble,' stoical elevation of mind, and also the cheerful and 
 "affable disposition which Montaigne said, with truth, was his 
 by inheritance, and in which he had been nourished. There 
 could be nothing better as regards " consolation in public 
 calamities," except a chapter of some not more human, but 
 of some truly divine book, in which the hand of God should be 
 
458 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne, but 
 actually and lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Mon- 
 taigne gives himself and others is perhaps as lofty and beauti- 
 ful as human consolation without prayer can be. 
 
 He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the 
 midst of the evils he described, and before they were ended. 
 He concluded it in his graceful and poetical way with a collec- 
 tion of examples, " a heap of foreign flowers," to which he 
 furnished only the thread for fastening them together. 
 
 There is Montaigne to the life ; no matter how seriously he 
 spoke, it was always with the utmost charm. To form an opin- 
 ion on his style you have only to open him indifferently at any 
 page and listen to his talk on any subject ; there is none that 
 he did not enliven and make suggestive. In the chapter " Of 
 Liars," for instance, after enlarging on his lack of memory and 
 giving a list of reasons by which he might console himself, he 
 suddenly added this fresh and delightful reason, that, thanks 
 to his faculty for forgetting, " the places I revisit, and the 
 books I read over again, always smile upon me with a fresh 
 novelty." It is thus that on every subject he touched he was 
 continually new, and created sources of freshness. 
 
 Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said : " The four 
 great poets, Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne ! " 
 How true it is of Montaigne ! No French writer, including the 
 poets proper, had so lofty an idea of poetry as he had. " From 
 my earliest childhood," he said, " poetry had power over me to 
 transport and transpierce me." He considered, and therein 
 shows penetration, that " we have more poets than judges and 
 interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than to under- 
 stand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies defi- 
 nition ; whoever desired to recognize it at a glance and discern 
 of what it actually consisted would see no more than " the 
 brilliance of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and con- 
 tinuity of his style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, 
 bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors that are never de- 
 tached from the thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in 
 its interior, that join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying 
 his own genius, he has gone beyond and sometimes exceeded 
 the genius of language. His concise, vigorous, and always 
 forcible style, by its poignancy, emphasizes and repeats the 
 
MONTAIGNE 459 
 
 meaning. It may be said of his style that it is a continual 
 epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that has only 
 been successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne 
 himself. If we wanted to imitate him, supposing we had the 
 power and were naturally fitted for it — if we desired to write 
 with his severity, exact proportion, and diverse continuity of 
 figures and turns — it would be necessary to force our language 
 to be more powerful, and poetically more complete, than is 
 usually our custom. Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied 
 in the series and assortment of the metaphors, exacts the crea- 
 tion of a portion of the tissue itself to hold them. It is abso- 
 lutely necessary that in places the woof should be enlarged and 
 extended, in order to weave into it the metaphor ; but in de- 
 fining him I come almost to write like him. The French lan- 
 guage, French prose, which iniact always savors more or less 
 of conversation, does not, naturally, possess the resources and 
 the extent of canvas necessary for a continued picture : by the 
 side of an animated metaphor it will often exhibit a sudden 
 lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness and 
 invention as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the ex- 
 pression and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear 
 equally finished. Style a la Montaigne would, in many re- 
 spects, be openly at war with that of Voltaire. It could only 
 come into being and flourish in the full freedom of the six- 
 teenth century, in a frank, ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and 
 refined mind, of a unique stamp, that even for that time, seemed 
 free and somewhat licentious, and that was inspired and em- 
 boldened, but not intoxicated by the pure and direct spirit of 
 ancient sources. 
 
 Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace ; he is Hora- 
 tian in the groundwork, often in the form and expression, al- 
 though in that he sometimes approaches Seneca. His book 
 is a treasure-house of moral observations and of experience ; at 
 whatever page it is opened, and in whatever condition of mind, 
 some wise thought expressed in a striking and enduring fash- 
 ion is certain to be found. It will at once detach itself and en- 
 grave itself on the mind, a beautiful meaning in full and forci- 
 ble words, in one^vigorous line, familiar or great. The whole 
 of his book, said Etienne Pasquier, is a real seminary of beauti- 
 ful and remarkable sentences, and they come in so much the 
 
46o SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 better that they run and hasten on without thrusting them- 
 selves into notice. There is something for every age, for every 
 hour of hfe : you cannot read in it for any time without having 
 the mind filled and lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully 
 armed and clothed. We have just seen how much useful coun- 
 sel and actual consolation it contains for an honorable man, 
 born for private life, and fallen on times of disturbance and 
 revolution. To this I shall add the counsel he gave those who, 
 like myself and many men of my acquaintance, suffer from po- 
 litical disturbances without in any way provoking them, or 
 believing ourselves capable of averting them. Montaigne, as 
 Horace would have done, counsels them, while apprehending 
 everything from afar ofif, not to be too much preoccupied with 
 such matters in advance ; to take advantage to the end of pleas- 
 ant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come his 
 piquant and wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, 
 with the most delightful one of all, and one, besides, entirely 
 appropriate and seasonable : it is folly and fret, he said, " to 
 take out your furred gown at Saint John because you will want 
 it at Christmas." 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 
 
 BY 
 
 GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 
 
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 
 1805— 1872 
 
 The life of Giuseppe Mazzini was devoted primarily to the cause of 
 Italian liberation, and only secondarily to literature, but he achieved 
 a great reputation in both fields of activity. He was born in Genoa 
 in 1805, and from his earliest childhood he was filled with a longing 
 • to see Italy become something more than " a geographical expression," 
 and his countrymen free. While a student at the University of Genoa 
 he gathered around him a group of ardent young men whom he fired 
 with his own enthusiasm. In 1827 Mazzini joined the Carbonari, and 
 soon became a prominent member of this famous secret society. In 
 1830 he was arrested for conspiracy and confined in the fortress of 
 Savona, the governor of Genoa informing his father that " the Gov- 
 ernment was not fond of young men of talent, the subject of whose 
 musings is unknown to it." He was finally acquitted of the charges 
 brought against him by the Senate at Turin, but while in his cell he 
 conceived the plan of organizing the new association of " Young 
 Italy." This organization became at once vigorously active, its head- 
 quarters being established at Marseilles. In 1831 he issued the journal 
 of " Young Italy," to which he was the principal contributor. He 
 published at this time numerous essays and appeals on the subject of 
 Italian liberty. In 1832 Mazzini was exiled from France, but remained 
 another year at Marseilles in disguise, planning a rising in Piedmont, 
 which proved abortive and resulted in the death of most of those 
 implicated. In 1834 another attempt at insurrection was made, the 
 insurrectionists entering Italy from Switzerland. This, too, failed 
 completely. Mazzini remained two years longer in Switzerland, but 
 was finally expelled from that country and forced to flee to London, 
 where he lived for a long time in the most abject poverty, often sub- 
 sisting on loans at usurious rates of interest. It was during this period 
 that several of the most important of his essays were written, those 
 on " Lamennais " and on " Byron and Goethe " in 1839, the two on 
 Carlyle in 1843, and that on the minor works of Dante in 1844. 
 
 In 1848, " the year of revolutions," Mazzini hastened to Italy. In 
 1849 the Republic was proclaimed, with Mazzini as the guiding spirit 
 of the revolt. After the battle of Novara Mazzini became the chief 
 of a triumvirate, and distinguished himself during the siege of Rome by 
 the French. In 1857 he participated in another abortive insurrection. 
 He then returned to England, where he had many friends and was 
 assured of a comfortable living by his pen. His health had been 
 shattered by his violent eflforts during the siege of Rome, but his mind 
 remained clear and active, and he wrote during this period many 
 notable papers, chiefly political. His " Duties of Man " and " Thoughts 
 upon Democracy in Europe " were written at this time. In 1870 he 
 took part in an insurrection at Palermo, during which he was captured. 
 He was released, however, by a general amnesty, but banished by the 
 Italian Government after the occupation of Rome. He died in 1872 
 at Pisa, and the honors paid him at his funeral assumed the nature 
 of a national demonstration. 
 
 462 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 
 
 I STOOD one day in a Swiss village at the foot of the Jura, 
 and watched the coming of a storm. Heavy black 
 clouds, their edges purpled by the setting sun, were rap- 
 idly covering the loveliest sky in Europe, save that of Italy. 
 Thunder growled in the distance, and gusts of biting wind 
 were driving huge drops of rain over the thirsty plain. Look- 
 ing upwards, I beheld a large Alpine falcon, now rising, now 
 sinking, as he floated bravely in the very midst of the storm 
 and I could almost fancy that he strove to battle with it. At 
 every fresh peal of thunder, the noble bird bounded higher 
 aloft, as if in answering defiance. I followed him with my 
 eyes for a long time, until he disappeared in the east. On the 
 ground, about fifty paces beneath me, stood a stork ; perfectly 
 tranquil and impassive in the midst of the warring elements. 
 Twice or thrice she turned her head towards the quarter from, 
 whence the wind came, with an indescribable air of half indif- 
 ferent curiosity; but at length she drew up one of her long 
 sinewy legs, hid her head beneath her wing, and calmly com- 
 posed herself to sleep. 
 
 I thought of Byron and Goethe ; of the stormy sky that 
 overhung both ; of the tempest-tossed existence, the life-long 
 struggle, of the one, and the calm of the other ; and of the two 
 mighty sources of poetry exhausted and closed by them. 
 
 Byron and Goethe — the two names that predominate, and, 
 come what may, ever will predominate, over our every recol- 
 lection of the fifty years that have passed away. They rule; 
 the master-minds, I might almost say the tyrants, of a whole 
 period of poetry ; brilliant, yet sad ; glorious in youth and dar- 
 ing, yet cankered by the worm i' the bud, despair. They are 
 the two representative poets of two great schools ; and around 
 them we are compelled to group all the lesser minds which 
 contributed to render the era illustrious. The qualities which 
 
 463 
 
464 MAZZINI 
 
 adorn and distinguish their works are to be found, although 
 more thinly scattered, in other poets their contemporaries ; still 
 theirs are the names that involuntarily rise to our lips when- 
 ever we seek to characterize the tendencies of the age in which 
 they lived. Their genius pursued different, even opposite 
 routes ; and yet very rarely do our thoughts turn to either with- 
 out evoking the image of the other, as a sort of necessary com- 
 plement to the first. The eyes of Europe were fixed upon the 
 pair, as the spectators gaze on two mighty wrestlers in the 
 same arena ; and they, like noble and generous adversaries, ad- 
 mired, praised, and held out the hand to each other. Many 
 poets have followed in their footsteps; none have been so 
 popular. Others have found judges and critics who have ap- 
 preciated them calmly and impartially ; not so they : for them 
 there have been only enthusiasts or enemies, wreaths or stones ; 
 and when they vanished into the vast night that envelops and 
 transforms aUke men and things — silence reigned around their 
 tombs. Little by little, poetry had passed away from our 
 world, and it seemed as if their last sigh had extinguished the 
 sacred flame. 
 
 A reaction has now commenced ; good, in so far as it reveals 
 a desire for and promise of new Hfe ; evil, in so far as it betrays 
 narrow views, a tendency to injustice towards departed genius, 
 and the absence of any fixed rule or principle to guide our ap- 
 preciation of the past. Human judgment, like Luther's 
 drunken peasant, when saved from falling on one side, too 
 often topples over on the other. The reaction against Goethe, 
 in his own country especially, which was courageously and 
 justly begun by Menzel during his lifetime, has been carried 
 to exaggeration since his death. Certain social opinions, to 
 which I myself belong, but which, although founded on a 
 sacred principle, should not be allowed to interfere with the 
 impartiality of our judgment, have weighed heavily in the bal- 
 ance ; and many young, ardent, and enthusiastic minds of our 
 day have reiterated with Bonne that Goethe is the worst of 
 despots ; the cancer of the German body. 
 
 The English reaction against Byron — I do not speak of that 
 mixture of cant and stupidity which denies the poet his place 
 in Westminster Abbey, but of literary reaction — has shown it- 
 self still more unreasoning. I have met with adorers of Shel- 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 465 
 
 ley who denied the poetic genius of Byron; others who se- 
 riously compared his poems with those of Sir Walter Scott. 
 One very much overrated critic writes that " Byron makes man 
 after his own image, and woman after his own heart ; the one 
 is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave." The first 
 forgot the verses in which their favorite hailed 
 
 " The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame 
 Over his living head like Heaven is bent; "^ 
 
 the second, that after the appearance of " The Giaour " and 
 " Childe Harold," Sir Walter Scott renounced writing poetry.^ 
 The last forgot that while he was quietly writing criticisms, 
 Byron was dying for new-born liberty in Greece. All judged, 
 too many in each country still judge, the two poets, Byron and 
 Goethe, after an absolute type of the beautiful, the true, or the 
 false, which they had formed in their own minds ; without re- 
 gard to the state of social relations as they were or are ; without 
 any true conception of the destiny or mission of poetry, or of 
 the law by which it, and every other artistic manifestation of 
 human life, is governed. 
 
 There is no absolute type on earth : the absolute exists in 
 the Divine Idea alone; the gradual comprehension of which 
 man is destined to attain ; although its complete realization is 
 impossible on earth ; earthly life being but one stage of the 
 eternal evolution of Hfe, manifested in thought and action; 
 strengthened by all the achievements of the past, and advanc- 
 ing from age to age towards a less imperfect expression of that 
 idea. Our earthly life is one phase of the eternal aspiration 
 of the soul towards progress, which is our law; ascending in 
 increasing power and purity from the finite towards the in- 
 finite; from the real towards the ideal; from that which is, 
 towards that which is to come. In the immense storehouse 
 of the past evolutions of life constituted by universal tradition, 
 and in the prophetic instinct brooding in the depths of the 
 human soul, does poetry seek inspiration. It changes with 
 the times, for it is their expression ; it is transformed with so- 
 ciety, for — consciously or unconsciously — it sings the lay of 
 Humanity ; although, according to the individual bias or cir- 
 cumstances of the singer, it assumes the hues of the present, 
 
 1 Adonais. « Lockhart. 
 
 30 
 
466 MAZZINI 
 
 or of the future in course of elaboration, and foreseen by the 
 inspiration of genius. It sings now a dirge and now a cradle 
 song ; it initiates or sums up. 
 
 Byron and Goethe summed up. This is at once the philo- 
 No ; it was the law of the times, and yet society at the present 
 day, twenty years after they have ceased to sing, assumes to 
 condemn them for having been born too soon. Happy in- 
 deed are the poets whom God raises up at the commencement 
 of an era, under the rays of the rising sun. A series of gen- 
 erations will lovingly repeat their verses, and attribute to them 
 the new Hfe which they did but foresee in the germ. 
 
 Byron and Goethe summed up. This is at once the philo- 
 sophical explanation of their works, and the secret of their popu- 
 larity. The spirit of an entire epoch of the European world 
 became incarnate in them ere its decease, even as — in the po- 
 litical sphere — the spirit of Greece and Rome became incar- 
 nate before death in Caesar and Alexander. They were the 
 poetic expression of that principle, of which England was the 
 economic, France the poHtical, and Germany the philosophic 
 expression : the last formula, effort, and result, of a society 
 founded on the principle of individuality. That epoch, the 
 mission of which had been, first through the labors of Greek 
 philosophy, and afterwards through Christianity, to rehabili- 
 tate, emancipate, and develop individual man — appears to have 
 concentrated in them, in Fichte, in Adam Smith, and in the 
 French school des droits de Vhomme, its whole energy and 
 power, in order fully to represent and express all that it had 
 achieved for mankind. It was much ; but it was not the whole ; 
 and therefore it was doomed to pass away. The epoch of in- 
 dividuality was deemed near the goal ; when lo ! immense hori- 
 zons were revealed ; vast unknown lands in whose untrodden 
 forests the principle of individuality was an insufficient guide. 
 By the long and painful labors of that epoch the human un- 
 known quantity had been disengaged from the various quan- 
 tities of different nature by which it had been surrounded ; but 
 only to be left weak, isolated, and recoiling in terror from the 
 solitude in which it stood. The poHtical schools of the epoch 
 had proclaimed the sole basis of civil organization to be the 
 right to liberty and equality (liberty for all), but they had en- 
 countered social anarchy by the way. The philosophy of the 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 467 
 
 epoch had asserted the sovereignty of the human Ego, and had 
 ended in the mere adoration of fact, in HegeHan immobiUty. 
 The economy of the epoch imagined it had organized free com- 
 petition, while it had but organized the oppression of the weak 
 by the strong ; of labor by capital ; of poverty by wealth. The 
 poetry of the epoch had represented individuality in its every 
 phase ; had translated in sentiment what science had theoreti- 
 cally demonstrated ; and it had encountered the void. But as 
 society at last discovered that the destinies of the race were not 
 contained in a mere problem of liberty, but rather in the har- 
 monization of liberty with association — so did poetry discover 
 that the life it had hitherto drawn from individuality alone was 
 doomed to perish for want of aliment ; and that its future ex- 
 istence depended on enlarging and transforming its sphere. 
 Both society and poetry uttered a cry of despair: the death- 
 agony of a form of society produced the agitation we have seen 
 constantly increasing in Europe since 181 5: the death-agony 
 of a form of poetry evoked Byron and Goethe. I believe this 
 point of view to be the only one that can lead us to a useful 
 and impartial appreciation of these two great spirits. 
 
 There are two forms of individuality ; the expressions of its 
 internal and external, or — as the Germans would say — of its 
 subjective and objective life. Byron was the poet of the first, 
 Goethe of the last. In Byron the Ego is revealed in all its 
 pride of power, freedom, and desire, in the uncontrolled pleni- 
 tude of all its faculties ; inhaling existence at every pore, eager 
 to seize " the life of life." The world around him neither rules 
 nor tempers him. The Byronian Ego aspires to rule it; but 
 solely for dominion's sake, to exercise upon it the Titanic force 
 of his will. Accurately speaking, he cannot be said to derive 
 from it either color, tone, or image ; for it is he who colors ; he 
 who sings ; he whose image is everywhere reflected and repro- 
 duced. His poetry emanates from his own soul ; to be thence 
 diffused upon things external ; he holds his state in the centre 
 of the universe, and from thence projects the light radiating 
 from the depths of his own mind ; as scorching and intense as 
 the concentrated solar ray. Hence that terrible unity which 
 only the superficial reader could mistake for monotony. 
 
 Byron appears at the close of one epoch, and before the 
 dawn of the other; in the midst of a community based upon 
 
468 MAZZINl 
 
 an aristocracy which has outlived the vigor of its prime ; sur- 
 rounded by a Europe containing nothing grand, unless it be 
 Napoleon one one side and Pitt on the other, genius degraded 
 to minister to egotism; intellect bound to the service of the 
 past. No seer exists to foretell the future: belief is extinct; 
 there is only its pretence : prayer is no more ; there is only a 
 movement of the lips at a fixed day or hour, for the sake of 
 the family, or what is called the people ; love is no more ; desire 
 has taken its place ; the holy warfare of ideas is abandoned ; the 
 conflict is that of interests. The worship of great thoughts 
 has passed away. That which is, raises the tattered banner 
 of some corpse-like traditions ; that which would be, hoists only 
 the standard of physical wants, of material appetites: around 
 him are ruins, beyond him the desert; the horizon is a blank. 
 A long cry of sufifering and indignation bursts from the heart 
 of Byron : he is answered by anathemas. He departs ; he hur- 
 ries through Europe in search of an ideal to adore; he trav- 
 erses it distracted, palpitating, like Mazeppa on the wild 
 horse ; borne onwards by a fierce desire ; the wolves of envy 
 and calumny follow in pursuit. He visits Greece; he visits 
 Italy; if anywhere a lingering spark of the sacred fire, a ray 
 of divine poetry, is preserved, it must be there. Nothing. A 
 glorious past, a degraded present ; none of life's poetry ; no 
 movement, save that of the sufferer turning on his couch to 
 relieve his pain. Byron, from the solitude of his exile, turns 
 his eyes again towards England; he sings. What does he 
 sing? What springs from the mysterious and unique concep- 
 tion which rules, one would say in spite of himself, over all 
 that escapes him in his sleepless vigil ? The funeral hymn, the 
 death-song, the epitaph of the aristocratic idea ; we discovered 
 it, we Continentalists ; not his own countrymen. He takes his 
 types from amongst those privileged by strength, beauty, and 
 individual power. They are grand, poetical, heroic, but soH- 
 tary ; they hold no communion with the world around them, 
 unless it be to rule over it ; they defy alike the good and evil 
 principle ; they " will bend to neither." In life and in death 
 " they stand upon their strength ; " they resist every power, for 
 their own is all their own ; it was purchased by 
 
 " Superior science — penance — daring — 
 And length of watching — strength of mind — and skill 
 In knowledge of our fathers." 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 469 
 
 Each of them is the personification, sHghtly modified, of a 
 single type, a single idea — the individual; free, but nothing 
 more than free ; such as the epoch now closing has made him ; 
 Faust, but without the compact which submits him to the 
 enemy ; for the heroes of Byron make no such compact. Cain 
 kneels not to Arimanes ; and Manfred, about to die, exclaims : 
 
 " The mind, which is immortal, makes itself 
 Requital for its good and evil thoughts — 
 Is its own origin of ill, and end — 
 And its own place and time, its innate sense, 
 When stripped of this mortality, derives 
 No color from the fleeting things without, 
 I But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy; 
 Born from the knowledge of its own desert." 
 
 They have no kindred: they live from their own life only; 
 they repulse humanity, and regard the crowd with disdain. 
 Each of them says : " I have faith in myself " ; never, ** I 
 have faith in ourselves." They all aspire to power or to 
 happiness. The one and the other alike escape them; for 
 they bear within them, untold, unacknowledged even to them- 
 selves, the presentiment of a life that mere liberty can never 
 give them. Free they are ; iron souls in iron frames, they 
 climb the Alps of the physical world as well as the Alps of 
 thought; still is their visage stamped with a gloomy and in- 
 effaceable sadness ; still is their soul — whether, as in Cain and 
 Manfred, it plunge into the abyss of the infinite, " intoxicated 
 with eternity," or scour the vast plain and boundless ocean 
 with the Corsair and Giaour — haunted by a secret and sleep- 
 less dread. It seems as if they were doomed to drag the 
 broken links of the chain they have burst asunder, riveted to 
 their feet. Not only in the petty society against which they 
 rebel does their soul feel fettered and restrained ; but even in 
 the world of the spirit. Neither is it to the enmity of society 
 that they succumb; but under the assaults of this nameless 
 anguish ; under the corroding action of potent faculties " in- 
 ferior still to their desires and their conceptions ; " under the 
 deception that comes from within. What can they do with 
 the liberty so painfully won ? On whom, on what, expend the 
 exuberant vitality within them ? They are alone ; this is the 
 secret of their wretchedness and impotence. They " thirst for 
 
470 MAZZINI 
 
 good " — Cain has said it for them all — but cannot achieve it ; 
 for they have no mission, no belief, no comprehension even of 
 the w^orld around them. They have never realized the concep- 
 tion of humanity in the multitudes that have preceded, sur- 
 round, and will follow after them ; never thought on their own 
 place between the past and future; on the continuity of labor 
 that unites all the generations into one whole; on the com- 
 mon end and aim, only to be realized by the common effort ; 
 on the spiritual post-sepulchral life even on earth of the indi- 
 vidual, through the thoughts he transmits to his fellows ; and, 
 it may be — when he lives devoted and dies in faith — through 
 the guardian agency he is allowed to exercise over the loved 
 ones left on earth. 
 
 Gifted with a liberty they know not how to use ; with a power 
 and energy they know not how to apply; with a life whose 
 purpose and aim they comprehend not; they drag through 
 their useless and convulsed existence. Byron destroys them 
 one after the other, as if he were the executioner of a sentence 
 decreed in heaven. They fall unwept, like a withered leaf into 
 the stream of time. 
 
 " Nor earth nor sky shall yield a single tear, 
 Nor cloud shall gather more, nor leaf shall fall, 
 Nor gale breathe forth one sigh for thee, for all." 
 
 They die, as they have lived, alone ; and a popular malediction 
 hovers round their solitary tombs. 
 
 This, for those who can read with the soul's eyes, is what 
 Byron sings; or rather what humanity sings through him. 
 The emptiness of the life and death of solitary individuality has 
 never been so powerfully and efficaciously summed up as in 
 the pages of Byron. The crowd do not comprehend him: 
 they listen ; fascinated for an instant ; then repent, and avenge 
 their momentary transport by calumniating and insulting the 
 poet. His intuition of the death of a form of society they call 
 wounded self-love ; his sorrow for all is misinterpreted as cow- 
 ardly egotism. They credit not the traces of profound suffer- 
 ing revealed by his Hneaments ; they credit not the presenti- 
 ment of a new life which from time to time escapes his 
 trembling lips ; they believe not in the despairing embrace in 
 which he grasps the material universe — stars, lakes, alps, and 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 471 
 
 sea — and identifies himself with it, and through it with God, 
 of whom — to him at least — it is a symbol. They do, however, 
 take careful count of some unhappy moments, in which, wea- 
 ried out by the emptiness of life, he has raised — with remorse 
 I am sure — the cup of ignoble pleasures to his lips, believing 
 he might find forgetfulness there. How many times have not 
 his accusers drained this cup, without redeeming the sin by a 
 single virtue; without — I will not say bearing — but without 
 having even the capacity of appreciating the burden which 
 weighed on Byron! And did he not himself dash into frag- 
 ments the ignoble cup, so soon as he beheld something worthy 
 the devotion of his life ? 
 
 Goethe — individuality in its objective life — ^having, like By- 
 ron, a sense of the falsehood and evil of the world round him 
 — followed exactly the opposite path. After having — he, too, 
 in his youth — uttered a cry of anguish in his Werther; after 
 having laid bare the problem of the epoch in all its terrific 
 nudity, in Faust ; he thought he had done enough, and refused 
 to occupy himself with its solution. It is possible that the im- 
 pulse of rebelHon against social wrong and evil which burst 
 forth for an instant in Werther may long have held his soul in 
 secret travail ; but that he despaired of the task of reforming 
 it as beyond his powers. He himself remarked in his later 
 years, when commenting on the exclamation made by a 
 Frenchman on first seeing him : " That is the face of a man 
 who has suffered much ; " that he should rather have said : 
 " That is the face of a man who has struggled energetically ; " 
 but of this there remains no trace in his works. Whilst Byron 
 writhed and suffered under the sense of the wrong and evil 
 around him, he attained the calm — I cannot say of victory — 
 but of indifference. In Byron the man always ruled, and even 
 at times overcame the artist: the man was completely lost in 
 the artist in Goethe.- In him there was no subjective life ; no 
 unity springing either from heart or head. Goethe is an in- 
 telligence that receives, elaborates, and reproduces the poetry 
 affluent to him from all external objects : from all points of the 
 circumference ; to him as centre. He dwells aloft alone ; a 
 mighty watcher in the midst of creation. His curious scrutiny 
 investigates, with equal penetration and equal interest, the 
 depths of the ocean and the calyx of the floweret. Whether 
 
472 MAZZINI 
 
 he studies the rose exhaling its Eastern perfume to the sky, or 
 the ocean casting its countless wrecks upon the shore, the brow 
 of the poet remains equally calm : to him they are but two 
 forms of the beautiful ; two subjects for art. 
 
 Goethe has been called a pantheist. I know not in what 
 sense critics apply this vague and often ill-understood word 
 to him. There is a materiaHstic pantheism and a spiritual pan- 
 theism ; the pantheism of Spinoza and that of Giordano Bruno ; 
 of St. Paul ; and of many others — all different. But there is no 
 poetic pantheism possible, save on the condition of embracing 
 the whole world of phenomena in one unique conception: of 
 feeling and comprehending the Hfe of the universe in its divine 
 unity. There is nothing of this in Goethe. There is panthe- 
 ism in some parts of Wordsworth ; in the third canto of " Childe 
 Harold," and in much of Shelley; but there is none in the 
 most admirable compositions of Goethe ; wherein life, though 
 admirably comprehended and reproduced in each of its suc- 
 cessive manifestations, is never understood as a whole. Goethe 
 is the poet of details, not of unity ; of analysis, not of synthesis. 
 None so able to investigate details; to set off and embellish 
 minute and apparently trifling points ; none throw so beautiful 
 a light on separate parts ; but the connecting link escapes him. 
 His works resemble a magnificent encyclopaedia, unclassified. 
 He has felt everything; but he has never felt the whole. 
 Happy in detecting a ray of the beautiful upon the humblest 
 blade of grass gemmed with dew ; happy in seizing the poetic 
 elements of an incident the most prosaic in appearance — he 
 was incapable of tracing all to a common source, and recom- 
 posing the grand ascending scale in which, to quote a beauti- 
 ful expression of Herder's, " every creature is a numerator of 
 the grand denominator, Nature." How, indeed, should he 
 comprehend these things, he who had no place in his works 
 or in his poet's heart for humanity, by the light of which con- 
 ception only can the true worth of sublunary things be deter- 
 mined ? " Religion and politics,"^ said he, " are a troubled 
 element for art. I have always kept myself aloof from them 
 as much as possible." Questions of life and death for the 
 millions were agitated around him ; Germany re-echoed to the 
 war-songs of Korner ; Fichte, at the close of one of his lectures, 
 
 " " Goethe and his Contemporaries." 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 473 
 
 seized his musket, and joined the volunteers who were hasten- 
 ing (alas ! what have not the Kings made of that magnificent 
 outburst of nationality !) to fight the battles of their fatherland. 
 The ancient soil of Germany thrilled beneath their tread ; he, 
 an artist, looked on unmoved; his heart knew no responsive 
 throb to the emotion that shook his country; his genius, ut- 
 terly passive, drew apart from the current that swept away en- 
 tire races. He witnessed the French Revolution in all its ter- 
 rible grandeur, and saw the old world crumble beneath its 
 strokes ; and while all the best and purest spirits of Germany, 
 who had mistaken the death-agony of the old world for the 
 birth-throes of a new, were wringing their hands at the spec- 
 tacle of dissolution, he saw in it only the subject of a farccw 
 He beheld the glory and the fall of Napoleon; he witnessed 
 the reaction of down-trodden nationalities — sublime prologue 
 of the grand epopee of the peoples destined sooner or later to 
 be unfolded — and remained a cold spectator. He had neither 
 learned to esteem men, to better them, nor even to suffer with 
 them. If we except the beautiful type of Berlichingen, a poetic 
 inspiration of his youth, man, as the creature of thought and 
 action ; the artificer of the future, so nobly sketched by Schiller 
 in his dramas, has no representative in his works. He has 
 carried something of this nonchalance even into the manner 
 in which his heroes conceive love. Goethe's altar is spread 
 with the choicest flowers, the most exquisite perfumes, the first- 
 fruits of nature; but the priest is wanting. In his work of 
 second creation — for it cannot be denied that such it was — he 
 has gone through the vast circle of living and visible things ; 
 but stopped short before the seventh day. God withdrew from 
 him before that time; and the creatures the poet has evoked 
 wander within the circle, dumb and prayerless ; awaiting until 
 the man shall come to give them a name, and appoint them to 
 a destination. 
 
 No, Goethe is not the poet of pantheism ; he is a polytheist 
 in his method as an artist; the pagan poet of modern times. 
 His world is, above all things, the world of forms: a multi- 
 plied Olympus. The Mosaic heaven and the Christian are 
 veiled to him. Like the pagans, he parcels out Nature into 
 fragments, and makes of each a divinity ; like them, he wor- 
 ships the sensuous rather than the ideal ; he looks, touches, and 
 
474 MAZZINI 
 
 listens far more than he feels. And what care and labor are 
 bestowed upon the plastic portion of his art ! what importance 
 is given — I will not say to the objects themselves — but to the 
 external representation of objects! Has he not somewhere 
 said that " the beautiful is the result of happy position " ? * 
 
 Under this definition is concealed an entire system of poetic 
 materialism, substituted for the worship of the ideal ; involving 
 a whole series of consequences, the logical result of which was 
 to lead Goethe to indifference, that moral suicide of some of 
 the noblest energies of genius. The absolute concentration 
 of every faculty of observation on each of the objects to be 
 represented, without relation to the ensemble; the entire avoid- 
 ance of every influence likely to modify the view taken of that 
 object, became in his hands one of the most effective means 
 of art. The poet, in his eyes, was neither the rushing stream, 
 a hundred times broken on its course, that it may carry fer- 
 tility to the surrounding country ; nor the brilliant flame, con- 
 suming itself in the light it sheds around while ascending to 
 heaven ; but rather the placid lake, reflecting alike the tranquil 
 landscape and the thunder-cloud; its own surface the while 
 unruffled even by the lightest breeze. A serene and passive 
 calm, with the absolute clearness and distinctness of successive 
 impressions, in each of which he was for the time wholly ab- 
 sorbed, are the peculiar characteristics of Goethe. " I allow 
 the objects I desire to comprehend, to act tranquilly upon me," 
 said he ; " I then observe the impression I have received from 
 them, and I endeavor to render it faithfully." Goethe has here 
 portrayed his every feature to perfection. He was in life such 
 as Madame Von Armin proposed to represent him after death ; 
 a venerable old man, with a serene, almost radiant counten- 
 ance ; clothed in an antique robe, holding a lyre resting on his 
 knees, and listening to the harmonies drawn from it either by 
 the hand of a genius, or the breath of the winds. The last 
 chords wafted his soul to the East ; to the land of inactive con- 
 templation. It was time : Europe had become too agitated for 
 him. 
 
 Such were Byron and Goethe in their general characteris- 
 tics ; both great poets ; very different, and yet, complete as is 
 the contrast between them, and widely apart as are the paths 
 
 * In the " Kunst und Alterthum." I think. 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 
 
 475 
 
 they pursue, arriving at the same point. Life and death, char- 
 acter and poetry, everything is unHke in the two, and yet the 
 one is the complement of the other. Both are the children of 
 fatality — for it is especially at the close of epochs that the prov- 
 idential law which directs the generations assumes towards 
 individuals the semblance of fatality — and compelled by it un- 
 consciously to work out a great mission. Goethe contem- 
 plates the world in parts, and delivers the impressions they 
 make upon him, one by one, as occasion presents them. By- 
 ron looks upon the world from a single comprehensive point 
 of view ; from the height of which he modifies in his own soul 
 the impressions produced by external objects, as they pass 
 before him. Goethe successively absorbs his own individual- 
 ity in each of the objects he reproduces. Byron stamps every 
 object he portrays with his own individuality. To Goethe, 
 nature is the symphony ; to Byron it is the prelude. She fur- 
 nishes to the one the entire subject ; to the other the occasion 
 only of his verse. The one executes her harmonies ; the other 
 composes on the theme she has suggested. Goethe better ex- 
 presses lives; Byron life. The one is more vast; the other 
 more deep. The first searches everywhere for the beautiful, and 
 loves, above all things, harmony and repose ; the other seeks 
 the sublime, and adores action and force. Characters, such as 
 Coriolanus or Luther, disturbed Goethe. I know not if, in his 
 numerous pieces of criticism, he has ever spoken of Dante ; but 
 assuredly he must have shared the antipathy felt for him by 
 Sir Walter Scott; and although he would undoubtedly have 
 sufficiently respected his genius to admit him into his Pan- 
 theon, yet he would certainly have drawn a veil between his 
 mental eye and the grand but sombre figure of the exiled seer, 
 who dreamed of the future empire of the world for his country, 
 and of the world's harmonious development under her guid- 
 ance. Byron loved and drew inspiration from Dante. He 
 also loved Washington and Franklin, and followed, with all 
 the sympathies of a soul athirst for action, the meteor-like 
 .career of the greatest genius of action our age has produced, 
 Napoleon ; feeling indignant — perhaps mistakenly — that he did 
 not die in the struggle. 
 
 When travelling in that second fatherland of all poetic souls 
 — Italy — the poets still pursued divergent routes ; the one ex- 
 
476 MAZZINI 
 
 perienced sensations; the other emotions; the one occupied 
 himself especially with nature; the other with the greatness 
 dead, the living wrongs, the human memories.^ 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all the contrasts, which I have 
 only hinted at, but which might be far more elaborately dis- 
 played by extracts from their works; they arrived — Goethe, 
 the poet of individuality in its objective life — at the egotism of 
 indifference; Byron — the poet of individuality in its subjective 
 life — at the egotism (I say it with regret, but it, too, is egotism) 
 of despair: a double sentence upon the epoch which it was 
 their mission to represent and to close ! 
 
 Both of them — I am not speaking of their purely literary 
 merits, incontestable and universally acknowledged — the one 
 by the spirit of resistance that breathes through all his crea- 
 tions; the other by the spirit of sceptical irony that pervades 
 his works, and by the independent sovereignty attributed to 
 art over all social relations — greatly aided the cause of intel- 
 lectual emancipation, and awakened in men's minds the senti- 
 ment of liberty. Both of them — the one, directly, by the im- 
 placable war he waged against the vices and absurdities of the 
 privileged classes, and indirectly, by investing his heroes with 
 all the most brilliant qualities of the despot, and then dashing 
 them to pieces as if in anger ; — the other, by the poetic rehabili- 
 tation of forms the most modest, and objects the most insig- 
 
 "The contrast between the two poets tudes; the horizon lengthens in the dis- 
 
 is nowhere more strikingly displayed tance, or suddenly contracts; huts and 
 
 than by the manner in which they were stables, columns and triumphal arches, 
 
 affected by the sight of Rome. In Goe- all lie pell-mell, and often so close that 
 
 the's " Elegies " and in his " Travels we might find room for all on the same 
 
 in Italy " we find the impressions of sheet of paper." 
 
 the artist only. He did not understand At Rome Byron forgot passions, sor- 
 Rome. The eternal synthesis that, from rows, his own individuality, all, in the 
 the heights of the Capitol and St. Peter, presence of a great idea; witness this 
 is gradually unfolded in ever-widening utterance of a soul born for devoted- 
 circles, embracing first a nation and ness:— 
 
 then Europe, as it will ultimately em- " O Rome! my country! city of the soul! 
 
 brace humanity, remained unrevealed to The orphans of the heart must turn 
 
 him; he saw only the inner circle of to thee, 
 
 f)aganism; the least prolific, as well as Lone mother of dead empires! and 
 
 east indigenous. One might fancy that control 
 
 he caught a glimpse of it for an instant, In their shut breasts their petty 
 
 when he wrote: " History is read here misery." 
 
 far otherwise than in any other spot in When at last he came to a recoUec- 
 
 the universe; elsewhere we read it tion of himself and his position, it was 
 
 from without to within; here one seems with a hope for the world (stanza 98) 
 
 to read it from within to without; " but and a pardon for his enemies. From the 
 
 if so, he soon lost sight of it again, fourth canto of " Childe Harold," the 
 
 and became absorbed in external nat- daughter of Byron might learn more 
 
 ure. " Whether we halt or advance, we of the true spirit of her father than 
 
 discover a landscape ever renewing it- from all the reports she may have heard, 
 
 self in a thousand fashions. We have and all the many volumes that have 
 
 palaces and ruins; gardens and soli- been written upon him. 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 477 
 
 nificant, as well as by the importance attributed to details — 
 combated aristocratic prejudices, and developed in men's 
 minds the sentiment of equality. And having by their artistic 
 excellence exhausted both forms of the poetry of individuality, 
 they have completed the cycle of its poets ; thereby reducing 
 all followers in the same sphere to the subaltern position of 
 imitators, and creating the necessity of a new order of poetry ; 
 teaching us to recognize a want where before we felt only a 
 desire. Together they have laid an era in the tomb ; covering 
 it with a pall that none may lift ; and, as if to proclaim its death 
 to the young generation, the poetry of Goethe has written its 
 history, while that of Byron has graven its epitaph. 
 
 And now farewell to Goethe ; farewell to Byron ! farewell to 
 the sorrows that crush but sanctify not — to the poetic flame 
 that illumines but warms not — to the ironical philosophy that 
 dissects without reconstructing^— to all poetry which, in an age 
 where there is so much to do, teaches us inactive contempla- 
 tion ; or which, in a world where there is so much need of de- 
 votedness, would instil despair. Farewell to all types of power 
 without an aim ; to all personifications of the solitary individu- 
 ality which seeks an aim to find it not, and knows not how to 
 apply the life stirring within it ; to all egotistic joys and griefs : 
 
 " Bastards of the soul; 
 O'erweening slips of idleness: weeds— no more — 
 Self-springing here and there from the rank soil; 
 O'erflowings of the lust of that same mind 
 * Whose proper issue and determinate end, 
 
 When wedded to the love of things divine. 
 Is peace, complacency, and happiness." 
 
 Farewell, a long farewell to the past ! The dawn of the future 
 is announced to such as can read its signs, and we owe our- 
 selves wholly to it. 
 
 The duality of the Middle Ages, after having struggled for 
 centuries under the banners of emperor and pope ; after having 
 left its trace and borne its fruit in every branch of intellectual 
 development; has reascended to heaven — its mission accom- 
 plished — in the twin flames of poesy called Goethe and Byron. 
 Two hitherto distinct formulae of life became incarnate in these 
 two men. Byron is isolated man, representing only the inter- 
 
478 MAZZINI 
 
 nal aspect of life ; Goethe isolated man, representing only the 
 external. 
 
 Higher than these two incomplete existences; at the point 
 of intersection between the two aspirations towards a heaven 
 they were unable to reach, will be revealed the poetry of the 
 future ; of humanity ; potent in new harmony, unity, and life. 
 
 But because, in our own day, we are beginning, though 
 vaguely, to foresee this new social poetry, which will soothe 
 the suffering soul by teaching it to rise towards God through 
 humanity; because we now stand on the threshold of a new 
 epoch, which, but for them, we should not have reached ; shall 
 we decry those who were unable to do more for us than cast 
 their giant forms into the gulf that held us all doubting and 
 dismayed on the other side? From the earliest times has 
 genius been made the scapegoat of the generations. Society 
 has never lacked men who have contented themselves with re- 
 proaching the Chattertons of their day with not being patterns 
 of self-devotion, instead of physical or moral suicides; with- 
 out ever asking themselves whether they had, during their 
 lifetime, endeavored to place aught within the reach of such 
 but doubt and destitution. I feel the necessity of protesting 
 earnestly against the reaction set on foot by certain thinkers 
 against the mighty-souled, which serves as a cloak for the 
 cavilling spirit of mediocrity. There is something hard, re- 
 pulsive, and ungrateful in the destructive instinct which so 
 often forgets what has been done by the great men who pre- 
 ceded us, to demand of them merely an account of what more 
 might have been done. Is the pillow of scepticism so soft to 
 genius as to justify the conclusion that it is from egotism only 
 that at times it rests its fevered brow thereon? Are we so 
 free from the evil reflected in their verse as to have a right to 
 condemn their memory? That evil was not introduced into 
 the world by them. They saw it, felt it, respired it; it was 
 around, about, on every side of them, and they were its greatest 
 victims. How could they avoid reproducing it in their works ? 
 It is not by deposing Goethe or Byron that we shall destroy 
 either sceptical or anarchical indifference amongst us. It is 
 by becoming believers and organizers ourselves. If we are 
 such, we need fear nothing. As is the public, so will be the 
 poet. If we revere enthusiasm, the fatherland, and humanity; 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 479 
 
 if our hearts are pure, and our souls steadfast and patient, the 
 genius inspired to interpret our aspirations, and bear to heaven 
 our ideas and our sufferings, will not be wanting. Let these 
 statues stand. The noble monuments of feudal times create 
 no desire to return to the days of serfdom. 
 
 But I shall be told, there are imitators. I know it too well ; 
 but what lasting influence can be exerted on social life by 
 those who have no real Hfe of their own ? They will but flutter 
 in the void, so long as void there be. On the day when the 
 living shall arise to take the place of the dead, they will vanish 
 like ghosts at cock-crow. Shall we never be sufficiently firm 
 in our own faith to dare to show fitting reverence for the grand 
 typical figures of an anterior age? It would be idle to speak 
 of social art at all, or of the comprehension of humanity, if we 
 could not raise altars to the new gods, without overthrowing 
 the old. Those only should dare to utter the sacred name of 
 progress, whose souls possess intelHgence enough to compre- 
 hend the past, and whose hearts possess sufficient poetic re- 
 ligion to reverence its greatness. The temple of the true be- 
 liever is not the chapel of a sect ; it is a vast Pantheon, in which 
 the glorious images of Goethe and Byron will hold their hon- 
 ored place, long after Goetheism and Byronism shall have 
 ceased to be. 
 
 When, purified alike from imitation and distrust, men learn 
 to pay righteous reverence to the mighty fallen, I know not 
 whether Goethe will obtain more of their admiration as an 
 artist, but I am certain that Byron will inspire them with more 
 love, both as man and poet — a love increased even by the fact 
 of the great injustice hitherto shown to him. While Goethe 
 held himself aloof from us, and from the height of his Olym- 
 pian calm seemed to smile with disdain at our desires, our 
 struggles, and our sufferings — Byron wandered through the 
 world, sad, gloomy, and unquiet; wounded, and bearing the 
 arrow in the wound. Solitary and unfortunate in his infancy ; 
 unfortunate in his first love, and still more terribly so in his 
 ill-advised marriage; attacked and calumniated both in his 
 acts and intentions, without inquiry or defence ; harassed by 
 pecuniary difficulties; forced to quit his country, home, and 
 child ; friendless — we have seen it too clearly since his death — 
 pursued even on the Continent by a thousand absurd and in- 
 
4So MAZZINI 
 
 famous falsehoods, and by the cold malignity of a world that 
 twisted even his sorrows into a crime ; he yet, in the midst of 
 inevitable reaction, preserved his love for his sister and his Ada ; 
 his compassion for misfortune ; his fidelity to the affections of 
 his childhood and youth, from Lord Clare to his old servant 
 Murray, and his nurse Mary Gray. He was generous with his 
 money to all whom he could help or serve, from his literary 
 friends down to the wretched libeller Ashe. Though impelled 
 by the temper of his genius, by the period in which he lived, 
 and by that fatality of his mission to which I have alluded, 
 towards a poetic individualism, the inevitable incompleteness 
 of which I have endeavored to explain, he by no means set 
 it up as a standard. That he presaged the future with the pre- 
 vision of genius is proved by his definition of poetry in his 
 journal — a definition hitherto misunderstood, but yet the best 
 I know : *' Poetry is the feeling of a former world and of a 
 future." Poet as he was, he preferred activity for good, to all 
 that his art could do. Surrounded by slaves and their op- 
 pressors; a traveller in countries where even remembrance 
 seemed extinct; never did he desert the cause of the peoples; 
 never was he false to human sympathies. A witness of the 
 progress of the Restoration, and the triumph of the principles 
 of the Holy Alliance, he never swerved from his courageous 
 opposition; he preserved and publicly proclaimed his faith in 
 the rights of the peoples and in the final ^ triumph of liberty. 
 The following passage from his journal is the very abstract of 
 the law governing the efforts of the true party of progress at 
 the present day : " Onwards ! it is now the time to act ; and 
 what signifies self, if a single spark of that which would be 
 worthy of the past ^ can be bequeathed unquenchably to the 
 future ? It is not one man, nor a million, but the spirit of lib- 
 erty which must be spread. The waves which dash on the 
 shore are, one by one, broken ; but yet the ocean conquers never- 
 theless. It overwhelms the armada ; it wears the rock ; and if 
 
 • " Yet, Freedom ! yet, thy banner torn. Chopped by the axe, looks rough 
 
 but flying, and little worth, 
 
 Streams, like the thunder-storm. But the sap lasts— and still the seed 
 
 against the wind: we find 
 
 Thy trumpet voice, though broken Sown deep, even in the bosom of 
 
 now and dying, the North, 
 
 The loudest still the tempest So shall a better spring less bitter 
 
 leaves behind. fruit bring forth." 
 
 The tree hath lost its blossoms, ' Written in Italy. 
 
 and the rind. 
 
BYRON AND GOETHE 481 
 
 the Neptunians are to be believed, it has not only destroyed but 
 made a world." At Naples, in the Romagna, wherever he saw 
 a spark of noble life stirring, he was ready for any exertion; or 
 danger, to blow it into a flame. He stigmatized baseness, hy- 
 pocrisy, and injustice, whencesoever they sprang. 
 
 Thus lived Byron, ceaselessly tempest-tossed between the 
 ills of the present and his yearnings after the future ; often un- 
 equal; sometimes sceptical; but always suffering — often most 
 so when he seemed to laugh ; ^ and always loving, even when 
 he seemed to curse. 
 
 Never did " the eternal spirit of the chainless mind " make 
 a brighter apparition amongst us. He seems at times a trans- 
 formation of that immortal Prometheus, of whom he has written 
 so nobly; whose cry of agony, yet of futurity, sounded above 
 the cradle of the European world ;'and whose grand and myste- 
 rious form, transfigured by time, reappears from age to age, 
 between the entombment of one epoch and the accession of an- 
 other ; to wail forth the lament of genius, tortured by the pre- 
 sentment of things it will not see realized in its time. Byron, 
 too, had the " firm will " and the " deep sense ;" he, too, made 
 of his *' death a victory." When he heard the cry of nationality 
 and liberty burst forth in the land he had loved and sung in 
 early youth, he broke his harp and set forth. While the Chris- 
 tian Powers were protocolizing or worse — while the Christian 
 nations were doling forth the alms of a few piles of ball in aid 
 of the Cross struggling with the Crescent; he, the poet, and 
 pretended sceptic, hastened to throw his fortune, his genius, 
 and his life at the feet of the first people that had arisen in the 
 name of the nationality and liberty he loved. 
 
 I know no more beautiful symbol of the future destiny and 
 mission of art than the death of Byron in Greece. The holy 
 alliance of poetry with the cause of the peoples ; the union — still 
 so rare — of thought and action — which alone completes the 
 human Word, and is destined to emancipate the world; the 
 grand solidarity of all nations in the conquest of the rights or- 
 dained by God for all his children, and in the accomplishment 
 of that mission for which alone such rights exist — ^all that is 
 now the religion and the hope of the party of progress through- 
 
 ■ *' And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
 'Tis that I may not weep." 
 
 31 
 
482 MAZZINI 
 
 out Europe, is gloriously typified in this image, which we, bar- 
 barians that we are, have already forgotten. 
 
 The day will come when democracy will remember all that 
 it owes to Byron. England, too, will, I hope, one day remem- 
 ber the mission — so entirely English, yet hitherto overlooked by 
 her — which Byron fulfilled on the Continent; the European 
 role given by him to English literature, and the appreciation and 
 sympathy for England which he awakened amongst us. 
 
 Before he came, all that was known of English literature was 
 the French translation of Shakespeare, and the anathema hurled 
 by Voltaire against the " intoxicated barbarian." It is since 
 Byron that we Continentalists have learned to study Shake- 
 speare and other English writers. From him dates the sym- 
 pathy of all the true-hearted amongst us for this land of liberty, 
 whose true vocation he so worthily represented among the op- 
 pressed. He led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage through- 
 out all Europe. 
 
 England will one day feel how ill it is — not for Byron but 
 for herself — that the foreigner who lands upon her shores 
 should search in vain in that temple which should be her national 
 Pantheon, for the poet beloved and admired by all the nations 
 of Europe, and for whose death Greece and Italy wept as it had 
 been that of the noblest of their own sons. 
 
 In these few pages — unfortunately very hasty — my aim has 
 been, not so much to criticise either Goethe or Byron, for which 
 both time and space are wanting, as to suggest, and if possible 
 lead, English criticism upon a broader, more impartial, and 
 more useful path than the one generally followed. Certain 
 travellers of the eleventh century relate that they saw at Tene- 
 riffe a prodigiously lofty tree, which, from its immense extent 
 of foliage, collected all the vapors of the atmosphere; to dis- 
 charge them, when its branches were shaken, in a shower of 
 pure and refreshing water. Genius is like this tree, and the 
 mission of criticism should be to shake the branches. At the 
 present day it more resembles a savage striving to hew down 
 the noble tree to the roots. 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN 
 
JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN 
 1823 — 1892 
 
 Joseph Ernest Renan was born at Treguier, a little town in Brittany, 
 in 1823. His father was a Breton seafaring man, and all his life Renan 
 retained a deep and abiding love for the life, legends, and poetry of 
 Brittany. The essay on " The Poetry of the Celtic Races " shows 
 Renan at his best, for in it he describes the poetry of his own race, 
 the legends learned during his own childhood. Until the age of fifteen 
 Renan attended the convent school of his native village. His pro- 
 ficiency attracted the attention of the Abbe Dupanloup, and he was 
 given a free scholarship in the Parisian preparatory school of St. 
 Nicholas du Chardonnet. Subsequently he entered the theological 
 seminary of St. Sulpice, but decided, after long meditation, that his 
 religious views would not permit him to enter the priesthood, and he 
 accordingly, in 1845, took a position as tutor. Two years later he 
 wrote an essay on the " General History of the Semitic Languages " 
 that won the Volney prize at the Institute of France. In 1851 he 
 accepted a position in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and in 1856 he be- 
 came a member of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 
 About this time he wrote numerous essays of great learning and power 
 on topics ranging from philosophy, theology, and history, to literary 
 criticism. These were soon gathered together and published in the 
 volumes " Etudes d'histoire religieuse " and " Essais de morale et de 
 critique." In 1863 appeared his " La vie de Jesus." This book aroused 
 a storm of criticism and protest. The clamors resulted in Renan's 
 removal from the chair of Hebrew which he had occupied in the 
 College de France since 1862. In " Les apotres," which appeared in 
 1866, Renan applied, with similar results, the same critical and historical 
 method to the study of the lives of the apostles that had previously 
 created so much sensation in his " Life of Jesus." The remaining 
 volumes of Renan's celebrated " Histoire des origines du christian- 
 isme" were "St. Paul" (1867), " L'Antechrist " (1873), "Les evan- 
 giles" (1877), " L'Eglise chretienne " (1879), and "Marc Aurele " 
 (1880). 
 
 In 1870 Renan resumed his professorship at the College of France, 
 and was soon placed at the head of the institution, a position he 
 held until his death. In 1878 he was elected a member of the French 
 Academy. His last great work was the " Histoire du peuple d'Israel." 
 He died at Paris in 1892. 
 
 Renan was one of the masters of modern French prose. In his 
 expository passages no writer could be more clear, in his descriptive 
 work none more vivid. He was the acknowledged leader of the school of 
 critical philosophy in France, and fills an important place both in 
 French literature and in the history of the development of human 
 thought. 
 
 484 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 EVERYONE who travels through the Armorican penin- 
 sula experiences a change of the most abrupt descrip- 
 tion as soon as he leaves behind the district most closely 
 bordering upon the Continent, in which the cheerful but com- 
 monplace type of face of Normandy and Maine is continually 
 in evidence, and passes into the true Brittany, that, which merits 
 its name by language and race. A cold wind arises full of a 
 vague sadness, and carries the soul to other thoughts ; the tree- 
 tops are bare and twisted ; the heath with ilf monotony of tint 
 stretches away into the distance ; at every step the granite pro- 
 trudes from a soil too scanty to cover it; a sea that is almost 
 always sombre girdles the horizon with eternal moaning. The 
 same contrast is manifest in the people : to Norman vulgarity, 
 to a plump and prosperous population, happy to live, full of its 
 own interests, egoistical as are all those who make a habit of 
 enjoyment, succeeds a timid and reserved race living altogether 
 within itself, heavy in appearance but capable of profound 
 feeling, and of an adorable delicacy in its religious instincts. A 
 like change is apparent, I am told, in passing from England into 
 Wales, from the Lowlands of Scotland, English by language 
 and manners, into the Gaelic Highlands ; and, too, though with 
 a perceptible difference, when one buries one's self in the dis- 
 tricts of Ireland where the race has remained pure from all ad- 
 mixture of alien blood. It seems like entering on the subter- 
 ranean strata of another world, and one experiences in some 
 measure the impression given us by Dante, when he leads us 
 from one circle of his Inferno to another. 
 
 Sufficient attention is not given to the peculiarity of this fact 
 of an ancient race living, until our days and almost under our 
 eyes, its own life in some obscure islands and peninsulas in the 
 West, more and more affected, it is true, by external influences, 
 but still faithful to its own tongue, to its own memories, to its 
 
 485 
 
486 RENAN 
 
 own customs, and to its own genius. Especially is it forgotten 
 that this little people, now concentrated on the very confines of 
 the world, in the midst of rocks and mountains whence its ene- 
 mies have been powerless to force it, is in possession of a 
 literature which, in the Middle Ages, exercised an immense in- 
 fluence, changed the current of European civilization, and im- 
 posed its poetical motives on nearly the whole of Christendom. 
 Yet it is only necessary to open the authentic monuments of 
 the Gaelic genius to be convinced that the race which created 
 them has had its own original manner of feeling and thinking, 
 that nowhere has the eternal illusion clad itself in more seductive 
 hues, and that in the great chorus of humanity no race equals 
 this for penetrative notes that go to the very heart. Alas ! it, 
 too, is doomed to disappear, this emerald set in the Western 
 seas. Arthur will return no more from his isle of faery, and 
 St. Patrick was ri^t when he said to Ossian, " The heroes that 
 thou weepest are dead ; can they be born again ? " It is high 
 time to note, before they shall have passed away, the divine 
 tones thus expiring on the horizon before the growing tumult 
 of uniform civiHzation. Were criticism to set itself the task 
 of calling back these distant echoes, and of giving a voice to 
 races that are no more, would not that suffice to absolve it from 
 the reproach, unreasonably and too frequently brought against 
 it, of being only negative? 
 
 Good works now exist which facilitate the task of him who 
 undertakes the study of these interesting literatures. Wales, 
 above all, is distinguished by scientific and literary activity, not 
 always accompanied, it is true, by a very rigorous critical spirit, 
 but deserving the highest praise. There, researches which 
 would bring honor to the most active centres of learning in 
 Europe are the work of enthusiastic amateurs. A peasant 
 called Owen Jones published in 1 80 1-7, under the name of the 
 " Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales," the precious collection 
 which is to this day the arsenal of Cymric antiquities. A num- 
 ber of erudite and zealous workers, Aneurin Owen, Thomas 
 Price of Crickhowell, William Rees, and John Jones, following 
 in the footsteps of the Myvyrian peasant, set themselves to finish 
 his work, and to profit from the treasures which he had col- 
 lected. A woman of distinction, Lady Charlotte Guest, charged 
 herself with the task of acquainting Europe with the collection 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 487 
 
 of the Mabinogion/ the pearl of GaeHc literature, the com- 
 pletest expression of the Cymric genius. This magnificent 
 work, executed in twelve years with the luxury that the wealthy 
 English amateur knows how to use in his publications, will 
 one day attest how full of life the consciousness of the Celtic 
 races remained in the present century. Only indeed the sin- 
 cerest patriotism could inspire a woman to undertake and 
 achieve so vast a literary monument. Scotland and Ireland 
 have in like measure been enriched by a host of studies of their 
 ancient history. Lastly, our own Brittany, though all too rarely 
 studied with the philological and critical rigor now exacted 
 in works of erudition, has furnished Celtic antiquities with 
 her share of worthy research. Does it not suffice to cite M. de 
 la Villemarque, whose name will be henceforth associated 
 among us with these studies, and whose services are so incon- 
 testable, that criticism need have no fear of depreciating him in 
 the eyes of a public w^hich has accepted him with so much 
 warmth and sympathy ? 
 
 If the excellence of races is to be appreciated by the purity 
 of their blood and the inviolability of their national character, 
 it must needs be admitted that none can vie in nobility with 
 the still surviving remains of the Celtic race.^ Never has a 
 human family lived more apart from the world, and been purer 
 from all alien admixture. Confined by conquest within for- 
 gotten islands and peninsulas, it has reared an impassable 
 barrier against external influences ; it has drawn all from itself; 
 
 1 " The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr still merit this name, as opposed to the 
 Coch O Hergest and other ancient Teutons and to the Neo-Latin peoples. 
 Welsh Manuscripts, with an English These four groups are: (i) The inhabi- 
 Translation and Notes." By Lady tants of Wales or Cambria, and the pen- 
 Charlotte Guest. London and Llando- insula of Cornwall, bearing even now 
 very, 1837-49. The word Mabinogi (in the ancient name of Cymry; (2) the 
 the plural Mabinogion) designates a Bretons bretonnants, or dwellers in 
 form of romantic narrative peculiar to French Brittany speaking Bas-Breton, 
 Wales. The origin and primitive mean- who represent an emigration of the 
 ing of this word are very uncertain, and Cymry from Wales; (3) the Gaels of 
 Lady Guest's right to apply it to the the North of Scotland speaking Gaelic; 
 whole of the narratives which she has (4) the Irish, although a very profound 
 published is open to doubt. line of demarcation separates Ireland 
 
 2 To avoid all misunderstanding, I from the rest of the Celtic family. [It 
 ought to point out that by the word is also necessary to point out that Re- 
 Celtic I designate here, not the whole nan in this essay applies the name Bre- 
 of the great race which, at a remote ton both to the Bretons proper, i.e. the 
 epoch, formed the population of nearly inhabitants of Brittany, and to the Brit- 
 the whole of V\^estern Europe, but sim- ish members of the Celtic race.] 
 
 ply the four groups which, in our days, 
 
488 RENAN 
 
 it has lived solely on its own capital. From this ensues that 
 powerful individuality, that hatred of the foreigner, which even 
 in our own days has formed the essential feature of the Celtic 
 peoples. Roman civilization scarcely reached them, and left 
 among them but few traces. The Teutonic invasion drove them 
 back, but did not penetrate them. At the present hour they are 
 still constant in resistance to an invasion dangerous in an alto- 
 gether different way — that of modern civilization, destructive 
 as it is of local variations and national types. Ireland in par- 
 ticular (and herein we perhaps have the secret of her irremedia- 
 ble weakness) is the only country in Europe where the native 
 can produce the titles of his descent, and designate with cer- 
 tainty, even in the darkness of prehistoric ages, the race from 
 which he has sprung. 
 
 It is in this secluded life, in this defiance of all that comes 
 from without, that we must search for the explanation of the 
 chief features of the Celtic character. It has all the failings, 
 and all the good qualities, of the solitary man; at once proud 
 and timid, strong in feeling and feeble in action, at home free 
 and unreserved, to the outside world awkward and embarrassed. 
 It distrusts the foreigner, because it sees in him a being more re- 
 fined than itself, who abuses its simplicity. Indifferent to the 
 admiration of others, it asks only one thing, that it should be 
 left to itself. It is before all else a domestic race, fitted for 
 family life and fireside joys. In no other race has the bond of 
 blood been stronger, or has it created more duties, or attached 
 man to his fellow with so much breadth and depth. Every 
 social institution of the Celtic peoples was in the beginning 
 only an extension of the family. A common tradition attests, 
 to this very day, that nowhere has the trace of this great institu- 
 tion of relationship been better preserved than in Brittany. 
 There is a widely-spread belief in that country, that blood 
 speaks, and that two relatives, unknown one to the other, in 
 any part of the world wheresoever it may be, recognize each 
 other by the secret and mysterious emotion which they feel in 
 each other's presence. Respect for the dead rests on the same 
 principle. Nowhere has reverence for the dead been greater 
 than among the Breton peoples ; nowhere have so many memo- 
 ries and prayers clustered about the tomb. This is because life 
 is not for these people a personal adventure, undertaken by 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 489 
 
 each man on his own account, and at his own risks and perils ; 
 it is a Hnk in a long chain, a gift received and handed on, a 
 debt paid and a duty done. 
 
 It is easily discernible how little fitted were natures so 
 strongly concentrated to furnish one of those brilliant develop- 
 ments, which imposes the momentary ascendancy of a people 
 on the world; and that, no doubt, is why the part played ex- 
 ternally by the Cymric race has always been a secondary one. 
 Destitute of the means of expansion, alien to all idea of aggres- 
 sion and conquest, little desirous of making its thought prevail 
 outside itself, it has only known how to retire so far as space has 
 permitted, and then, at bay in its last place of retreat, to make 
 an invincible resistance to its enemies. Its very fidelity has 
 been a useless devotion. Stubborn of submission and ever 
 behind the age, it is faithful to its conquerors when its con- 
 querors are no longer faithful fo themselves. It was the last to 
 defend its religious independence against Rome — and it has 
 become the staunchest stronghold of Catholicism; it was the 
 last in France to defend its political independence against the 
 King — and it has given to the world the last royalists. 
 
 Thus the Celtic race has worn itself out in resistance to its 
 time, and in the defence of desperate causes. It does not seem 
 as though in any epoch it had any aptitude for poHtical life. 
 The spirit of family stifled within it all attempts at more ex- 
 tended organization. Moreover, it does not appear that the 
 peoples which form it are by themselves susceptible of progress. 
 To them life appears as a fixed condition, which man has no 
 power to alter. Endowed with little initiative, too much in- 
 clined to look upon themselves as minors and in tutelage, they 
 are quick to believe in destiny and resign themselves to it. 
 Seeing how little audacious they are against God, one would 
 scarcely believe this race to be the daughter of Japhet. 
 
 Thence ensues its sadness. Take the songs of its bards of 
 the sixth century ; they weep more defeats than they sing vic- 
 tories. Its history is itself only one long lament ; it still recalls 
 its exiles, its flights across the seas. If at times it seems to be 
 cheerful, a tear is not slow to glisten behind its smile ; it does 
 not know that strange forgetfulness of human conditions and 
 destinies which is called gayety. Its songs of joy end as elegies ; 
 there is nothing to equal the delicious sadness of its national 
 
 1 
 
c 
 
 490 RENAN 
 
 melodies. One might call them emanations from on high which, 
 falling drop by drop upon the soul, pass through it like mem- 
 ories of another world. Never have men feasted so long upon 
 these solitary delights of the spirit, these poetic memories which 
 simultaneously intercross all the sensations of life, so vague, so 
 deep, so penetrative, that one might die from them, without 
 being able to say whether it was from bitterness or sweetness. 
 
 The infinite delicacy of feeling which characterizes the Cel- 
 tic race is closely allied to its need of concentration. Natures 
 that are little capable of expansion are nearly always those that 
 feel most deeply, for the deeper the feeling, the less it tends to 
 express itself. Thence we have that charming shamefastness, 
 that veiled and exquisite sobriety, equally far removed from 
 the sentimental rhetoric too familiar to the Latin races, and 
 the reflective simplicity of Germany, which are so admirably 
 displayed in the ballads published by M. de la Villemarque. 
 The apparent reserve of the Celtic peoples, often taken for 
 coldness, is due to this inward timidity which makes them be- 
 lieve that a feeling loses half its value if it be expressed ; and 
 that the heart ought to have no other spectator than itself. 
 
 If it be permitted us to assign sex to nations as to individuals, 
 we should have to say without hesitance that the Celtic race, 
 especially with regard to its Cymric or Breton branch, is an 
 essentially feminine race. No human family, I believe, has 
 carried so much mystery into love. No other has conceived 
 with more delicacy the ideal of woman, or been more fully 
 dominated by it. It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a ver- 
 tigo. Read the strange " Mabinogi of Peredur," or its French 
 imitation " Parceval le Gallois " ; its pages are, as it were, dewy 
 with feminine sentiment. Woman appears therein as a kind of 
 vague vision, an intermediary between man and the super- 
 natural world. I am acquainted with no literature that offers 
 anything analogous to this. Compare Guinevere or Iseult with 
 those Scandinavian furies Gudrun and Chrimhilde, and you 
 will avow that woman such as chivalry conceived her, an ideal 
 of sweetness and loveliness set up as the supreme end of life, 
 is a creation neither classical, nor Christian, nor Teutonic, but 
 in reality Celtic. 
 
 Imaginative power is nearly always proportionate to con- 
 centration of feeling, and lack of the external development of 
 life. The limited nature of Greek and Italian imag:ination is 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 491 
 
 due to the easy expansiveness of the peoples of the South, with 
 whom the soul, wholly spread abroad, reflects but little within 
 itself. Compared with the classical imagination, the Celtic 
 imagination is indeed the infinite contrasted with the finite. In 
 the fine Mabinogi of the '' Dream of Maxem Wledig," the Em- 
 peror Maximus beholds in a dream a young maiden so beautiful 
 that on waking he declares he cannot live without her. For 
 several years his envoys scour the world in search of her; at 
 last she is discovered in Brittany. So is it with the Celtic race ; 
 it has worn itself out in taking dreams for realities, and in pur- 
 suing its splendid visions. The essential element in the Celt's 
 poetic life is the adventure — that is to say, the pursuit of the 
 unknown, an endless quest after an object ever flying from 
 desire. It was of this that St. Brandan dreamed, that Peredur 
 sought with his mystic chivalry,, that Knight Owen asked of his 
 subterranean journey ings. This race desires the infinite, it 
 thirsts for it, and pursues it at all costs, beyond the tomb, be- 
 yond hell itself. The characteristic failing of the Breton peo- ^ 
 pies, the tendency to drunkenness — a failing which, according 
 to the traditions of the sixth century, was the cause of their 
 disasters — is due to this invincible need of illusion. Do not say 
 that it is an appetite for gross enjoyment; never has there been 
 a people more sober and more alien to all sensuality. No, the 
 Bretons sought in mead what Owen, St. Brandan, and Peredur 
 sought in their own way — the vision of the invisible world. 
 To this day in Ireland drunkenness forms a part of all Saint's 
 Day festivals — that is to say, the festivals which best have re- 
 tained their national and popular aspect. 
 
 Thence arises the profound sense of the future and of the 
 eternal destinies of his race, which has ever borne up the Cymry, 
 and kept him young still beside his conquerors who have grown 
 old. Thence that dogma of the resurrection of the heroes, 
 which appears to have been one of those that Christianity found 
 most difficulty in rooting out. Thence Celtic Messianism, that 
 belief in a future avenger who shall restore Cambria, and deliver 
 Tier out of the hands of her oppressors, like the mysterious 
 Leminok promised by Merlin, the Lez-Breiz of the Armori- 
 cans, the Arthur of the Welsh.^ The hand that arose from the 
 
 8 M. Augustin Thierry (" Histoire de Welsh prophecies in the Middle Ages 
 la Conquete d'Angleterre ") has finely was due to their steadfastness in af- 
 remarked that the renown attaching to firming the future of their race. 
 
492 RENAN 
 
 mere, when the sword of Arthur fell therein, that seized it, and 
 brandished it thrice, is the hope of the Celtic races. It is thus 
 that little peoples dowered with imagination revenge themselves 
 on their conquerors. Feeling themselves to be strong inwardly 
 and weak outwardly, they protest, they exult; and such a 
 strife unloosing their might, renders them capable of miracles. 
 Nearly all great appeals to the supernatural are due to peoples 
 hoping against all hope. Who shall say what in our own times 
 has fermented in the bosom of the most stubborn, the most 
 powerless of nationalities — Poland? Israel in humiliation 
 dreamed of the spiritual conquest of the world, and the dream 
 has come to pass. 
 
 II 
 
 At a first glance the literature of Wales is divided into three 
 
 /perfectly distinct branches: the bardic or lyric, which shines 
 
 forth in splendor in the sixth century by the works of Taliessin, 
 
 of Aneurin, and of Liwarc'h Hen, and continues through an 
 
 uninterrupted series of imitations up to modern times; the 
 
 rMahinogion, or literature of romance, fixed towards the twelfth 
 century, but linking themselves in the groundwork of their 
 ^ideas with the remotest ages of the Celtic genius; finally, an 
 ^ ecclesiastical and legendary literature, impressed with a dis- 
 tinct stamp of its own. These three literatures seem to have 
 existed side by side, almost without knowledge of one another. 
 The bards, proud of their solemn rhetoric, held in disdain the 
 popular tales, the form of which they considered careless ; on 
 the other hand, both bards and romancers appear to have had 
 few relations with the clergy; and one at times might be 
 tempted to suppose that they ignored the existence of Christian- 
 ity. To our thinking it is in the Mabinogion that the true ex- 
 pression of the Celtic genius is to be sought ; and it is surprising 
 that so curious a literature, the source of nearly all the romantic 
 creations of Europe, should have remained unknown until our 
 own days. The cause is doubtless to be ascribed to the dis- 
 persed state of the Welsh manuscripts, pursued till last century 
 by the English as seditious books compromising those who pos- 
 sessed them. Often too they fell into the hands of ignorant 
 owners, whose caprice or ill-will sufficed to keep them from 
 critical research. 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 493 
 
 The Mabinogion have been preserved for us in two principal 
 documents — one of the thirteenth century from the Hbrary of 
 Hengurt, belonging to the Vaughan family ; the other dating 
 from the fourteenth century, known under the name of the 
 " Red Book of Hergest," and now in Jesus College, Oxford. 
 No doubt it was some such collection that charmed the weary 
 hours of the hapless Leolin in the Tower of London, and was 
 burned after his condemnation, with the other Welsh books 
 which had been the companions of his captivity. Lady Char- 
 lotte Guest has based her edition on the Oxford manuscript ; it 
 cannot be sufficiently regretted that paltry considerations have 
 caused her to be refused the use of the earlier manuscript, of 
 which the later appears to be only a copy. Regrets are re- 
 ' doubled when one knows that several Welsh texts, which were 
 seen and copied fifty years ago, iiave now disappeared. It is in 
 the presence of facts such as these that one comes to believe that 
 revolutions — in general so destructive of the works of the past 
 — are favorable to the preservation of literary monuments, by 
 compelling their concentration in great centres, where their 
 existence, as well as their publicity, is assured. 
 
 The general tone of the Mabinogion is rather romantic than ~] 
 epic. Life is treated naively and not too emphatically. The 
 hero's individuality is limitless. We have free and noble natures 
 acting in all their spontaneity. Each man appears as a kind 
 of demi-god characterized by a supernatural gift. This gift is 
 nearly always connected with some miraculous object, which 
 in some measure is the personal seal of him who possesses it. 
 The inferior classes, which this people of heroes necessarily 
 supposes beneath it, scarcely show themselves, except in the ex- 
 ercise of some trade, for practising which they are held in high 
 esteem. The somewhat complicated products of human in- 
 dustry are regarded as living beings, and in their manner en- 
 dowed with magical properties. A multiplicity of celebrated 
 objects have proper names, such as the drinking-cup, the lance, 
 the sword, and the shield of Arthur ; the chess-board of Gwen- 
 dolen, on which the black pieces played of their own accord 
 against the white ; the horn of Bran Galed, where one found 
 whatever liquor one desired; the chariot of Morgan, which 
 directed itself to the place to which one wished to go ; the pot 
 of Tyrnog, which would not cook when meat for a coward was 
 
494 RENAN 
 
 put into it; the grindstone of Tudwal, which would only 
 sharpen brave men's swords ; the coat of Padarn, which none 
 save a noble could don.; and the mantle of Tegan, which no 
 woman could put upon herself were she not above reproach.* 
 The animal is conceived in a still more individual way ; it has a 
 proper name, personal qualities, and a role which it develops at 
 its own will and with full consciousness. The same hero ap- 
 pears as at once man and animal, without it being possible to 
 trace the line of demarcation between the two natures. 
 
 The tale of " Kilhwch and Olwen," the most extraordinary 
 of the Mabinogion, deals with Arthur's struggle against the 
 wild-boar' King Twrch Trwyth, who with his seven cubs holds 
 in check all the heroes of the Round Table. The adventures of 
 the three hundred ravens of Kerverhenn similarly form the sub- 
 ject of the " Dream of Rhonabwy." The idea of moral merit 
 and demerit is almost wholly absent from all these composi- 
 tions. There are wicked beings who insult ladies, who tyran- 
 nize over their neighbors, who only find pleasure in evil because 
 such is their nature; but it does not appear that they incur 
 wrath on that account. Arthur's knights pursue them, not as 
 criminals, but as mischievous fellows. All other beings are 
 perfectly good and just, but more or less richly gifted. This 
 •is the dream of an amiable and gentle race which looks upon 
 evil as being the work of destiny, and not a product of the hu- 
 man conscience. All nature is enchanted, and fruitful as im- 
 agination itself in indefinitely varied creations. Christianity 
 rarely discloses itself; although at times its proximity can be 
 felt, it alters in no respect the purely natural surroundings in 
 which everything takes place. A bishop figures at table beside 
 Arthur, but his function is strictly limited to blessing the dishes. 
 The Irish saints, who at one time present themselves to give 
 their benediction to Arthur and receive favors at his hands, are 
 portrayed as a race of men vaguely known and difficult to un- 
 derstand. No mediaeval literature held itself further removed 
 from all monastic influence. We evidently must suppose that 
 the Welsh bards and story-tellers lived in a state of great isola- 
 tion from the clergy, and had their culture and traditions quite 
 apart. 
 
 * Here may be recognized the origin most interesting episodes in " Lancelot 
 of trial by court mantle, one of the of the Lake." 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 495 
 
 The charm of the Mabinogion principally resides in the 
 amiable serenity of the Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever 
 in suspense between a smile and a tear. We have in them the 
 simple recital of a child, unwitting of any distinction between 
 the noble and the common; there is something of that softly 
 animated world, of that calm and tranquil ideal to which Ari- 
 osto's stanzas transport us. The chatter of the later mediaeval 
 French and German imitators can give no idea of this charming 
 manner of narration. The skilful Chretien de Troyes himself 
 remains in this respect far below the Welsh story-tellers, and 
 as for Wolfram of Eschenbach, it must be avowed that the joy 
 of the first discovery has carried German critics too far in the 
 exaggeration of his merits. He loses himself in interminable 
 descriptions, and almost completely ignores the art of his recital. 
 
 What strikes one at a first glance in the imaginative com- 
 positions of the Celtic races, above all when they are contrasted — j 
 with those of the Teutonic races, is the extreme mildness of \ 
 manners pervading them. There are none of those frightful 
 vengeances which fill the " Edda " and the " Niebelungen." 
 Compare the Teutonic with the Gaelic hero — Beowulf with 
 Peredur, for example. What a difference there is ! In the one 
 all the horror of disgusting and blood-embrued barbarism, the 
 drunkenness of carnage, the disinterested taste, if I may say so, 
 for destruction and death; in the other a profound sense of 
 justice, a great height of personal pride, it is true, but also a 
 great capacity for devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The tyran- 
 nical man, the monster, the Black Man, find a place here, like the 
 Lestrigons and the Cyclops of Homer, only to inspire horror 
 by contrast with softer manners ; they are almost what the 
 wicked man is in the naive imagination of a child brought up 
 by a mother in the ideas of a gentle and pious morality. The 
 primitive man of Teutonism is revolting by his purposeless bru- 
 tality, by a love of evil that only gives him skill and strength 
 in the service of hatred and injury. The Cymric hero on the 
 other hand, even in his wildest flights, seems possessed by hab- 
 its of kindness and a warm sympathy with the weak. Sympathy 
 indeed is one of the deepest feelings among the Celtic peoples. 
 Even Judas is not denied a share of their pity. St. Brandan 
 found him upon a rock in the midst of the Polar seas ; once a 
 week he passes a day there to refresh himself from the fires of 
 
496 RENAN 
 
 hell. A cloak that he had given to a beggar is hung before him, 
 and tempers his sufferings. 
 
 If Wales has a right to be proud of her Mabinogion, she has 
 not less to felicitate herself in having found a translator truly 
 worthy of interpreting them. For the proper understanding of 
 these original beauties there was needed a delicate appreciation 
 of Welsh narration, and an intelligence of the naive order, qual- 
 ities of which an erudite translator would with difficulty have 
 been capable. To render these gracious imaginings of a people 
 so eminently dowered with feminine tact, the pen of a woman 
 was necessary. Simple, animated, without effort and without 
 vulgarity. Lady Guest's translation is the faithful mirror of the 
 original Cymric. Even supposing that, as regards philology, 
 the labors of this noble Welsh lady be destined to receive im- 
 provement, that does not prevent her book from forever re- 
 maining a work of erudition and highly distinguished taste.^ 
 
 The Mahinogion, or at least the writings which Lady Guest 
 thought she ought to include under this common name, divide 
 themselves into two perfectly distinct classes — some connected 
 exclusively with the two peninsulas of Wales and Cornwall, and 
 relating to the heroic personality of Arthur; the others alien 
 to Arthur, having for their scene not only the parts of England 
 that have remained Cymric, but the whole of Great Britain, and 
 leading us back by the persons and traditions mentioned in them 
 to the later years of the Roman occupation. The second class, 
 of greater antiquity than the first, at least on the ground of 
 subject, is also distinguished by a much more mythological 
 character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an enigmatical form, 
 a style full of alliteration and plays upon words. Of this num- 
 ber are the tales of " Pwyll," of " Branwen," of " Manawyd- 
 dan," of '' Math the son of Mathonwy," the " Dream of the Em- 
 peror Maximus," the story of *' Llud and Llewelys," and the 
 legend of Taliessin. To the Arthurian cycle belong the narra- 
 tives of " Owen," of " Geraint,'' of " Peredur," of " Kilhwch 
 and Olwen," and the " Dream of Rhonabwy." It is also to be 
 remarked that the two last-named narratives have a particularly 
 antique character. In them Arthur dwells in Cornwall, and 
 
 * M. de la Villemarque published in translation of the narratives that Lady 
 1842 under the title of " Contes popu- Guest had already presented in English 
 laires des anciens Bretons," a French at that time. 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 497 
 
 noft as in the others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he ap- 
 pears with an individual character, hunting and taking a per- 
 sonal part in warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only 
 an emperor all-powerful and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, 
 around whom a pleiad of active heroes groups itself. The 
 Mabinogi of " Kilhwch and Olwen," by its entirely primitive 
 aspect, by the part played in it by the wild-boar in conformity 
 to the spirit of Celtic mythology, by the wholly supernatural 
 and magical character of the narration, by innumerable allu- 
 sions the sense of which escapes us, forms a cycle by itself. It 
 represents for us the Cymric conception in all its purity, before 
 it had been modified by the introduction of any foreign ele- 
 ment. Without attempting here to analyze this curious poem, 
 I should like by some extracts to make its antique aspect and 
 high originality apparent. 
 
 Kilhwch, son of Kilydd, prince of Kelyddon, having heard 
 some one mention the name of Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden 
 Penkawr, falls violently in love, without having ever seen her. 
 He goes to find Arthur, that he may ask for his aid in the diffi- 
 cult undertaking which he meditates ; in point of fact, "he does 
 not know in what country the fair one of his affection dwells. 
 Yspaddaden is besides a frightful tyrant who suffers no man 
 to go from his castle alive, and whose death is linked by des- 
 tiny to the marriage of his daughter.* Arthur grants Kilhwch 
 some of his most valiant comrades in arms to assist him in this 
 enterprise. After wonderful adventures the knights arrive at 
 the castle of Yspaddaden, and succeed in seeing the young maid- 
 en of Kilhwch's- dream. Only after three days of persistent 
 struggle do they manage to obtain a response from Olwen's 
 father, who attaches his daughter's hand to conditions appar- 
 ently impossible of realization. The performance of these trials 
 makes a long chain of adventures, the framework of a veritable 
 romantic epic which has come to us in a very fragmentary form. 
 Of the thirty-eight adventures imposed on Kilhwch the manu- 
 script used by Lady Guest only relates seven or eight. I choose 
 at random one of these narratives, which appears to me fitted 
 to give an idea of the whole composition. It deals with the find- 
 
 " The idea of making the death of the eral romances of the Breton cycle, in 
 father the condition of possession of " Lancelot " for example, 
 the daughter is to be found in sev- 
 
 32 
 
498 RENAN 
 
 ing of Mabon the son of Modron, who was carried away from 
 his mother three days after his birth, and whose deHverance is 
 one of the labors exacted of Kilhwch. 
 
 " His followers said unto Arthur, * Lord, go thou home ; 
 thou canst not proceed with thy host in quest of such small 
 adventures as these.' Then said Arthur, * It were well for thee, 
 Gwrhyr Gwalstawd leithoedd, to go upon this quest, for thou 
 knowest all languages, and art familiar with those of the birds 
 and the beasts. Thou, Eidoel, oughtest likewise to go with my 
 men in search of thy cousin. And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, 
 I have hope of whatever adventure ye are in quest of, that ye 
 will achieve it. Achieve ye this adventure for me.' " 
 
 They went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri. 
 And Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, " Tell 
 me if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who 
 was taken when three nights old from between his mother and 
 the wall." And the Ousel answered, " When I first came here 
 there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young 
 bird ; and from that time no work has been done upon it, save 
 the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so 
 much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet all the ven- 
 geance of Heaven be upon me, if during all that time I have ever 
 heard of the man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless I will 
 do that which is right, and that which it is fitting I should do 
 for an embassy from Arthur. There is a race of animals who 
 were formed before me, and I will be your guide to them." 
 
 So they proceeded to the place where was the Stag of Red- 
 ynvre. " Stag of Redynvre, behold we are come to thee, an em- 
 bassy from Arthur, for we have not heard of any animal older 
 than thou. Say, knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Mo- 
 dron, who was taken from his mother when three nights old ? " 
 The Stag said, " When firsf I came hither there was a plain all 
 around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, which grew 
 up to be an oak with a hundred branches. And that oak has 
 since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the with- 
 ered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet 
 have I never heard of the man for whom you inquire. Never- 
 theless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to 
 the place where there is an animal which was formed before I 
 was." 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 499 
 
 So they proceeded to the place where was the Owl of Cwm 
 Cawlwyd. " Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from 
 Arthur; knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, 
 who was taken after three nights from his mother ? " " If I 
 knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide val- 
 ley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and 
 rooted it up. And there grew there a second wood ; and this 
 wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps? 
 Yet all this time, even until to-day, I have never heard of the 
 man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless I will be the guide 
 of Arthur's embassy until you come to the place where is the 
 oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled most, 
 the Eagle of Gwern Abwy." 
 
 Gwrhyr said, " Eagle of Gwern Abwy, we have come to 
 thee an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught 
 of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his mother 
 when he was three nights old." The Eagle said, " I have been 
 here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither 
 there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the 
 stars every evening ; and now it is not so much as a span high. 
 From that day to this I have been here, and I have never heard 
 of the man for whom you inquire, except once when I went in 
 search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I 
 struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve me 
 as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I 
 was scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with 
 my whole kindred to attack him, and to try to destroy him, but 
 he sent messengers, and made peace with me ; and came and 
 besought me to take fifty fish spears out of his back. Unless he 
 know something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell who may. 
 However, I will guide you to the place where he is." 
 
 So they went thither ; and the Eagle said, '* Salmon of Llyn 
 Llyw, I have. come to thee with an embassy from Arthur, to 
 ask thee if thou knowest aught concerning Mabon the son of 
 Modron, who was taken away at three nights old from his 
 mother." " As much as I know I will tell thee. With every 
 tide I go along the river upwards, until I come near to the walls 
 of Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never 
 found elsewhere; and to the end that ye may give credence 
 thereto, let one of you go thither upon each of my two shoul- 
 
500 RENAN 
 
 ders." So Kai and Gwrhyr Gwalstawd leithoedd went upon 
 the shoulders of the saknon, and they proceeded until they 
 came unto the wall of the prison, and they heard a great wailing 
 and lamenting from the dungeon. Said Gwrhyr, ** Who is it 
 that laments in this house of stone ? " " Alas there is reason 
 enough for whoever is here to lament. It is Mabon the son 
 of Modron who is here imprisoned ; and no imprisonment was 
 ever so grievous as mine, neither that of Lludd Llaw Ereint, nor 
 that of Greid the son of Eri." " Hast thou hope of being re- 
 leased for gold or for silver, or for any gifts of wealth, or 
 through battle and fighting?" " By fighting will whatever I 
 may gain be obtained." 
 
 We shall not follow the Cymric hero through trials the re- 
 sult of which can be foreseen. What, above all else, is striking 
 in these strange legends is the part played by animals, trans- 
 formed by the Welsh imagination into intelligent beings. No 
 race conversed so intimately as did the Celtic race with the 
 lower creation, and accorded it so large a share of moral life.'' 
 The close association of man and animal, the fictions so dear to 
 •mediaeval poetry of the Knight of the Lion, the Knight of the 
 Falcon, the Knight of the Swan, the vows consecrated by the 
 presence of birds of noble repute, are equally Breton imagin- 
 ings. Ecclesiastical literature itself presents analogous feat- 
 ures ; gentleness towards animals informs all the legends of the 
 saints of Brittany and Ireland. One day St. Kevin fell asleep 
 while he was praying at his window with outstretched arms ; 
 and a swallow perceiving the open hand of the venerable monk, 
 considered it an excellent place wherein to make her nest. The 
 saint on awaking saw the mother sitting upon her eggs, and, 
 loath to disturb her, w^aited for the little ones to be hatched 
 before he arose from his knees. 
 
 This touching sympathy was derived from the singular vi- 
 vacity with which the Celtic races have inspired their feeling 
 for nature. Their mythology is nothing more than a trans- 
 parent naturalism, not that anthropomorphic naturalism of 
 Greece and India, in which the forces of the universe, viewed 
 as living beings and endowed with consciousness, tend more 
 and more to detach themselves from physical phenomena, and 
 
 ' See especially the narratives of Nen- them animals have at least as important 
 nius, and of Giraldus Cambrensis. In a part as men. 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 501 
 
 to become moral beings ; but in some measure a realistic natu- 
 ralism, the love of nature for herself, the vivid impression of her 
 magic, accompanied by the sorrowful feeling that man knows, 
 when, face to face with her, he believes that he hears her com- 
 mune with him concerning his origin and his destiny. The 
 legend of Merlin mirrors this feeling. Seduced by a fairy of 
 the woods, he flies with her and becomes a savage. Arthur's 
 messengers come upon him as he is singing by the side of a 
 fountain ; he is led back again to court ; but the charm carries 
 him away. He returns to his forests, and this time forever. 
 Under a thicket of hawthorn Vivien has built him a magical 
 prison. There he prophesies the future of the Celtic races ; he 
 speaks of a maiden of the woods, now visible and now unseen, 
 who holds him captive by her spells. Several Arthurian legends 
 are impressed with the same character. Arthur himself in 
 popular belief became, as it were, a woodland spirit. " The 
 foresters on their nightly round by the light of the moon," says 
 Gervais of Tilbury, *' often hear a great sound as of horns, and 
 meet bands of huntsmen; when they are asked whence they 
 come, these huntsmen make reply that they are of King Ar- 
 thur's following." ^ Even the French imitators of the Breton 
 romances keep an impression — although a rather insipid one 
 — of the attraction exercised by nature on the Celtic imagina- 
 tion. Elaine, the heroine of Lancelot, the ideal of Breton per- 
 fection, passes her life with her companions in a garden, in the 
 midst of flowers which she tends. Every flower culled by her 
 hands is at the instant restored to life ; and the worshippers of 
 her memory are under an obligation, when they cut a flower, to 
 sow another in its place. 
 
 The worship of forest, and fountain, and stone is to be ex- 
 plained by this primitive naturalism, which all the councils 
 of the Church held in Brittany united to proscribe. The stone, 
 in truth, seems the natural symbol of the Celtic races. It is an 
 immutable witness that has no death. The animal, the plant, 
 above all the human figure, only express the divine life under 
 a determinate form ; the stone on the contrary, adapted to re- 
 
 «This manner of explaining all the may say so, of landscape among the 
 
 unknown noises of the wood by " Ar- Celts, see Gildas and Nennius, pp. 131, 
 
 thur's hunting " is still to be found 136, 137, etc. (Edit. San Marte, Berlin, 
 
 in several districts. To understand 1844.) 
 properly the cult of nature, and, if I 
 
502 RENAN 
 
 ceive all forms, has been the fetich of peoples in their childhood. 
 Pausanias saw, still standing erect, the thirty square stones of 
 Pharse, each bearing the name of a divinity. The men-hir 
 to be met with over the whole surface of the ancient world, what 
 is it but the monument of primitive humanity, a living witness 
 of its faith in Heaven ? * 
 
 It has frequently been observed that the majority of popular 
 beliefs still extant in our different provinces are of Celtic origin. 
 A not less remarkable fact is the strong tinge of naturalism 
 dominant in these beliefs. Nay more, every time that the old 
 Celtic spirit appears in our history, there is to be seen, re-born 
 with it, faith in nature and her magic influences. One of the 
 most characteristic of these manifestations seems to me to be 
 that of Joan of Arc. That indomitable hope, that tenacity in the 
 affirmation of the future, that belief that the salvation of the 
 kingdom will come from a woman — all those features, far re- 
 moved as they are from the taste of antiquity, and from Teu- 
 tonic taste, are in many respects Celtic. The memory of the 
 ancient cult perpetuated itself at Domremy, as in so many other 
 places, under the form of popular superstition. The cottage of 
 the family of Arc was shaded by a beech tree, famed in the 
 country and reputed to be the abode of fairies. In her child- 
 hood Joan used to go and hang upon its branches garlands of 
 leaves and flowers, which, so it was said, disappeared during the 
 night. The terms of her accusation speak with horror of this 
 innocent custom, as of a crime against the faith; and indeed 
 they were not altogether deceived, those unpitying theologians 
 who judged the holy maid. Although she knew it not, she was 
 more Celtic than Christian. She has been foretold by Merlin ; 
 she knows of neither Pope nor Church — she only believes the 
 voice that speaks in her own heart. This voice she hears in 
 the fields, in the sough of the wind among the trees, when 
 measured and distant sounds fall upon her ears. During her 
 trial, worn out with questions and scholastic subtleties, she is 
 asked whether she still hears her voices. " Take me to the 
 woods," she says, " and I shall hear them clearly." Her legend 
 
 » It is, however, doubtful whether the belong to a more ancient humanity, 
 
 monuments known in France as Celtic Never, in fact, has any branch of the 
 
 (men-hir, dol-men, etc.) are the work of Indo-European race built in this fash- 
 
 the Celts. With M. Worsaae and the ion. (See two articles by M. Merimee 
 
 Copenhagen archaeologists, I am in- in " L'Athenseum frangais," Sept. ii, 
 
 clined to think that these monuments 1852, and April 25, 1853.) 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 503 
 
 is tinged with the same colors; nature loved her, the wolves 
 never touched the sheep of her flock. When she was a little 
 girl, the birds used to come and eat bread from her lap as 
 though they were tame.^® 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Mabinogion do not recommend themselves to our study, 
 only as a manifestation of the romantic genius of the Breton 
 races. It was through them that the Welsh imagination exer- 
 cised its influence upon the Continent, that it transformed, in 
 the twelfth century, the poetic art of Europe, and realized this 
 miracle — that the creations of a half-conquered race have be- 
 come the universal feast of imagination for mankind. 
 
 Few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. Neither Gildas 
 nor Aneurin, his contemporaries, speak of him ; Bede did not 
 even know his name ; Taliessin and Liwarc'h Hen gave him only 
 a secondary place. In Nennius, on the other hand, who lived 
 about 850, the legend has fully unfolded. Arthur is already 
 the exterminator of the Saxons ; he has never experienced de- 
 feat ; he is the suzerain of an army of kings. Finally, in Geof- 
 frey of Monmouth, the epic creation culminates. Arthur 
 reigns over the whole earth; he conquers Ireland, Norway, 
 Gascony, and France. At Caerleon he holds a tournament at 
 which all the monarchs of the world are present ; there he puts 
 upon his head thirty crowns, and exacts recognition as the sov- 
 ereign lord of the universe. So incredible is it that a petty king 
 of the sixth century, scarcely remarked by his contemporaries, 
 should have taken in posterity such colossal proportions, that 
 several critics have supposed that the legendary Arthur and the 
 obscure chieftain who bore that name have nothing in common, 
 the one with the other, and that the son of Uther Pendragon 
 is a wholly ideal hero, a survivor of the old Cymric mythology. 
 As a matter of fact, in the symbols of Neo-Druidism — ^that is 
 
 10 Since the first publication of these icately appreciating questions of this 
 
 views, on which I should not like more kind, relative to the genius of races, 
 
 emphasis to be put than what belongs It frequently happens that the resur- 
 
 to a passing impression, similar consid- rection of an old national genius takes 
 
 erations have been developed, in terms place under a very different form from 
 
 that appear a little too positive, by M. that which one would have expected, 
 
 H. Martin (" History of France," vol. and by means of individuals who have 
 
 vi., 1856). The objections raised to it no idea of the ethnographical part 
 
 are, for the most part, due to the fact which they play, 
 that very few people are capable of del- 
 
504 
 
 RENAN 
 
 to say, of that secret doctrine, the outcome of Druidism, which 
 prolonged its existence even to the Middle Ages under the form 
 of Freemasonry — we again find Arthur transformed into a 
 divine personage, and playing a purely mythological part. It 
 must at least be allowed that, if behind the fable some reality 
 lies hidden, history offers us no means of attaining it. It can- 
 not be doubted that the discovery of Arthur's tomb in the Isle 
 of Avalon in 1189 was an invention of Norman policy, just as 
 in 1283, the very year in which Edward I was engaged in 
 crushing out the last vestiges of Welsh independence, Arthur's 
 crown was very conveniently found, and forthwith united to 
 the other crown jewels of England. 
 
 We naturally expect Arthur, now become the representative 
 of Welsh nationality, to sustain in the Mabinogion a character 
 analogous to this role, and therein, as in Nennius, to serve the 
 hatred of the vanquished against the Saxons. But such is not 
 the case. Arthur, in the Mabinogion, exhibits no characteristics 
 of patriotic resistance; his part is limited to uniting heroes 
 around him, to maintaining the retainers of his palace, and to 
 enforcing the laws of his order of chivalry. He is too strong 
 for anyone to dream of attacking him. He is the Charlemagne 
 of the Carlovingian romances, the Agamemnon of Homer — one 
 of those neutral personalities that serve but to give unity to the 
 poem. The idea of warfare against the alien, hatred towards 
 the Saxon, does not appear in a single instance. The heroes of 
 the Mabinogion have no fatherland; each fights to show his 
 personal excellence, and satisfy his taste for adventure, but 
 not to defend a national cause. Britain is the universe ; no one 
 suspects that beyond the Cymry there may be other nations and 
 other races. 
 
 It was by this ideal and representative character that the Ar- 
 thurian legend had such an astonishing prestige throughout 
 the whole world. Had Arthur been only a provincial hero, the 
 more or less happy defender of a little country, all peoples would 
 not have adopted him, any more than they have adopted the 
 Marco of the Serbs, or the Robin Hood of the Saxons. The 
 Arthur who has charmed the world is the head of an order of 
 equality, in which all sit at the same table, in which a man's 
 worth depends upon his valor and his natural gifts. What mat- 
 tered to the world the fate of an unknown peninsula, and the 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 505 
 
 strife waged on its behalf? What enchanted it was the ideal 
 court presided over by Gwenhwyvar (Guinevere), where 
 around the monarchical unity the flower of heroes was gathered 
 together, where ladies, as chaste as they were beautiful, loved 
 according to the laws of chivalry, and where the time was passed 
 in listening to stories, and learning civility and beautiful man- 
 ners. 
 
 This is the secret of the magic of that Round Table, about 
 which the Middle Ages grouped all their ideas of heroism, of 
 beauty, of modesty, and of love. We need not stQp to inquire 
 whether the ideal of a gentle and polished society in the midst 
 of the barbarian world is, in all its features, a purely Breton 
 creation, whether the spirit of the courts of the Continent has 
 not in some measure furnished the model, and whether the 
 Mahinogion themselves have npt felt the reaction of the French 
 imitations ; ^^ it suffices for us that the new order of sentiments 
 which we have just indicated was, throughout the whole of the 
 Middle Ages, persistently attached to the groundwork of the 
 Cymric romances. Such an association could not be fortuitous ; 
 if the imitations are all so glaring in color, it is evidently be- 
 cause in the original this same color is to be found united to 
 particularly strong character. How otherwise shall w« ex- 
 plain why a forgotten tribe on the very confines of the world 
 should have imposed its heroes upon Europe, and, in the domain 
 of imagination, accomplished one of the most singular revolu- 
 tions known to the historian of letters? 
 
 If, in fact, one compares European literature before the in- 
 troduction of the Cymric romances with what it became when 
 the trouveres set themselves to draw from Breton sources, one 
 
 / recognizes readily that with the Breton narratives a new ele- 
 ment entered into the poetic conception of the Christian peoples, 
 
 ' and modified it profoundly. The Carlovingian poem, both by 
 its structure and by the means which it employs, does not depart 
 from classical ideas. The motives of man's action are the same 
 as in the Greek epic. The essentially romantic element, the life 
 of forests and mysterious adventure, the feeling for nature, 
 
 ^ The surviving version of the " Ma- ratives have been borrowed in a like 
 
 binogion " has a later date than these manner, since among them are some 
 
 imitations, and the Red Book includes unknown to the trouveres, which could 
 
 several tales borrowed from the French only possess interest for Breton coun- 
 
 trouveres. But it is out of the question tries, 
 to maintain that the really Welsh nar- 
 
5o6 RENAN 
 
 and that impulse of imagination which makes the Breton war- 
 rior unceasingly pursue the unknown — nothing of all this is as 
 yet to be observed. Roland differs from the heroes of Homer 
 only by his armor ; in heart he is the brother of Ajax or Achilles. 
 Perceval, on the contrary, belongs to another world, separated 
 by a great gulf from that in which the heroes of antiquity live 
 -and act. 
 
 It was above all by the creation of woman's character, by 
 introducing into mediaeval poetry, hitherto hard and austere, 
 the nuances of love, that the Breton romances brought about 
 this curious metamorphosis. It was like an electric spark; 
 in a few years European taste was changed. Nearly all the 
 types of womankind known to the Middle Ages, Guinevere, 
 Iseult, Enid, are derived from Arthur's court. In the Car- 
 lovingian poems woman is a nonentity without character or 
 individuality ; in them love is either brutal, as in the romance 
 of " Ferebras," or scarcely indicated, as in the " Song of Ro- 
 land." In the Mabinogion, on the other hand, the principal part 
 always belongs to the women. Chivalrous gallantry, which 
 makes the warrior's happiness to consist in serving a woman 
 and meriting her esteem, the belief that the noblest use of 
 strength is to succor and avenge weakness, results, I know, from 
 a turn of imagination which possessed nearly all European peo- 
 ples in the twelfth century ; but it cannot be doubted that this 
 turn of imagination first found literary expression among the 
 Breton peoples. One of the most surprising features in the 
 Mabinogion is the delicacy of the feminine feeling breathed in 
 them ; an impropriety or a gross word is never to be met with. 
 It would be necessary to quote at length the two romances of 
 " Peredur " and " Geraint " to demonstrate an innocence such as 
 this ; but the naive simplicity of these charming compositions 
 forbids us to see in this innocence any underlying meaning. 
 The zeal of the knight in the defence of ladies' honor became a 
 satirical euphemism only in the French imitators, who trans- 
 formed the virginal modesty of the Breton romances into a 
 shameless gallantry — so far indeed that these compositions, 
 chaste as they are in the original, became the scandal of the 
 Middle Ages, provoked censures, and were the occasion of the 
 ideas of immorality which, for religious people, still cluster 
 about the name of romance. 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES - 507 
 
 Certainly chivalry is too complex a fact for us to be per- 
 mitted to assign it to any single origin. Let us say however^ 
 that in the idea of envisaging the esteem of a woman as the 
 highest object of human activity, and setting up love as the 
 supreme principle of morality, there is nothing of the antique 
 spirit, or indeed of the Teutonic. Is it in the " Edda " or in the 
 " Niebelungen " that we shall find the germ of this spirit of pure 
 love, of exalted devotion, which forms the very soul of chivalry ? 
 As to following the suggestion of some critics and seeking 
 among the Arabs for the beginnings of this institution, surely 
 of all literary paradoxes ever mooted, this is one of the most 
 singular. The idea of conquering woman in a land where she 
 is bought and sold, of seeking her esteem in a land where she 
 is scarcely considered capable of moral merit! I shall oppose 
 the partisans of this hypothesis, with one single fact — the sur- 
 prise experienced by the Arabs of Algeria when, by a some- 
 what unfortunate recollection of mediaeval tournaments, the 
 ladies were intrusted with the presentation of prizes at the 
 Beiram races. What to the knight appeared an unparalleled 
 honor seemed to the Arabs a humiliation and almost an insult. 
 
 The introduction of the Breton romances into the current 
 of European literature worked a not less profound revolution 
 in the manner of conceiving and employing the marvellous. In 
 the Carlovingian poems the marvellous is timid, and conforms 
 to the Christian faith ; the supernatural is produced directly by 
 God or his envoys. Among the Cymry, on the contrary, the 
 principle of the marvel is in nature herself, in her hidden forces, 
 in her inexhaustible fecundity. There is a mysterious swan, a 
 prophetic bird, a suddenly appearing hand, a giant, a black 
 tyrant, a magic mist, a dragon, a cry that causes the hearer to 
 die of terror, an object with extraordinary properties. There is 
 no trace of the monotheistic conception, in which the marvellous 
 is only a miracle, a derogation of eternal laws. Nor are there 
 any of those personifications of the life of nature which form 
 the essential part of the Greek and Indian mythologies. Here 
 we have perfect naturalism, an unlimited faith in the possible, 
 belief in the existence of independent beings bearing within 
 themselves the principle of their strength — an idea quite op- 
 posed to Christianity, which in such beings necessarily sees 
 either angels or fiends. And besides, these strange beings are 
 
 J 
 
5o8 RENAN 
 
 always presented as being outside the pale of the Church ; and 
 when the knight of the Round Table has conquered them he 
 forces them to go and pay homage to Guinevere, and have them- 
 selves baptized. 
 
 Now, if in poetry there is a marvellous element that we might 
 accept, surely it is this. Classical mythology, taken in its first 
 simplicity, is too bold, taken as a mere figure of rhetoric, too 
 insipid, to give us satisfaction. As to the marvellous element 
 in Christianity, Boileau is right: no fiction is compatible with 
 such a dogmatism. There remains then the purely naturalistic 
 marvellous, nature interesting herself in action and acting her- 
 self, the great mystery of fatality unveiling itself by the secret 
 conspiring of all beings, as in Shakespeare and Ariosto. It 
 would be curious to ascertain how much of the Celt there is in 
 the former of these poets ; as for Ariosto he is the Breton poet 
 par excellence. All his machinery, all his means of interest, 
 all his fine shades of sentiment, all his types of women, all his 
 adventures, are borrowed from the Breton romances. 
 
 Do we now understand the intellectual role of that little race 
 which gave to the world Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Per- 
 ceval, Merlin, St. Brandan, St. Patrick, and almost all the poet- 
 ical cycles of the Middle Ages ? What a striking destiny som6 
 nations have, in alone possessing the right to cause the accep- 
 tance of their heroes, as though for that were necessary a quite 
 peculiar degree of authority, seriousness, and faith ! And it is 
 a strange thing that it is to the Normans, of all peoples the 
 one least sympathetically inclined towards the Bretons, that 
 we owe the renown of the Breton fables. Brilliant and imita- 
 tive, the Norman everywhere became the pre-eminent repre- 
 sentative of the nation on which he had at first imposed himself 
 by force. French in France, English in England, Italian in 
 Italy, Russian at Novgorod, he forgot his own language to 
 speak that of the race which he had conquered, and to become 
 the interpreter of its genius. The deeply suggestive character 
 of the Welsh romances could not fail to impress men so prompt 
 to seize and assimilate the ideas of the foreigner. The first 
 revelation of the Breton fables, the " Latin Chronicle " of Geof- 
 frey of Monmouth, appeared about the year 1137, under the 
 auspices of Robert of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. 
 ^^ Henry II acquired a taste for the same narratives, and at his 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 509 
 
 request Robert Wace, in 1155, wrote in French the first history 
 of Arthur, thus opening the path in which walked after him a 
 host of poets or imitators of all nationalities, French, Provencal, 
 Italian, Spanish, English, Scandinavian, Greek, and Georgian. 
 We need not belittle the glory of the first trouveres who put 
 into a language, then read and understood from one end of 
 Europe to the other, fictions which, but for them, would have 
 doubtless remained forever unknown. It is however difficult 
 to attribute to them an inventive faculty, such as would permit 
 them to merit the title of creators. The numerous passages 
 in which one feels that they do not fully understand the original 
 which they imitate, and in which they attempt to give a natural 
 significance to circumstances of which the mythological bearing 
 escaped them, suffice to prove that, as a rule, they were satisfied 
 to make a fairly faithful copy of tKe work before their eyes. 
 
 What part has Armorican Brittany played in the creation or 
 propagation of the legends of the Round Table? It is impos- 
 sible to say with any degree of precision ; and in truth such a 
 question becomes a matter of secondary import, once we form 
 a just idea of the close bonds of fraternity which did not cease 
 until the twelfth century to unite the two branches of the Breton 
 peoples. That the heroic traditions of Wales long continued to 
 live in the branch of the Cymric family which came and settled 
 in Armorica cannot be doubted when we find Geraint, Urien, 
 and other heroes become saints in Lower Brittany ; ^^ and above 
 all when we see one of the most essential episodes of the Ar- 
 thurian cycle, that of the Forest of BroceHande, placed in the 
 same country. A large number of facts collected by M. de la 
 Villemarque ^^ prove, on the other hand, that these same tradi- 
 tions produced a true poetic cycle in Brittany, and even that at 
 certain epochs they must have recrossed the Channel, as though 
 to give new life to the mother country's memories. The fact 
 that Gauthier Calenius, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought back 
 from Brittany to England (about 1125) the very text of the 
 
 ^I shall only cite a single proof; it et les contes des anciens Bretons" 
 
 is a law of Edward the Confessor: (Paris, 1859), pp. 20 et seq. In the 
 
 " Britones vero Armorici quum vene- " Contes populaires des anciens Bre- 
 
 rint in regno isto, suscipi debent et in tons," of which the above may be con- 
 
 regno protegi sicut probi cives de cor- sidered as a new edition, the learned 
 
 pore regni hujus; exierunt quondam author had somewhat exaggerated the 
 
 de sanguine Britonum regni hujus." — influence of French Brittany. In the 
 
 Wilkins, " Leges Anglo-Saxonicae," p. present article, when first published, I 
 
 206. had, on the other hand, depreciated it 
 
 " " Les Romans de la Table-Ronde too much. 
 
5IO REN AN 
 
 legends which were translated into Latin ten years afterwards 
 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, is here decisive. I know that to 
 readers of the Mabinogion such an opinion will appear sur- 
 prising at a first glance. All is Welsh in these fables, the places, 
 the genealogies, the customs ; in them Armorica is only repre- 
 sented by Hoel, an important personage no doubt, but one who 
 has not achieved the fame of the other heroes of Arthur's court. 
 Again, if Armorica saw the birth of the Arthurian cycle, how 
 is it that we fail to find there any traces of that brilliant na- 
 tivity?^* 
 
 These objections, I avow, long barred my way, but I no 
 longer find them insoluble. And first of all there is a class of 
 Mabinogion, including those of Owen, Geraint, and Peredur, 
 stories which possess no very precise geographical localization. 
 In the second place, national written literature being less suc- 
 cessfully defended in Brittany than in Wales against the inva- 
 sion of foreign culture, it may be conceived that the memory of 
 the old epics should be there more obliterated. The literary 
 share of the two countries thus remains sufficiently distinct. 
 The glory of French Brittany is in her popular songs ; but it 
 is only in Wales that the genius of the Breton people has suc- 
 ceeded in establishing itself in authentic books and achieved 
 creations. 
 
 IV 
 
 In comparing the Breton cycle as the French trouveres knew 
 it, and the same cycle as it is to be found in the text of the 
 Mabinogion, one might be tempted to believe that the European 
 imagination, enthralled by these brilliant fables, added to them 
 some poetical themes unknown to the Welsh. Two of the most 
 celebrated heroes of the Continental Breton romances, Lancelot 
 and Tristan, do not figure in the Mabinogion; on the other 
 hand, the characteristics of the Holy Grail are presented in a 
 totally different way from that which we find in the French and 
 German poets. A more attentive study shows that these ele- 
 ments, apparently added by the French poets, are in reality of 
 
 " M. de la Villemarque makes appeal laires de la Bretagne " two poems are 
 
 to the popular songs still extant in Brit- to be found in which that hero's name 
 
 tany, in which Arthur's deeds are cele- figures, 
 brated. In fact, in his " Chants popu* 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 511 
 
 Cymric origin. And first of all, M. de la Villemarque has 
 demonstrated to perfection that the name of Lancelot is only a 
 translation of that of the Welsh hero Mael, who in point of fact 
 exhibits the fullest analogy with the Lancelot of the French 
 romances.^^ The context, the proper names, all the details of 
 the romance of Lancelot also present the most pronounced 
 Breton aspect. As much must be said of the romance of Tris- 
 tan. It is even to be hoped that this curious legend will be 
 discovered complete in some Welsh manuscript. Dr. Owen 
 states that he has seen one of which he was unable tO' obtain a 
 copy. As to the Holy Grail, it must be avowed that the mystic 
 cup, the object after which the French Parceval and the Ger- 
 man Parsifal go in search, has not nearly the same importance 
 among the Welsh. In the romance of " Peredur " it only 
 figures in an episodical fashion, and without a well-defined re- 
 ligious intention. 
 
 " Then Peredur and his uncle discoursed together, and he 
 beheld two youths enter the hall, and proceed up to the chamber, 
 bearing a spear of mighty size, with three streams of blood 
 flowing from the point to the ground. And when all the com- 
 pany saw this, they began wailing and lamenting. But for. all 
 that, the man did not break off his discourse with Peredur. 
 And as he did not tell Peredur the meaning of what he saw, he 
 forbore to ask him concerning it. And when the clamor had 
 a little subsided, behold two maidens entered, with a large salver 
 between them, in which was a man's head, surrounded by a pro- 
 fusion of blood. And thereupon the company of the court made 
 so great an outcry, that it was irksome to be in the same hall with 
 them. But at length they were silent." This strange and 
 wondrous circumstance remains an enigma to the end of the 
 narrative. Then a mysterious young man appears to Peredur, 
 apprises him that the lance from which the blood was dropping 
 is that with which his uncle was wounded, that the vessel con- 
 tains the blood and the head of one of his cousins, slain by the 
 witches of Kerloiou, and that it is predestined that he, Peredur, 
 should be their avenger. In point of fact, Peredur goes and 
 
 " Ancelot is the diminutive of Ancel, borne by some Welshmen in the French 
 and means servant, page, or esquire. service in the early part of the four- 
 To this day in the Cymric dialects Mael teenth century, is also no doubt a trans- 
 has the same signification. The sur- lation of Mael. 
 name of Poursigant, which we find 
 
512 REN AN 
 
 convokes the Round Table ; Arthur and his knights come and 
 put the witches of Kerloiou to death. 
 
 If we now pass to the French romance of " Parceval," we 
 find that all this phantasmagoria clothes a very different sig- 
 nificance. The lance is that with which Longus pierced Christ's 
 side, the Grail or basin is that in which Joseph of Arimathea 
 caught the divine blood. This miraculous vase procures all 
 the good things of heaven and earth ; it heals wounds, and is 
 filled at the owner's pleasure with the most exquisite food. To 
 approach it one must be in a state of grace ; only a priest can tell 
 of its marvels. To find these sacred relics after the passage 
 of a thousand trials — such is the object of Peredur's chivalry, 
 at once worldly and mystical. In the end he becomes a priest ; 
 he takes the Grail and the lance into his hermitage ; on the day 
 of his death an angel bears them up to Heaven. Let us add 
 that many traits prove that in the mind of the French trouvere 
 the Grail is confounded with the eucharist. In the miniatures 
 which occasionally accompany the romance of " Parceval," the 
 Grail is in the form of a pyx, appearing at all the solemn mo- 
 ments of the poem as a miraculous source of succor. 
 
 Is this strange myth, diflFering as it does from the simple 
 narrative presented in the Welsh legend of Peredur, really 
 Cymric, or ought we rather to see in it an original creation of 
 the trouveres, based upon a Breton foundation? With M. de 
 la Villemarque ^® we believe that this curious fable is essentially 
 Cymric. In the eighth century a Breton hermit had a vision 
 of Joseph of Arimathea bearing the chalice of the Last Supper, 
 and wrote the history called the " Gradal." The whole Celtic 
 mythology is full of the marvels of a magic caldron under which 
 nine fairies blow silently, a mysterious vase which inspires 
 poetic genius, gives wisdom, reveals the future, and unveils the 
 secrets of the world. One day as Bran the Blessed was hunting 
 in Ireland upon the shore of a lake, he saw come forth from it 
 a black man bearing upon his back an enormous caldron, fol- 
 lowed by a witch and a dwarf. This caldron was the instru- 
 ment of the supernatural power of a family of giants. It cured 
 all ills, and gave back life to the dead, but without restoring to 
 them the use of speech — an allusion to the secret of the bardic 
 
 " See the excellent discussion of this to " Contes populaires des anciens Bre- 
 interesting problem in the introduction tons " (pp. i8i et seq.). 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 513 
 
 initiation. In the same way Perceval's wariness forms the 
 whole plot of the quest of the Holy Grail. The Grail thus ap- 
 pears to us in its primitive meaning as the pass-word of a kind 
 of freemasonry which survived in Wales long after the preach- 
 ing of the Gospel, and of which we find deep traces in the legend 
 of TaHessin. Christianity grafted its legend upon the mytho- 
 logical data, and a like transformation was doubtless made by 
 the Cymric race itself. If the Welsh narrative of Peredur does 
 not offer the same developments as the French romance of 
 " Parceval," it is because the " Red Book of Hergest " gives 
 us an earlier version than that which served as a model for 
 Chretien de Troyes. It is also to be remarked that, even in 
 " Parceval," the mystical idea is not as yet completely developed, 
 that the trouvere seems to treat this strange theme as a narrative 
 which he has found already complete, and the meaning of which 
 he can scarcely guess. The motive that sets Parceval a-field 
 in the French romance, as well as in the Welsh version, is a 
 family motive; he seeks the Holy Grail as a talisman to cure 
 his uncle the Fisherman-King, in such a way that the religious 
 idea is still subordinated to the profane intention. In the Ger- 
 man version, on the other hand, full as it is of mysticism and 
 theology, the Grail has a temple and priests. Parsifal, who 
 has become a purely ecclesiastical hero, reaches the dignity of 
 King of the Grail by his religious enthusiasm and his chastity.^^ 
 Finally, the prose versions, more modern still, sharply distin- 
 guish the two chivalries, the one earthly, the other mystical. 
 In them Parceval becomes the model of the devout knight. 
 This was the last of the metamorphoses which that all-powerful 
 enchantress called the human imagination made him undergo; 
 and it was only right that, after having gone through so many 
 dangers, he should don a monkish frock, wherein to take his 
 rest after his life of adventure. 
 
 When we seek to determine the precise moment in the history 
 of the Celtic races at which we ought to place ourselves in order 
 
 " It is indeed remarkable that all the and a martyr for her chastity, her fes- 
 
 Breton heroes in their last transforma- tival being celebrated on August ist. 
 
 tion are at once gallant and devout. She it is who figures in the French ro- 
 
 One of the most celebrated ladies of mances under the name of Lunette. See 
 
 Arthur's court, Luned, becomes a saint Lady Guest, vol. i. pp. 113, 114. 
 
 33 
 
514 REN AN 
 
 to appreciate their genius in its entirety, we find ourselves led 
 back to the sixth century of our era. Races have nearly always 
 a predestined hour at which, passing from simplicity to reflec- 
 tion, they bring forth to the light of day, for the first time, all 
 the treasures of their nature. For the Celtic races the poetic 
 moment of awakening and primal activity was the sixth century. 
 Christianity, still young amongst them, has not completely 
 stifled the national cult ; the religion of the Druids defends it- 
 self in its schools and holy places ; warfare against the foreigner, 
 without which a people never achieves a full consciousness of 
 itself, attains its highest degree of spirit. It is the epoch of all 
 the heroes of enduring fame, of all the characteristic saints of 
 the Breton Church ; finally, it is the great age of bardic litera- 
 ture, illustrious by the names of Taliessin, of Aneurin, of 
 Liwarc'h Hen. 
 
 To such as would view critically the historical use of these 
 half- fabulous names, and would hesitate to accept as authentic, 
 poems that have come down to us through so long a series of 
 ages, we reply that the objections raised to the antiquity of the 
 bardic literature — objections of which W. Schlegel made him- 
 self the interpreter in opposition to M. Fauriel — have completely 
 disappeared under the investigations of an enlightened and im- 
 partial criticism.^® By a rare exception sceptical opinion has 
 for once been found in the wrong. The sixth century is in 
 fact for the Breton peoples a perfectly historical century. We 
 touch this epoch of their history as closely and with as much 
 certainty as Greek or Roman antiquity. It is indeed known 
 that, up to a somewhat late period, the bards continued to com- 
 pose pieces under the names — which had become popular — of 
 Aneurin, Taliessin, and Liwarc'h Hen; but no confusion can 
 be made between these insipid rhetorical exercises and the 
 really ancient fragments which bear the names of the poets 
 cited — fragments full of personal traits, local circumstances, 
 and individual passions and feelings. 
 
 Such is the literature of which M. de la Villemarque has at- 
 tempted to unite the most ancient and authentic monuments in 
 
 18 This evidently does not apply to ure as they copied them; and that a 
 
 the language of the poems in question. manuscript in the vulgar tongue, as a 
 
 It is well known that mediaeval scribes, rule, only attests the language of him 
 
 alien as they were to all ideas of archae- who transcribed it. 
 ology, modernized the texts, in meas- 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 515 
 
 his " Breton Bards of the Sixth Century." Wales has recog- 
 nized the service that our learned compatriot has thus rendered 
 to Celtic studies. We confess, however, to much preferring 
 to the " Bards " the " Popular Songs of Brittany." It is in the 
 latter that M. de la Villemarque has best served Celtic studies, 
 by revealing to us a delightful literature, in which, more clearly 
 than anywhere else, are apparent these features of gentleness, 
 fidelity, resignation, and timid reserve which form the character 
 of the Breton peoples. ^^ 
 
 The theme of the poetry of the bards of the sixth century is 
 simple and exclusively heroic; it ever deals with the great 
 motives of patriotism and glory. There is a total absence of 
 all tender feeling, no trace of love, no well-marked religious 
 idea, but only a vague and naturalistic mysticism — a survival 
 of Druidic teaching — and a moral philosophy wholly expressed 
 in Triads, similar to that taught in the half-bardic, half-Chris- 
 tian schools of St. Cadoc and St. Iltud. The singularly artifi- 
 cial and highly wrought form of the style suggests the existence 
 of a system of learned instruction possessing long traditions. 
 A more pronounced shade, and there would be a danger of 
 falling into a pedantic and mannered rhetoric. The bardic 
 literature, by its lengthened existence through the whole of 
 the Middle Ages, did not escape this danger. It ended by being 
 no more than a somewhat insipid collection of unoriginalities 
 in style, and conventional metaphors.^^ 
 
 The opposition between bardism and Christianity reveals it- 
 self in the pieces translated by M. de la Villemarque by many 
 features of original and pathetic interest. The strife which rent 
 
 " This interesting collection ought two forms of tradition to be fully in 
 
 not, however, to be accepted unre- accord with one another. M. de la 
 
 servedly; and the absolute confidence Villemarque is also too ready to sup- 
 
 with which it has been quoted is not pose that the people repeats for centu- 
 
 without its inconveniences. We be- ries songs that it only half understands, 
 
 lieve that when M. de la Villemarque When a song ceases to be intelligible 
 
 comments on the fragments which, to it is nearly always altered by the peo- 
 
 his eternal honor, he has been the first pie, with the end of approximating it 
 
 to bring to light, his criticism is far to the sounds familiar and significant 
 
 from being proof against all reproach, to their ears. Is it not also to be feared 
 
 and that several of the historical allu- that in this case the editor, in entire 
 
 sions which he considers that he finds good faith, may lend some slight in- 
 
 in them are hypotheses more ingenious flection to the text, so as to find in it 
 
 than solid. The past is too great, and the sense that he desires, or has in his 
 
 has come down to us in too f ragmen- mind? 
 
 tary a manner, for such coincidences 20 a Welsh scholar, Mr. Stephens, in 
 
 to be probable. Popular celebrities are his " History of Cymric Literature " 
 
 rarely those of history, and when the (Llandovery, 1849), has demonstrated 
 
 rumors of distant centuries come to us these successive transformations very 
 
 by two channels, one popular, the other well, 
 historical, it is a rare thing for these 
 
5i6 RENAN 
 
 the soul of the old poets, their antipathy to the gray men of the 
 monastery, their sad and painful conversion, are to be found in 
 their songs. The sweetness and tenacity of the Breton char- 
 acter can alone explain how a heterodoxy so openly avowed as 
 this maintained its position in face of the dominant Christianity, 
 and how holy men, Kolumkill for example, took upon them- 
 selves the defence of the bards against the kings who desired 
 to stamp them out. The strife was the longer in its duration, 
 in that Christianity among the Celtic peoples never employed 
 force against rival religions, and, at the worst, left to the van- 
 quished the liberty of ill humor. Belief in prophets, indestruct- 
 ible among these peoples, created, in despite of faith, the Anti- 
 Christian type of Merlin, and caused his acceptance by the 
 whole of Europe. Gildas and the orthodox Bretons were cease- 
 less in their thunderings against the prophets, and opposed to 
 them Elias and Samuel, two bards who only foretold good ; even 
 in the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prophet in 
 the town of Caerleon. 
 
 Thanks to this toleration bardism lasted into the heart of the 
 Middle Ages, under the form of a secret doctrine, with a con- 
 ventional language, and symbols almost wholly borrowed from 
 the solar divinity of Arthur. This may be termed Neo-Druid- 
 ism, a kind of Druidism subtilized and reformed on the model 
 of Christianity, which may be seen growing more and more 
 obscure and mysterious, until the moment of its total disap- 
 pearance. A curious fragment belonging to this school, the 
 dialogue between Arthur and Eliwlod, has transmitted to us 
 the latest sighs of this latest protestation of expiring naturalism. 
 Under the form of an eagle Eliwlod introduces the divinity to 
 the sentiments of resignation, of subjection, and of humility, 
 with which Christianity combated pagan pride. Hero-worship 
 recoils step by step before the great formula, which Christian- 
 ity ceases not to repeat to the Celtic races to sever them from 
 their memories : There is none greater than God. Arthur al- 
 lows himself to be persuaded to abdicate from his divinity, and 
 ends by reciting the Pater. 
 
 I know of no more curious spectacle than this revolt of the 
 manly sentiments of hero-worship against the feminine feel- 
 ing which flowed so largely into the new faith. What, in fact, 
 exasperates the old representatives of Celtic society are the ex- 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 
 
 517 
 
 elusive triumph of the pacific spirit and the men, clad in linen 
 and chanting psalms, whose voice is sad, who preach asceticism, 
 and know the heroes no more.^^ We know the use that Ireland 
 has made of this theme, in the dialogues which she loves to 
 imagine between the representatives of her profane and reli- 
 gious life, Ossian and St. Patrick.^^ Ossian regrets the advent- 
 ures, the chase, the blast of the horn, and the kings of old time. 
 " If they were here," he says to St. Patrick, " thou shouldst not 
 thus be scouring the country with thy psalm-singing flock." 
 Patrick seeks to calm him by soft words, and sometimes carries 
 his condescension so far as to listen to his long histories, which 
 appear to interest the saint but slightly. *' Thou has heard my 
 story," says the old bard in conclusion ; " albeit my memory 
 groweth weak, and I am devoured with care, yet I desire to con- 
 tinue still to sing the deeds of yore, and to live upon ancient glo- 
 ries. Now am I stricken with years, my life is frozen within 
 me, and all my joys are fleeting away. No more can my hand 
 grasp the sword, nor mine arm hold the lance in rest. Among 
 priests my last sad hour lengthened out, and psalms take now the 
 place of songs of victory." " Let thy songs rest," says Patrick, 
 " and dare not to compare thy Finn to the King of kings, whose 
 might knoweth no bounds: bend thy knees before Him, and 
 know Him for thy Lord." I was indeed necessary to surrender, 
 and the legend relates how the old bard ended his days in the 
 cloister, among the priests whom he had so often used rudely, 
 in the midst of these chants that he knew not. Ossian was too 
 good an Irishman for anyone to make up his mind to damn 
 him utterly. Merlin himself had to cede to the new spell. He 
 was, it is said, converted by St. Columba; and the popular 
 voice in the ballads repeats to him unceasingly this sweet and 
 touching appeal : " Merlin, Merlin, be converted ; there is no 
 divinity save that of God." 
 
 " The antipathy to Christianity at- The Virgin above all is their great en- 
 
 tributed by the Armorican people to emy; she it is who has hounded them 
 
 the dwarfs and korigans belongs in like forth from their fountains, and on Sat- 
 
 measure to traditions of the opposition urday, the day consecrated to her, who- 
 
 encountered by the Gospel in its be- soever beholds them combing their hair 
 
 ginnings. The korigans in fact are, or counting their treasures is sure to 
 
 for the Breton peasant, great princesses perish. (Villemarque, " Chants popu- 
 
 who would not accept Christianity when laires," Introduction.) 
 
 the apostles came to Brittany. They 22 gee Miss Brooke's " Reliques of 
 
 hate the clergy and the churches, the Irish Poetry," Dublin, 1789, pp. 37 et 
 
 bells of which make them take to flight. seq., pp. 75 et seq. 
 
5i8 REN AN 
 
 VI 
 
 We should form an altogether inadequate idea of the physi- 
 ognomy of the Celtic races were we not to study them under 
 what is perhaps the most singular aspect of their development 
 — that is to say, their ecclesiastical antiquities and their saints. 
 Leaving on one side the temporary repulsion which Christian 
 mildness had to conquer in the classes of society which saw 
 their influence diminished by the new order of things, it can be 
 truly said that the gentleness of manners and the exquisite 
 sensibility of the Celtic races, in conjunction with the absence 
 of a formerly existing religion of strong organization, predes- 
 tined them to Christianity. Christianity in fact, addressing itself 
 by preference to the more humble feelings in human nature, 
 met here with admirably prepared disciples ; no race has so deli- 
 cately understood the charm of littleness, none has placed the 
 simple creature, the innocent, nearer God. The ease with which 
 the new religion took possession of these peoples is also remark- 
 able. Brittany and Ireland between them scarce count two or 
 three martyrs ; they are reduced to venerating as such those of 
 their compatriots who were slain in the Anglo-Saxon and Dan- 
 ish invasions. Here comes to light the profound difference di- 
 viding the Celtic from the Teutonic race. The Teutons only 
 received Christianity tardily and in spite of themselves, by 
 scheming or by force, after a sanguinary resistance, and with 
 terrible throes. Christianity was in fact on several sides re- 
 pugnant to their nature; and one understands the regrets of 
 pure Teutonists who, to this day, reproach the new faith with 
 having corrupted their sturdy ancestors. 
 
 Such was not the case with the Celtic peoples; that gentle 
 little race was naturally Christian. Far from changing them, 
 and taking away some of their qualities, Christianity finished 
 and perfected them. Compare the legends relating to the intro- 
 duction of Christianity into the two countries, the " Kristni 
 Saga " for instance, and the delightful legends of Lucius and 
 St. Patrick. What a difference we find! In Iceland the first 
 apostles are pirates, converted by some chance, now saying 
 mass, now massacring their enemies, now resuming their former 
 profession of sea-rovers; everything is done in accord with 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 519 
 
 expediency, and without any serious faith. In Ireland and 
 Brittany grace operates through women, by I know not what 
 charm of purity and sweetness. The revolt of the Teutons was 
 never effectually stifled ; never did they forget the forced bap- 
 tisms, and the sword-supported Carlovingian missionaries, until 
 the day when Teutonism took its revenge, and Luther through 
 seven centuries gave answer to Witikind. On the other hand, 
 the Celts were, even in the third century, perfect Christians. To 
 the Teutons Christianity was for long nothing but a Roman 
 institution, imposed from without. They entered the Church 
 only to trouble it ; and it was not without very great difficulty 
 that they succeeded in forming a national clergy. To the Celts, 
 on the contrary, Christianity did not come from Rome; they 
 had their native clergy, their own peculiar usages, their faith 
 at first hand. It cannot, in fact,, be doubted that in apostolic 
 times Christianity was preached in Brittany; and several his- 
 torians, not without justification, have considered that it was 
 borne there by Judaistic Christians, or by disciples of the school 
 of St. John. Everywhere else Christianity found, as a first 
 substratum, Greek or Roman civilization. Here it found a vir- 
 gin soil of a nature analogous to* its own, and naturally pre- 
 pared to receive it. 
 
 Few forms of Christianity have offered an ideal of Christian 
 perfection so pure as the Celtic Church of the sixth, seventh, 
 and eighth centuries. Nowhere, perhaps, has God been better 
 worshipped in spirit than in those great monastic communities 
 of Hy, or of lona, of Bangor, of Clonard, or of Lindisfarne. 
 One of the most distinguished developments of Christianity — 
 doubtless too distinguished for the popular and practical mission 
 which the Church had to undertake — Pelagianism, arose from 
 it. The true and refined morality, the simplicity, and the wealth 
 of invention which give distinction to the legends of the Breton 
 and Irish saints, are indeed admirable. No race adopted Chris- 
 tianity with so much originality, or, while subjecting itself to 
 the common faith, kept its national characteristics more per- 
 sistently. In religion, as in all else, the Bretons sought isola- 
 tion, and did not willingly fraternize with the rest of the world. 
 Strong in their moral superiority, persuaded that they possessed 
 the veritable canon of faith and religion, having received their 
 Christianity from an apostolic and wholly primitive preaching. 
 
520 RENAN 
 
 they experienced no need of feeling themselves in communion 
 with Christian societies less noble than their own. Thence arose 
 that long struggle of the Breton churches against Roman pre- 
 tensions, which is so admirably narrated by M. Augustin Thier- 
 ry,^^ thence those inflexible characters of Columba and the 
 monks of lona, defending their usages and institutions against 
 the whole Church, thence finally the false position of the Celtic 
 peoples in Catholicism, when that mighty force, grown more 
 and more aggressive, had drawn them together from all 
 quarters, and compelled their absorption in itself. Having no 
 Catholic past, they found themselves unclassed on their entrance 
 into the great family, and were never able to succeed in creating 
 for themselves an archbishopric. All their efforts and all their 
 innocent deceits to attribute that title to the churches of Dol 
 and St. Davids were wrecked on the overwhelming divergence 
 of their past ; their bishops had to resign themselves to being 
 obscure suffragans of Tours and Canterbury. 
 
 It remains to be said that, even in our own days, the powerful 
 originality of Celtic Christianity is far from being effaced. The 
 Bretons of France, although they have felt the consequences 
 of the revolutions undergone by Catholicism on the Continent, 
 are, at the present hour, one of the populations in which religious 
 feeling has retained most independence. The new devotions 
 find no favor with it ; the people are faithful to the old beliefs 
 and the old saints ; the psalms of religion have for them an in- 
 effable harmony. In the same way, Ireland keeps, in her more 
 remote districts, quite unique forms of worship from those of 
 the rest of the world, to which nothing in other parts of Chris- 
 tendom can be compared. The influence of modern Catholicism, 
 elsewhere so destructive of national usages, has had here a 
 wholly contrary effect, the clergy having found it incumbent 
 on them to seek a vantage ground against Protestantism, in 
 attachment to local practices and the customs of the past. 
 
 It is the picture of these Christian institutions, quite distinct 
 from those of the remainder of the West, of this sometimes 
 strange worship, of these legends of the saints marked with 
 so distinct a seal of nationality, that lends an interest to th^ 
 
 2* In his " History of the Conquest." tails, which were rectified in the edition 
 
 The objections raised by M. Varin and published after the illustrious histo- 
 
 some other scholars to M. Thierry's rian's death, 
 narrative only affect some secondary de- 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 521 
 
 ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland, of Wales, and of Armorican 
 Brittany. No hagiology has remained more exclusively natural 
 than that of the Celtic peoples ; until the twelfth century those 
 peoples admitted very few alien saints into their martyrology. 
 None, too, includes so many naturalistic elements. Celtic Pa- 
 ganism offered so little resistance to the new religion that the 
 Church did not hold itself constrained to put in force against 
 it the rigor with which elsewhere it pursued the slightest traces 
 of mythology. The conscientious essay by W. Rees on the 
 *' Saints of Wales," and that by the Rev. John Williams, an 
 extremely learned ecclesiastic of the diocese of St. Asaph, on 
 the " Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry," suffice to make 
 one understand the immense value which a complete and intelli- 
 gent history of the Celtic churches, before their absorption in 
 the Roman Church, would possess. To these might be added 
 the learned work of Dom Lobineau on the " Saints of Brittany," 
 reissued in our days by the Abbe Tresvaux, had not the half- 
 criticism of the Benedictine, much worse than a total absence 
 of criticism, altered those naive legends and cut away from 
 them, under the pretext of good sense and religious reverence, 
 that which to us gives them interest and charm. 
 
 Ireland above all would offer a religious physiognomy quite 
 peculiar to itself, which would appear singularly original, were 
 history in a position to reveal it in its entirety. When we con- 
 sider the legions of Irish saints who in the sixth, seventh, and 
 eighth centuries inundated the Continent, and arrived from 
 their isle bearing with them their stubborn spirit, their attach- 
 ment to their own usages, their subtle and realistic turn of 
 mind, and see the Scots (such was the name given to the Irish) 
 doing duty, until the twelfth century, as instructors in grammar 
 and literature to all the West, we cannot doubt that Ireland, in 
 the first half of the Middle Ages, was the scene of a singular 
 religious movement. Studious philologists and daring philoso- 
 phers, the Hibernian monks were above all indefatigable copy- 
 ists; and it was in part owing to them that the work of the 
 pen became a holy task. Columba, secretly warned that his 
 last hour is at hand, finishes the page of the psalter which he 
 has commenced, writes at the foot that he bequeaths the con- 
 tinuation to his successor, and then goes into the church to die. 
 Nowhere was monastic life to find such docile subjects. Credu- 
 
522 RENAN 
 
 lous as a child, timid, indolent, inclined to submit and obey, 
 the Irishman alone was capable of lending himself to that com- 
 plete self-abdication in the hands of the abbot, which we find 
 so deeply marked in the historical and legendary memorials of 
 the Irish Church. One easily recognizes the land where, in our 
 own days, the priest, without provoking the slightest scandal, 
 can, on a Sunday before quitting the altar, give the orders for 
 his dinner in a very audible manner, and announce the farm 
 where he intends to go and dine, and where he will hear his 
 fiock in confession. In the presence of a people which lived by 
 imagination and the senses alone, the Church did not consider 
 itself under the necessity of dealing severely with the caprices 
 of religious fantasy. It permitted the free action of the popular 
 instinct; and from this freedom emerged what is perhaps of 
 all cults the most mythological and most analogous to the mys- 
 teries of antiquity, presented in Christian annals, a cult attached 
 to certain places, and almost exclusively consisting in certain 
 acts held to be sacramental. 
 
 Without contradiction the legend of St. Brandan is the most 
 singular product of this combination of Celtic naturalism with 
 Christian spiritualism. The taste of the Hibernian monks for 
 making maritime pilgrimages through the archipelago of the 
 Scottish and Irish seas, everywhere dotted with monasteries,^* 
 and the memory of yet more distant voyages in Polar seas, fur- 
 nished the framework of this curious composition, so rich in 
 local impressions. From Pliny (IV. xxx. 3) we learn that, even 
 in his time, the Bretons loved to venture their lives upon the 
 high seas, in search of unknown isles. M. Letronne has proved 
 that in 795, sixty-five years consequently before the Danes, Irish 
 monks landed in Iceland and established themselves on the 
 coast. In this island the Danes found Irish books and bells; 
 and the names of certain localities still bear witness to the so- 
 journ of those monks, who were known by the name of Papcs 
 (fathers). In the Faroe Isles, in the Orkneys, and the Shet- 
 lands, indeed in all parts of the Northern seas, the Scandinavians 
 found themselves preceded by those Papce, whose habits con- 
 
 2* The Irish saints literally covered legends of St. Malo, St. David, and 
 
 the Western seas. A very considerable of St. Pol of Leon are replete with sim- 
 
 number of the saints of Brittany, St. ilar stories of voyages to the distant 
 
 Tenenan, St. Renan, for example, were isles of the West, 
 emigrants from Ireland. The Breton 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 523 
 
 trasted so strangely with their own.^ Did they not have a 
 ghmpse too of that great land, the vague memory of which 
 seems to pursue them, and which Columbus was to discover, 
 following the traces of their dreams? It is only known that 
 the existence of an island, traversed by a great river and situ- 
 ated to the west of Ireland, was, on the faith of the Irish, a 
 dogma for mediaeval geographers. 
 
 The story went that, towards the middle of the sixth century, 
 a monk called Barontus, on his return from voyaging upon the 
 sea, came and craved hospitality at the monastery of Clonfert. 
 Brandan the abbot besought him to give pleasure to the brothers 
 by narrating the marvels of God that he had seen on the high 
 seas. Barontus revealed to them the existence of an island sur- 
 rounded by fogs, where he had left his disciple Mernoc; it is 
 the Land of Promise that God keeps for his saints. Brandan 
 with seventeen of his monks desired to go in quest of this mys- 
 terious land. They set forth in a leather boat, bearing with 
 them as their sole provision a utensil of butter, wherewith to 
 grease the hides of their craft. For seven years they lived thus 
 in their boat, abandoning to God sail and rudder, and only stop- 
 ping on their course to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and 
 Easter on the back of the king of fishes, Jasconius. Every step 
 of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on every isle is a mon- 
 astery, where the wonders of a fantastical universe respond to 
 the extravagances of a wholly ideal life. Here is the Isle of 
 Sheep, where these animals govern themselves according to 
 their own laws ; elsewhere the Paradise of Birds, where the 
 winged race lives after the fashion of monks, singing matins 
 and lauds at the canonical hours. Brandan and his companions 
 celebrate mass here with the birds, and remain with them for 
 fifty days, nourishing themselves with nothing but the singing 
 of their hosts. Elsewhere there is the Isle of Delight, the ideal 
 of monastic life in the midst of the seas. Here no material ne- 
 cessity makes itself felt ; the lamps light of themselves for the 
 offices of religion, and never burn out, for they shine with a 
 spiritual light. An absolute stillness reigns in the island ; every- 
 one knows precisely the hour of his death; one feels neither 
 cold, nor heat, nor sadness, nor sickness of body or soul. All 
 
 '» On this point see the careful researches of Humboldt in his " History of the Geog- 
 raphy of the New Continent," vol. ii. 
 
524 REN AN 
 
 this has endured since the days of St. Patrick, who so ordained 
 it. The Land of Promise is more marvellous still; there an 
 eternal day reigns ; all the plants have flowers, all the trees bear 
 fruits. Some privileged men alone have visited it. On their 
 return a perfume is perceived to come from them, which their 
 garments keep for forty days. 
 
 In the midst of these dreams there appears with a surprising 
 fidelity to truth the feeling for the picturesque in Polar voyages 
 — the transparency of the sea, the aspect of bergs and islands of 
 ice melting in the sun, the volcanic phenomena of Iceland, the 
 sporting of w^hales, the characteristic appearance of the Norwe- 
 gian fiords, the sudden fogs, the sea calm as milk, the green 
 isles crowned with grass which grows down to the very verge 
 of the waves. This fantastical nature created expressly for an- 
 other humanity, this strange topography at once glowing with 
 fiction and speaking of truth, make the poem of St. Brandan 
 one of the most extraordinary creations of the human mind, 
 and perhaps the completest expression of the Celtic ideal. All 
 is lovely, pure, and innocent; never has a gaze so benevolent 
 and so gentle been cast upon the earth; there is not a single 
 cruel idea, not a trace of frailty or repentance. It is the world 
 seen through the crystal of a stainless conscience, one might 
 almost say a human nature, as Pelagius wished it, that has 
 never sinned. The very animals participate in this universal 
 mildness. Evil appears under the form of monsters wandering 
 on the deep, or of Cyclops confined in volcanic islands ; but God 
 causes them to destroy one another, and does not permit them 
 to do hurt to the good. 
 
 We have just seen how, around the legend of a monk, the 
 Irish imagination grouped a whole cycle of physical and mari- 
 time myths. The Purgatory of St. Patrick became the frame- 
 work of another series of fables, embodying the Celtic ideas 
 concerning the other life and its different conditions.^® Per- 
 haps the profoundest instinct of the Celtic peoples is their de- 
 sire to penetrate the unknown. With the sea before them, they 
 wish to know what lies ,beyond ; they dream of a Promised 
 Land. In the face of the unknown that lies beyond the tomb, they 
 dream of that great journey which the pen of Dante has cele- 
 
 '•See Thomas Wright's excellent dis- don, 1844), and Calderon's "The Well of 
 sertation, " St. Patrick's Purgatory " (Lon- St. Patrick." 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 525 
 
 brated. The legend tells how while St. Patrick was preaching 
 about Paradise and Hell to the Irish, they confessed that they 
 would feel more assured of the reality of these places if he 
 would allow one of them to descend there, and then come back 
 with information. St. Patrick consented. A pit was dug, by 
 which an Irishman set out upon the subterranean journey. 
 Others wished to attempt the journey after him. With the con- 
 sent of the abbot of the neighboring monastery, they descended 
 into the shaft, they passed through the torments of Hell and 
 Purgatory, and then each told of what he had seen. Some did 
 not emerge again; those who did laughed no more, and were 
 henceforth unable to join in any gayety. Knight Owen made a 
 descent in 11 53, and gave a narrative of his travels which had 
 a prodigious success. 
 
 Other legends related that when St. Patrick drove the gob- 
 lins out of Ireland he was greatly tormented in this place for 
 forty days by legions of black birds. The Irish betook them- 
 selves to the spot, and experienced the same assaults which 
 gave them an immunity from purgatory. According to the 
 narrative of Giraldus Cambrensis, the isle which served as the 
 theatre of this strange superstition was divided into two parts. 
 One belonged to the monks, the other was occupied by evil 
 spirits, who celebrated religious rites in their own manner, with 
 an infernal uproar. Some people, for the expiation of their 
 sins, voluntarily exposed themselves to the fury of those demons. 
 There were nine ditches in which they lay for a night, tormented 
 in a thousand different ways. To make the descent it was nec- 
 essary to obtain the permission of the bishop. His duty it was 
 to dissuade the penitent from attempting the adventure, and to 
 point out to him how many people had gone in who had never 
 come out again. If the devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously 
 conducted to the shaft. He was lowered down by means of a 
 rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the 
 combat against the fiend which he proposed to wage. On the 
 following morning the sacristan offered the rope anew to the 
 sufferer. If he mounted to the surface again, they brought him 
 back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting psalms. If 
 he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and de- 
 parted. In more modern times pilgrims to the sacred isles spent 
 nine days there. They passed over to them in a boat hollowed 
 
526 REN AN 
 
 out of the trunk of a tree. Once a day they drank of the water 
 of the lake; processions and stations were performed in the 
 beds or cells of the saints. Upon the ninth day the penitents 
 entered into the shaft. Sermons were preached to them warn- 
 ing them of the danger they were about to run, and they were 
 told of terrible examples. They forgave their enemies and took 
 farewell of one another, as though they were at their last agony. 
 According to contemporary accounts, the shaft was a low and 
 narrow kiln, into which nine entered at a time, and in which the 
 penitents passed a day and a night, huddled and tighty pressed 
 against one another. Popular belief imagined an abyss under- 
 neath, to swallow up the unworthy and the unbelieving. On 
 emerging from the pit they went and bathed in the lake^ and 
 so their purgatory was accomplished. It would appear from the 
 accounts of eye-witnesses that, to this day, things happen very 
 nearly after the same fashion. 
 
 The immense reputation of the purgatory of St. Patrick filled 
 the whole of the Middle Ages. Preachers made appeal to the 
 public notoriety of this great fact, to controvert those who had 
 their doubts regarding purgatory. In the year 1358 Edward 
 III gave to a Hungarian of noble birth, who had come from 
 Hungary expressly to visit the sacred well, letters patent attest- 
 ing that he had undergone his purgatory. Narratives of those 
 travels beyond the tomb became a very fashionable form of 
 literature; and it is important for us to remark the wholly 
 mythological, and as wholly Celtic, characteristics dominant in 
 them. It is in fact evident that we are dealing with a mystery 
 or local cult, anterior to Christianity, and probably based upon 
 the physical appearance of the country. The idea of purgatory, 
 in its final and concrete form, fared specially well amongst the 
 Bretons and the Irish. Bede is one of the first to speak of it 
 in a descriptive manner, and the learned Mr. Wright very justly 
 observes that nearly all the descriptions of purgatory come from 
 Irishmen, or from Anglo-Saxons who have resided in Ireland, 
 such as St. Fursey, Tundale, the Northumbrian Dryhthelm, and 
 Knight Owen. It is likewise a remarkable thing that only the 
 Irish were able to behold the marvels of their purgatory. A 
 canon from Hemstede in Holland, who descended in 1494, saw 
 nothing at all. Evidently this idea of travels in the other world 
 and its infernal categories, as the Middle Ages accepted it, is 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 527 
 
 Celtic. The belief in the three circles of existence is again to 
 be found in the " Triads," ^^ under an aspect which does not 
 permit one to see any Christian interpolation. 
 
 The soul's peregrinations after death are also the favorite 
 theme of the most ancient Armorican poetry. Among the feat- 
 ures by which the Celtic races most impressed the Romans were 
 the precision of their ideas upon the future life, their inclina- 
 tion to suicide, and the loans and contracts which they signed 
 with the other world in view. The more frivolous peoples of 
 the South saw with awe in this assurance the fact of a mys- 
 terious race, having an understanding of the future and the 
 secret of death. Through the whole of classical antiquity runs 
 the tradition of an Isle of Shadows, situated on the confines of 
 Brittany, and of a folk devoted to the passage of souls, which 
 lives upon the neighboring coast. In the night they hear dead 
 men prowling about their cabin, and knocking at the door. 
 Then they rise up ; their craft is laden with invisible beings ; on 
 their return it is lighter. Several of these features reproduced 
 by Plutarch, Claudian, Procopius, and Tzetzes would incline 
 one to believe that the renown of the Irish myths made its way 
 into classical antiquity about the first or second century. Plu- 
 tarch, for example, relates, concerning the Cronian Sea, fables 
 identical with those which fill the legend of St. Malo. Pro- 
 copius, describing the sacred island of Brittia, which consists 
 of two parts separated by the sea, one delightful, the other given 
 over to evil spirits, seems to have read in advance the descrip- 
 tion of the purgatory of St. Patrick, which Giraldus Cambren- 
 sis was to give seven centuries later. It cannot be doubted for 
 a moment, after the able researches of Messrs. Ozanam, La- 
 bitte, and Wright, that to the number of poetical themes which 
 Europe owes to the genius of- the Celts, is to be added the 
 framework of the Divine Comedy. 
 
 One can understand how greatly this invincible attraction to 
 fables must have discredited the Celtic race in the eyes of na- 
 tionalities that believed themselves to be more serious. It is in 
 truth a strange thing, that the whole of the mediaeval epoch, 
 whilst submitting to the influence of the Celtic imagination, 
 
 '^ A series of aphorisms under the form according to the testimony of the ancients, 
 
 of triplets, which give us, with numerous was transmitted by means of mnemonic 
 
 interpolations, the ancient teaching of the verses in the schools of the Druids, 
 bards, and that traditional wisdom which, 
 
528 REN AN 
 
 and borrowing irom Brittany and Ireland at least half of its 
 poetical subjects, believed itself obliged, for the saving of its 
 own honor, to slight and satirize the people to which it owed 
 them. Even Chretien de Troyes, for example, who passed his 
 life in exploiting the Breton romances for his own purposes, 
 originated the saying : 
 
 ** Les Gallois sont tous par nature 
 Plus sots que bites de pdture.^^ 
 
 Some English chronicler, I know not who, imagined he was 
 making a charming play upon words when he described those 
 beautiful creations, the whole world of which deserved to live, 
 as " the childish nonsense with which those brutes of Bretons 
 amuse themselves." The Bollandists found it incumbent to 
 exclude from their collection, as apocryphal extravagances, 
 those admirable religious legends, with which no church has 
 anything to compare. The decided leaning of the Celtic race 
 towards the ideal, its sadness, its fidelity, its good faith, caused 
 it to be regarded by its neighbors as dull, foolish, and super- 
 stitious. They could not understand its delicacy and refined 
 manner of feeling. They mistook for awkwardness the em- 
 barrassment experienced by sincere and open natures in the 
 presence of more artificial natures. The contrast between 
 French frivolity and Breton stubbornness above all led, after 
 the fourteenth century, to most deplorable conflicts, whence the 
 Bretons ever emerged with a reputation for wrong-headedness. 
 
 It was still worse, when the nation that most prides itself on 
 its practical good sense found confronting it the people that, to 
 its own misfortune, is least provided with that gift. Poor Ire- 
 land, with her ancient mytholo^, with her purgatory of St. 
 Patrick, and her fantastic travels of St. Brandan, was not des- 
 tined to find grace in the eyes of English puritanism. One 
 ought to observe the disdain of English critics for these fables, 
 and their superb pity for the Church which dallies with pagan- 
 ism, so far as to keep up usages which are notoriously derived 
 from it. Assuredly we have here a praiseworthy zeal, arising 
 from natural goodness ; and yet, even if these flights of imag- 
 ination did no more than render a little more supportable many 
 sufferings which are said to have no remedy, that after all would 
 be something. Who shall dare to say where, here on earth, is 
 
THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES 529 
 
 the boundary between reason and dreaming? Which is worth 
 more, the imaginative instinct of man, or the narrow orthodoxy 
 that pretends to remain rational, when speaking of things di- 
 vine? For my own part, I prefer the frank mythology, with 
 all its vagaries, to a theology so paltry, so vulgar, and so color- 
 less, that it would be wronging God to believe that, after hav- 
 ing made the visible world so beautiful he should have made 
 the invisible world so prosaically reasonable. 
 
 In presence of the ever-encroaching progress of a civilization 
 which is of no country, and can receive no name, other than that 
 of modern or European, it would be puerile to hope that the 
 Celtic race is in the future to succeed in obtaining isolated ex- 
 pression of its originality. And yet we are far from believing 
 that this race has said its last word. After having put in prac- 
 tice all chivalries, devout and worldly, gone with Peredur in 
 quest of the Holy Grail and fair ladies, and dreamed with St. 
 Brandan of mystical Atlantides, who knows what it would pro- 
 duce in the domain of intellect, if it hardened itself to an 
 entrance into the world, and subjected its rich and profound 
 nature to the conditions of modern thought ? It appears to me 
 that there would result from this combination, productions of 
 high originality, a subtle and discreet manner of taking life, a 
 singular union of strength and weakness, of rude simplicity 
 and mildness. Few races have had so complete a poetic child- 
 hood as the Celtic ; mythology, lyric poetry, epic, romantic im- 
 agination, religious enthusiasm — none of these failed them; 
 why should reflection fail them? Germany, which commenced 
 with science and criticism, has come to poetry ; why should not 
 the Celtic races, which began with poetry, finish with criticism ? 
 There is not so great a distance from one to the other as is sup- 
 posed ; the poetical races are the philosophic races, and at bot- 
 tom philosophy is only a manner of poetry. When one con- 
 siders how Germany, less than a century ago, had her genius 
 revealed to her, how a multitude of national individualities, to 
 all appearance effaced, have suddenly risen again in our own 
 days, more instinct with life than ever, one feels persuaded that 
 it is a rash thing to lay down any law on the intermittence and 
 awakening of nations ; and that modern civilization, which ap- 
 peared to be made to absorb them, may perhaps be nothing 
 more than their united fruition. 
 34 
 
THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED 
 WORLDS 
 
 THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE 
 HEAVENS 
 
 BY 
 
 CAMILLE FLAMMARION 
 
CAMILLE FLAMMARION 
 
 Camille Flammarion was born at Montigny-le-Roi in 1842. He re- 
 ceived his early education at the public schools of Langres, a neigh- 
 boring town, and at Paris. At the age of fourteen pecuniary difficulties 
 in which his family became involved necessitated his looking for a 
 means of livelihood, and he was apprenticed to an engraver, but in 
 spite of all obstacles he continued his studies, and in 1858 entered the 
 Observatory at Paris as a student of astronomy. Here he remained 
 four years, and before leaving Paris published his first book, " The 
 Plurality of Inhabited Worlds," a work that achieved instant success 
 and gave its young author at once a brilliant reputation. It has been 
 translated into many languages, and still remains one of the most 
 widely read and greatly admired of all his works. At this time, when 
 only twenty years old, Flammarion determined to devote himself to 
 the work of popularizing the science of astronomy. By the time he 
 was twenty-four, three notable books had followed one another in 
 quick succession — " Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes reels," " Les 
 merveilles celestes," and " Dieu dans la nature." 
 
 Flammarion meantime had been one of the most active contributors 
 to " Cosmos," and in 1866 he took charge of the scientific department 
 of the " Siecle." The following year he began a series of popular 
 lectures on astronomy which enhanced his already well established 
 reputation. In 1868 he was nominated president of the scientific sec- 
 tion of the Exposition at Havre, but with this exception he resigned 
 from all his official duties and devoted himself henceforth entirely to 
 his life-work. He was now in possession of a moderate income from 
 his writings and lectures. This enabled him to establish a small ob- 
 servatory of his own, which was afterward greatly enlarged by gifts 
 from some of his admirers. 
 
 In 1882 Flammarion founded the monthly " Journal d'Astronomie," 
 of which he is still the editor, and in 1887 he founded the Astronomical 
 Society of France, becoming its first president. A complete list of 
 his later works would fill several pages, comprising, as they do, not 
 only printed books, pamphlets, and monographs, but a great number 
 of articles in magazines and even in weekly and daily newspapers, 
 many of which are of great interest and importance. In 1893 Flam- 
 marion published a work on the planet Mars and its probable inhab- 
 itants, which gave rise to an extensive and animated popular discussion, 
 and greatly increased the popular interest in astronomy. 
 
 Flammarion's style is light and graceful, vivid and fluent. As a 
 master of the art of popular exposition of subjects naturally abstruse 
 and difficult he has few equals in literature. Indeed, it is precisely 
 because his work is so notably superior to that of compilers of text- 
 books and ordinary writers on scientific subjects that his name de- 
 serves a place among the masters of prose. He is by no means rnerely 
 an interpreter of the discoveries of others, but an original investigator 
 of no slight merit 
 
 532 
 
THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS 
 
 THE astronomical truths which have been the subject of 
 our conversation doubtless prove the high character 
 of the human mind which aspires to them, and which, 
 scrutinizing the organized laws of the universe, has been able 
 to determine the causes which regulate the harmony of the 
 cosmos and secure its perpetuity. No doubt, it is good for 
 man, this spiritual atom inhabiting a material atom, to have 
 penetrated the mysteries of creation, and to have been exalted 
 to the knowledge of these sublime heights, the contemplation 
 of which alone overwhelms and annihilates him. But if the 
 universe remains to man only a great material mechanism, 
 moved by physical forces, if nature is nothing in his eyes but 
 a gigantic laboratory, where the elements are mingled blindly 
 under the most various and casual forms; in a word, if this 
 admirable and magnificent science of the heavens confines the 
 efforts of the human mind eternally to the geometry of the 
 heavenly bodies, the science would never attain its real end, 
 and it would stop at the moment of reaping the fruit of its 
 immense labors. It would remain supremely incomplete if 
 the universe were never anything to it but an assemblage of 
 inert bodies floating in space under the action of material 
 forces. 
 
 The philosopher must go further. He must not confine 
 himself to seeing under a more or less distinct form the great 
 body of nature. But, stretching forth the hand, he must feel 
 under the material envelope the life which circulates in great 
 waves. God's empire is not the empire of death ; it is the em- 
 pire of life. 
 
 We live on a world which is no exception among the heaven- 
 ly bodies, and which has not received the least privilege. It 
 is the third of the planets which revolve round the sun and one 
 of the smallest among them. Without going beyond our system, 
 
 533 
 
534 FLAMMARION 
 
 other planets are much more important than it ; Jupiter, for 
 instance, is 1,414 times greater, and Saturn 734 times. While 
 it appears to us the most important of the universe, it is in 
 reality lost in the immensity of the worlds which people the 
 heavens, and the whole creation does not guess at its existence. 
 
 Of the planets of our own system there are only four, the 
 inhabitants of which can know that the earth exists; these 
 are. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter ; and even to this last 
 one it is most of the time invisible in the solar aureola. Now, 
 while the Earth is thus lost amid worlds more important than 
 itself, the other worlds are in the same conditions of habita- 
 bility as those that we observe on the Earth. On these planets, 
 as on our own, the generous rays of the sun pour forth heat 
 and light ; on them, as here, years, months, and days succeed 
 each other, drawing with them the seasons which, from time 
 to time, support the conditions of existence ; on them, as here, 
 a transparent atmosphere envelops the inhabited surface with 
 a protecting climate, gives rise to meteoric movements, and 
 develops those ravishing beauties which celebrate sunrise and 
 sunset. On them as here, vaporous clouds rise from the ocean 
 with the deep waves, and spreading themselves under the 
 heaven, carry dew to the parched-up regions. This great 
 movement of life which circulates over the Earth is not con- 
 fined to this little planet ; the same causes develop elsewhere 
 the same effects, and on many among these strange worlds, 
 far from noticing the absence of the riches with which the 
 Earth is endowed, an abundance of wealth of which our abode 
 only possesses the first-fruits is observed. By the side of these 
 bodies, the Earth is essentially an inferior world in many re- 
 pects; from the unsatisfactory conditions of geological sta- 
 bility of which the terrestrial spheroid reminds us, its surface 
 being only a thin pellicle, to the fatal laws which govern life 
 on this Earth where death reigns supreme. 
 
 If, on the one hand, the other worlds have conditions of 
 habitability quite as powerful, if not more so, as the terrestrial 
 conditions, on the other hand, the Earth, considered in itself, 
 appears to us like an overflowing cup whence life issues on all 
 sides. It seems that to create is so necessary to the order of 
 nature that the smallest piece of matter of suitable properties 
 does not exist without serving as an abpde of living beings. 
 
THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS 535 
 
 While the telescope discovered in the heavens fresh fields for 
 creation, the microscope showed us below the range of visibility 
 the field of invisible life, and that, not content with spreading 
 life everywhere where there is matter to receive it, from the 
 primitive period when this globe had scarcely left its fiery 
 cradle, to our days, nature still heaps up existence, to the detri- 
 ment of existence itself. 
 
 Leaves of plants are fields of microscopical flocks of which 
 certain species, although invisible to the naked eye, are real 
 elephants beside other beings, whose extreme diminutiveness 
 has not prevented an admirable system of organization for the 
 carrying on of their ephemeral life. Animals themselves serve 
 as an abode to races of parasites which, in their turn, are them- 
 selves the abode of parasites still smaller. Under another 
 aspect the infinity of life presents a correlative character in its 
 diversity. Its force is so powerful that no element appears 
 capable of struggling advantageously against it, and tending 
 to spread itself in every place, nothing can stop its action. From 
 the high regions of the air, where the winds carry the germs, to 
 the oceanic depths, where they undergo a pressure equal to 
 several hundred atmospheres, and where the most complete 
 night extends its eternal sovereignty ; from the burning climate 
 of the equator and the hot sources of volcanic regions to the 
 icy regions and the solid seas of the polar circle, life extends its 
 empire like an immense network, surrounding the whole Earth, 
 amusing itself with all obstacles, and passing over all abysses, 
 so that there is not in the world any district which can pretend 
 to be beyond its absolute sovereignty. 
 
 It is by studies founded on this double consideration, the in- 
 significance of the Earth in creation, and the abundance of life 
 on its surface, that we are able to raise ourselves to the first 
 real principles on which the demonstration of the universal 
 habitation of the heavenly bodies must be fixed. For a long 
 time man could confine himself to the study of phenomena ; for 
 a long time he must still keep to the direct and simple observa- 
 tion of physical appearances, in order that science may acquire 
 the precision which constitutes its value. But now this entrance 
 of truth can be passed, and thought, outstripping matter, may 
 rise to the idea of intellectual things. In the bosom of these 
 distant worlds it sees universal life plunging its immense roots ; 
 
536 FLAMMARION 
 
 and at their surface it sees this Hfe spreading itself, and intelli- 
 gence establishing its throne. 
 
 Founded on the astronomical basis, the only possible founda- 
 tion, researches made in the domain of the physical sciences, 
 from celestial mechanism to biology, and in that of the phil- 
 osophical science from ontology to morals, the old idea of the 
 plurality of worlds has risen to the rank of a doctrine. The 
 evidence of this truth has been revealed to the eyes of all those 
 who are impartially and entirely given up to the study of nature. 
 It does not come within the bounds of this discourse to enter 
 fully on this philosophical aspect of creation ; but if I consider 
 it in itself as the logical conclusion of astronomical studies, I 
 owe it to my readers at least to offer them as a modest conclu- 
 sion of the narratives which they have followed up to this time, 
 the principal results to which we have arrived on this great and 
 beautiful question of the existence of life on the surface of the 
 heavenly bodies. 
 
 In the first place, the following is the first consideration 
 established on the astronomical character of the world and its 
 history : If the reader follow the philosophical march of mod- 
 ern astronomy, he will discover that from the moment when 
 the movement of the Earth and the volume of the sun were 
 known astronomers and philosophers found it strange that a 
 body so magnificent was solely employed to light up and warm 
 a little imperceptible world, arranged in company with many 
 others under a supreme rule. The absurdity of such an opinion 
 was still more striking, when they found that Venus was a 
 planet of the same dimensions as the Earth, with mountains and 
 plains, seasons and years, days and nights, similar to our own ; 
 the analogy was extended to the conclusion that these two 
 worlds, similar in their formation, were also similar in their 
 role in the universe; if Venus was without population, the 
 Earth ought to be equally so ; and conversely, if the Earth was 
 peopled Venus must be so also. But afterward, when the 
 gigantic worlds of Jupiter and Saturn were observed, sur- 
 rounded with their splendid retinues, they were compelled to 
 refuse living beings to the preceding little planets, if they did 
 not equally endow these, and moreover give to Jupiter and 
 Saturn men much superior to those of Venus and the Earth. 
 And indeed, is it not evident that the absurdity of the im- 
 
THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS 
 
 537 
 
 movability of the Earth has been perpetuated a thousand times 
 more extravagantly in this ill-conceived final causation, the ob- 
 ject of which is to place our globe in the first rank of celestial 
 bodies? Is it not evident that this world has been thrown 
 without any distinction into the planetary cluster, and that it is 
 not better adapted than the others to be the exclusive seat of 
 life and intelligence? How little founded is the sentiment 
 which animates us when we fancy that the universe is created 
 for us, poor beings lost on a world, and that if we should disap- 
 pear from the scene, this vast universe would be marred, like 
 an assemblage of inert bodies, and deprived of light! If on 
 the morrow not one of us was to awake, and if the night which, 
 in each diurnal period enwraps the world, forever sealed the 
 closed eyelids of all living beings, is it to be believed that hence- 
 forth the sun would no longer pour out its light and heat, and 
 that the powers of nature would cease their eternal movements ? 
 No; these distant worlds that we have just reviewed would 
 continue the cycle of their existence, rocked on the permanent 
 forces of gravitation, and bathed in the luminous aureola that 
 the orb of day produces round its brilliant focus. The Earth 
 that we inhabit is only one of the smallest bodies grouped round 
 this focus, and its degree of habitation has nothing which dis- 
 tinguishes it amid its companions. For an instant place your- 
 self at a distance in space whence you can embrace the whole 
 solar system, and suppose that the planet in which you saw 
 light is unknown to you. For to give yourself freely to the 
 present study you must no longer consider the Earth as your 
 country, or prefer it to other abodes; and then contemplate 
 without pretension and with an ultra-terrestrial eye the plane- 
 tary worlds which circulate round the focus of our life! If 
 you suspect the phenomena of existence, if you imagine that 
 certain planets are inhabited, if you are taught that life has 
 chosen certain worlds in which to spread the germs of its pro- 
 ductions, do you intend to people this small globe of the Earth, 
 before having established in superior worlds the wonders of 
 living creation ? Or if you have the intention of settling your- 
 self on a body whence you can embrace the splendor of the 
 heavens, and on which you can enjoy the benefits of a rich and 
 fertile nature, shall you choose as an abode this mean Earth 
 which is eclipsed by so many resplendent spheres? In reply, 
 
538 FLAMMARION 
 
 reader, and it is the least strong and most rigorous conclusion 
 that we can draw from the preceding considerations, let us agree 
 that " the Earth has no marked preeminence in the solar system 
 to entitle it to be the only inhabited world, and that, astronomi- 
 cally speaking, the other planets are arranged as well as it is as 
 abodes of life." 
 
 A second consideration, founded on the varieties of living 
 beings on the surface of the terrestrial globe, on the infinite 
 power of nature, that no obstacle has ever stopped, and on the 
 eloquent spectacle of the infinity of life itself in the terrestrial 
 world, conducts the argument into a new order of ideas : " Nat- 
 ure knows the secret of all things, puts into action the most 
 feeble as well as the most powerful forces, renders all its crea- 
 tions answerable, and constitutes beings according to the worlds 
 and ages, without the one or the other being able to place any 
 obstacle in the way of the manifestation of its power. Hence 
 it follows that the habitability and habitation of the planets are 
 a necessary complement to their existence, and that of all the 
 conditions enumerated, not one can stop the manifestation of 
 life on each of these worlds. But let us add another observation 
 which will complete the preceding ; let us think" for an instant 
 of our forced ignorance in this little isle of the great archipelago 
 where destiny has bound us, and of the difficulty we experience 
 in searching into the secrets and power of nature. Let us prove 
 that, on the one hand, we do not know all the causes which have 
 been able to influence, and which still influence, the manifesta- 
 tion of life, its support and propagation on the surface of the 
 Earth; and that, on the other hand, we are still far from 
 knowing all the principles of existence which propagate in other 
 worlds very dissimilar creations. Scarcely have we penetrated 
 those which regulate the daily functions of life ; scarcely have 
 we been able to study the physical properties of the media, the 
 action of light and electricity, the effects of heat and magnetism. 
 There exist others which go on constantly under our eyes, and 
 which have not yet been studied nor even discovered. How 
 vain then would it be to wish to oppose to the possibility of 
 planetary existences the superficial and narrow principles of 
 what we call our sciences ? What cause would be able to strug- 
 gle with advantage against the effective power of nature, and 
 to place obstacles to the existence of beings on all these magnifi- 
 
THE PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS 
 
 539 
 
 cent globes which revolve round the sun ! What extravagance 
 to regard the little world where we first saw light as the only 
 temple, or as the model of nature ! " 
 
 Impressed with the value of the providential design of crea- 
 tion, these considerations become more imperious still. " That 
 our planet was made to be lived in, is incontestable, not only 
 because the beings which people it are here under our eyes, but 
 again because the connection which exists between these beings 
 and the regions in which they live brings the inevitable conclu- 
 sion that the idea of habitation is immediately connected with 
 the idea of habitability. Now this fact is an argument in our 
 favor; for, unless we consider the creative power as illogical, 
 or as inconsistent with its real manner of acting, it must be un- 
 derstood that the habitability of the planets imperiously demands 
 their habitation. To what end have they received years, sea- 
 sons, months, days; and why does not life come forth on the 
 surface of these worlds which enjoy, like ours, the benefits of 
 nature, and which receive, like ours, the rays of the same sun ? 
 Why these snows of Mars, which melt each spring, and descend 
 to water its continents? Why these clouds of Jupiter, which 
 spread shade and freshness over its immense plains? Why 
 this atmosphere of Venus, which bathes its valleys and moun- 
 tains? O splendid worlds, which float afar from us in the 
 heavens ! Would it be possible that cold sterility was ever the 
 immutable sovereign of yonder desolate regions? Would it 
 be possible that this magnificence, which seems to be your ap- 
 panage, was given to solitary and bare worlds, where the lonely 
 rocks eternally regard each other in sullen silence? Fearful 
 spectacle in its immense immutability ; and more incomprehensi- 
 ble than if Death had passed over the Earth in fury, and with 
 a single stroke mowed down the living population which en- 
 lightens its surface, thus enveloping in one ruin all the children 
 of life, and leaving it to roll in space like a corpse in an eternal 
 tomb ! " 
 
 Thus it is that, under whatever aspect we regard creation, 
 the doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds is formed and 
 presented as the only explanation of the final end — as the justi- 
 fication of the existence of material forms — as the crowning of 
 astronomical truths. The summary conclusions which we have 
 just quoted are established, logically and without difficulty, by 
 
540 FLAMMARION 
 
 observed facts; and when, having contemplated the universe 
 under its different aspects, the mind is astonished at not having 
 sooner conceived this striking truth, it feels within itself that 
 the demonstration of such evidence is no longer necessary, and 
 that it ought to accept it, even with no other reasons in its favor 
 than the condition of the terrestrial atom compared with the rest 
 of the immense universe. Humbled by this spectacle, one can 
 but proclaim the luminous truth in a transport, disdaining all 
 researches. 
 
 " Ah ! if our sight was piercing enough to discover, where 
 we only see brilliant points on the black background of the sky, 
 resplendent suns which revolve in the expanse, and the inhabited 
 worlds which follow them in their path, if it were given to us 
 to embrace in a general coup d'oeil these myriads of fire-based 
 systems ; and if, advancing with the velocity of light, we could 
 traverse from century to century, this unlimited number of suns 
 and spheres, without ever meeting any limit to this prodigious 
 immensity where God brings forth worlds and beings : looking 
 behind, but no longer knowing in what part of the infinite to 
 find this grain of dust called the Earth, we should stop fasci- 
 nated and confounded by such a spectacle, and uniting our voice 
 to the concert of universal nature we should say from the depths 
 of our soul : Almighty God ! how senseless we were to believe 
 that there was nothing beyond the Earth, and that our abode 
 alone possessed the privilege of reflecting Thy greatness and 
 power ! " 
 
THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE HEAVENS 
 
 HOW beautiful and worthy of the human mind is this con- 
 templation of the visible splendors of creation ! How- 
 much superior are these studies to the common pre- 
 occupations which occupy our days and pass away our years ! 
 How they elevate the soul toward real greatness ! In the arti- 
 ficial world that we have formed for ourselves by our citizen 
 habits we have become so strange to nature that when we return 
 to it we appear to enter into a new world. We have lost belief 
 in its value, and thus deprive ourselves of the purest joys. By 
 freeing ourselves from stormy life, by returning to peace we un- 
 dergo a hitherto unknown impression, as if the sphere of har- 
 mony into which we enter had always remained far from the 
 labors of our minds. 
 
 Studies of nature possess this precious characteristic, that 
 being applied to truth, they recall us to our origin, to our ma- 
 terial cradle. Worldly life is a real exile for the soul. Im- 
 perceptibly we get accustomed to content ourselves with ap- 
 pearances, no longer to seek the bottom and the substance of 
 things. Imperceptibly we lose our value and greatness, when 
 rocked on the surface of this unfathomable ocean on which float 
 human barks. The objects which surround us alone attract 
 our attention, and we forget the past like the future. But there 
 are hours of solitude, when the soul, returning to itself, feels 
 the emptiness of all these appearances, when it discovers how 
 little they can satisfy it, when it anxiously searches and returns 
 with love to real greatness alone, capable of giving firm ground 
 for its repose, instead of the fluctuations which have agitated 
 it. Then the soul has homesickness ; it demands the truth ; it 
 wishes for the beautiful, and bids adieu to transient affections. 
 If it is allowed at these hours of reflection to contemplate the 
 beauties of nature; to admire and understand the wonders of 
 creation; entirely giving itself up to the contemplation which 
 
 541 
 
542 FLAMMARION 
 
 captivates it, abandoning itself to the charm of the splendors 
 studied, it devotes itself unreservedly to the spectacle which 
 absorbs it, forgetful of the false joys of the Earth, and eager 
 after the true and profound ones which nature, that young 
 mother whose age is unchangeable, pours into the souls of the 
 children who cherish her. The beauties of the heavens will 
 captivate it with their charms, it will demand that such a con- 
 templation shall never cease, that the night shall reveal to it 
 wonder upon wonder, and that it may be permitted not to leave 
 the scene before its admiration is satisfied. 
 
 When we give our minds up to these high and magnificent 
 studies we soon feel the great harmony, the admirable unity in 
 which all things are bound together; we feel that all creation 
 is one, that we form a constituent part of it, and that an im- 
 mense life, scarcely guessed at, envelops us. Then all phenom- 
 ena take their place in the universal concert. 
 
 The golden star which shines in the depths of the heavens 
 and the little grain of crystallized sand which reflects the solar 
 ray unite their light ; the majestic sphere which revolves har- 
 moniously in its gigantic orbit and the little bird which sings 
 under the leaves ; the immense nebula which arranges its system 
 of suns in the vast expanse, and the bee-hive which receives the 
 rhomboids of a republic in eternal concord ; gravitation which 
 bears up in space these formidable globes and these systems of 
 worlds, and the humble zephyr which wafts beloved perfumes 
 from one flower to another ; great phenomena and imperceptible 
 actions unite with each other in the general movement, and the 
 infinitely great and the infinitely small embrace each other. 
 For the universe is the action of a single thought. 
 
 No human speech, no work formed by the hand of man, can 
 compete with the harmony of nature or the work of creation. 
 Compare for an instant the most admirable chef d'mivre among 
 the wonders of art with the most simple among the productions 
 of nature. As was said long ago, compare the richness of regal 
 ornaments, the oriental tissue of Solomon's garments when in 
 all his glory, the golden plates of his temple, the mosaics of his 
 palaces, to the whiteness of the lilies, the bloom of the roses, and 
 seek if the comparison can be thought of for an instant. The 
 great characteristic which distinguishes these works, is that 
 in the one, a restricted power marks the limits of its skill, while 
 
THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE HEAVENS 543 
 
 in the other the impress of an infinite power always remains. 
 Magnify the power of our senses, take that astonishing lens 
 which raises up giants where the most insignificant beings re- 
 mained invisible ; at its focus, the finest tissue, the most delicate 
 work of human art, is changed into a shapeless and coarse ob- 
 ject ; on the other hand, the most modest tissue formed by the 
 hands of nature reveals hidden riches in proportion as the mag- 
 nifying power increases. 
 
 Try now to compare our most wonderful instruments, from 
 our formidable machinery which holds captive those powerful 
 forces of which man has made himself master, to those exact 
 instruments, so elegant, so sensitive with the untamable forces 
 with which matter is animated, or with those admirable and pre- 
 cise laws which rule in an incomprehensible perfection the har- 
 monious movements of the starry spheres at the concert of the 
 heavens, and say how much art is surpassed by nature. 
 
 And the work of nature is as charming in the infinitely small 
 as in the infinitely great. The sublime spectacles which the con- 
 templation of the heavens unveil to us are doubtless the most 
 striking, the magnificence of which imposes itself most impres- 
 sively on our astonished mind ; but if we examined little things 
 our imagination would remain as confounded before them as be- 
 fore the greatest. On the poor little white butterfly which, born 
 yesterday, will be in dust before to-morrow has passed, the 
 analyzing eye of the microscope will show magnificent feathers 
 of snowy white or dead yellow, symmetrically arranged, with 
 as much care as those of the eagle intended to fly to the heavens ; 
 nevertheless to the naked eye there is nothing but an impalpable 
 dust, which adheres to the fingers. On its head you may count 
 twenty thousand eyes. If the finer drops of dew suspended at 
 sunrise to the leaves of the lower branches, fall at the touch of a 
 passing bird, you will see painted on this fine rain a rainbow 
 not less rich than the gigantic arch uplifted at the end of a 
 storm in the regions of the atmosphere; charming little rain- 
 bow, formed for a life of a few tenths of a second and disap- 
 pearing as it was born. Examine these humble wild flowers 
 with colored petals; emeralds and rubies succeed each other, 
 gold and sapphire intermingle their delicate tints ; it is in minia- 
 ture the same magnificence of colors as shines in the double 
 stars. We could continue without limit these comparisons, 
 
544 FLAMMARION 
 
 which prove to us, in all directions, the infinity of the creative 
 power. 
 
 Nevertheless we do not think of it, and we pass indifferently 
 by these wonders. If the night was deprived of stars, said a 
 philosopher, and there was only one place on the Earth whence 
 the constellations and bodies would be visible, the pilgrim- 
 age to this place would never cease, and each would wish 
 to admire these wonders. But that which daily surrounds 
 us loses its value, custom destroys attention, and we forget nat- 
 ure for pleasures certainly infinitely less worthy of our thoughts. 
 If sometimes we allow ourselves to be exalted by these wonders 
 of the science of the heavens, we quickly return to the things 
 of the world, forgetting our grand questions. The Earth has 
 the gift of captivating us so strongly that we willingly forget 
 the heavens for it. 
 
 Let us consider, dream, and think sometimes of the beautiful 
 in nature. Let us allow ourselves to be drawn away by those 
 delicious reveries which carry us from earthly tumults to calm 
 and silence. Let us ascend to that limpid source, whence de- 
 scend all consolation in sadness, all coolness after the fatigue 
 of the day, all peace in disquietude. When our lips are parched 
 by the winds of the world, let us moisten them at this clear 
 spring, let us ask a kiss from the lips of Nature — and may this 
 pure aspiration keep us from poisoned cups. 
 
 The fulness and height of man's happiness, said Seneca, is 
 to tread under foot all bad desires, to dive into the heavens, and 
 to penetrate the most hidden folds of nature. With what sat- 
 isfaction, when our thought has taken flight from the midst of 
 these, does it mock at the mosaics of our riches, and our earth 
 with all its gold! To disdain these porticoes — these brilliant 
 platforms of ivory — these rivers running through palaces — one 
 must have embraced the circle of the universe, and looked from 
 on high on this narrow globe, a great portion of which is sub- 
 merged, while that which is above water is either savage, or 
 torrid, or frozen. This is, then, says the sage, the spot divided 
 among many nations with fire and sword! Here are our 
 mortals, with their absurd frontiers ! If the human intelligence 
 were given to ants, would they not also divide a square of gar- 
 den into several provinces? When thou shalt have risen to 
 the really grand objects of which I speak, each time that thou 
 
THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE HEAVENS 
 
 545 
 
 shalt see armies marching with colors raised, and as if it were 
 a serious matter, horsemen sometimes flying unguardedly, or 
 retreating on their supports, thou wilt be tempted to say, " These 
 are evolutions of ants — great movements in little space." Oh, 
 how little is man if he does not rise above human things ! There 
 are regions above, without limits, which our soul is admitted 
 to possess, provided that it carries away with it the least possi- 
 ble that is material, and that, being purified from all stain, and 
 free from fetters it is worthy of flying thither. As soon as it 
 reaches there, it is nourished and developed ; it is as if delivered 
 from its irons, and returned to its source : it recognizes itself 
 to be a daughter of heaven from the delight it takes in celestial 
 things ; it enters there not as a stranger, but as if at home. An 
 eager spectator, there is nothing but it sounds and interrogates. 
 Ah ! who could hinder it ? Does it not know that all this is its 
 domain? Man does not live on bread alone — he requires 
 thought. It is on rising to these noble contemplations that he 
 becomes worthy of his rank ; it is by occupying his mind with 
 these beautiful and fertile subjects of study that his countenance 
 will preserve the divine expression of his destiny, and will shine 
 more and more. Let us not forget the teachings of the night, 
 but return sometimes to meditate under its silent gloom. In- 
 stead of a passing reverie, now that we have partly lifted the 
 veil which hid the celestial mysteries from us, our minds will 
 have an object better understood ; we shall understand what we 
 admire, and we shall better appreciate these distant creations. 
 These nocturnal hours will have a double value in our eyes, as 
 they will place us henceforth in communication with worlds 
 whose natures are no longer unknown to us. And it is with 
 greater intimacy that we shall address that salutation to the 
 night, with which we opened our interview with the heavens : 
 
 " O Nuit ! que ton langage est sublime pour mot, 
 Lorsque seul et pens if, aussi calme que toi, 
 Contemplant les soleils dont ta robe est paree, 
 Perre et medite en paix sous ton ombre sacri ! " 
 
 35 
 
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