.:'.. j THE OLD COLLEGE. PUBLISHED BY JAMES M AC LEHOSE, GLASGOW. HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co. Cambridge, . . . MACMILLAN & Co.. (E&tnbnrgit, . : -. EDMONSTON & DOHGLAS. MAY, MDCCCI.XIX. THE OLD COLLEGE FOR MDCCCLXIX. EDITED BY STUDENTS GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE, BOOKSELLER TO THE UNIVERSITY 61 ST. VINCENT STREET 1869 CONTENTS. PAGE OUR OLD UNIVERSITY, I OLD ALICE, , ... . . -34 GREEK ETHICS, 35 TO ELIZA, ....... 76 CUI BONO, 77 HEINE, .78 FROM HORACE, 95 LAW AND HISTORY, 98 THE RIVER, . . . . . . .114 AFTER MANY YEARS, Il6 THE NATIONALITIES OF SHAKESPEARE, . . . Il8 GLAUCUS, 130 A LECTURE ON DRAMATIC POETRY, . . .. 139 IMITATION OF THE OLD BALLAD, . . . 160 FUGA TEMPORUM, l6l GREEK VERSES, . . 162 CONTENTS. OUR ENGLISH PROMETHEUS, . . . . .164 LET'S LOVE WHILE LOVE WE MAY, . . .191 AUTUMN, I9 2 SPINOZA THE MAN AND HIS SYSTEM, . . .193 THE APPLE-TREE, . . . . . . 233 ON SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SCOTT*S POETRY, . 234 FROM HEINE, . . ... . . . .242 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 2 43 SPRING SONGS, 260 THE CENTAUR, . - 263 AMOR VINCIT, . . . . , -273 AESTHETICS, -275 LOVE, . . . . ... 289 NOTES OF A LECTURE BY GEORGE MACDONALD, . 290 PROOEMION, 305 PANTHEISM, o 6 FROM THE BELLEROPHON OF EURIPIDES, . 326 DRAMATIC REPRESENTATIONS IN THE UNIVERSITY, . 327 ANSWER, - THE TRADITION OF THE ELDERS, . . . .354 THE OLD COLLEGE. OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. " Dura sed emovere loco me tempera grato." Hor. THE History of Glasgow University has yet to be written. Why this should be so, it is hard to say, considering the importance of the subject, and the abundance of materials from which such a work might be compiled. We are not ambitious on this occasion of attempting the task, being content to discourse briefly, and after an easy and rambling fashion, befitting not the sterner and more decorous style of the historian, concerning a few of the leading events in the history of the College. It is difficult for us who live in an age of telegraphs, steam-engines and the penny press, to realise the ignorance and barbarity in which our ancestors of the middle ages were sunk. Italy, Germany and France were first to throw off the lethargy in which for centuries they in common with the western world had slumbered, and during the fifteenth century, thanks to the exertions of Pope Nicholas and other illustrious pioneers of thought, opportunely aided by the invention of the art of printing, THE OLD COLLEGE. knowledge had begun to permeate even the humbler grades of society, and a study of the classics, by revealing the greatness and culture of Greece and Rome, had already to a certain extent humanised and cultivated the modern world. Scotland, although remote from the centres of learning, was not slow to catch the spirit of the Renaissance, and even during the preceding cen- tury had made great and marked progress in material prosperity and increased civilization. In addition to the schools attached to the monasteries and cathed- ral churches, there were many public grammar schools, though schools of a higher kind were of a much later date. Prior to the fifteenth century, a Scotchman desir- ous of education had to betake himself to one of the foreign universities, of which Oxford and Paris, and after them Cambridge and Cologne, were most patronised by our countrymen; though just as Scotch generals and Scotch cohorts were at that time to be found in the service of every foreign prince, so Scotch students and Scotch professors studied and taught in every university in Europe. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, crowds of young Scotchmen flocked to Oxford, although they were never popular there, and just then the papal schism embittered the ill-feeling. In 1382 Richard II. of England addressed a writ to the Oxford authorities forbidding them to molest the Scotch students notwith- standing their " damnable adherence to Robert the Antipope" (Clement VIII.). These inconveniences hastened by a few years the establishment of Scotch Universities, an event which the OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. increased requirements and civilization of the country had rendered inevitable. In 1410 the University of St. Andrews was founded, and forty years later, on the 7th day of January, 1450-1,* Pope Nicholas V. granted the charter of Glasgow University. The honour of the idea belongs to James II., who requested William Turnbull, Bishop of the Diocese of Glasgow, to apply to the Pope for the required Bull; and the neighbourhood of that city, as being " a noteable place and fitted for the purpose by the temperature of the air and the plenty of all provisions for human life," was chosen as the site of the proposed studium generate for the teaching of Theology, Law and Arts, "and every other lawful faculty." Bologna at that time, with the exception of Paris, the most celebrated, as well as the oldest of European universities was expressly mentioned as the model of the neAV foundation ; but it is probable that their actual resemblance consisted in little more than the possession of the privilege of conferring degrees, the right of granting which privilege belonged exclusively to the Holy See. Mr. Cosmo Innes con- siders the real analogue of the new University to have been rather Louvain in Belgium, the customs of which were much imitated at the time by the universities- of the Northern countries. This, however, seems doubtful, since Louvain was only erected in 1425, and a very short time had elapsed for testing its constitution ; more- * " 1450-1," yth Jany. 1450, is equivalent to 7th Jany. 1451, of the historical year. Pope Nicholas used the same style, then common in Scotland, beginning the year on the 25th of March, which continued to be the custom of this country till the year 1600. THE OLD COLLEGE. over Bologna had been also chosen for the pattern of the University of St. Andrews. One curious remnant of Continental influence still survives in our division of students into four " nations," indicating in a rough way the quarters of the globe from which they have come. In old times the " nations " (then including all members of the University) elected four Procurators, who in turn elected the Rector and other officials. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the relative proportions and influence of the members of the University had greatly altered, a keen controversy arose as to whether the electoral constituency (in the case of the election of Rector) was properly confined to the permanent members of the University, or should be extended to all matricu- lated students. The dispute was settled by a Royal Commission in 1727, who declared that the right lay with the matriculated members, masters, and students of the University. Thereafter, accordingly, the Comitia, consisting of the Rector, Dean of Faculty, Principal, Professors, and Matriculated Students, elected the Rector, and continued to do so until, on the abolition of the Comitia, the right of election was vested, as it is at present, in the students alone. By the exertions of Bishop Turnbull and his Chapter, a body of Statutes was prepared, and the University opened in 1451. It consisted of a Chancellor (the Bishop himself), a Rector,* of Masters and Doctors in * Master David Cadzow, Precentor of the Church of Glasgow, was our first Lord Rector, and read in the Chapter House of the Domini- cans on aQth July, 1460, at nine o'clock a.m., in presence of the clergy OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. the four faculties, and lastly of incorporated students of these Faculties, who might be promoted to degrees after the usual course of study. The Chancellor conferred all academical honours, and the Rector, with the advice of the four Deputati, exercised supreme judicial and ex- ecutive power over all members of the University. By Royal Charter, dated 2oth April, 1450, James II. had granted to William Turnbull, Bishop of Glasgow, and his successors, the City and Barony of Glasgow and lands called Bishop Forest, to be holden in free, pure and mere regality in fee and heritage for ever. By this grant the Bishop was enabled to confer extensive privileges on the University. Accordingly, on ist December, 1453, he gave to the University full power to buy and sell in the city and regality all goods and necessaries of life brought thither not for trading purposes but private consumption, and without exaction of custom or asking leave. All members were further exempted from taxation, a privi- lege often afterwards renewed by successive governments. In 1456 the University obtained from the Bishop the further right of "plenary jurisdiction" over its own members, in all matters, civil and criminal. Every member could claim to be tried before his peers. There is a case on record so late as 1670, in which a student, accused of the crime of murder, was tried before the Rector and acquitted. Even to this day there would appear to be a sort of nominal sanctuary afforded to students by the college walls, and it has very recently and masters, the Rubric of the 3rd book of Gregory's Decretals, viz. , De vita et honestate clericorum. THE OLD COLLEGE. been questioned whether a civil officer can legitimately insist upon invading the sacred precincts for the purpose of executing the warrant of a judge, without permission from the head of the University. In the earliest ordinances all general meetings were directed to be held in such place as the Rector might appoint. The Chancellor and Rector being generally the Bishop and one of his canons, these meetings were usually held in the Cathedral. The first place actually used for this purpose was the Chapter House of the Dominicans (Friars' Preachers, as they were called), which occupied the site of the present College Kirk. Here the University held its first general chapter on the i4th of October, 1452, but ever after, down to the time of the Reformation, its general meetings were held, as we have said, within the Chapter House of the Cathedral. The University was necessarily very poor during its infancy, its income being derived solely from some small perquisites connected with the granting of degrees, and the patronage of two or three small chaplainries. Such was its native vigour, however, and the efficiency with which it discharged its functions, that within two years after its establishment, more than 200 students had been enrolled, and two years later the number matriculating in the Faculty* of Arts had in- creased so much that it was thought necessary to provide * A ' Faculty ' was the body of teachers or graduates, who not only had the privilege of lecturing, and examining, and admitting candidates for degrees into their body, but also of making statutes, choosing officers, using a seal, and doing all that pertains to a privi- leged corporation to raise money. OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. them with a regular set of teachers, and a place of resi- dence. For the former purpose the Crypt of the Cathe- dral was allowed them by the Bishop, in which to attend the lectures in the Faculties of Theology and Canon Law. The house provided for their accommodation was the Paedagogium (the first actual collegiate building), which belonged to the Faculty of Arts, and was situated on the south side of the Rotten Row. The College of Arts appears to have been the most use- ful and flourishing branch of the University, for so early as 1458 the Faculty rented a piece of ground on the east side of the High Street, whereon they began to erect a new Paedagogium. Their circumstances were, however, so straitened, that with all their efforts to raise money, they might have found themselves unable to compass their ob- ject, had it not been for the liberality of Lord Hamilton, who in 1459-60 made them a present of the ground. The seisin is made out in name of Duncan Bunch, the first Regent of the Faculty, and his successors in office. The ground is described as a tenement on the east side of the High Street, lying between the house of the Friars' Preach- ers on the south, and the lands of Sir Thomas Arthurlie on the north, with four acres of the Dowhill beside the Molendinar Burn, to which possession the name of the " Land of the Paedagogue" was for a long time afterwards applied.* A century later we find the same four acres de- scribed as a " greit orchart," and the remainder of the Dowhill tastefully laid out in gardens, rich in summer time with flowers and fruits, and surrounded by well- * For detailed history of ground see Note, p. 31. THE OLD COLLEGE. trimmed hawthorn hedges. To this place, then, about the year 1465,* the teaching and residence of the mem- bers of the University were transferred, in whole or in part, and the name of Paedagogium or College was given to the new buildings. Lord Hamilton's gift soon received many additions, and in 1466 the adjacent house and lands were bequeathed to the College by Sir Thomas Arthurlie, chaplain. This land, amounting to about two acres, adjoined the College on * This action on the part of the College was of great importance, deciding as it did one of the most practical and vexed questions in the early history of universities, that, namely, of the residence of stu- dents. At first the custom of outside residence, which obtains with us at present, was followed. But the increase of students causing a corresponding increase in rents, the price of lodging soon became so exorbitant as to render immediate action on the part of the College necessary. Bishop Turnbull accordingly enacted that all houses and lodgings for the members of the University within the city were to be let by the arbitration of an equal number of members and citizens sworn as umpires, and no one was to be disturbed in his possession so long as he paid his rent and conducted himself properly. As a further remedy for the evil the religious orders began to establish in University towns hospitia or hostels for such of their members as re- sorted thither. In imitation of these, houses were provided by chari- table persons, in which free lodgings, and ultimately free board, were provided for the poorer students. Such establishments were called inns, halls, or colleges, the last name being generally restricted to foundations endowed for the support of graduates. The term colle- gium was also sometimes applied to the place in which the students were taught, although the more general name was Psedagogium. On the disuse of the common table at the end of the last century the prac- tice of residing within college was discontinued, or at least confined to a very few students of standing and repute. OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. the north side, and stretched along the Vicar's Alley (the New Vennel) back to the Molendinar. It was annexed to the Paedagogy in 1475, anf ^ tne front portion of it be- came in later times the site of some of the Professors' houses. In all probability the Faculty of Arts alone received a definite constitution, and afforded a regular course of instruction. It had its own proper dean, and peculiar statutes, and as it possessed the greater part of the funds, it ultimately assumed the entire control of the University. By one of the statutes it was ordained that every student of sufficient means should live at table with the regents, and should on no other condition be admitted to the study of Arts. It was impossible to get a dispen- sion. Students who were unable, from poverty or other- wise, to live at table were ordained to pay a noble each to the regents, and as many should be allowed to sleep in the College chambers as could be accommodated. By another statute the gates were ordered to be closed in winter at nine, and in summer at ten o'clock, the cham- bers of the students having first been visited by one of the regents. In this way the College went on gradually developing and increasing in usefulness till the time of the Reforma- tion, when along with other constitutions of Roman Catho- lic origin, it was thrown into confusion by the loss of the support, which it had previously derived from the church. When the Crown absorbed the benefices by which the regents, who were all churchmen, were supported, men could with difficulty be found to accept the office of regent THE OLD COLLEGE. without the salary. The Chancellor, James Beaton, fled to the continent, carrying with him the cathedral plate, as well as the charter, and titles both of the See and of the University. The buildings at this time are described as ruinous, and the teaching as almost extinguished. The College of Arts, however (owing to its principal, John Davidson, having embraced the Reformed doctrines, and continued in office), survived the storm, but in so shattered a condition that in a charter by Queen Mary, dated i3th July, 1683, it is stated that " ane parte of the sculis and chalmeris being biggit, the rest thairof alsweill dwellingis, as provisioune for the pouir bursouris and maisteris to teche ceissit, sua that the samyn apperit rather to be the decay of ane Universitie, nor ony wyse to be reknit ane establisst fundatioun." For which reasons the Queen founded five bursaries for poor youths, for the endowment of which she granted to the University the manse and church of the Friars' Predicators, thirteen acres of ground adjoining, and certain other rents and property, confis- cated from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1572 the Magistrates and Council of the town, sensible of the loss which the community sustained from the decay of the University, conveyed to the College certain church pro- perty which had been granted to them by the Queen. The Act of Parliament confirming this charter shows at what a low ebb the affairs of the University were at this time, the whole of the resident members, regents and stu- dents, only numbering some fifteen persons, and the entire annual income of the College not exceeding ^300 Scots 25 sterling). OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. In 1574 a fresh stimulus was given to the whole Uni- versity system by the advent of the celebrated Andrew Melville, whose nephew, alluding to this period in its history, writes, " There was na place in Europe compara- ble to Glasgow for guid letters during these yeirs for a plentifull and guid chepe mercat of all kynd of langages, artes, and sciences." These words must, however, be accepted with a reservation, as it is difficult to reconcile them altogether with the facts stated immediately below. Melville, on finishing his course of study at St. Andrews, left that University with the character of being " the best philosopher, poet, and Grecian, of any young master in the land." He afterwards studied at Paris, and on returning to Scotland was appointed Principal of Glasgow University, which office he held till 1580, when he was translated to St. Andrews to fill a similar situation. During his connexion with these universities he intro- duced many improvements into their system of teaching and internal discipline, and eminently contributed to extend their usefulness and increase their reputation. In 1577 James VI., then in his minority, was advised by Regent Morton to remodel the constitution of the Uni- versity, and grant a charter, making over to it the Rectory and Vicarage of the Parish of Govan. This deed is commonly called the Nova Erectio, and forms the basis of the present constitution the Magna Charta, as it were, of our College. The preamble contains a doleful account of the state into which the University had fallen. "Seeing that among other losses and in- conveniencies of our kingdom we observe our schools THE OLD COLLEGE. and gymnasia to have almost perished, and that our youth, who formerly were distinguished by uprightness of life and purity of moral character, are languishing in idleness and vice, we desire to renew, restore, and endow on a new foundation our Pedagogy in Glasgow, which for want of funds has almost perished, and in which, through poverty, study and discipline are in abeyance." By this charter twelve officers were ap- pointed, including a Principal, who was to teach Theolo- gy, Hebrew, and Syriac, and three Regents or Professors, one for Greek and Rhetoric, another for Dialectics, Morals, and Politics, with Arithmetic and Geometry, and the third for Physiology, Geography, Chronology, and As- trology. Besides these there ^ were also four Bursars (poor students), a House Steward, a Servant to the Principal, a Cook and a Janitor. These were all to live within the College, and the provision for their support was purposely limited, in order that by frugality in their meals they might be incited to greater zeal in their studies. They might with propriety have adopted for their motto the line suggested by the witty Canon for the Edinburgh Review, "Tenui musam meditamur avena." The provisions regulating the domestic lives of the students are very minute. The effeminate youths of modern days who grumble at having to attend classes at eight o'clock a.m., may be glad that they were not members of the College during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when every one at a given signal had to turn out at five o'clock in the morning, at which hour one of the Regents (styled the Hebdomadar) went round their OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 13 bed chambers to rouse them from their slumbers. The duties of the toilette over, lessons followed from six to eight, when they all assembled to morning prayers, which occupied only half an hour. After prayers they retired to their different rooms to study till breakfast time (nine o'clock). At ten studies were resumed, and at a quarter past eleven the cook received warning to have all things ready for dinner at twelve. After dinner thanks were returned and a psalm sung, during which all stood. The rest of the day was spent in the schools until late in the evening. At nine p.m. the Hebdomadar went his rounds again to see if everybody was in, and take a note of the absentees. On certain days, after dinner and supper, disputations were held, of which, we are told, Principal Melville was exceedingly fond. From dinner till four p.m. every second, fourth, and sixth day in each week was set apart for ' play,' one of the many duties of the unfortunate hebdomadar being to accom- pany the students to the fields where they went to "disporte themselves." By an order in the reign of Charles I. the ' Scholars at Glasgow ' were to be exercised in lawful sports, such as " gouffe, archerie, and the lyk," and were prohibited from indulging in unlawful games as carding, dicing, and for some strange reason bathing or swimming we presume in the Molendinar indulgence in which was strictly prohibited under a pain of " many stripes and ejection." It must not be supposed that their amusements were limited to such as are only exer- cised in "green fields" they even included dramatic representation. It was ordained in 1462 that ever 14 THE OLD COLLEGE. after on gth May (the day of Saint Nicholas) at a general congregation to be held at the doors of the Cathedral, " two discreet masters should be elected to provide the necessaries and utensils for a grand banquet of the College of the Faculty of Arts, on the Sabbath day (i.e., Saturday) or Feast following said day of St. Nicholas, as the Faculty should judge proper, and weather permit," to which every master holding a benefice should give 33., and all non-beneficed masters, bachelors and students, is. 6d. each. On the day fixed all should assemble, under a penalty of 2S., at eight a.m., in the Chapel of Saint Thomas, and there hear Mass, after which they should, in a becoming and solemn manner, receive flowers and branches of trees, and all should proceed on horseback in a grave and stately procession through the public street, from the higher part of the city to the Cross, and return the same way to the College of Arts, where, amid the joy of the Feast, the masters should take council concerning what might promote the interests of the Faculty and its members. The feast over, the banquetters were to repair to a place more fitted for amusement, where some of the masters and students should perform an interlude or other show whereby to delight the people ; the actors being granted special powers and prerogatives for their trouble. Even in 1574, three years after the death of Knox, the performance of comedies on Sunday was not altogether discontinued, though one year later an Act was passed by the General Assembly prohibiting them. The discipline maintained in College was very strict. OUK OLD UNIVERSITY. 15 No resident student who was not cunning in the Latin tongue was allowed to have a servant, and so late as 1705 the Principal ordered every Regent to appoint a secret censor to spy among the students, and report on such as were guilty of the heinous crime of speaking their mother tongue. The wearing of arms was (and is) strictly prohibited, as also was intrusion by scholars into the sacred region of the kitchen. All students convicted of robbing the orchards were severely punished, and Masters of Arts were enjoined not to be familiar with non-graduates. Corporal punishment was a thing of daily occurence. Originally the Principal propria manu inflicted the chastisement on the delinquent's bare shoul- ders, in the common hall, in the presence of the masters and students therein assembled. Andrew Melville was the first to disregard the custom, and devolved the task upon his regents. Squibs which we dare say many of our readers imagine to be a recent importation within our College were very common with students in the seventeenth century, as we read of Principal Gillespie being bitterly wroth at certain lampoons against himself and colleagues which were affixed " diverse tymes on the Colledge gate, and scattered in the Colledge close, and put in the mouth of all the schollars." These squibs are described by the enraged principal as "most base and scandalous Latine verses, abusing myself and Mr. John Young (Professor of Theology) very vylelie, and scoffing at all the Regents." The learned and irate authorities were unable to discover the author, although "sundrie boys were scourged publiclie," which " remedie," we are 1 6 THE OLD COLLEGE. naively told, " appeared not to have too much effect, for every other day new papers of many base villanies were spread and sent out all over the countrie." In 1725 a censor was appointed, for the "better preservation of order without the College," to visit the streets and " billiard rooms and other gaming places," and " observe what gentlemen of the College they might find there at unlawful hours." This and a curious letter, dated 3rd April, 1716, from Gerschom Carmichael to Principal Stirling of Aberdeen, proves the truth of the adage that " youth will be youth," or rather has always been youth. "There were some," writes Carmichael of his fellow- students, "that kept ill hours, coming late into the College by backways, and by your house among the rest, &c." The Nova Erectio ordained, among other things, that the professors were not, as had hitherto been the custom, to carry on their students through the three years course, but had each to confine himself to his own department, so that the student had a new professor every year, a system which was altered in 1642, but reintroduced after the Revolution. Professors were enjoined to observe celibacy, and in the event of their marrying were strictly prohibited from bringing their wives within the walls. In 1581 the Archbishop of Glasgow, then Chancellor of the University, in order to augment the yearly duty paid to it by the town, mortified the whole customs of the Trons, great and small, and those of fair and market, measure and weight, within the burgh, by which OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 17 donation the College was enabled to institute a separate Greek Chair. Again in 1615 the Bishop of St. Andrews presented the College with the land lying between it and its garden, of which mention has been made above. Notwithstanding all these acquisitions, however, the buildings in 1617 had advanced very little, and were still in a disgraceful state of decay. Concerning the original buildings we know little or nothing. No re- mains of them are now extant, except perhaps a part of the building between the two oldest quadrangles. It was not until 1632, when its appeal to the public for aid was liberally met, that the College was enabled fairly to begin the work of restoration. Attention was first directed to the inner of the two courts, the greater portion of which was rebuilt within the next seven years. An interval of about fifteen years then elapsed, during which time the College received the magnificent donations of Zachary Boyd, which were applied chiefly for the erection of the steeple. The impression is pretty general that Zachary was rather badly treated by his disponees, having left his property to them under the condition that a small por- tion of the funds should be devoted to the publication of a portion of his MSS. works, a condition which was never fulfilled. We are inclined to think that, apart from the strictly legal or moral aspect of the question, the College exercised a wise discretion in not fulfilling Zachary's in- structions to the letter. It is not to be supposed that his two most intimate friends, Dr. Strang and Mr. Robert Baillie, to whom he had primarily committed the revisal of his MSS. for the press, should have neglected to insist on B 1 8 THE OLD COLLEGE. the publication without good cause. The probability is that they were overruled or persuaded by a more power- ful party, headed by Principal Gillespie (of whom here- after), who were desirous of completing the buildings, and that the preparations for publication being deferred to a more convenient season, which never came, the matter dropped altogether out of sight. Indeed, when we con- sider the nature of the task imposed by Zachary upon his two reverend literary friends, we are not surprised that they were persuaded to defer its execution. The prospect of having to wade through a mass of MSS., consisting of nearly 2000 pages, closely written, and of no preeminent literary merit, might have appalled bolder men. How- ever this may have been, thanks mainly to Zachary's do- nations and Principal Gillespie's zeal, the work of building was pushed on with great vigour. About the year 1654, and during the four following years, the steeple and the remainder of the inner court, particularly on the south side (but excluding the portions of the original building allowed to remain), were finished, and the work began to proceed in the first court. It is probable that up to this time (1659) the front court was merely an open space off the High Street, and that the only approach to a quad- rangle was an imaginary square formed by the continua- tion of a projecting portion at each end of the building, and a line drawn at right angles to the lines so formed along the border of the street. The whole front therefore, nearly as it now stands, containing the fore hall, staircase, the Principal's house, and the arched entrance", is just about 2ro years old. Six of the Professors' houses had OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 19 been built by this time, and in 1698 the stone ballusters of the great staircase, and the lion and unicorn on the pedestals at its foot, were erected. Writing of the Pro- fessors' houses, Mercuri says " Of late there is a third court erected, two parts whereof are already built for the use of the masters of the University to lodge in, and when this court is finished (as is projected) it will be the largest court, looking rather like a king's palace than any other lodging. . . . The primar or principal has a most stately and convenient lodging in the south side, and adjacent to the University, so that it is an universal saying, that the primar of the College of Glasgow (even when episcopacy took place) was the best lodged clergyman in the Kingdom." The history of the rest of the building is well known. The library was added about 1730, the Hunterian Museum in the earliest years of the present century, and the east side of the inner quadrangle, containing the common hall and several large class rooms, with an archway admitting to the back, was erected in 1812. To Principal Gillespie's enterprise and per- severance we are greatly indebted for our present pile of buildings, which is not without architectural beauties, and whose walls blackened by the smoke of ages, have so well withstood the tear and wear of the elements. The name of its architect if it ever had one is unknown. In these later days each builder of a petty dwelling house, must needs carve his name and the date of foundation on its front, while on our magnificent old College only the Royal arms, with C(harles) R(ex) are THE OLD COLLEGE. engraved above the arched gateway, fronting the High Street. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, greatly owing, as we have seen, to the patronage of James VI. and the presidency of Andrew Melville, the College had greatly increased in influence and prosperity, so much so indeed as to attract to its halls large and ever increasing crowds of students among others one who was destined in after years to do it notable service, the well known and much misrepresented Zachary Boyd. It would be unfair, and disrespectful to the memory of one whose fortunes will ever be identified with those of the College which he loved so much and served so well, were we to pass over without some brief notice the name of Mr. Boyd. To the general public and even, we suspect, to the majority of our students, the venerable Zachary is little more than a myth, associated in their minds with one of Grant's novels, certain ludic- rous misrenderings of holy writ erroneously attributed to his pen, and a smoke-begrimed monument of a rather austere cast of countenance, that has looked down on the inner quadrangle of the College from time im- memorial. That he was a clergyman of more than ordinary attainments and exact scholarship, possessed of great courage and unblemished character, one moreover who literally gave his all to the institution with which he was so long and so honourably connected not many, we dare say, even of our academical readers are aware. We shall not therefore apologise for this digression, necessary as it is, moreover, to the satisfactory elucidation OUR OLD U.\iri:RSirY. of our subject. Zachary, then only sixteen years of age, matriculated in Glasgow University in 1601, from which two years later he removed to Saint Andrews, where he took his degree of M.A. in 1607. After passing sixteen years in France, studying part of the time in the College of Saumur, he returned to Scotland in 1623, and shortly after his arrival was installed as minister of the Barony Parish of Glasgow. At the time of his ordination the population of the whole City did not exceed 7,000, and the houses generally were of a mean appearance, covered with turf, heather, or straw thatch. Mr. Boyd was three times elected Dean of Faculty, twice Vice-Chancellor, three times Rector, and while he held these offices the Records of the University bear evidence to his having been a faithful and hard working friend to its internal prosperity. From 1629 until the close of his life he was continually subscribing large sums to the College, and in 1652 he granted a Deed of Mortification in its favour, in which, reserving the life rent to his spouse, in the event of her surviving him, he conveyed to the College almost all his property. Although, as we have seen, his dis- ponees failed to fulfil all the conditions of his will, they showed themselves not insensible to his liberality, by causing a marble statue* to be erected to his memory, * The inscription on the statue is as follows : MR ZACHARIAS BODIVS FIDELIS ECCLESI^ SVBVRBAN.* PASTOR 2OOOO LIB. QVA AD ALEDOS QVOTANNIS TRES ADOLESCENTES THEOLOGIZE STVDIOSOS QVA AD EXTRVEJSIDAS NOVAS HAS >EDES VNA CVM VNIVERSA SVPELLECTILI LIBRARIA ALMJE MATRI ACADEMIC LEGAVIT. 22 THE OLD COLLEGE. over the gateway within the second court, where it still stands.* During Mr. Boyd's connexion with the Uni- versity, it prospered greatly till at the era of the Restora- tion it boasted (besides a Principal) eight Professors, a Librarian, a tolerable library (to which George Buchanan contributed largely) and an increased number of bursars and students of all ranks. The buildings were also rebuilt in a more enlarged and elegant fashion than they had formerly been. In 1636 Charles II. endeavoured to force Episcopacy upon Scotland without distinction of persons. Mr. Boyd, though at first dissenting from the principles of the Cove- nant, and always a strong Royalist, was induced at length to give them his adhesion. The ascendancy acquired by the Independents after the execution of Charles I. was a sad disappointment to the hopes of the Scotch Presbyteri- ans, and largely affected the fortunes of our College. Cromwell, although tolerant in religious matters, could not brook the Scotch loyalty to Charles II., and in order to chastise their monarchical pride, marched into Scotland in 1650 at the head of a large army. After the disastrous battle of Dunbar, in September of that year, the Protector obtained possession of Edinburgh, and shortly afterwards " came peaceably" we are told, " with his whole army and cannon, by way of .Kilsyth to Glasgow." The ministers * " By an entry dated May, 1658 (No. 15 of Clerk's Press, p. 214), it appears that there were given out for Mr Zacharias Boyd's statue, with the compartment in whyt marble, and the wryting tabell in black, twenty-five poundis sterling " Deeds Instituting Bursaries, &c., pp. 39, 40. OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 23 and magistrates all fled, with the exception of stout old Zachary, who stood by his post, and as an old chronicler has it, " railled on the invaders to their very face in the High Church," where Cromwell went in state one Sunday forenoon to hear him preach. " The fantastic old gentle- man," as Carlyle designates the venerable preacher, chose for his text the 8th chapter of Daniel, and improved the occasion while he relieved his mind by inveighing in no measured terms against his august hearer, drawing a vivid parallel between him and the rough goat mentioned in his text, very much to the latter's advantage, and calling the Protector and his followers " sectaries and blasphemers." On leaving the church, Cromwell's secretary, fiery Mr. Thurlow, " whispered him leave to pistol the old scoun- drel." " Tuts !" replied the General, " you are a greater fool than himself. We'll pay him back in his own coin !" He accordingly invited his reverend foe to dinner, which was of the scantiest character, and concluded with a prayer, which lasted for several hours, " even," as an old writer has it with a sort of sympathetic sigh, " even until three in the morning." Of Zachary's pulpit utterances many stories are told, of which the following is not the worst : Finding that several of his hearers left the church after the forenoon service, in order to escape further infliction, the preacher made use of this expression in his afternoon prayer " Now, Lord, thou sees that many people do go away from hearing the word, but had we told them stories of Robin Hood or Davie Lindsay, they had stayed, and yet none of these are near so good as the word that I preach." THE OLD COLLEGE. Cromwell contrived to leave his mark on the University, as he did on most things with which he had to do, by ap- pointing one of his favourites, Mr Patrick Gillespie, to the Principalship, to the grievous chagrin of Zachary, and " most pairt of the facultie." The former seems to have devoted the last three years of his life mainly to the busi- ness of the College and the revision of his poetical works. Concerning the latter many absurd misrepresentations are current, to show the unfairness of which we give the fol- lowing specimens of verses popularly attributed to Zachary, along with the verses which he actually wrote : PARODIES. There was a man called Job, Dwelt in the Land of Uz ; He had a good gift of the gob, The same case happen us. Colvil. Job's wife said to Job, Curse God and die ; Oh no, you wicked scold, No, not I. Jeshurun waxed fat, And down his paunches hang ; And up against the Lord, his God, He kicked and he flang. TRUE READINGS. In Uz a man cal'd Job there was, Both perfect and upright ; Who feared God, and did eschew Evill even with all his might. Garden of Zion, vol. ii. p. 2. Then said his wife, Retain'st thou still Thine old integritie ; What meanest thou, O foolish man, Now curse thou God and die ; But he again said unto her, His witlesse wife to schoole, Thou speakest now thou knowes not what, Thou speakest like a foole, Garden of Zion, vol. ii., p. 8. But Jeshurun, who should have beene Most righteous, did kick ; Thou art exceeding waxed fat, Thou art also grown thick ; Thou covered art with fatnesse; then His Maker he forsook, And of his sure salvation's rock, No care at all he took. Garden of Zion, vol. i., p. 67. OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. JACOB TO RACHEL. And Jacob made for his wee Josie, Yea, for your sake, this little Joseph more, A tartan coat to keep him cosie ; I love than all that born were him before ; And what for no, there was nae harm, ...... To keep the lad baith saft and warm. Him I doe count from Heav'n to be our lot ; Let us him make a particolour'd coat. Zion's Flowers, MS. p. 403. OF PHARAOH. And was not Pharaoh a wicked and Because this King thus hardened his harden'd rascal, heart, Not to allow the men of Israel with Often great plagues his Kingdome felt their flocks and herds, their wives the smart. and their little ones, to go a forty Garden ofZion, vol. i. p. 53. day's journey into the wilderness to eat the Pascal. In February, 1653, there is an entry in the Records that Mr. Boyd " wes sicke," and unable to attend a University meeting; in March following he died. All honour to his memory, which should ever be held sacred by all to whom the honour of Glasgow College is dear ; for he was a man who though austere, as befitted the character of his age, was yet kindly and generous, and who with some failings bore a high character for scholarship and uprightness, and proved so true a friend to this University when it stood most in need of friendship. About this time the buildings were undergoing great changes. During the course of about thirty years from 1630 the new buildings appear mostly to have been erected, chiefly under the principalship of Gillespie (1652-60). Mr. Baillie seems to have taken great offence at the Principal's proceedings. "For our Col- lege," he writes in a letter to Strang, 1658, "we have no redress of our discipline and teaching. Mr. Gillespie's 26 THE OLD COLLEGE. work is building and teaching : with the din of masons, wrights, carters, smiths, we are vexed every day. Mr. Gillespie alone, for vanity to make a new quarter in the College, has cast down my house to build up another of greater show, but far worse accommodation. In the meantime, for one full year I will be and am exceedingly incommodate, which I bear because I cannot help it, and also because Mr. Gillespie had strange ways of getting money for it by his own industry alone. An order he got from the Protector of 500 pound sterling, but for an ill office in the country. His delation of so much con- cealed rent yearly of the crown, also the vacancy of all churches wherein the College had interest; this breeds clamour as the unjust spoil of churches and incumbents upon these foundations are our palaces builded, but withal our debts grow, and our stipends are not paid, for by his continual laying our rent is mouldered away." Mr. Baillie also complains bitterly of the Principal's "pulling down the whole forework of the Colledge, the high Hall and Arthurlie, very good houses, all newly dressed at a great charge." So much for worthy Mr. Baillie, who only bore with the high-handed Principal "because he couldn't help it." The restoration of Charles II. in 1662, struck a severe blow at the prosperity of the University, by depriving it of the best source of its revenue the Bishopric of Galloway. The merry monarch who thought that Pres- bytery "was not a religion for a gentleman" reestablished Episcopacy in Scotland, and overthrew the Presbyterian Church. The putting in force of the Royal Edict was en- OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 27 trusted to Lord Middleton. His Lordship was a man of profligate manners, and had gathered around him in his "jovial Parliament" (as Scott terms it) a troop of roy- stering dare-devils, attended by trumpeters, macers, and kettle-drums. A bacchanalian ovation awaited him wher- ever he went and especially at Paisley, Dumbarton, and Hamilton he was right royally entertained. " Such who entertained the commissioner best," says the matter-of-fact Wodrow/'had their dining-room, their drinking-room, their vomiting-room, and sleeping-rooms, when the company had lost their senses." At Ayr " the devil's health was drunk at the cross at midnight, and so the dissolute crew staggered onward on their way to Glasgow." Middleton held his Council in the noble old fore-hall of our College, looking out into the High Street. The hall remains iden- tically the same to-day as when its rich old wainscotted walls rang with the excited voices of his lordship's "drun- ken parliament," of whom, "all present" we are told, " were flustered with drink, save Sir James Lochart of Lee." Bishop Burnet mentions that the Duke of Hamil- ton, who was a member of the council, informed him that " they were all so drunk that day as to be incapable of considering anything that was laid before them, and would hear of nothing but the executing the law without relenting or delay." From this council issued the cele- brated Act of Glasgow, whereby nearly a third of the ministers of the Presbyterian church were thrust from their charges at a moment's notice, and out of its decree arose the conventicles and field-preachings throughout the country, which afterwards were so often assailed 28 THE OLD COLLEGE. by the troopers of Claverhouse and Dalzell, together with the consequent train of finings, imprisonments, and torturings. So impoverished was the University, owing to these and other causes, that a large debt was contracted, and three of the professorships (one of theology and those of humanity and medicine), fell into abeyance. So things continued till the time of the revolution, when the College again began to revive from the state of depression in which it had so long remained. In 1693 each of the Scotch Universities obtained a gift of ^300 a year out of the Bishop rents of Scotland, and the number of students who matriculated in Glasgow was greatly increased. In 1702 those attending Theology, Greek, and Philosophy amounted to 402. We have now, as minutely as the limited space at our disposal will admit of, traced the history of our College from the year of her foundation to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is not our purpose to follow any further her varying fortunes through times of prosperity and depression, or in any way to deal with what is matter of recent history. What has befallen her during the last century and a half her rapid growth her increased fame the great and wise men who have filled her chairs and studied within her halls down to the last changes in her system, and the late magnificent response made by the nation to the appeal of her professors for aid these and such like are they not chronicled in recent pamphlets, and recorded in the pages of the College Calendar? Some years ago a great historian addressed a large and OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 29 eager crowd of students in the common hall of this University. It was his inaugural speech on being in- stalled Lord Rector, and after rapidly reviewing the history of the College the orator wound up his address with the following brilliant peroration. "I trust, therefore, that when a hundred years more have run out, this ancient College will still continue to de- serve well of our country and of mankind. I trust that the installation of 1949 will be attended by a still greater as- sembly of students than I have the happiness now to see before me. That assemblage, indeed, may not meet in the place where we have met. These venerable halls may have disappeared. My successor may speak to your suc- cessors in a more stately edifice, in an edifice which, even among the magnificent buildings of the future Glasgow, will still be admired as a fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in the days of the good Queen Victoria. But though the site and the walls may be new, the spirit of the institution will, I hope, be still the same. My suc- cessor will, I hope, be able to boast that the fifth century of the University has even been more glorious than the fourth. He will be able to vindicate that boast by citing a long list of eminent men, great masters of experimental science, of ancient learning, of our native eloquence, orna- ments of the Senate, the pulpit, and the bar. He will, I hope, mention with high honour some of my young friends who now hear me ; and he will, I also hope, be able to add that their talents and learning were not wasted on sel- fish or ignoble objects, but were employed to promote the physical and moral good of their species, to extend the 30 THE OLD COLLEGE. < empire of man over the material world, to defend the cause of civil and religious liberty against tyrants and bigots, and to defend the cause of virtue and order against the enemies of all divine and human laws." Twenty years have barely elapsed since these words were spoken, yet a few months more will witness the real- ization of Lord Macaulay's prophecy. The rich old orchards, with their tempting fruitage and sunny slopes the shady avenues, where learned Professors loved to walk and meditate the cluster of mighty trees, in whose wide- spreading branches flourished a thriving colony of hoarse- throated crows all these have long since passed away. The Molendinar no longer wimples seaward fresh and pure, nor is the upper green sacred to flowers and science, only a few barren trees remaining sad remnants of its former glory. Those buildings, which the old chronicler thought " like unto a king's palace," seem to our modern eyes rather mean and dingy, and the halls where philoso- phers, scholars, statesmen and poets have taught and spoken will in a year or two echo with the voices of bust- ling officials, and the noisy pens of railway, clerks. Con- fident though we are that the future prosperity of our College will as much exceed that of its past as the new buildings exceed the old in architectural beauty, we can- not help casting a lingering look of fond regret on those old halls, so soon to be swept away. To us, in common with the majority of our readers, these halls and courts are associated with happy reminiscences of olden times, when arm in arm with some friendly class-mate we strolled through the old quadrangles, never dreaming of OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 31 the changes so soon to come. In anticipation of these changes we have written this hasty and imperfect sketch, a humble but loving tribute to the memory of our College. NOTE. It may be interesting to many of our readers to trace the steps by which the grounds of the Old College have been acquired. The first portion, acquired by gift from Lord Hamilton as men- tioned in the text, is described as "quoddam tenementum cum pertinenciis unacum quattuor acris terrarum mentis columbarum prope torrentem de Malyndonore contigue adjacentibus, quod quid- em tenementum jacet in Magno Vico descendente ab ecclesia Cathe- drali Glasguensi usque ad crucem Fori ex parte orientali ejusdem inter locum Fratrum Predicatorum ab australi parte et terrain Domini Thome Arthurle Capellani a parte boreali." This land comprehended two portions, first, the site of the original building, consisting of two courts, and covering about half an acre; and second, a garden of nearly four acres in the low part of the green, adjoining the Molen- dinar on the east, Arthurlie's lands on the north, the Friars Lane or Blackfriars Street on the south, and the Muyr Butts on the west. The two portions of ground were not adjacent to each other although of course there must have been means of access to the garden because in 1615 the Bishop of St. Andrews mortified to the College "a tenement lying between the College and its gardens." This tenement may have been identical with the Muyr Butts, and have extended all the way along the west side of the four acres. Between the Butts and the grounds of the Blackfriars preachers there was at one time a private lane or alley which led from the Friars Lane to the back of the College buildings. The next acquisition was the gift of Sir Thomas Arthurlie, men- tioned in the text, a long narrow strip of ground of about two acres adjoining the College on the north side. It extended along the Vicar's alley (the New Vennel) from High Street to the Molendinar. The front portion of this ground is now occupied by the Professors' Court. Arthurlie's lands cannot, however, have embraced the 32 THE OLD COLLEGE. whole of 'the new court,' because in 1632 "the few males and superiorities of the tenement of land and yeards lying betwixt the house belonging to David Rob and the New Vennel" were pur- chased from the Laird of Bedlay by Charles Morthland, Professor of Oriental Languages, on behalf of the College, who was also instructed to buy the property of the said tenement. It is stated in the same minute that six of the Professors' houses stood on this piece of ground. The portion last acquired seems to answer to the description of "the Paidagog or Colledge yaird," and the portion of Arthurlie's lands lying betwixt it and the College to the description of "the Auld Colledge Yaird," which at one time supplied the learned inmates of that august institution with Kail. The Chapter House and ground formerly belonging to the Friars were bestowed on the College in the time of Queen Mary. They are described as "the Manss and Kirkrowme of the Freris predica- toris within the citie of Glasgow with threttene aikers of land lyand besyde the samyn citie." The Friars predicatores were the Dominican or Black Friars, who are said to have been called the Friars Preachers on account of their frequent preaching. The Chapter House was nearly 200 years older than the College. It was succeeded by the College Kirk, which was afterwards trans- ferred by the College to the town in 1635. In 1618 the Chantry of St. Mungo, which we presume was a chapel set apart for the praise of that saint and had been connected with the old Chapter House, was acquired by purchase. It fronted the High Street and stood close by the site of the Principal's house. The chantry ground was retained and still forms part of the College grounds. If we can put any reliance on the descriptions in the Title Deeds, the gardens round the chapter house were at one time of the most luxuriant description. This is at least suggested by the name of "the Paradise yards," which, along with "the West Freir yarde, the Colhouse and Cloister Knot yardis," all lay "conjoinit with the greit orcharl, betuix the samyn and the kirk callit the Blackfriers' Kirk." The College was wont to let the orchard, as appears from the old rent-rolls, and we get some notion of what the ground pro- OUR OLD UNIVERSITY. 33 duced from a note appended to a document entitled "The Fencing of Muyr Darnlye and Craxtown, Colledge and Pedagog," to the following effect, "thefensing of the quheat, pets, beinis, grouand upoun the land in Dowhill maid the penult of Merche before Mr. Hew Fullarton at the Mercat Croce." This document seems to us to have been a kind of judicial allocation of the produce of the College garden between three tenants or rather three purchasers of the produce, because no rent is entered in the Rental of that time as derived from the garden, though it was let on lease shortly afterwards. The "threttene aikers of land besyde the citie" must have lain beyond the Molendinar. That portion of the green amounts to more than seven acres, and the property of the College beyond the wall of the green on the north-east extremity of it amounts to about six acres. The latter part has been feued for public works and the like. Taken together these two portions rather more than account for Queen Mary's gift. "The high green," in which the observatory long stood, was used as a private garden where the Professors might pursue their meditations undisturbed in the open air. This was also probably the "great garden for Botany and a Physic garden," which in 1 704 was improved and enclosed with a wall. The whole green was enclosed with a wall about the same time, for in 1696 the Uni- versity bought from the Minister and Session of the Barony Parish "part of the five-shilling-land of the Dowhill," called "the Grassum Lands," at the price of 1184 merks Scots, "the said Universitie being about to enclose the haill lands of the Dowhill in a park which they cannot convenientlie doe without enclosing the said Grassum lands." The Grassum lands must therefore have lain between the high green and the low green on the sloping banks of the Molen- dinar, where there was, and still is, a grove of trees. The name indicates that these lands were considered available for feuing pur- poses, and the probability of their having occupied this position is heightened by the fact that about the same time the University purchased some feus in the same line at its southern extremity. We have now accounted for the whole ground connected with the College, and shown, in sufficient detail, how and when it was ac- C 34 THE OLD COLLEGE. quired. We feel disposed to wind up with a reflection. Often have we heard of the 'grand uncertainty of the law,' often have we felt the delights of casuistry, but we never were more bewildered by con- tradictory statements, never more convinced of the vanity of conjec- ture, than in the case of the Muyr Butts. Did they ever exist ? If so, where did they lie ? What were they ? Why were they called Muyr Butts ? and why Butts f When the Editors are made Lord Rectors of the University, they will be happy to present with a gold medal any enterprising young historian who will give a satisfactory answer to these simple questions. Our own opinion is that the Muyr Butts were set apart for the practice of archery, and occupied the position we have indicated above. OLD ALICE. THEY told me they who went to see the play " Old Alice" was the part they liked the best, Played with simplicity which hid true art, Yet with a touching emphasis that made The louder more pretentious style seem poor. I went one night, but had forgot their comments, When, ere I knew, " Old Alice" quietly moved Into the scene. O time and change ! 'twas she Who in the dreamlike past of far off days Played all the youthful queens and every form Of unimagined loveliness ; 'twas she to whom Age seemed impossible, decay a jest, Whose radiant forehead and whose lips of love Made havoc with all hearts and most with mine ! GREEK ETHICS. 35 " Old Alice!" what has happened in those years That men should call thee so out of thy name ? Comes but to me that vision of thyself, Treasured so long, not knowing thou wert old, Comes but to me strange wonderment to trace Bright memories in those altered lineaments ! Yet now I look again thou art not old, For into autumn thou hast brought with thee The gleamy warmth and the ethereal grace Of summer hours, and if thy bright day wanes, A tender moonlight is around thee still Silvering the evening cloud with gentler ray ! Henry Glassford Bell. GREEK ETHICS. " I ASKED him why those slain in battle were allowed to remain unburied ?" He said it had always been the custom, but that he could not explain it. "But," I replied, "why should you disturb the bones of those whom you have already buried, and expose them on the outskirts of the town ? " " It was the custom of our forefathers," he answered ; "therefore we continue to observe it." " Have you no belief in a future existence after death ? 36 THE OLD COLLEGE. Is not some idea expressed in the act of exhuming the bones after the flesh is decayed?" " Existence after death ! How can that be ? Can a dead man get out of his grave unless we dig him out ? " " Do you think man is like a beast that dies and is ended ?" " Certainly : an ox is stronger than a man : but he dies and his bones last longer : they are bigger. A man's bones break quickly : he is weak." " Is not a man superior in sense to an ox ? has he not a mind to direct his actions." " Some men are not so clever as an ox. Men must sow corn to obtain food, but the ox and wild animals can procure it without sowing." "Do you not know that there is a spirit within you more than flesh ? Do you not dream and wander in thought to distant places in your sleep? Nevertheless your body rests in one spot. How do you account for this?" Commoro laughing, "Well, how do you account for it? It is a thing I cannot understand : it occurs to me every night." " Have you no idea of the existence of spirits superior either to man or beast ? Have you no fear of evil except from bodily causes ? " " I am afraid of elephants and other animals, when in the jungle at night, but of nothing else." " Do you see no difference in good and bad actions ? " " Yes, there are good and bad in men and beasts ? " GREEK E THICS. 3 7 " Do you think that a good man and a bad man must share the same fate and alike die and alike end?" " Yes : what else can they do ? how can they help dying ? good and bad all die." " Their bodies perish, but their spirits remain, the good in happiness, the bad in misery. If you have no belief in a future state why should a man be good ? Why should he not be bad if he can prosper by wickedness ? " " Most people are bad : if they are strong they take from the weak : the good people are all weak, they are good because they are not strong enough to be bad." Most readers of the dialogue in Sir Samuel Baker's book, from which the above sentences are taken, will admit that the savage Commoro has the best of the argu- ment, but his position represents the very crudest stage of Ethics, a stage further back than that to which we are referred by the earliest traditions of any civilized people. The sentiments and the practice of barbarous tribes are like fossilized remains of a pre-historic humanity in which " the traces of primaeval man appear," unless indeed they point to a falling away by isolation or a degeneration of the original type. Morality, as we find it in the oldest Hebrew and Oriental records, is already raised above the bare idea of individual strength might is right, in the most superficial sense by the influence of family ties and a trace of some religious or superstitious reverence. Morality in this form may be said to be born with man, and, as far back as we can read, it has advanced beyond the trenchant brutality of Commoro, although in utterly 38 THE OLD COLLEGE. sceptical or disorganized periods of social life, from the date of the Peloponnesian war to that of the French Revolution, and in the practice of the worst kind of men in all ages, it is apt to revert to that brutal type. But ethical speculation, properly so called, begins with Greece. The contemplative thought of the East was all wrapped up in her mythology. There was no step towards the gradual disentanglement of the different lines of investi- gation which forms so great a part of the history of the Hellenic mind. The East is in the main a majestic unity without the capacity of development, for all growth starts from some friction of ideas. The germs of art, philoso- phy and government cluster round her religion and do not fructify. Her sciences are buried in a mysterious Avorship. Her morality is confined to precepts of sub- mission. The motionless Theocracy of Brahminism and the self-annihilating idealism of Buddha end in the same stagnation. India is dominated by priests without pro- phets, and by schoolmen without science. In Greece first we have progression, activity and change : by her geography and the mixture of races on her soil, she is predestined for variety and freedom. The spirit of the East is the absorption of man in nature, that of Greece is " individuality conditioned by beauty." At the dawn of her civilization heroic fables take the place of a rigid dogma. Her Polytheism from the first contains more hope for the future than Orientalism, the conquest over which is typified in the overthrow of the Titans. The merely natural powers, symbolised rudely in Fetichism, more abstractly in the old Persian faith, are, at an early GREEK ETHICS. 39 date, subordinated to those which regulate and preside over human intelligence. Athene restraining the wrath of Achilles is already divine wisdom imposing a curb on the "passionate heart." I. It is an anachronism to look for an ethical system in Homer. There is endless matter for study in his writings but no philosophy. What we find mainly is a representation of the era of bodily nature, pictures of a time when manners plain and fierce were only tempered by a love of beauty. Everything is concrete ; there are ideas of excellence, transcending those of Commoro, but still generally associated with ideas of strength, of nobility and meanness, of truth, of courage, of reverence for the aged and for the gods, with a lament over the fact that men have become more unlike them ; but there is an uncertainty about the rules of right and wrong. Physical and moral qualities are confused : more deference is paid to a swift foot, a loud voice, a broad chest, than to self- command or justice. The Iliad turns on slighted honour, and Achilles, the finest model of offended chivalry, hates a lie more than the gates of hell, but Ulysses, the chief of all knights errant, is lauded for his ingenious wiles. Homer has not arrived at the conception of law as dis- tinct from an isolated command, and in his account of the divine attributes he is inconsistent. The jars of good and evil lie at the door of Zeus, even while he protests against men laying to this charge the fruits of their own recklessness. Hesiod's Boeotian pastoral depicts, with inferior genius, a state of society in advance of Homer's, a society in 40 THE OLD COLLEGE. which a half instinctive half patriarchal code of ethics is recognized. A sort of wisdom about life is beginning to grow up in the shape of proverbs and maxims, mostly prudential, partly sentimental. Hesiod and the seven sages (living at a time when the aristocratic element was beginning to succeed the old hereditary monarchies, and men's minds were groping their way, by aid of words, figures and fancies borrowed from the remnants of nature- worship on the one side and a half historic belief in gods and heroes on the other, from the world of sense to the world of thought), are the main sources of those simple lessons, many of which were employed by the later philo- sophers as texts to expand into an ampler meaning. Among those golden sentences were, /^Sev ayav, yv&O (reavrov, ^pr} TT/SOS TO reAos cr/coTreiv, TrAeov -fjfjiifrv Travros, with several others quoted in Plato, e.g., " The flocks of the just bear him fleeces, his trees bear him fruit." " Help your neighbour and he will help you." " Virtue is seated on a pleasant sward, but at the top of a steep rock to which a narrow path ascends." Much of the teaching of the gnomic poets is, like that of Solomon, in the same tone. The sanctity of an oath, the power of time, the charms of friendship, the respect due to parents, the authority of law and the certainty of retribution, were their prevailing topics expressed in yvw/zat or aphorisms from which they derived their name, and which were engraved on obelisks and erected in Athens by the Peisistratidae. To know those simple prudential maxims in their poetical form constituted a great part of the -IJ of Greece. If a Greek were asked what justice GREEK ETHICS. 41 was, he would naturally reply by quoting a line of Simonides or a verse of Solon. This morality was tolerably accurate but superficial. In Hesiod, however, and the best of the gnomic poets, there are traces of a deeper element. Among the veins of thought that traverse the old literature of Greece two are conspicuously opposed. The one represents our favourite modern ideal of the fresh Hellenic mind. Inspired by light air, bright suns and blue seas, it sings of " the dancing stars and the daedal earth." " Ver ubi longum tepidasque praebet Jupiter bru mas." Its mottoes are " Carpe diem," " Vivas in amore jocisque." This spirit, which pervades the more joyous myths, Homer's hymns, Anacreon's lyrics, the elegies of Mimnermus, the odes in Theocritus, is that of men dKrjSea OV/JLOV ex oVTS > with minds untouched by the pale cast of thought, but with senses, like those of children, alive to every impression of " this fair round world." On the shore they heard " old Triton blow his wreathed horn : " at dawn they saw the steeds of the rosy-fingered Eos "Arise And shake the darkness from their loosened manes And beat the twilight into flakes of fire." To them, " fleeting the time carelessly as in the golden age," beauty was truth, truth beauty, that was all they knew on earth, and all they cared to know. They made and worshipped the statues of Aphrodite, and enshrined 42 THE OLD COLLEGE. at Cyprus the religion of pleasure which was afterwards buried beneath the ruins of Pompeii. But, alongside of this strophe of exuberance, there is, almost from the first, an antistrophe of regret : in the earliest Greek poetry there is an occasional undertone, the feeling of imperfection and decay which darkens, like a deepening shadow, as we advance from the morning to the evening of the world. Even Homer looks back to his golden age : he anticipates the regrets of Sir Thomas Malory in the fifteenth of Mr. Froude in the nine- teenth century of Christendom : for the godlike force and freedom of the race have passed, we are assured, before the ten years war at Troy, and now on earth there breathes not nor creeps a more unhappy thing than man. " Ou fjiev yap TI TTOV ICTTLV oi^vputrepov IlavTwv oVcra re yalav em Trveiet, re KOLL In Hesiod this idea of diminished strength is refined into that of a fall from innocence and virtue. He com- plains of living in an iron world, faithless and full of ills, " IIAetij p.f.v yap yaia KO.KWV, TrXeiij 8e OdXacrcra^" over which there wander 30,000 spirits to punish unjust deeds. Theoguis, the most melancholy of the gnomic poets, declares " It were better for men not to have been born at all, or if born the next best is to go as soon as possible to Hades," and Hades in his mind was a gloomy realm. "OuSeis dv9p(a7T(i)V, ov Trptar 1 lirl yala KaXv\jrr) Eis T' "E/)e/3os KarajBy, Sahara IIe/Dcre^)ovr;s, TepTrerai 6'vre \vprjaywvo? avev i^oyov, is a square without reproach or blot Injustice is the disturbance of the balance which the moralist has to set even by the avTi7re7rov#os, " the good old rule, the simple plan," of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth which belongs to the infancy of every civilization. Similarly friendship was defined as an equality of communities, and the rubric Trdvra TO, t\(i)v Kowa was adopted. If the golden verses are Pythagorean some of their practical precepts are remark- able. " Avoid hatred never hurt others bear wrongs GREEK ETHICS. 45 with patience." "Discord born with mortals wounds them mortally, we should flee from it and give it place." " Men are the artizans of their own misfortunes." " Do not abandon yourself to sleep before examining three times the actions of the day." The Metempsychosis was a logical deduction from the view of the soul as incorporeal and yet requiring a body as a garment ; it may have been suggested by some of the mysteries which undoubt- edly left some impression on early Greek morality. Those of Orpheus and Eumolpus appear to have taught the doctrine of a future life, of rewards and punishments, and the need of an expiation for guilt, all which ideas are prominent in Pythagoras. But his system, like these mysteries, was framed too much on the Oriental model to keep its place as a whole in the heart of Hellas. His half theocratic society pushed its rules to the verge of tyranny ; its castes, its secrecy and its vows of obedience were adapted to make believers rather than philosophers. The destruction of the Pythagorean political institute, which Plato vainly endeavoured to revive, may be taken as a symbol of the expulsion of the eastern element which up to that time still clung about the mind of Greece. Democritus, the most illustrious exponent, if not the founder of the Atomistic philosophy, opposed to the pre-existing idealisms a complete system of sensational morality, which again advanced on that of Pythagoras in giving, however inconsistently, a higher place to the in- dependent action of the individual. Many of its practical maxims, as " Temperance sharpens pleasure," " Courage 46 THE OLD COLLEGE. is spoiled by its excess," " Never wish for anything absurd," are commonplace; others are more suggestive, as "When thou art alone act as if in a crowd, respecting thyself," " Good turns to evil in ill-regulated minds," " TO fj,ri aSt/cctv TO /tif ZOeXeiv." " In the whirl of necessity man is only half a slave." The spirit of mystery driven from Greece proper found a refuge in Sicily, and took form at a somewhat later date in the motley rhapsodies of the eclectic poet and sage Empedocles. In his scheme of the universe the Pythagorean dualism reappears in the two powers, Love and Hate, and the notion of two worlds, that in which we at present dwell, marred by ignorance and strife, and that from which we have lapsed, the realm of truth and rest : the Eden, the Elysium, the Faery Land of fancy. As the penalty of former guilt, man is doomed u Tfk p-vpias <$pafj.evov e'/epev, and yet even Pindar speaks 48 THE OLD COLLEGE. of their envy. The ruling idea in what we may call the Religion of Herodotus, is the inevitable chastisement of everything which passes the bound of moderation. All excess, too much happiness, too much pride, too much cruelty, or too much greatness, calls down an arbitrary Nemesis, which, acting on a gigantic scale like Thrasy- bulas and Tarquin, lops off the heads of all the tall poppies " n^i/3ovo)v TIV' e/ca/^e fSporwv " it is a process of theological ostracism keeping the lives of men within limit, like the voices of a chorus. " Mark," the historian, puts into the mouth of Artabanus, the counsellor who stands by the throne of Xerxes like the slave in the Roman car, " Mark how the God 6 0eos dashes down animals of surpassing size, and does not suffer them to make a vaunt of their strength while he leaves the little ones unharmed ! Mark how his bolts are launched against the tallest trees ! He delights in laying the ex- alted low, and has smitten and destroyed with terror many a mighty host, for God permits no one but Himself to call himself great." With this reference we may close our survey of the mythological aspects of early Greek morality. The reflex partly of national, partly of individual feeling, they exhibit all the inconsistencies of a transition stage of thought, when the more primitive polytheism of Homer's time was beginning to give place to abstract views of man and nature ; what is true in them has been absorbed in the religion, what is false lingers in the superstitions of our own day. Of the practical life of the Greeks during this period we have few details; such as there are, GREEK ETHICS. 49 point to a gradual softening of the manners of the heroic age, to a gracefully sensuous rather than a grossly sensual existence, seldom ennobled by very lofty examples or disfigured by atrocious crimes, to a gradual merging of the .idea of the family in that of the state. In the infancy of science there are few distinctions. We have seen Ethics formalised and stiffened by mathematics on the one side, and merged on the other in a mystic theology : it was also confounded with Law, and this con- fusion prevailed so long that moral were never clearly separated from positive obligations till the time of the Stoics. With us^Law is commonly regarded as a gra- dually inducted standard, bearing the authority of a long experience, but requiring to be administered or even modified with reference to the requirements of each successive generation. The Greeks, like the Hebrews, were more accustomed to regard it as a sort of inspir- ation, or divine ordinance issued for the regulation of their lives. Their legislators Solon, Lycurgus and Xaron- das were ministers of the decrees of Themis This idea, together with the prominence given to the fact of citizen- ship by the smallness of their states, helped to elevate valour and loyalty above the other virtues and fostered the habit of referring to written law as the supreme sanction of morality. The first clear recognition of the insufficiency of this standard, and of the possible conflict between the higher and lower law, is the famous answer of Antigone to Creon. "Those laws of thine were ordained neither in Heaven nor by the justice of the nether world ; nor have they any power to override the D 50 THE OLD COLLEGE. unwritten and immutable decrees of God aypaTrra /cdcr- $01X17 6>ea)v vo/*i//,a." Sophocles is perhaps the most modern in spirit of the Greek poets, the life of his dramas is at once more complex and more refined than that represented in the pages of his predecessors, he dwells more on the delicate play of the affections and appeals throughout to subtler sentiments his women come nearer to our hearts than those of the medieval Romances, and we have, particularly in the " Coloneus," frequent instances of that emotional interpretation of natural scenery which is comparatively rare in ancient art. He was not wholly unaffected by the traditions of the era that was passing, for his religion is pervaded by the sentiment of the Herodotean Nemesis : but with him the innocent who fall protest their innocence, in his scheme of life the energy and will of man wrestle with the irony of Fate, and the higher principles which he maintained had to fight for their acknowledgment with the sceptical tendencies of his own and the next gener- ation. II. There comes a time in the history of men and nations when the hereditary beliefs of life are put on their trial : the canons of taste, religion and morals which have been hitherto accepted blindly are revised in a spirit of antagonism, all formulae are questioned, old errors and old truths are thrown overboard together : there is a reaction of incredulity and irreverence. Such were the phenomena which introduced the second stage of Greek thought in the middle of the fifth century, B.C., and of this spirit the Sophists were the accredited ex- GREEK ETHICS. ponents. Like the Tyrants who preceded them in the political world, they were conductors of a transition ; they replaced the poets and rhapsodists in their influence on the national mind and fore-ran the more systematic philosophers of real life. Before their era philosophy had stood apart in the "fallentis semita vita" It was developed in little schools in remote corners of the Hellenic world. Now, for the first time, the pressure of a great foreign war had done what common councils and feasts had failed to do in making Greece a nation. The thought of Pythagoras and Thales became her thought, and in Athens, the Prytany of wisdom, the insufficiency of their isolated and abstract views of the universe was made apparent through their mutual contradiction. The scepticism which had been fructifying in the heart of the old mythology pervaded the epoch of the Sophists, all the previous speculations had been leading up to it. The condition of mind of Adeimantus, in Book II. of Plato's Republic, was the natural result of the preceding argument which is an epitome of the tentative and con- jectural stage of Greek ethics. The early gnomes had been found wanting. The philosophies had clashed. The laws had lost their majesty. The rites of expiation were bought and sold. The tears of Heraclitus and the laughter of Democritus expressed the same despair. One thing remained the art of life, good management, prudence and the proper use of words in influencing men. Eloquence was power : truth itself a mode of speech, 6v (j>vo-L dAAa vo/ivo-ews, the study of nature for the study of man. He GREEK ETHICS. 55 admitted that the earlier thinkers had let go the reins of thought, that they had neglected to test their instrument, that their systems were dissolved in a maze of obscurity. Philosophy must be brought down to earth and carried " home to men's hearts and bosoms. " The search in which Thales and Parmenides had gone astray, which the Sophists had resigned, must be renewed under better auspices. The self-satisfaction which filled up the void of wisdom with words must be exchanged for a con- fession of ignorance. Before proceeding one step on the way to knowledge we must know what we know and what we do not know at starting. Socrates made the old maxim yv&Oi o-eavrov the foundation of a new psycho- logical method, and turned to a different use the principle of Protagoras. Like the Sophists he started with a o-Kr^ts: but it was pot the scepticism which is pre- determined to deny : it was rather, like the Cartesian doubt, the spirit which proves all things and holds fast by that which is good ; a negative in answer to a negative the result was positive. While endeavouring to reestablish the old reverences, he held himself bound to the higher when it came into conflict with the lower law. " If you were to offer to dismiss me on such conditions I would exclaim, O Athenians I regard you with the utmost respect and affection, but I shall obey God rather than you." To all mere rules of expediency he opposed a firm belief in the aypairra vop//,a 0ewi/, and their reflection in a single standard of right, inherent in and recognizable by the mind. Behind all physical phenomena he held, with Anaxagoras, the unity of a supreme power governing 56 THE OLD COLLEGE. the world and directing all things for the best. Behind all " passions, thoughts, desires," and all the complexities of human life he maintained the internal presence of the same deity. He erred, as Plato did after him, by failing to recognize the will as a distinct factor of action. His rubric 'Emo-n^ 17 dpe-n?, virtue is knowledge, is in one point of view the assertion of a rational morality, as a science and not merely an art, in opposition to the idea that freedom consists in acting at random. It implied that the highest functions of the soul work harmoniously, that the laws of the good, the true and the beautiful meet if we trace them far enough. But Socrates did not appreciate the force of the truth enunciated first by Aristotle, that one may see the right end and yet reject the right means to attain to it. " Video mdiora proboque deteriora sequor" The knowledge of good and evil was to him the tree of life and " eritis sicut dei" was in his mind no satire. Before his age, he was yet a Greek, and a taint of intellectual assumption went along with his modesty. His sympathies though intense were limited. His practical morals were simple : his temperance was the ability to endure hunger and cold and thirst, his justice an obedience to written and unwritten laws. Happiness being among his ends of life, he was not a Stoic, though we can trace the germ of Stoicism in his death and his frequent injunction that we should make ourselves independent of circumstances. There is a true way of interpreting this, there should be a citadel in the mind unshaken by the waves of fortune. There are two false ways : when we float down the stream of life singing GREEK ETHICS. 57 with our English Anacreon "gather ye roses while ye may" or when we stand apart from other men "in im- potence of fancied pride." The Cyrenaic among the imperfect schools that sprang from Socrates took the first of those false views and lapsed into a crude Epicu- reanism. Their motto " /AOVO^/JOVOS ^Sovr/," " p,rj TT/OO- Ka/xvv," was, in an irreligious sense, take no thought of the morrow, let us eat and drink and die. The Cynics took the second, and holding that virtue was dvrapK^s 7T/30S evSai/iovtav, mistook self-confidence for virtue, aban- doned their duties to their fellows, wrapped themselves up in an embittered wisdom and ended in approximating to the life of the brutes. Diogenes the Cynic was a maimed parody of Socrates : half Mentor, half Thersites, he went barking through the city which patriots were trying in vain to save from Macedon. PLATO was the heir of all the ages of Greek thought up to his time, and he gave to that thought its highest expression. He fused down and remodelled the poly- theistic poetry of Greece in his apologues and his myths. From the Ionic school he borrowed part of his cosmo- logy. He applied the Heraclitean flux to his theory of phenomenal existence. He took his immutable ideas from the Eleatics, dipping the colourless abstractions of Parmenides in an ethical dye and endeavouring to bridge over the gulf that separated them from life. From Pythagoras he derived his belief in the omnipresence of the laws of number, his notion of a philosophic polity and his conception of order as the standard of the moral and mental universe. In his earlier dialogues the 58 THE OLD COLLEGE. Metempsychosis appears in connection with the v??o-is of a past existence : in the Gorgias and Republic it is refined into a faith in immortality. Plato's ethics are on one side connected with his metaphysics as pre- sided over by the Supreme Idea, his loftiest abstraction. On the other they are closely interwoven with his politics. His perfect man is the perfect ruler of his ideal state. In many respects his morality is singularly modern : the highest thoughts of (Eschylus, Pindar and Sophocles pass into it freed from their former limitations. He has discarded the crude notions of the Nemesis, of retaliation, of external motives generally and without seeking, as the Neo Platonists did, to annihilate the body, he places it in constant subordination to the soul. In the "Republic" he tells us that God, simple and true without change or shadow of turning is the source of good only, never of evil, but that the wicked need chastening and owe gratitude to the Deity for its remedial power. " As for the just man if he fall into poverty or disease or anything that seems evil, we must know that all these things work together for good to him whether he be dead or alive : for he who exerts himself to practise justice and virtue and so become like the gods is never by them neglected." In the Theatetus he declares " Evil is necessary but with the Gods there is no evil : therefore we ought as soon as may be to take flight to their company, the means of flight being unceasing efforts to become like them." In the Crito and again in the Republic he protests against returning evil for evil, as "justice can never consist in doing an injury to any GREEK ETHICS. 59 one." In the Symposium he says " Men are willing to have their feet and hands cut off if these seem to them to be evil, for what they love at heart is good. Lovers not only men, but even women, are ready to die for one another." In the Phaedrus we have this, of a former life, " Being initiated and beholding visions perfect, simple and happy in the pure light, pure ourselves as yet un- clothed with this body* which we carry about with us, the source of wars and strife, to which we are bound as an oyster to his shell," and in the Laws the following, " Self conquest is the greatest of victories TO VLKO.V avrov S.ITOV 7raox3j/ viKtav irpurrri re KOI dpia-rrj for there is a war in our members against ourselves;" "Ignorance is an evil, but bad cleverness is worse;" "The cause of all our blunders arises from our believing that it is right to love ourselves ;" " Let no one speak ill of another." Reading such passages as these we are apt to say that ages before the introduction of Christianity Plato was almost per- suaded to be a Christian : but like Homer he is uncertain and contradictory. His Theism is still tinged with mythology ; even his God is not master of the Fates. His psychology is defective in failing to take account of the will or to discriminate sufficiently between the moral and the purely intellectual parts of our nature. The range of his sympathy like that of all the Greeks is limited to Greece. No one makes a more contemptuous or more frequent use of the word barbarian. It has not even occurred to him, that slavery needs a defence, or that men and women of every rank may have equal rights. 60 THE OLD COLLEGE. III. ARISTOTLE whose writings introduce the third stage of Greek ethics was to all intents a pupil of Plato. He borrows illustrations from his master almost in every page, and accepts with little or no modification many of his leading ideas. They are at one in their conception of the Chief Good as something self-complete, TtXeiov Kdt avra/o/ces, in their intellectual views of virtue, in the importance they attach to education, in their manner of regarding Pleasure -and Friendship. But after this begins a contrast. Their styles of writing are opposed, in place of dramatic effect and poetical allusion we find in Aristotle definite logical formulae and a regular system. He first marks off the sciences from one another, and assigns to them their separate provinces and methods. In the sphere of speculation he is more transcendental than his predecessor : his metaphysics having no connec- tion with real life. In the field of practice he is more definite, more ready to enter into details, and more willing to be guided by circumstances or by opinion. Aristotle's politics are more modern than Plato's : his theology is less so. He has cut the Past and abandoned the attempt to reconcile a philosophical belief with the traditions and instincts of ordinary men. When he talks of the Greek Gods it is a merefafvn deparler: his own Supreme Deity is a power almost without personality, voryo-t? vo^o-ews. He removes the Platonic basis of morality in religion, and substitutes another founded partly on the nature of the human mind, partly on the good of society. His Psychology distinguishes more clearly the different faculties, gives greater prominence GREEK ETHICS. 61 to the force of habit, and separates the will from the reason, though owing to his still confusing it with Desire he is only able to raise without being able to settle the question of its freedom. He distinctly asserts the supe- riority of the moral to the written law, " 'E Kvpnartpoi KO.I Trepl Kvpuareptav TWV Kara ypdfj.fji.aTa vop-iov 6t Kara ra fdrj eitriv" but his views regarding the ultimate founda- tion of the former are still fluctuating. His Ethics are the porch to his Politics, and in the latter he fails to advance beyond the conception of a well regulated Greek state, limited in extent, and still upheld by the institution of slavery, for which, however, he thinks it necessary to apologise. He inherits from Plato, and helps to perpetu- ate, the erroneous political and moral economy which regards the prosperity of one nation as a deduction from the prosperity of another, a view which, under the name of the balance of power, still formularizes the selfishness of our own day, and which, only a few years ago, helped to intensify our insular distrust of the great western war of liberation. While admitting that various forms of government are adapted to various stages of civilization, he still appeals to the lawgivers of his race with an exaggerated confidence. His virtues are all more or less political. They are controlled by the idea of limitation, which presided over Hellenic thought in all its phases from the time of Pythagoras to that of Zeno. Their motive is the KaAoV, a conception which is, like the law of honour in the age of chivalry, partially moral, and largely aesthetic : their end evScu/iovta, an exalted standard, but still a standard of happiness, into which duty in the 62 THE OLD COLLEGE. modern sense of the word scarcely enters. Let us take as a compendium of Aristotle's view of life his descrip- tion of a perfect character the magnanimous man in whom he tells us all the virtues, temperance, courage, liberality, justice, and wisdom are combined in a /coV/^os. " At the extreme of greatness he holds the mean in acting with regard to its conditions. He aims at the highest honour, and receives it calmly as his due. Dishonour cannot touch him, nor fortune, fair or foul, disturb his equanimity. Little distinctions as the prizes of wealth and petty power he contemns, and cares not for them to run into little dangers, but for a great end he is prodi- gal of life itself. He likes to grant, and dislikes to receive or to be reminded of favours. If any one lays him under obligation, he will over-repay the benefit, and so regain the superior place. He will play second-fiddle to no man. To those in rank his glance is stern and high : to the lowly he waives a little of his claim. Fearless and true he knows no concealment, save in irony, and is open alike in his love and hate. He flatters not nor bears a grudge, for 'tis beneath his dignity to remember evil. He is no gossip, nor cares he to enquire after blame or praise. He always prefers honour to gain. His gait is slow and stately, his voice is deep, and his enunciation deliberate." There are heroic elements in this Athenian beau-ideal who speaketh no evil and murmureth not, but there are others almost mean, almost ridiculous. What self-com- placency, what contempt, what a strut, what an amount of "leather and prunella" there is in this high-souled GREEK ETHICS. 63 man ! He hates to be reminded of favours. He will have the superior place. His voice is deep and his enunciation deliberate ! How many of his characteristics are to be found in Milton's Lucifer. Let us turn to this other model in old Decker's play " The best of men That ere wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, humble, patient tranquil spirit The first true gentleman that ever breathed." Or even look back to Plato's King who is called a star- gazer and a babbler by the multitude, whose heart and treasure are laid up in Heaven, whose vision is bent away from earthly honours towards the celestial city ev Ao-yois Kfifj.fvrj, who is content if he can live "integer viti> KCU avOpwiro^op^tav which he calls divine. But these exist alone as visions or " they lie beside their nectar careless of mankind," for the gods of Epicurus are themselves Epicureans. " Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est Immortal! sevo summa cum pace fruatur Semota a nostris rebus sejunctaque longe ; Nam privata dolore omni privata periclis Ipsa suis pollens opibus nihil incligna nostri Nee bene promeritis capitur nee tangitur ira. " The Lucretian Ethics are not wholly indefensible; most ordinary lives even now run far beneath their level, but they are deficient in philanthropy and devoid of faith. To the philosopher they are the apotheosis of a refined and elevated selfishness ; to the many their theories are " glorious insufficiencies," their practice was inevitably degraded into the worship of pleasure. Let us contrast with the above hexameters the following extract from the hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes, that hymn to Jupiter which has been called the most devotional fragment of antiquity. "All deformities Their proper nature lose in wisdom's plan, Merged in the bland disposal of thy love, Which tempers evil to a higher good ; Do thou dark Dweller in the clouds correct Our wandering wishes, counteract their end, Protect us from our own insanity, And chase the perilous darkness of the soul." Here we have more of the celestial light and the belief in a Providence: but, as the Epicurean doctrine inclined to GREEK ETHICS. 67 Atheism, there is a latent Pantheism in the Stoic and a fatalistic tendency. "Lead me Zeus and Destiny," is the prayer of Epictetus " whithersoever I am appointed to go I will follow without questioning : even though I turn coward and shrink I shall have to follow." The STOICS made a step forward both in practical and in speculative Ethics. Their psychology gave a fresh prominence to the discussion of the human will, and on this subject they arrived at a theory of determinism, similar to that which has been recently revived. They approached the con- ception of duty. Their scheme first transcended nation- alities, and the extent to which it ignored artificial distinctions appears in the fact that one of their sages was a slave. Their rules of life were lofty if one-sided. Their wise man, like Plato's philosopher, has put pain and pleasure and all the accidents of a day beneath his feet. King, priest, and prophet by divine right, living in just conformity with nature, or, as Clarke expressed a similar modern thought, with the eternal fitness of things, he is such "ut nee tabescat molestiis, nee frangitur timore, nee sitienter quid expetens ardeat desiderio, nee alacritate futili gestiens deliquescat" The two great maxims of Stoicism Ave^ov and ATTC^OV ; bear up against sorrow, sin and death ; keep your soul un- spotted and make your mind a kingdom to yourself, are the heroic refrains of great moralists in all ages from Cleanthes to Fichte. But with a semblance of nobility, it is false through the exaggeration of a narrow view. fo become strong the Stoic destroyed the sources of tality, as the despot destroys the freedom he cannot 68 THE OLD COLLEGE. rule and calls the solitude peace. His j:qnception of Order was extinction of a full third of our nature. The Puritan of antiquity, he set up an aristocracy of character as exclusive as the aristocracy of race and birth which he had demolished, and prided himself on his monopoly of Reason as the modern Calvinist on his monoply of grace. His Abstinence, like that of all ascetics was, even when, as it seldom is, consistent and sincere, apt to become a Stylites pillar of self-glorification. Cato's conceit, like that of Artisthenes, shone through the rags of his tunic as he strutted across the Forum. Stoicism was a bridge between ancient and modern thought. It first maintained, in opposition to the view of Aristotle, " there are many things diviner than man," the view of Kant "the only great thing is his moral will." In it first the soul as distinct from the intellect tried to probe the mystery of existence. But, like Monasticism, it taught its followers to think too much about their own souls, and, like Neoplat- onism, degenerated into a " meditatio mortis." Never- theless the old Stoic trying to live again the life of an imaginary republic under the regime of Commodus and Petronius Arbiter was a noble protest against luxury, scepticism, sycophancy and corruption. Pagan morality dies grandly with Marcus Aurelius, nor has Christian morality, on one side at least, gone far beyond him. Let us open his book, " One man, when he has done a service to another is ready to set it down to his account as a service rendered. Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor and he knows what he has done. A third does GREEK ETHICS. 69 not even jgiggLjvdiatLJieJias-xione^..but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit;" again "When thou hast_assumed these names good, modest, true, rational, equal minded, magnanimous, take care that thou dost not change them, fix thyself in the possession of them and abide in them as if thou wast removed to the Happy Islands." " What an affinity," exclaims Mr. Arnold who has quoted these sentences, " What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor of the Christians, its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice were the very elements for which his soul longed : they were near him, he touched them, he passed them by. Could he have read the Sermon on the Mount what would have become of his notions of the exitiabilis superstitio of the Christians ? Vain question : yet the charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise and just, self- governed, tender, thankful, blameless : yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond ' tendentemque manus ripa ulterioris amore. ' " IV. This well-balanced yet eloquent appreciation is the more valuable because of its contrast with criticisms of a different stamp. It is a common practice to steal the best thoughts of the ancients, and then to revile their authors and disparage the ages in which they wrote. We abuse our hosts when drunk with their own wine. Moral corruption doubtless prevailed widely among the nations of the Pagan world, but it prevails widely among ourselves, and we have no evidence to show that the general practice of the Greeks fell further short of their 70 THE OLD COLLEGE. theories than that of England or France does of the standards which they have agreed to uphold. To rake among the kennels * of the lower empire for abominations in evidence against the philosophy of Plato and the Antonines is no less preposterous than it would be to appeal to the story of the Levite's wife as an example of the inefficacy of the Jewish Decalogue, or to point to the monstrosities of medievalism, the disgraces of the Papacy, the horrors of the Inquisition, or the immoral carnivals of Munster and Oneida Creek as a reproach to the creed of Christendom itself. It does not, however, follow because the average manner of life at Athens was probably on a par with that of Paris or New York, that Ethics have remained stationary. Mr. Mill indeed complains that "our modern morality is in great part a protest against Paganism," that "its ideal is negative rather than positive," and that "in some respects it falls below the best morality of the ancients." This is partially correct. ^Owing to the greater complexity of our civilization some of the ancient virtues have fallen into abeyance. These are mainly such as were fostered by the patriotism of a small Greek state, as Friendship, Liberality for its own sake, a com- parative scorn of mere money-making, the disinterested regard for the Commonweal and the love of Simplicity which characterises the best days of the Roman Republic : to which we may add the love of Speculative Truth which grew in part out of the free discussions of the schools, and was repressed when their influence was superseded by * See the article on Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity in the North British Review for Dec., 1867. GREEK ETHICS. 7' thatjjf authoritative dogmas._ With ourselves too much is apt to be made of obedience to certain restrictions, what Heinrich Heine calls " melancholy abstinence from the joys of this beautiful Jife," too little of participation in its active duties. There is too much talk about self- sacrifice^ too little practice of self-reliance. The sloth of old age is the accompanying drawback of its decorum, and the temptations to hypocrisy and moral cowardice often increase as those to excess diminish. Men have become less like tigers more like sheep. On the other hand we have made in some directions a great advance. "Another race hath been and other palms are won. " Our Ethics though still prone to be Stoical in theory, Epicurean in practice, are animated by new aspirations and sustained by firmer hopes. History and Science have in many respects enlarged and elevated our morality. A^ broader 'freedom, a deeper sense of veracity and honour, regard for purity, and consideration for weakness, came from the German forests to renovate the stagnation of the Italian plains, to help to destroy slavery and begin to raise woman, for the first time, to her rank in the 'scale of society.J Physical discovery has at a later date thrown fresh light on the laws which regulate the health of body and mind. It has also impressed us with the idea of progress " the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns" an idea everywhere contrasted with the finality which everywhere marked the theories and the practice, the science and the art of the ancient world. For the Parthenon, the Apollo Belvidere, the Antigone, Aristotle's Ethics, it has given us in exchange Gothic Cathedrals, 72 THE OLD COLLEGE. Raphael's Madonnas, Shakespeare and Dante, Words- worth listening to the "mighty waters," Kant's apostrophe to the stars, a sense of incompleteness, combined with a faith in expansion without end. " To day's brief passion limits their range, It seethes with the morrow for us and more. " Much is also due to the influence of Religion. Morality is not indeed necessarily based on any particular creed. The near approach to identity in the practical precepts of Buddism, of the Talmud, of Christianity, of Platonism, and of the Pantheism of Spinoza, establishes the existence of ethical standards, independent of, and compatible with very various forms of belief : but neither are they entirely unrelated : for their spheres intersect although they do not coincide. A low morality is almost certain to ac- company a degrading superstition, and we need not look for high standards of life among the fellow savages of Commoro or the image worshippers of Naples. The undogmatic Christianity of the Gospels is the great lever of modern Ethics. By indefinitely extending their arena, and setting forth motives of action, at once lofty and generally appreciable, it offers to do for the whole world what the schools only professed to do for their selected followers. The cardinal difference between ancient and modern moral systems is the comparative exclusiveness of the one, the universality of the other. The Platonic virtues in their highest form can only be understood or fully practised by the golden race who minister in the temple of his Hellenic state. The Aristotelean magna- GREEK ETHICS. 73 nimity and magnificence are prerogatives of a well-edu- cated Athenian citizen. Stoicism, which broke down the walls of race and rank and wealth, was still fenced with intellectual pride, and the capacity of rightly interpreting its precepts was confined to a few. Ancient morality was more or less artistic : it regarded a perfect life as the blooming of natural excellencies, the development of natural powers like heat and light, rarely as obedience to a law, and, with both good and bad results, dwelt on the quality of the action rather than the merit of the actor. It preferred a constitutionally noble nature to the self conquest that is the result of an internal combat, the "beautiful disdain" that recoils from evil as from ugli- ness to the sainthood that subdues " the world, the flesh, and the devil." Christianity in giving prominence to the latter conceptions added to ethics the side which is most capable of being brought to bear on the mass of men. It first announced a Heaven willing to stoop to feeble virtue and " lit up morality," with an inspiration in which all may be partakers. The Religion of Pleasure was for the wise ; the Religion of JPain was for the strong : the common end of both was Egotism. The_ReIigion of Love, transcending the old barriers of family and tribe and nation, is for all who are " toiling, rejoicing, sorrow- ing " on the highways and byeways of life : it addresses itself, not to contemplate, but to aid " the strife of poor humanity's afflicted will." To the old philosophers a future world assumed at best the form of an alternative. Plato himself was half conscious of the invalidity of his proofs of its existence, and felt the want of a raft to float 74 THE OLD COLLEGE. him down the sea of his thought. Glaucon in the Republic is made to wonder at the new revelation Kat 6's lfj.(3Xtya