JBRARY

NIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA

BAN DIEGO

TYPES OF
GREAT LITERATURE

CHOSEN BY
PERCY HAZEN HOUSTON, PH.D.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SOUTHERN BRANCH

AND

JOHN KESTER BONNELL, PH.D.

LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH,
GOUCHER COLLEGE

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1927

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATE*

AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, CARPEN CITT, N. Y.

PREFACE

"I cannot be interested in life; I care nothing for human beings and their ideas and
emotions."

No one ever says just that. And yet that is just what is implied whenever any one
says, as young people frequently say, " I am not interested in literature." The intended
implication is, of course, that the speaker is not interested in literature but is interested
in life, in people. But literature is life: life reflected in a crystal mirror, life not of the
passing crowd merely, but of many epochs and of various lands, the teeming life, the
many-colored character of man. Through it one may know ultimately some of the
greatest minds that the race has produced, and through it, consequently, one's exper-
ience of life and human nature may be enriched as through no other means.

Literature, moreover, is one of the supreme achievements by which a nation shows
its greatness. When all else that counted for greatness has returned to dust and obliv-
ion, that nation is called great and famous which has left the mark of its spirit upon
posterity through great literature. Why does Europe still reverence the ancient
Greeks? Why do English speaking people remember with pride "The spacious times
of great Elizabeth"? The answer is found in the poets.

Such thoughts as these impelled the editors of this book when they ransacked the
ages for proper representatives of the several types of literature. Their problem was,
within the covers of one volume, to supply an opportunity for direct acquaintance with
masterpieces. To avoid elaborate historical outlines and critical entanglements, while
at the same time ranging free from the cramping limits of periods and lands, they de-
cided to present the material grouped according to types. The drama, the novel, and
the short story are omitted because it is felt, on the one hand, that they cannot so well
be represented by excerpts as some other types, and on the other hand, that they are
far more readily accessible to the general reader.

This book is an introduction. It does not pretend to be an Aladdin's cave of in-
exhaustible treasure, nor yet a completely representative selection of the world's literary
gems. It is, rather, a gate, that gives upon the main highways of letters. The editors
have sought in each of the several types to present what is excellent and representative ;
but they have sought, also, to present selections that would command the enthusiasm
of impatient youth. They have kept in mind the generous spirit of those who are
interested less in letters than in life. It is hoped that each reader will find at least one
of the main highways leading from this gate sufficiently attractive to pursue beyond it.

ANNAPOLIS, 28 June, 1919.

CONTENTS

I. EPIC AND ROMANCE

HCMER

Iliad, VI 3

Odyssey, XXI, XXII (part). ... 12
VIRGIL

^Eneid, II 26

DANTE

Inferno, VIII, IX 42

MILTON

Paradise Lost, I, II 47

BEOWULF

Episode of Grendel's Mother ... 66
THE SONG OF ROLAND

Death of the Peers at Roncesvalles. . 71

NlBELUNGENLIED

Episodes of Siegfried and Kriemhild . 76
MALORY

The Death of Arthur 93

II. NARRATIVE POETRY

BURNS

Tarn O'Shanter 101

BYRON

Don Juan, Canto II (the shipwreck) . 103
TENNYSON

The Last Fight of the "Revenge" . .118
BROWNING

Herv6 Riel 120

ARNOLD

Sohrab and Rustum 122

LANIER

The Revenge of Hamish 136

III. THE BALLAD

The Popular Ballad

Edws.rd 139

The Three Ravens 140

Thomas Rymer 140

Sir Patrick Spens 141

Bonny Barbara Allan 141

Johnie Armstrong 142

The Daemon Lover 143

Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne . . 144

Modern Imitations of the Ballad
KEATS

La Belle Dame Sans Merci .... 147
ROSSETTI

Sister Helen 147

IV. LYRIC POETRY

FAGS

ANONYMOUS

Jolly Good Ale and Old 152

SIDNEY

Sonnet XXXI 152

PEELE

Fair and Fair, and Twice so Fair . . 152
DRAYTON

The Ballad of Agincourt .... 153
SHAKESPEARE

Songs, and Sonnets 154

WOTTON

Character of a Happy Life . . . . 15$

D F KKER

The Happy Heart 158

BEN JONSON

Song to Celia 158

Hymn to Diana 158

JOHN FLETCHER

Melancholy 159

WITHER

The Lover's Resolution 159

HERRICK

Upon Julia's Clothes 159

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time. 160

To Daffodils 160

An Ode for Ben Jonson 160

SHIRLEY

The Glories of Our Blood and State . 160

WALLER

Go, Lovely Rose 161

MILTON

Sonnet (On His Blindness) .... 161

SUCKLING

The Constant Lover 161

Why So Pale and Wan 161

LOVELACE

To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars . . 162
To Althea, from Prison ..... 162

VAUGHAN

The World 162

DRYDEN

Alexander's Feast 163

GRAY

Elegy Written in a Country Church-
yard 165

BURNS

Highland Mary 167

Bonnie Doon 168

Scots WhaHae 168

A Man's a Man for a' That . . . . 168

Lines to John Lapraik 169

To a Mouse ........ 169

Vlll

CONTENTS

WORDSWORTH PAGK

The Prelude, from Book I .... 170

Tintern Abbey 171

The Solitary Reaper 173

Ode to Duty 173

Character of the Happy Warrior . . 174

Westminster Bridge 175

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and

Free 175

The World is Too Much with Us . .175

COLERIDGE

Kubla Khan 176

LAMB

Old Familiar Faces 176

LANDOR

Rose Aylmer 177

On his Seventy-fifth Birthday . . . 177

CAMPBELL

Ye Mariners of England 177

The Battle of the Baltic 178

Hohenlinden 178

CUNNINGHAM

A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea . . 179

PROCTER ("BARRY CORNWALL")

The Sea 179

BYRON

She Walks in Beauty 180

SHELLEY

To a Skylark 180

Ode to the West Wind 181

The Indian Serenade 183

Ozymandias 183

KEATS

Ode on a Grecian Urn 183

Ode to a Nightingale 184

To Autumn 185

Hymn to Pan (from Endymion, I) . . 186
On First Looking into Chapman's

Homer 187

HOOD

The Bridge of Sighs ...... 187

EMERSON

Days 189

LONGFELLOW

Sonnets (on Dante) 189

POE

To Helen 190

Israfel 190

The City in the Sea 190

The Raven 191

The Haunted Palace 193

TENNYSON

The Lotos-Eaters 194

Ulysses 197

Lyrics from "The Princess" . . . 198
Lyrics from "In Memoriam" . . . 109
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Well-
ington 200

Lyric from "Maud" 204

Crossing the Bar 204

BROWNING

My Last Duchess 205

Meeting at Night 205

Parting at Morning 206

Home-Thoughts from the Sea . . . 206

The Bishop Orders his Tomb . . . 206

Andrea Del Sarto 206

Rabbi Ben Ezra 212

Prospice 214

Epilogue of Asolando 215

WHITMAN

Captain, My Captain 215

ARNOLD

Dover Beach 216

SWINBURNE

Choruses from " Atalanta in Calydon" . 216

In the Water 218

HENLEY

Invictus 219

KIPLING

Recessional 219

McCRAE

In Flanders Fields 219

BROOKE

The Soldier 220

SEEGER

1 Have a Rendezvous with Death . 220

V. HISTORY

HERODOTUS

Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis . . 221
THUCYDIDES

The Peloponnesian War: Funeral Ora-
tion of Pericles, The Corcyraean

Revolution 241

TACITUS

The Annals: from the "Reign of Nero" 248
GIBBON

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
Siege, Assault, and Final Conquest

of Constantinople 254

CARLYLE

French Revolution: Chapters from

Books V and VI 269

MACAULAY

Frederick the Great: the Treachery of

Frederick 280

The History of England: Torrington

and Tourville 284

PARKMAN

The Conspiracy of Pontiac: Chapters

VII, VIII, IX 289

GREEN

A Short History of the English People:

Portrait of Elizabeth .... 302

VI. BIOGRAPHY

PLUTARCH

Themistocles 310

FULLER

The Holy State, Book II, Chapter xxii:

The Life of Sir Francis Drake. . 323

CONTENTS

BOSWELL PAG E

The Life of Samuel Johnson: First
Meeting with Johnson, Johnson's
Interview with the King, Johnson's
Conversations, Dinner with John

Wilkes 327

FRANKLIN

Autobiography: Concerning Militia
and the Founding of a College,
Public Subscriptions, Improving
City Streets 347

VII. LETTERS

JOHNSON 358

FRANKLIN 358

LAMB 359

BYRON 364

MAZZINI 365

LINCOLN 368

CARLYLE 368

STEVENSON 369

VIII. ORATIONS

PLATO

The Apology of Socrates

BURKE

At the Trial of Warren Hastings
DANTON

Dare, Dare Again, Always Dare .
WEBSTER

In Reply to Hayne

MACAULAY

On the Reform Bill

MAZZINI

To the Young Men of Italy ....
GARIBALDI

To His Soldiers

CAVOUR

Rome as the Capital of United Italy .
LINCOLN

The "House Divided Against Itself" .

The Speech at Gettysburg ....

The Second Inaugural

385
387
388

397
401
402
403

405
406
407

IX. ESSAYS

MONTAIGNE *AGK

Of Repentance 408,

BACON

Of Truth, Of Adversity, Of Riches, Of
Youth and Age, Of Negotiating, Of

Studies 414

SWTJFT

Abolishing of Christianity .... 420
A Modest Proposal 427

ADDISON

The Object of The Spectator, Thoughts
in Westminster Abbey, The Fine

^ Lady's Journal 432

BURKE

Reflections on the French Revolution . 438
LAMB

Poor Relations, Grace Before Meat, The

Convalescent 448

SCHOPENHAUER

On Thinking for Oneself 45$

CARLYLE

Past and Present, Book III, Chapters

x, xi, and xiii 463

EMERSON

Self-Reliance 476

SATNTE-BEUVE

What Is a Classic? 484

POE

The Philosophy of Composition. . . 491
RUSKTJST

Life and Its Arts 498

ARNOLD

Sweetness and Light, Hebraism and

Hellenism 508

HUXLEY

The Method of Scientific Investigation 526
JAMES

The Moral Equivalent of War . . . 530
STEVENSON

jEs Triplex 538

EPIC AND ROMANCE
HOMER

When many centuries have passed over a civilization, and its cities have disappeared like a mist
on the horizon, with all their monuments, their ships, their stately buildings of brass and stone then
there might be nothing left by which that civilization could be remembered, if it were not for the poets.
For songs have proved themselves the most enduring things on this earth. Thus, in the mighty epics of
ancient Greece, the Iliad and the Odyssey, we have preserved for us the Greek life of about three thousand
years ago. Through these poems we know the heart of ancient Greece and what manner of men her
heroes were.

Whether or not Homer was, as tradition held, an old blind singer who wandered from place to place
chanting his stories of the fall of Troy and of the voyagings of the wise Odysseus, need not concern us.
The significant thing is that these poems have profoundly influenced European literature, both ancient
and modern, and through literature have touched the lives of all western peoples; that they are not only
the most ancient national epics, but also the greatest.

THE ILIAD

The Iliad is the epic narrative of the expedition of the Greeks against the city of Troy to recover
Helen, wife of Menelaus, who had been seduced and abducted by Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy.
The story of the golden apple thrown by Discord among the goddesses at the wedding feast of Thetis,
the quarrel between Hera, Pallas Athena, and Aphrodite over who was the fairest with a right to posses-
sion of the apple, their request that Paris should make the decision, and his awarding of it to Aphrodite,
her rewarding him with the love of Helen fairest of women, his stealing of her from the hearthstone of
Menelaus, the gathering of the chieftains of Greece to his aid these preliminaries to the story are told
elsewhere or incidentally in the poem. The poem itself opens in the ninth year of the siege with a
quarrel between Agamemnon, leader of the Greek host, and the greatest of the Greek warriors, Achilles,
over the spoils of war, and the retirement of the latter to his tent to sulk among his people. He is in
the end forced into active fighting only by the death of his beloved friend Patroclus who had disguised
himself in the armor of the great warrior in order to hearten the Greek host. Achilles avenges him by
slaying Hector, the Trojan chieftain, and dragging his body behind his chariot about the walls of the
city. Throughout the mighty succession of battles, the heroes, aided by the gods from high Olympus,
contend for the mastery of the field.

The translation (1864) is by Edward, Earl of Derby.

BOOK VI

ARGUMENT

THE battle is continued. The Trojans being
closely pursued, Hector by the advice of
Helenus enters Troy, and recommends it to
Hecuba to go in solemn procession to the
temple of Minerva; she with the matrons goes
accordingly. Hector takes the opportunity
to find out Paris, and exhorts him to return
to the field of battle. An interview succeeds
between Hector and Andromache, and Paris,
having armed himself in the meantime, comes
up with Hector at the close of it, when they
sally from the gate together.

THE Gods had left the field, and o'er the
plain

Hither and thither surg'd the tide of war,
As couch'd th' opposing chiefs their brass-

tipp'd spears,
Midway 'twixt Simois' and Scamander's

streams.
First through the Trojan phalanx broke

his way

The son of Telamon, the prop of Greece,
The mighty Ajax; on his friends the light
Of triumph shedding, as Eusorus' son
He smote, the noblest of the Thracian

bands,

Valiant and strong, the gallant Acamas.
Full in the front, beneath the plumed helm,
The sharp spear struck, and crashing

through the bone,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The warrior's eyes were clos'd in endless

night.

Next valiant Diomed Axylus slew,
The son of Teuthranes, who had his home
In fair Arisba; rich in substance he,
And lov'd of all; for, dwelling near the

road,

He op'd to all his hospitable gate;
But none of all he entertain'd was there
To ward aside the bitter doom of death:
There fell they both, he and his charioteer,
Calesius, who athwart the battle-field
His chariot drove; one fate o'er took them

both.

Then Dresus and Opheltius of their arms
Euryalus despoil'd; his hot pursuit
^Esepus next, and Pedasus assail'd,
Brothers, whom Abarbarea, Naiad nymph,
To bold Bucolion bore; Buco!ion, son
Of great Laomedon, his eldest born,
Though bastard: he upon the mountain

side,
On which his flocks he tended, met the

nymph,
And of their secret loves twin sons were

born;

Whom now at once Euryalus of strength
And life depriv'd, and of their armour

stripp'd.

By Polypcetes' hand, in battle strong,
Was slain Astyalus; Pidutes fell,
Chief of Percote, by Ulysses' spear;
And Teucer godlike Aretaon slew.
Antilochus, the son of Nestor, smote
With gleaming lance Ablerus; Elatus
By Agamemnon, King of men, was slain,
Who dwelt by Satnois' widely-flowing

stream,

Upon the lofty heights of Pedasus.
By Le'itus was Phylacus in flight
O'erta'en; Eurypylus Melanthius slew.
Then Menelaus, good in battle, took
Adrastus captive; for his horses, scar'd
And rushing wildly o'er the plain, amid
The tangled tamarisk scrub his chariot

broke,
Snapping the pole; they with the flying

crowd

Held city-ward their course ; he from the car
Hurl'd headlong, prostrate lay beside the

wheel,
Prone on his face in dust; and at his side,

Poising his mighty spear, Atrides stood.
Adrastus clasp'd his knees, and suppliant

cried,

"Spare me, great son of Atreus! for my life
Accept a price; my wealthy father's house
A goodly store contains of brass, and gold,
And well- wrought iron; and of these he fain
Would pay a noble ransom, could he hear
That in the Grecian ships I yet surviv'd."
His words to pity mov'd the victor's

breast;

Then had he bade his followers to the ships
The captive bear; but running up in haste,
Fierce Agamemnon cried in stern rebuke;

"Soft-hearted Menelaus, why of life
So tender? Hath thy house receiv'd in-
deed

Nothing but benefits at Trojan hands?
Of that abhorred race, let not a man
Escape the deadly vengeance of our arms ;
No, not the infant in its mother's womb;
No, nor the fugitive; but be they all,
They and their city, utterly destroy'd,
Uncar'd for, and from mem'ry blotted

out."
Thus as he spoke, his counsel, fraught

with death,
His brother's purpose chang'd: he with hi3

hand

Adrastus thrust aside, whom with his lance
Fierce Agamemnon through the loins

transfix'd;

And, as he roll'd in death, upon his breast
Planting his foot, the ashen spear with-
drew.
Then loudly Nestor shouted to the

Greeks:
"Friends, Grecian heroes, ministers of

Mars!

Loiter not now behind, to throw yourselves
Upon the prey, and bear it to the ships:
Let all your aim be now to kill; anon
Ye may at leisure spoil your slaughter'd

foes."
With words like these he fir'd the blood

of all.
Now had the Trojans by the warlike

Greeks
In coward flight within their walls been

driv'n;

But to ^Eneas and to Hector thus
The son of Priam, Helenus, the

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Of all the Trojan seers, address'd his

speech:

"^Eneas, and thou Hector, since on you,
Of all the Trojans and the Lycian hosts,
Is laid the heaviest burthen, for that ye
Excel alike in council and in fight,
Stand here awhile, and moving to and fro
On ev'ry side, around the gates exhort
The troops to rally, lest they fall disgrac'd,
Flying for safety to their women's arms,
And foes, exulting, triumph in their shame.
Their courage thus restor'd, worn as we

are,
We with the Greeks will still maintain the

fight,
For so, perforce, we must; but, Hector,

thou

Haste to the city; there our mother find,
Both thine and mine; on Ilium's topmost

height

By all the aged dames accompanied,
Bid her the shrine of blue-ey'd Pallas seek;
Unlock the sacred gates; and on the knees
Of fair-hair'd Pallas place the fairest robe
In all the house, the amplest, best es-

teem'd;

And at her altar vow to sacrifice
Twelve yearling kine that never felt the

goad,

So she have pity on the Trojan state,
Our wives, and helpless babes, and turn

away

The fiery son of Tydeus, spearman fierce,
The Minister of Terror; bravest he,
In my esteem, of all the Grecian chiefs;
For not Achilles' self, the prince of men,
Though Goddess-born, such dread inspir'd;

so fierce
His rage; and with his prowess none may

vie."

He said, nor uncomplying, Hector heard
His brother's counsel; from his car he

leap'd
In arms upon the plain; and brandish'd

high

His jav'lins keen, and moving to and fro
The troops encourag'd, and restor'd the

fight.
Rallying they turn'd, and fac'd again the

Greeks :
These ceas'd from slaughter, and in turn

gave way,

Deeming that from the starry Heav'n

some God
Had to the rescue come; so fierce they

turn'd.

Then to the Trojans Hector calPd aloud:
"Ye valiant Trojans, and renown'd

Allies,
Quit you like men; remember now, brave

friends,

Your wonted valor; I to Ilium go
To bid our wives and rev'rend Elders raise
To Heav'n their pray'rs, with vows of

hecatombs."
Thus saying, Hector of the glancing

helm

Turn'd to depart; and as he mov'd along,
The black bull's-hide his neck and ankles

smote,

The outer circle of his bossy shield.
Then Tydeus' son, and Glaucus, in the

midst,

Son of Hippolochus, stood forth to fight;
But when they near were met, to Glaucus

first

The valiant Diomed his speech address'd:
"Who art thou, boldest man of mortal

birth?

For in the glorious conflict heretofore
I ne'er have seen thee; but in daring now
Thou far surpasses! all, who hast not fear'd
To face my spear; of most unhappy sires
The children they, who my encounter meet.
But if from Heav'n thou com'st, and art

indeed
A God, I fight not with the heav'nly

powers.

Not long did Dryas' son, Lycurgus brave,
Survive, who dar'd th' Immortals to defy:
He, 'mid their frantic orgies, in the groves
Of lovely Nyssa, put to shameful rout
The youthful Bacchus' nurses ; they, in fear,
Dropp'd each her thyrsus, scatter'd by

the hand

Of fierce Lycurgus, with an ox-goad arm'd.
Bacchus himself beneath the ocean wave
In terror plung'd, and, trembling, refuge

found

In Thetis' bosom from a mortal's threats:
The Gods indignant saw, and Saturn's son
Smote him with blindness; nor surviv'd he

long,
Hated alike by all th' immortal Gods.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

I dare not then the blessed Gods oppose;
But be thou mortal, and the fruits of earth
Thy food, approach, and quickly meet thy

doom."

To whom the noble Glaucus thus replied:
"Great son of Tydeus, why my race en-
quire?

The race of man is as the race of leaves:
Of leaves, one generation by the wind
Is scatter 'd on the earth; another soon
In spring's luxuriant verdure bursts to

light.

So with our race; these flourish, those de-
cay.
But if thou wouldst in truth enquire and

learn
The race I spring from, not unknown of

men;

There is a city, in the deep recess
Of pastoral Argos, Ephyre by name:
There Sisyphus of old his dwelling had,
Of mortal men the craftiest; Sisyphus,
The son of ^Eolus; to him was born
Glaucus; and Glaucus in his turn begot
Bellerophon, on whom the Gods bestow'd
The gifts of beauty and of manly grace.
But Prcetus sought his death; and,

mightier far,
From all the coasts of Argos drove him

forth,

To Prcetus subjected by Jove's decree.
For him the monarch's wife, Antsea, nurs'd
A madd'ning passion, and to guilty love
Would fain have tempted him; but fail'd

to move

The upright soul of chaste Bellerophon.
With lying words she then address'd the

King:

'Die, Prcetus, thou, or slay Bellerophon,
Who basely sought my honor to assail.'
The King with anger listen'd to her words;
Slay him he would not; that his soul ab-

horr'd;

But to the father of his wife, the King
Of Lycia, sent him forth, with tokens

charg'd

Of dire import, on folded tablets trac'd
Pois'ning the monarch's mind, to work his

death.

To Lycia, guarded by the Gods, he went;
But when he came to Lycia, and the

streams

Of Zanthus, there with hospitable rites
The King of wide-spread Lycia welcom'd

him.

Nine days he feasted him, nine oxen slew;
But with the tenth return of rosy morn
He question'd him, and for the tokens-

ask'd

He from his son-in-law, from Prcetus, bore.
The tokens' fatal import understood,
He bade him first the dread Chimaera slay;
A monster, sent from Heav'n, not human

born,

With head of lion, and a serpent's tail,
And body of a goat ; and from her mouth
There issued flames of fiercely-burning fire :
Yet her, confiding in the Gods, he slew.
Next, with the valiant Solymi he fought,
The fiercest fight that e'er he undertook.
Thirdly, the women-warriors he o'erthrew,
The Amazons; from whom returning home,
The King another stratagem devis'd;
For, choosing out the best of Lycia's sons,
He set an ambush ; they return'd not home,
For all by brave Bellerophon were slain.
But, by his valor when the King perceiv'd
His heav'nly birth, he entertain'd him well;
Gave him his daughter; and with her the

half

Of all his royal honors he bestow'd:
A portion too the Lycians meted out,
Fertile in corn and wine, of all the state
The choicest land, to be his heritage.
Three children there to brave Bellerophon
Were born; Isander, and Hippolochus,
Laodamia last, belov'd of Jove,
The Lord of counsel; and to him she bore
Godlike Sarpedon of the brazen helm.
Bellerophon at length the wrath incurr'd
Of all the Gods; and to th' Aleian plain
Alone he wander'd; there he wore away
His soul, and shunn'd the busy haunts of

men.

Insatiate Mars his son Isander slew
In battle with the valiant Solymi:
His daughter perish'd by Diana's wrath.
I from Hippolochus my birth derive:
To Troy he sent me, and enjoin'd me oft
To aim at highest honors, and surpass
My comrades all; nor on my father's name
Discredit bring, who held the foremost

place
In Ephyre, and Lycia's wide domain.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Such is my race and such the blood I

boast."

He said; and Diomed rejoicing heard:
His spear he planted in the fruitful ground,
And thus with friendly words the chief

address'd:
"By ancient ties of friendship are we

bound;

For godlike CEneus in his house receiv'd
For twenty days the brave Bellerophon;
They many a gift of friendship inter-

chang'd.

A belt, with crimson glowing, GEneus gave;
Bellerophon, a double cup of gold,
Which in my house I left when here I came.
Of Tydeus no remembrance I retain;
For yet a child he left me, when he fell
With his Achaians at the gates of Thebes.
So I in Argos am thy friendly host;
Thou mine in Lycia, when I thither come:
Then shun we, ev'n amid the thickest fight,
Each other's lance; enough there are for me
Of Trojans and their brave allies to kill,
As Heav'n may aid me, and my speed of

foot;
And Greeks enough there are for thee to

slay,

If so indeed thou canst; but let us now
Our armor interchange, that these may

know
What friendly bonds of old our houses

join."
Thus as they spoke, they quitted each his

car;
Clasp'd hand in hand, and plighted mutual

faith.
Then Glaucus of his judgment Jove de-

priv'd,

His armor interchanging, gold for brass,
A hundred oxen's worth for that of nine.
Meanwhile, when Hector reach'd the

oak beside
The Scaean gate, around him throng'd the

wives

Of Troy, and daughters, anxious to enquire
The fate of children, brothers, husbands,

friends;

He to the Gods exhorted all to pray,
For deep the sorrows that o'er many hung.
But when to Priam's splendid house he

came,
With polish'd corridors adorn'd within

Were fifty chambers, all of polish'd stone,
Plac'd each by other; there the fifty sons
Of Priam with their wedded wives repos'd;
On th' other side, within the court were

built
Twelve chambers, near the roof, of polish'd

stone,

Plac'd each by other; there the sons-in-law
Of Priam with their spouses chaste repos'd;
To meet him there his tender mother came,
And with her led the young Laodice,
Fairest of all her daughters; clasping then
His hand, she thus address'd him: "Why,

my son,
Why com'st thou here, and leav'st the

battle-field?
Are Trojans by those hateful sons of

Greece,

Fighting around the city, sorely press'd?
And com'st thou, by thy spirit mov'd, to

raise,
On Ilium's heights, thy hands in pray'r to

Jove?

But tarry till I bring the luscious wine,
That first to Jove, and to th' Immortals

all,
Thou mayst thine ofif'ring pour; then with

the draught
Thyself thou mayst refresh; for great the

strength
Which gen'rous wine imparts to men who

toil,

As thou hast toil'd, thy comrades to pro-
tect."
To whom great Hector of the glancing

helm:
"No, not for me, mine honor'd mother,

pour
The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my

limbs,

And make me all my wonted prowess lose.
The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove
With hands unwash'd; nor to the cloud-
girt son

Of Saturn may the voice of pray'r ascend
From one with blood bespatter'd and

defil'd.
Thou, with the elder women, seek the

shrine
Of Pallas; bring your gifts; and on the

knees
Of fair-hair'd Pallas place the fairest robe

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

In all the house, the amplest, best es-

teem'd;

And at her altar vow to sacrifice
Twelve yearling kine, that never felt the

goad;

So she have pity on the Trojan state,
Our wives, and helpless babes; and turn

away

The fiery son of Tydeus, spearman fierce,
The Minister of Terror; to the shrine
Of Pallas thou; to Paris I, to call
If haply he will hear; would that the earth
Would gape and swallow him! for great

the curse
That Jove through him hath brought on

men of Troy,

On noble Priam, and on Priam's sons.
Could I but know that he were in his

grave,

Methinks my sorrows I could half forget."
He said: she, to the house returning, sent
Th' attendants through the city, to collect
The train of aged suppliants; she mean-
while
Her fragrant chamber sought, wherein

were stor'd

Rich garments, by Sidonian women work'd,
Whom godlike Paris had from Sidon

brought,
Sailing the broad sea o'er, the selfsame

path

By which the high-born Helen he convey'd.
Of these, the richest in embroidery,
The amplest, and the brightest, as a star
Refulgent, plac'd with care beneath the

rest,
The Queen her off'ring bore to Pallas'

shrine:
She went, and with her many an ancient

dame.
But when the shrine they reach'd on

Ilium's height,

Theano, fair of face, the gates unlock'd,
Daughter of Cisseus, sage Antenor's wife,
By Trojans nam'd at Pallas' shrine to

serve.
They with deep moans to Pallas rais'd

their hands;

But fair Theano took the robe, and plac'd
On Pallas' knees, and to the heav'nly Maid,
Daughter of Jove, she thus address'd her

pray'r:

"Guardian of cities, Pallas, awful Queen,
Goddess of Goddesses, break thou the

spear

Of Tydeus' son ; and grant that he himself
Prostrate before the Scaean gates may fall ;
So at thine altar will we sacrifice
Twelve yearling kine, that never felt the

goad,

If thou have pity on the state of Troy,
The wives of Trojans, and their helpless

babes."
Thus she; but Pallas answer 'd not her

pray'r.
While thus they call'd upon the heav'nly

Maid,

Hector to Paris' mansion bent his way;
A noble structure, which himself had built
Aided by all the best artificers
Who in the fertile realm of Troy were

known;
With chambers, hall, and court, on Ilium's

height,
Near to where Priam's self and Hector

dwelt.

There enter'd Hector, well belov'd of Jove ;
And in his hand his pond'rous spear he

bore,
Twelve cubits long; bright flash'd the

weapon's point
Of polish'd brass, with circling hoop of

gold.
There in his chamber found he whom he

sought,

About his armor busied, polishing
His shield, his breastplate, and his bended

bow.
While Argive Helen, 'mid her maidens

plac'd,
The skilful labors of their hands o'er-

look'd.
To him thus Hector with reproachful

words:

"Thou dost not well thine anger to in-
dulge;

In battle round the city's lofty wall
The people fast are falling; thou the cause
That fiercely thus around the city burns
The flame of war and battle; and thyself
Wouldst others blame, who from the fight

should shrink.
Up, ere the town be wrapp'd in hostile

fires."

EPIC AND ROMANCE

To whom in answer godlike Paris thus:
"Hector, I own not causeless thy rebuke;
Yet will I speak; hear thou and under

stand ;
'Twas less from anger with the Trojan

host,
And fierce resentment, that I here re-

main'd,

Than that I sought my sorrow to indulge;
Yet hath my wife, ev'n now, with soothing

words

Urg'd me to join the battle; so, I own,
'Twere best; and Vict'ry changes oft her

side.

Then stay, while I my armor don; or thou
Go first: I, following, will o'ertake thee

soon."

He said: but Hector of the glancing helm
Made answer none; then thus with gentle

tones

Helen accosted him: "Dear brother mine,
(Of me, degraded, sorrow-bringing, vile !)
Oh that the day my mother gave me birth
Some storm had on the mountains cast

me forth!

Or that the many-dashing ocean's waves
Had swept me off, ere all this woe were

wrought !

Yet if these evils were of Heav'n ordain'd,
Would that a better man had call'd me

wife;

A sounder judge of honor and disgrace:
For he, thou know'st, no firmness hath of

mind,

Nor ever will; a want he well may rue.
But come thou in, and rest thee here

awhile,
Dear brother, on this couch; for travail

sore

Encompasseth thy soul, by me impos'd,
Degraded as I am, and Paris' guilt;
On whom this burthen Heav'n hath laid,

that shame
On both our names through years to come

shall rest."
To whom great Hector of the glancing

helm:
"Though kind thy wish, yet, Helen, ask

me not

To sit or rest; I cannot yield to thee:
For to the succour of our friends I haste,
Who feel my loss, and sorely need my aid.

But thou thy husband rouse, and let him

speed,

That he may find me still within the walls.
For I too homeward go; to see once more
My household, and my wife, and infant

child:

For whether I may e'er again return,
I know not, or if Heav'n have so decreed,
That I this day by Grecian hands should

fall."
Thus saying, Hector of the glancing

helm
Turn'd to depart; with rapid step he

reach'd
His own well-furnish'd house, but found

not there

His white-arm'd spouse, the fair Andro-
mache.
She with her infant child and maid the

while
Was standing, bath'd in tears, in bitter

grief,
On Ilium's topmost tower: but when her

Lord
Found not within the house his peerless

wife,

Upon the threshold pausing, thus he spoke:
"Tell me, my maidens, tell me true, which

way

Your mistress went, the fair Andromache;
Or to my sisters, or my brothers' wives?
Or to the temple where the fair-hair'd

dames

Of Troy invoke Minerva's awful name? "
To whom the matron of his house re-
plied:

" Hector, if truly we must answer thee,
Not to thy sisters, nor thy brothers' wives,
Nor to the temple where the fair-hair'd

dames

Of Troy invoke Minerva's awful name,
But to the height of Ilium's topmost tow'r
Andromache is gone; since tidings came
The Trojan force was overmatch'd, and

great
The Grecian strength: whereat, like one

distract,

She hurried to the walls, and with her took,
Borne in the nurse's arms, her infant

child."
So spoke the ancient dame; and Hector

straight

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Through the wide streets his rapid steps

retrac'd.

But when at last the mighty city's length
Was travers'd, and the Scaean gates were

reach'd
Whence was the outlet to the plain, in

haste
Running to meet him came his priceless

wife,

Eetion's daughter, fair Andromache;
Eetion, who from Thebes Cilicia sway'd,
Thebes, at the foot of Places' wooded

heights.

His child to Hector of the brazen helm
Was giv'n in marriage: she it was who now
Met him, and by her side the nurse, who

bore,
Clasp'd to her breast, his all unconscious

child,

Hector's lov'd infant, fair as morning star;
Whom Hector call'd Scamandrius, but the

rest

Astyanax, in honor of his sire,
The matchless chief, the only prop of Troy.
Silent he smil'd as on his boy he gaz'd:
But at his side Andromache, in tears,
Hung on his arm, and thus the chief ad-

dress'd:
"Dear Lord, thy dauntless spirit will

work thy doom:
Nor hast thou pity on this thy helpless

child,

Or me forlorn, to be thy widow soon:
For thee will all the Greeks with force

combin'd

Assail and slay: for me, 'twere better far,
Of thee bereft, to lie beneath the sod;
Nor comfort shall be mine, if thou be lost,
But endless grief; to me nor sire is left,
Nor honor 'd mother; fell Achilles' hand
My sire Eetion slew, what time his arms
The populous city of Cilicia raz'd,
The lofty-gated Thebes; he slew indeed,
But stripp'd him not; he reverenc'd the

dead;

And o'er his body, with his armor burnt,
A mound erected; and the mountain

nymphs,

The progeny of aegis-bearing Jove,
Planted around his tomb a grove of elms.
There were sev'n brethren in my father's

house;

All in one day they fell, amid their herds
And fleecy flocks, by fierce Achilles' hand.
My mother, Queen of Places' wooded

height,
Brought with the captives here, he soon

releas'd

For costly ransom; but by Dian's shafts
She, in her father's house, was stricken

down.

But, Hector, thou to me art all in one,
Sire, mother, brethren! thou, my wedded

love!

Then pitying us, within the tow'r remain,
Nor make thy child an orphan, and thy

wife

A hapless widow; by the fig-tree here
Array thy troops; for here the city wall,
Easiest of access, most invites assault.
Thrice have their boldest chiefs this point

assail'd,

The two Ajaces, brave Idomeneus,
Th' Atridae both, and Tydeus' warlike son,
Or by the prompting of some Heav'n-

taught seer,

Or by their own advent'rous courage led."
To whom great Hector of the glancing

helm:
"Think not, dear wife, that by such

thoughts as these
My heart has ne'er been wrung; but I

should blush
To face the men and long-rob'd dames of

Troy,

If, like a coward, I could shun the fight.
Nor could my soul the lessons of my youth
So far forget, whose boast it still has been
In the fore-front of battle to be found,
Charg'd with my father's glory and mine

own.

Yet hi my inmost soul too well I know,
The day must come when this our sacred

Troy,

And Priam's race, and Priam's royal self,
Shall in one common ruin be o'erthrown.
But not the thoughts of Troy's impending

fate,

Nor Hecuba's nor royal Priam's woes,
Nor loss of brethren, numerous and brave,
By hostile hands laid prostrate in the dust,
So deeply wring my heart as thoughts of

thee,
Thy days of freedom lost, and led away

EPIC AND ROMANCE

A weeping captive by some brass-clad

Greek;

Haply in Argos, at a mistress' beck,
Condemn'd to ply the loom, or water draw
From Hypereia's or Messeis' fount,
Heart-wrung, by stern necessity con-

strain'd.
Then they who see thy tears perchance

may say,
'Lo! this was Hector's wife, who, when

they fought
On plains of Troy, was Ilium's bravest

chief.'
Thus may they speak; and thus thy grief

renew
For loss of him, who might have been thy

shield

To rescue thee from slav'ry's bitter hour.
Oh may I sleep in dust, ere be condemn'd
To hear thy cries, and see thee dragg'd

away!"
Thus as he spoke, great Hector stretch'd

his arms
To take his child; but back the infant

shrank,
Crying, and sought his nurse's shelt'ring

breast,
Scar'd by the brazen helm and horse-hair

plume,
That nodded, fearful, on the warrior's

crest.
Laugh'd the fond parents both, and from

his brow
Hector the casque remov'd, and set it

down,
All glitt'ring, on the ground; then kiss'd his

child,
And danc'd him in his arms; then thus to

Jove
And to th' Immortals all address'd his

pray'r:
"Grant, Jove, and all ye Gods, that this

my son

May be, as I, the foremost man of Troy,
For valor fam'd, his country's guardian

King;
That men may say, 'This youth surpasses

far
His father,' when they see him from the

fight,
From slaughter'd foes, with bloody spoils

of war

Returning, to rejoice his mother's heart ! "
Thus saying, in his mother's arms he

plac'd
His child; she to her fragrant bosom

clasp'd,
Smiling through tears; with eyes of pitying

love
Hector beheld, and press'd her hand, and

thus
Address'd her "Dearest, wring not thus

my heart!

For till my day of destiny is come,
No man may take my life; and when it

comes,

Nor brave nor coward can escape that day.
But go thou home, and ply thy household

cares,
The loom and distaff, and appoint thy

maids
Their sev'ral tasks; and leave to men of

Troy

And, chief of all to me, the toils of war."
Thus as he spoke, his horsehair-plumed

helm
Great Hector took; and homeward turn'd

his wife
With falt'ring steps, and shedding scalding

tears.

Arriv'd at valiant Hector's well-built house,
Her maidens press'd around her; and in all
Arose at once the sympathetic grief.
For Hector, yet alive, his household

mourn'd,

Deeming he never would again return,
Safe from the fight, by Grecian hands un-

harm'd.

Nor linger 'd Paris in his lofty halls;
But donn'd his armor, glitt'ring o'er with

brass,
And through the city pass'd with bounding

steps.
As some proud steed, at well-filPd manger

fed,
His halter broken, neighing, scours the

plain,

And revels in the widely-flowing stream
To bathe his sides; then tossing high his

head,
While o'er his shoulders streams his ample

mane,
Light borne on active limbs, in conscious

pride,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

To the wide pastures of the mares he flies;
So Paris, Priam's son, from Ilium's height,
His bright arms flashing like the gorgeous

sun,
Hasten'd, with boastful mien, and rapid

step.
Hector he found, as from the spot he

turn'd
Where with his wife he late had converse

held;
Whom thus the godlike Paris first ad-

dress'd:
"Too long, good brother, art thou here

detain'd,

Impatient for the fight, by my delay;
Nor have I timely, as thou bad'st me,

come."

To whom thus Hector of the glancing

helm:
"My gallant brother, none who thinks

aright

Can cavil at thy prowess in the field;
For thou art very valiant; but thy will
Is weak and sluggish; and it grieves my

heart,

When from the Trojans, who in thy behalf
Such labors undergo, I hear thy name
Coupled with foul reproach! But go we

now!

Henceforth shall all be well, if Jove permit
That from our shores we chase th' invading

Greeks,

And to the ever-living Gods of Heav'n
In peaceful homes our free libations pour."

THE ODYSSEY

The Odyssey is the story of the sea-wanderings of Odysseus (Ulysses) after the fall of Troy, and of
the coming home of this much-enduring hero to his island kingdom of Ithaca. During his many years'
absence, his wife the Queen, Penelope, type of perfect wifeliness has been besieged by numerous
and arrogant suitors, who, scorning the youthful son, Telemachus, make free with the house and pos-
sessions of Odysseus, and urge Penelope to regard her husband as dead, and to marry one of them.

The Hero comes to his home in the guise of an humble stranger; he has made himself known to his
son, and has been recognized by his old nurse and his faithful dog, but is unknown to the suitors and to
Penelope. In this passage the climax of the story is reached, and Odysseus triumphs over his enemies.
The translation is that of William Cowper (1731-1800), published in 1791.

BOOK XXI

ARGUMENT

PENELOPE proposes to the suitors a contest with
the bow, herself the prize. They prove un-
able to bend the bow; when Ulysses having
with some difficulty possessed himself of it,
manages it with the utmost ease, and dis-
patches his arrow through twelve rings erected
for the trial.

MINERVA now, Goddess casrulean-eyed,
Prompted Icarius' daughter, the discrete
Penelope, with bow and rings to prove
Her suitors in Ulysses' courts, a game
Terrible in conclusion to them aS.
First, taking in her hand the brazen key
Well-forged, and fitted with an iv'ry grasp,
Attended by the women of her tram
She sought her inmost chamber, the recess
In which she kept the treasures of her

Lord,

His brass, his gold, and steel elaborate.
Here lay his stubborn bow, and quiver filPd

With num'rous shafts, a fatal store. That

bow

He had received and quiver from the hand
Of godlike Iphitus Eurytides,
Whom, in Messenia, in the house he met
Of brave Orsilochus. Ulysses came
Demanding payment of arrearage due
From all that land; for a Messenian fleet
Had borne from Ithaca three hundred

sheep,
With all their shepherds; for which cause,

ere yet

Adult, he voyaged to that distant shore,
Deputed by his sire, and by the Chiefs
Of Ithaca, to make the just demand.
But Iphitus had thither come to seek
Twelve mares and twelve mule colts which

he had lost,
A search that cost him soon a bloody

death.

For, coming to the house of Hercules
The valiant task-performing son of Jove.
He perish'd there, slam by his cruel host

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Who, heedless of heav'n's wrath, and of the

rights
Of his own board, first fed, then slaughter'd

him;
For in his house the mares and colts were

hidden.

He, therefore, occupied in that concern,
Meeting Ulysses there, gave him the bow
Which, erst, huge Eurytus had borne, and

which

Himself had from his dying sire received.
Ulysses, hi return, on him bestowed
A spear and sword, pledges of future love
And hospitality; but never more
They met each other at the friendly board,
For, ere that hour arrived, the son of Jove
Slew his own guest, the godlike Iphitus.
Thus came the bow into Ulysses' hands,
Which, never in his gallant barks he bore
To battle with him (though he used it oft
In times of peace), but left it safely stored
At home, a dear memorial of his friend.
Soon as, divinest of her sex [Penelope],

arrived
At that same chamber, with her foot she

press'd
The oaken threshold bright, on which the

hand
Of no mean architect had stretch'd the

line,

Who had erected also on each side
The posts on which the splendid portals

hung,

She loos'd the ring and brace, then intro-
duced

The key, and aiming at them from with-
out,
Struck back the bolts. The portals, at

that stroke,
Sent forth a tone deep as the pastur'd

bull's,
And flew wide open. She, ascending,

next,

The elevated floor on which the chests
That held her own fragrant apparel stood,
With lifted hand aloft took down the bow
In its embroider'd bow-case safe enclosed.
Then, sitting there, she lay'd it on her

knees,

Weeping aloud, and drew it from the case.
Thus weeping over it long time she sat.
Till satiate, at the last, with grief and tears

Descending by the palace steps she sought
Again the haughty suitors, with the bow
Elastic, and the quiver in her hand
Replete with pointed shafts, a deadly

store.

Her maidens, as she went, bore after her
A coffer fill'd with prizes by her Lord,
Much brass and steel; and when at length

she came,

Loveliest of women, where the suitors sat,
Between the pillars of the stately dome
Pausing, before her beauteous face she held
Her lucid veil, and by two matrons chaste
Supported, the assembly thus address'd.

Ye noble suitors hear, who rudely haunt
This palace of a Chief long absent hence,
Whose substance ye have now long tune

consumed,

Nor palliative have yet contrived, or could,
Save your ambition to make me a bride
Attend this game to which I call you forth.
Now suitors! prove yourselves with this

huge bow

Of wide-renown'd Ulysses; he who draws
Easiest the bow, and who his arrow sends
Through twice six rings, he takes me to his

home,

And I must leave this mansion of my youth
Plenteous, magnificent, which, doubtless,

oft
I shall remember even in my dreams.

So saying, she bade Eumaeus lay the bow
Before them, and the twice six rings of

steel.
He wept, received them, and obey'd; nor

wept
The herdsman less, seeing the bow which

erst

His Lord had occupied; when at their tears
Indignant, thus, Antinoiis began.
Ye rural drones, whose purblind eyes

see not

Beyond the present hour, egregious fools!
Why weeping trouble ye the Queen, too

much

Before afflicted for her husband lost?
Either partake the banquet silently,
Or else go weep abroad, leaving the bow,
That stubborn test, to us; for none, I

judge,
None here shall bend this polish'd bow

with ease,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Since in this whole assembly I discern
None like Ulysses, whom myself have seen
And recollect, though I was then a boy.
He said, but in his heart, meantime, the

hope
Cherish'd, that he should bend, himself,

the bow,
And pass the rings; yet was he destin'd

first

Of all that company to taste the steel
Of brave Ulysses' shaft, whom in that

house

He had so oft dishonor'd, and had urged
So oft all others to the like offence.
Amidst them, then, the sacred might arose
Of young Telemachus, who thus began.
Saturnian Jove questionless hath de-
prived

Me of all reason. My own mother, fam'd
For wisdom as she is, makes known to all
Her purpose to abandon this abode
And follow a new mate, while, heedless, I
Trifle and laugh as I were still a child.
But come, ye suitors! since the prize is

such,

A woman like to whom none can be found
This day in all Achaia; on the shores
Of sacred Pylus; in the cities proud
Of Argos or Mycenae; or even here
In Ithaca; or yet within the walls
Of black Epirus; and since this yourselves
Know also, wherefore should I speak her

praise?
Come then, delay not, waste not time in

vain

Excuses, turn not from the proof, but bend
The bow, that thus the issue may be

known.

I also will, myself, that task essay;
And should I bend the bow, and pass the

rings,

Then shall not my illustrious mother leave
Her son forlorn, forsaking this abode
To follow a new spouse, while I remain
Disconsolate, although of age to bear,
Successful as my sire, the prize away.
So saying, he started from his seat,

cast off

His purple cloak, and lay'd his sword aside,
Then fix'd, himself, the rings, furrowing

the earth
By line, and op'ning one long trench for all,

And stamping close the glebe. Amaze-
ment seized

All present, seeing with how prompt a skill
He executed, though untaught, his task.
Then, hasting to the portal, there he stood.
Thrice, struggling, he essay'd to bend the

bow,

And thrice desisted, hoping still to draw
The bow-string home, and shoot through

all the rings.
And now the fourth time striving with full

force

He had prevail'd to string it, but his sire
Forbad his eager efforts by a sign.
Then thus the royal youth to all around
Gods! either I shall prove of little force
Hereafter, and for manly feats unapt,
Or I am yet too young, and have not

strength
To quell the aggressor's contumely. But

come
(For ye have strength surpassing mine)

try ye

The bow, and bring this contest to an end.
He ceas'd, and set the bow down on the

floor,
Reclining it against the shaven panels

smooth
That lined the wall; the arrow next he

placed,
Leaning against the bow's bright-polish'd

horn,
And to the seat, whence he had ris'n, re-

turn'd.

Then thus Eupithes' son, Antinoiis spake.
My friends! come forth successive from

the right,

Where he who ministers the cup begins.
So spake Antinoiis, and his counsel

pleased.

Then, first, Leiodes, (Enop's son, arose.
He was their soothsayer, and ever sat
Beside the beaker, inmost of them all.
To him alone, of all, licentious deeds
Were odious, and, with indignation fired,
He witness'd the excesses of the rest.
He then took foremost up the shaft and

bow,
And, station'd at the portal, strove to

bend

But bent it not, fatiguing, first, his hands
Delicate and uncustom'd to the toil.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

He ceased, and the assembly thus bespake.
My friends, I speed not; let another try;

For many Princes shall this bow of life

Bereave, since death more eligible seems,

Far more, than loss of her, for whom we
meet

Continual here, expecting still the prize.

Some suitor, haply, at this moment, hopes

That he shall wed whom long he hath
desired,

Ulysses' wife, Penelope; let him

Essay the bow, and, trial made, address

His spousal offers to some other fair

Among the long-stoled Princesses of
Greece,

This Princess leaving his, whose proffer'd
gifts

Shall please her most, and whom the Fates

ordain.

He said, and set the bow down on the
floor,

Reclining it against the shaven panels
smooth

That lined the wall; the arrow, next, he
placed,

Leaning against the bow's bright-polish'd
horn,

And to the seat whence he had ris'n re-
turn'd.

Then him Antinoiis, angry, thus reproved.
What word, Leiodes, grating to our ears

Hath scap'd thy lips? I hear it with dis-
dain.

Shall this bow fatal prove to many a
Prince,

Because thou hast, thyself, too feeble
proved

To bend it? no. Thou wast not born to
bend

The unpliant bow, or to direct the shaft,

But here are nobler who shall soon prevail.
He said, and to Melanthius gave com-
mand,

The goat-herd. Hence, Melanthius, kin-
dle fire;

Beside it place, with fleeces spread, a form

Of ^length commodious; from within pro-
cure

A large round cake of suet next, with which

When we have chafed and suppled the
tough bow

Before the fire, we will again essay

To bend it, and decide the doubtful strife.

He ended, and Melanthius, kindling fire

Beside it placed, with fleeces spread, a form

Of length commodious; next, he brought

a cake

Ample and round of suet from within,
With which they chafed the bow, then

tried again

To bend, but bent it not ; superior strength
To theirs that task required. Yet two,

the rest

In force surpassing, made no trial yet,
Antinoiis, and Eurymachus the brave.
Then went the herdsman and the swine-
herd forth

Together; after whom, the glorious Chief
Himself the house left also, and when all
Without the court had met, with gentle

speech

Ulysses, then, the faithful pair address'd.
Herdsman! and thou, Eumaeus! shall I

keep

A certain secret close, or shall I speak
Outright? my spirit prompts me, and I will.
What welcome should Ulysses at your

hands

Receive, arriving suddenly at home,
Some God his guide; would ye the suitors

aid,

Or would ye aid Ulysses? answer true.
Then thus the chief intendant of his

herds.

Would Jove but grant me my desire, to see
Once more the Hero, and would some kind

Pow'r,
Restore him, I would shew thee soon an

arm
Strenuous to serve him, and a dauntless

heart'.

Eumaeus, also, fervently implored
The Gods in pray'r, that they would render

back

Ulysses to his home. He, then, convinced
Of their unfeigning honesty, began.

Behold him! I am he myself, arrived
After long suffrings in the twentieth year !
I know how welcome to yourselves alone
Of all my train I come, for I have heard
None others praying for my safe return.
I therefore tell you truth; should heav'n

subdue
The suitors under me, ye shall receive

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Each at my hands a bride, with lands and

house

Near to my own, and ye shall be thence-
forth
Dear friends and brothers of the Prince

my son.

Lo! also this indisputable proof
That ye may know and trust me. View

it here.

It is the scar which in Parnassus erst
(Where with the sons I hunted of renown'd
Autolycus) I from a boar received.

So saying, he stripp'd his tatters, and

unveil'd
The whole broad scar; then, soon as they

had seen

And surely recognized the mark, each cast
His arms around Ulysses, wept, embraced
And press'd him to his bosom, kissing oft
His brows and shoulders, who as oft their

hands
And foreheads kiss'd, nor had the setting

sun

Beheld them satisfied, but that himself
Ulysses thus admonished them, and said.
Cease now from tears, lest any, coming

forth,

Mark and report them to our foes within.
Now, to the hall again, but one by one,
Not all at once, I foremost, then your-
selves,
And this shall be the sign. Full well I

know

That, all unanimous, they will oppose
Deliv'ry of the bow and shafts to me;
But thou (proceeding with it to my seat),
Eumaeus, noble friend! shalt give the bow
Into my grasp; then bid the women close
The massy doors, and should they hear a

groan

Or other noise made by the Princes shut
Within the hall, let none set step abroad,
But all work silent. Be the palace-door
Thy charge, my good Philcetius! key it fast
Without a moment's pause, and fix the

brace.

He ended, and, returning to the hall,
Resumed his seat; nor stay'd his servants

long
Without, but follow'd their illustrious

Lord.
Eurymachus was busily employ'd

Turning the bow, and chafing it before
The sprightly blaze, but, after all, could

find
No pow'r to bend it. Disappointment

wrung
A groan from his proud heart, and thus he

said.

Alas! not only for myself I grieve,
But grieve for all. Nor, though I mourn

the loss

Of such a bride, mourn I that loss alone,
(For lovely Grecians may be found no few
In Ithaca, and in the neighbor isles)
But should we so inferior prove at last
To brave Ulysses, that no force of ours
Can bend his bow, we are for ever shamed.
To whom Antinoiis, thus, Euphites' son.
Not so; (as even thou art well-assured
Thyself, Eurymachus!) but Phoebus claims
This day his own. Who then, on such a

day,
Would strive to bend it? Let it rather

rest.
And should we leave the rings where now

they stand,

I trust that none ent'ring Ulysses' house
Will dare displace them. Cup-bearer,

attend!
Serve all with wine, that, first, libation

made,

We may religiously lay down the bow.
Command ye too Melanthius, that he

drive

Hither the fairest goats of all his flocks
At dawn of day, that burning first, the

thighs

To the ethereal archer, we may make
New trial, and decide, at length, the strife.
So spake Antinoiis, and his counsel

pleased.
The heralds, then, pour'd water on their

hands,
While youths crown'd high the goblets

which they bore

From right to left, distributing to all.
When each had made libation, and had

drunk

Till well sufficed, then, artful to effect
His shrewd designs, Ulysses thus began.
Hear, ye suitors of the illustrious

Queen,
My bosom's dictates. But I shall entreat

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Chiefly Eurymachus and the godlike youth
Antinoiis, whose advice is wisely giv'n.
Tamper no longer with the bow, but

leave

The matter with the Gods, who shall de-
cide
The strife to-morrow, fav'ring whom they

will.
Meantime, grant me the polish'd bow, that

May trial make among you of my force,
If I retain it still in like degree
As erst, or whether wand'ring and defect
Of nourishment have worn it all away.
He said, whom they with indignation

heard
Extreme, alarm'd lest he should bend the

bow,
And sternly thus Antinoiis replied.

Desperate vagabond! ah wretch de-
prived

Of reason utterly! art not content?
Esteem'st it not distinction proud enough
To feast with us the nobles of the land?
None robs thee of thy share, thou wit-

nessest
Our whole discourse, which, save thyself

alone,

No needy vagrant is allow'd to hear.
Thou art befool'd by wine, as many have

been,
Wide-throated drinkers, unrestrain'd by

rule.

Wine in the mansion of the mighty Chief
Pirithoiis, made the valiant Centaur mad,
Eurytion, at the Lapithsean feast.
He drank to drunkenness, and being

drunk,

Committed great enormities beneath
Pirithoiis' roof, and such as fill'd with rage
The Hero-guests, who therefore by his feet
Dragg'd him right through the vestibule,

amerced

Of nose and ears, and he departed thence
Provoked to frenzy by that foul disgrace.
Whence war between the human kind

arose

And the bold Centaurs but he first in-
curred

By his ebriety that mulct severe.
Great evil, also, if thou bend the bow,
To thee I prophesy; for thou shalt find

Advocate or protector none in all

This people, but we will dispatch thee

hence

Incontinent on board a sable bark
To Echetus, the scourge of human kind,
From whom is no escape. Drink then in

peace,
And contest shun with younger men than

thou.

Him answer'd, then, Penelope discrete.
Antinoiis! neither seemly were the deed
Nor just, to maim or harm whatever guest
Whom here arrived Telemachus receives.
Canst thou expect, that should he even

prove
Stronger than ye, and bend the massy

bow,

He will conduct me hence to his own home,
And make me his own bride? No such

design
His heart conceives, or hope; nor let a

dread

So vain the mind of any overcloud
Who banquets here, since it dishonors me.
So she; to whom Eurymachus reply 'd,
Offspring of Polybus. O matchless Queen !
Icarius' prudent daughter! none suspects
That thou wilt wed with him; a mate so

mean
Should ill become thee; but we fear the

tongues

Of either sex, lest some Achaian say
Hereafter (one inferior far to us),
Ah! how unworthy are they to compare
With him whose wife they seek! to bend

his bow

Pass'd all their pow'r, yet this poor vaga-
bond,

Arriving from what country none can tell,
Bent it with ease, and shot through all the

rings.
So will they speak, and so shall we be

shamed.

Then answer, thus, Penelope return'd.
No fair report, Eurymachus, attends
Their names or can, who, riotous as ye,
The house dishonor, and consume the

wealth
Of such a Chief. Why shame ye thus

yourselves ?

The guest is of athletic frame, well form'd,
And large of limb; he boas tshim also sprung

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

From noble ancestry. Come then con-
sent
Give him the bow, that we may see the

proof;

For thus I say, and thus will I perform;
Sure as he bends it, and Apollo gives
To him that glory, tunic fair and cloak
Shall be his meed from me, a javelin keen
To guard him against men and dogs, a

sword

Of double edge, and sandals for his feet,
And I will send him whither most he

would.

Her answer'd then prudent Telemachus.
Mother the bow is mine; and, save my-
self,

No Greek hath right to give it, or refuse.
None who hi rock-bound Ithaca possess
Dominion, none in the steed-pastured isles
Of Elis, if I chose to make the bow
His own for ever, should that choice con-
trol.

But thou into the house repairing, ply
Spindle and loom, thy province, and enjoin
Diligence to thy maidens; for the bow
Is man's concern alone, and shall be mine
Especially, since I am master here.
She heard astonish'd, and the prudent

speech

Reposing of her son deep in her heart,
Withdrew; then mounting with her female

train

To her superior chamber, there she wept
Her lost Ulysses, till Minerva bathed
With balmy dews of sleep her weary lids.
And now the noble swine-herd bore the

bow

Toward Ulysses, but with one voice all
The suitors, clamorous, reproved the deed,
Of whom a youth, thus, insolent ex-

claim'd.
Thou clumsy swine-herd, whither bear'st

the bow,
Delirious wretch? the hounds that thou

hast train'd

Shall eat thee at thy solitary home
Ere long, let but Apollo prove, at last,
Propitious to us, and the Pow'rs of heav'n.
So they, whom hearing he replaced the

bow

Where erst it stood, terrified at the sound
Of such loud menaces; on the other side

Telemachus as loud assail'd his ear.
Friend! forward with the bow; or soon

repent

That thou obey'dst the many. I will else
With huge stones drive thee, younger as

I am,
Back to the field. My strength surpasses

thine.

I would to heav'n that I in force excell'd
As far, and prowess, every suitor here!
So would I soon give rude dismission hence
To some, who live but to imagine harm.
He ceased, whose words the suitors

laughing heard.
And, for their sake, in part their wrath

resign'd

Against Telemachus ; then through the hall
Eumaeus bore, and to Ulysses' hand
Consign'd the bow; next, summoning

abroad
The ancient nurse, he gave her thus in

charge.

It is the pleasure of Telemachus,
Sage Euryclea! that thou key secure
The doors; and should you hear, per-
chance, a groan

Or other noise made by the Princes shut
Within the hall, let none look, curious,

forth,
But each in quietness pursue her work.

So he; nor flew his words useless away,
But she, incontinent, shut fast the doors.
Then, noiseless, sprang Philcetius forth,

who closed

The portals also of the palace-court.
A ship-rope of ^Egyptian reed, it chanced,
Lay in the vestibule; with that he braced
The doors securely, and re-entring fill'd
Again his seat, but watchful, eyed his

Lord.

He, now, assaying with his hand the bow,
Made curious trial of it ev'ry way,
And turn'd it on all sides, lest haply worms
Had in its master's absence drill'd the

horn.

Then thus a suitor to his next remark'd.
He hath an eye, methinks, exactly

skill'd
In bows, and steals them; or perhaps, at

home,

Hath such himself, or feels a strong desire
To make them; so inquisitive the rogue

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Adept in mischief, shifts it to and fro!
To whom another, insolent, replied.
I wish him like prosperity in all
His efforts, as attends his effort made
On this same bow, which he shall never

bend.

So they; but when the wary Hero wise
Had made his hand familiar with the bow
Poising it and examining at once
As when in harp and song adept, a bard
Unlab'ring strains the chord to a new lyre,
The twisted entrails of a sheep below
With fingers nice inserting, and above,
With such facility Ulysses bent
His own huge bow, and with his right hand

play'd
The nerve, which in its quick vibration

sang

Clear as the swallow's voice. Keen an-
guish seized
The suitors, wan grew ev'ry cheek, and

Jove

Gave him his rolling thunder for a sign.
That omen, granted to him by the son
Of wily Saturn, with delight he heard.
He took a shaft that at the table-side
Lay ready drawn; but in his quiver's womb
The rest yet slept, by those Achaians proud
To be, ere long, experienced. True he

lodg'd

The arrow on the centre of the bow,
And, occupying still his seat, drew home
Nerve and notch'd arrow-head; with

stedfast sight
He aimed and sent it; right through all

the rings
From first to last the steel-charged weapon

flew

Issuing beyond, and to his son he spake.
Thou need'st not blush, young Prince,

to have received

A guest like me ; neither my arrow swerved,
Nor labor 'd I long time to draw the bow;
My strength is unimpair'd, not such as

these

In scorn affirm it. But the waning day
Calls us to supper, after which succeeds
Jocund variety, the song, the harp,
With all that heightens and adorns the

feast.

He said, and with his brows gave him
the sign.

At once the son of the illustrious Chief
Slung his keen faulchion, grasp'd his spear,

and stood
Arm'd bright for battle at his father's side.

BOOK XXII

ARGUMENT

ULYSSES, with some little assistance from Tele-
machus, Eumaeus and Philcetius, slays all the
suitors

THEN, girding up his rags, Ulysses sprang
With bow and full-charged quiver to the

door;
Loose on the broad stone at his feet he

pour'd

His arrows, and the suitors, thus, bespake.
This prize, though difficult, hath been

achieved.

Now for another mark which never man
Struck yet, but I will strike it if I may,
And if Apollo make that glory mine.

He said, and at Antinoiis aimed direct
A bitter shaft; he, purposing to drink,
Both hands advanced toward the golden

cup
Twin-ear'd, nor aught suspected death so

nigh.

For who, at the full banquet, could suspect
That any single guest, however brave,
Should plan his death, and execute the

blow?

Yet him Ulysses with an arrow pierced
Full in the throat, and through his neck

behind
Started the glitt'ring point. Aslant he

droop'd;
Down fell the goblet; through his nostrils

flew
The spouted blood, and spurning with his

foot
The board, he spread his viands in the

dust.

Confusion, when they saw Antinoiis fall'n,
Seized all the suitors; from the thrones

they sprang,
Flew ev'ry way, and on all sides explored
The palace-walls, but neither sturdy lance
As erst, nor buckler could they there dis-
cern,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Then, furious, to Ulysses thus they spake.
Thy arrow, stranger, was ill-aimed; a

man

Is no just mark. Thou never shalt dispute
Prize more. Inevitable death is thine.
For thou hast slain a Prince noblest of all
In Ithaca, and shalt be vultures' food.
Various their judgments were, but none

believed

That he had slain him wittingly, nor saw
Th' infatuate men fate hov'ring o'er them

all.
Then thus Ulysses, louring dark, replied.

O dogs ! not fearing aught my safe return
From Ilium, ye have shorn my substance

close,

Lain with my women forcibly, and sought,
While yet I lived, to make my consort

yours,

Heedless of the inhabitants of heav'n
Alike, and of the just revenge of man.
But death is on the wing; death for you all.
He said; their cheeks all faded at the

sound,
And each with sharpen'd eyes search'd

ev'ry nook

For an escape from his impending doom.
Till thus, alone, Eurymachus replied.

If thou indeed art he, the mighty Chief
Of Ithaca return'd, thou hast rehears'd
With truth the crimes committed by the

Greeks
Frequent, both in thy house and in thy

field.

But he, already, who was cause of all,
Lies slain, Antinoiis, he thy palace fill'd
With outrage, not solicitous so much
To win the fan- Penelope, but thoughts
Far diff'rent framing, which Saturnian

Jove

Hath baffled all; to rule, himself, supreme
In noble Ithaca, when he had kill'd
By an insidious stratagem thy son.
But he is slain. Now therefore, spare

thy own,

Thy people; public reparation due
Shall sure be thine, and to appease thy

wrath
For all the waste that, eating, drinking

here
We have committed, we will yield thee,

each.

Full twenty beeves, gold paying thee beside
And brass, till joy shall fill thee at the

sight,

However just thine anger was before.
To whom Ulysses, frowning stern, re-
plied.

Eurymachus, would ye contribute each
His whole inheritance, and other sums
Still add beside, ye should not, even so,
These hands of mine bribe to abstain from

blood,

Till ev'ry suitor suffer for his wrong.
Ye have your choice. Fight with me, or

escape

(Whoever may) the terrors of his fate,
But ye all perish, if my thought be true.
He ended, they with trembling knees

and hearts
All heard, whom thus Eurymachus ad-

dress'd.
To your defence, my friends! for respite

none

Will he to his victorious hands afford,
But, arm'd with bow and quiver, will dis-
patch
Shafts from the door till he have slain us

all.
Therefore to arms draw each his sword

oppose

The tables to his shafts, and all at once
Rush on him; that, dislodging him at least
From portal and from threshold, we may

give

The city on all sides a loud alarm,
So shall this archer soon have shot his last.
Thus saying, he drew his brazen faul-

chion keen

Of double edge, and with a dreadful cry
Sprang on him; but Ulysses with a shaft
In that same moment through his bosom

driv'n
Transfix'd his liver, and down dropp'd his

sword.

He, staggering around his table, fell
Convolv'd in agonies, and overturn'd
Both food and wine; his forehead smote

the floor;
Woe fill'd his heart, and spurning with his

heels

His vacant seat, he shook it till he died.
Then, with his faulchion drawn, Amphi-

nomus

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Advanced to drive Ulysses from the door,
And fierce was his assault; but, from be-
hind,

Telemachus between his shoulders fix'd
A brazen lance, and urged it through his

breast.
Full on his front, with hideous sound, he

fell.

Leaving the weapon planted in his spine
Back flew Telemachus, lest, had he stood
Drawing it forth, some enemy, perchance,
Should either pierce him with a sudden

thrust
Oblique, or hew him with a downright

edge.

Swift, therefore, to his father's side he ran,
Whom reaching, in wing'd accents thus he

said.
My father! I will now bring thee a

shield,

An helmet, and two spears; I will enclose
Myself in armor also, and will give
Both to the herdsmen and Eumaeus arms
Expedient now, and needful for us all.
To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied.
Run ; fetch them, while I yet have arrows

left,

Lest, single, I be justled from the door.
He said, and, at his word, forth went

the Prince,

Seeking the chamber where he had secured
The armor. Thence he took four shields,

eight spears,
With four hair-crested helmets, charged

with which

He hasted to his father's side again,
And, arming first himself, furnish'd with

arms

His two attendants. Then, all clad alike
In splendid brass, beside the dauntless

Chief

Ulysses, his auxiliars firm they stood.
He, while a single arrow unemploy'd
Lay at his foot, right-aiming, ever pierced
Some suitor through, and heaps on heaps

they fell.

But when his arrows fail'd the royal Chief,
His bow reclining at the portal's side
Against the palace-wall, he slung, himself,
A four-fold buckler on his arm, he fix'd
A casque whose crest wav'd awful o'er his

brows

On his illustrious head, and fill'd his gripe

With two stout spears, well-headed, both,

with brass.
There was a certain postern in the wall

At the gate-side, the customary pass

Into a narrow street, but barr'd secure.

Ulysses bade his faithful swine-herd watch

That egress, station'd near it, for it own'd

One sole approach; then Agelalis loud

Exhorting all the suitors, thus exclaim'd.
Oh friends, will none, ascending to the
door

Of yonder postern, summon to our aid

The populace, and spread a wide alarm?

So shall this archer soon have shot his last.
To whom the keeper of the goats replied,

Melanthius. Agelaiis! Prince renown'd!

That may not be. The postern and the
gate

Neighbor too near each other, and to force

The narrow egress were a vain attempt;

One valiant man might thence repulse us
all.

But come myself will furnish you with
arms

Fetch'd from above; for there, as I sup-
pose,

(And not elsewhere) Ulysses and his son

Have hidden them, and there they shall

be found.

So spake Melanthius, and, ascending,
sought

Ulysses' chambers through the winding
stairs

And gall'ries of the house. Twelve buck-
lers thence

He took, as many spears, and helmets
bright

As many, shagg'd with hair, then swift re-
turn'd

And gave them to his friends. Trembled
the heart

Of brave Ulysses, and his knees, at sight

Of his opposers putting armor on,

And shaking each his spear; arduous in-
deed

Now seem'd his task, and in wing'd ac-
cents brief

Thus to his son Telemachus he spake.
Either some woman of our train con-
trives

Hard battle for us, furnishing with arms

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The suitors, or Melanthius arms them all.

Him answer'd then Telemachus discrete.

Father, this fault was mine, and be it

charged

On none beside; I left the chamber-door
Unbarr'd, which, more attentive than

myself,
Their spy perceived. But haste, Eumaeus,

shut
The chamber-door, observing well, the

while,

If any women of our train have done
This deed, or whether, as I more suspect,
Melanthius, Dolius' son, have giv'n them

arms.
Thus mutual they conferr'd; meantime,

again

Melanthius to the chamber flew in quest
Of other arms. Eumaeus, as he went,
Mark'd him, and to Ulysses thus he spake.
Laertes' noble son, for wiles renown'd!
Behold, the traitor, whom ourselves sup-
posed,

Seeks yet again the chamber ! Tell me plain,
Shall I, should I superior prove in force,
Slay him, or shall I drag him thence to

thee,

That he may suffer at thy hands the doom
Due to his treasons perpetrated oft
Against thee, here, even in thy own house?
Then answer thus Ulysses shrewd re-

turn'd.

I, with Telemachus, will here immew
The lordly suitors close, rage as they may.
Ye two, the while, bind fast Melanthius'

hands
And feet behind his back, then cast him

bound

Into the chamber, and (the door secured)
Pass underneath his arms a double chain,
And by a pillar's top weigh him aloft
Till he approach the rafters, there to en-
dure,
Living long time, the mis'ries he hath

earned.
He spake; they prompt obey'd; together

both
They sought the chamber, whom the

wretch within

Heard not, exploring ev'ry nook for arms.
They watching stood the door, from which,

at length,

Forth came Melanthius, bearing in one

hand

A casque, and in the other a broad shield
Time-worn and chapp'd with drought,

which in his youth

Warlike Laertes had been wont to bear.
Long time neglected it had lain, till age
Had loosed the sutures of its bands. At

once
Both, springing on him, seized and drew

him hi

Forcibly by his locks, then cast him down
Prone on the pavement, trembling at his

fate.

With painful stricture of the cord his hands
They bound and feet together at his back,
As their illustrious master had enjoined,
Then weigh'd him with a double chain(

aloft

By a tall pillar to the palace-roof,
And thus, deriding him, Eumaeus spake.
Now, good Melanthius, on that fleecy

bed
Reclined, as well befits thee, thou wilt

watch

All night, nor when the golden dawn for-
sakes
The ocean stream, will she escape thine

eye,

But thou wilt duly to the palace drive
The fattest goats, a banquet for thy

friends.
So saying, he left him in his dreadful

sling.
Then, arming both, and barring fast the

door,

They sought brave Laertiades again.
And now, courageous at the portal stood
Those four, by numbers in the interior

house

Opposed of adversaries fierce hi arms,
When Pallas, in the form and with the

voice

Approach'd of Mentor, whom Laertes' son

Beheld, and joyful at the sight, exclaim'd.

Help, Mentor! help now recollect a

friend
And benefactor, born when thou wast

born.

So he, not unsuspicious that he saw
Pallas, the heroine of heav'n. Meantime
The suitors filTd with menaces the dome,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

And Agelaiis, first, Damastor's son,

In accents harsh rebuked the Goddess

thus.
Beware, O Mentor! that he lure thee

not

To oppose the suitors and to aid himself.
For thus will we. Ulysses and his son
Both slain, in vengeance of thy purpos'd

deeds

Against us, we will slay thee next, and thou
With thy own head shalt satisfy the wrong
Your force thus quell'd in battle, all thy

wealth
Whether in house or field, mingled with

his,

We will confiscate, neither will we leave
Or son of thine, or daughter in thy house
Alive, nor shall thy virtuous consort more
Within the walls of Ithaca be seen.
He ended, and his words with wrath

inflamed
Minerva's heart the more; incensed, she

turn'd

Towards Ulysses, whom she thus reproved.
Thou neither own'st the courage nor the

force,
Ulysses, now, which nine whole years

thou showd'st

At Ilium, waging battle obstinate
For high-born Helen, and in horrid fight
Destroying multitudes, till thy advice
At last lay'd Priam's bulwark'd city low.
Why, in possession of thy proper home
And substance, mourn'st thou want of

pow'r t'oppose
The suitors? Stand beside me, mark my

deeds,

And thou shalt own Mentor Alcimides
A valiant friend, and mindful of thy love.
She spake; nor made she victory as yet
Entire his own, proving the valor, first,
Both of the sire and of his glorious son,
But, springing in a swallow's form aloft,
Perch'd on a rafter of the splendid roof.
Then, Agelaiis animated loud
The suitors, whom Eurynomus also roused,
Amphimedon, and Demoptolemus,
And Polyctorides, Pisander named,
And Polybus the brave; for noblest far
Of all the suitor-chiefs who now survived
And fought for life were these. The bow

had quell'd

And shafts, in quick succession sent, the

rest.

Then Agelaiis, thus, harangued them all.
We soon shall tame, O friends, this

warrior's might,

Whom Mentor, after all his airy vaunts
Hath left, and at the portal now remain
Themselves alone. Dismiss not therefore,

all,

Your spears together, but with six alone
Assail them first; Jove willing, we shall

pierce

Ulysses, and subduing him, shall slay
With ease the rest; their force is safely

scorn'd.
He ceas'd; and, as he bade, six hurl'd the

spear

Together; but Minerva gave them all
A devious flight; one struck a column, one
The planks of the broad portal, and a third
Flung right his ashen beam pond'rous with

brass
Against the wall. Then (ev'ry suitor's

spear

Eluded) thus Ulysses gave the word
Now friends! I counsel you that ye

dismiss
Your spears at them, who, not content with

past
Enormities, thirst also for our blood.

He said, and with unerring aim, all threw
Their glitt'ring spears. Ulysses on the

ground

Stretch 'd Demoptolemus; Euryades
Fell by Telemachus; the swine-herd slew
Elatus ; and the keeper of the beeves
Pisander; in one moment all alike
Lay grinding with their teeth the dusty

floor.

Back flew the suitors to the farthest wall,
On whom those valiant four advancing,

each
Recover'd, quick, his weapon from the

dead.

Then hurl'd the desp'rate suitors yet again
Their glitt'ring spears but Pallas gave to

each
A frustrate course; one struck a column.

one

The planks of the broad portal, and a third
Flung full his ashen beam against the

wall.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Yet pierced Amphimedon the Prince's

wrist,
But slightly, a skin-wound, and o'er his

shield

Ctesippus reach'd the shoulder of the good
Eumseus, but his glancing weapon swift
O'erflew the mark, and fell. And now the

four,

Ulysses, dauntless Hero, and his friends
All hurl'd their spears together in return,
Himself Ulysses, city-waster Chief,
Wounded Eurydamas; Ulysses' son
Amphimedon; the swine-herd Polybus;
And in his breast the keeper of the beeves
Ctesippus, glorying over whom, he cried.
Oh son of Polytherses! whose delight
Hath been to taunt and jeer, never again
Boast foolishly, but to the Gods commit
Thy tongue, since they are mightier far

than thou.

Take this a compensation for thy pledge
Of hospitality, the huge ox-hoof,
Which while he roam'd the palace, begging

alms,

Ulysses at thy bounteous hand received.
So gloried he; then, grasping still his

spear,

Ulysses pierced Damastor's son, and, next,
Telemachus, enforcing his long beam
Sheer through his bowels and his back,

transpierced

Leiocritus; he prostrate smote the floor.
Then, Pallas from the lofty roof held forth
Her host-confounding ^Egis o'er their

heads,
With'ring their souls with fear. They

through the hall
Fled, scatter'd as an herd, which rapid-

wing'd

The gad-fly dissipates, infester fell
Of beeves, when vernal suns shine hot and

long.
But, as when bow-beak'd vultures crooked-

claw'd
Stoop from the mountains on the smaller

fowl;

Terrified at the toils that spread the plain
The flocks take wing, they, darting from

above,

Strike, seize, and slay, resistance or escape
Is none, the fowler's heart leaps with de-
light,

So they, pursuing through the spacious

hall
The suitors, smote them on all sides, their

heads
Sounded beneath the sword, with hideous

groans
The palace rang, and the floor foamed with

blood.

Then flew Leiodes to Ulysses' knees,
Which clasping, in wing'd accents thus h(

cried.

I clasp thy knees, Uiysses ! on respect
My suit, and spare me! Never have

word

Injurious spoken, or injurious deed
Attempted 'gainst the women of thr

house,

But others, so transgressing, oft forbad.
Yet they abstain'd not, and a dreadful fate
Due to their wickedness have, therefore,

found.

But I, their soothsayer alone, must fall,
Though unoffending; such is the return
By mortals made for benefits received !

To whom Ulysses, louring dark, replied.
Is that thy boast? Hast thou indeed for

these

The seer's high office fill'd? Then, doubt-
less, oft
Thy pray'r hath been that distant far

might prove

The day delectable of my return,
And that my consort might thy own be-
come
To bear thee children; wherefore thee I

doom

To a dire death which thou shalt not avoid.
So saying, he caught the faulchion from

the floor

Which Agelaiis had let fall, and smote
Leiodes, while he kneel'd, athwart his neck
So suddenly, that ere his tongue had ceased
To plead for life, his head was in the dust.
But Phemius, son of Terpius, bard divine,
Who, through compulsion, with his song

regaled

The suitors, a like dreadful death escaped.
Fast by the postern, harp in hand, he

stood,
Doubtful if, issuing, he should take his

seat
Beside the altar of Hercaean Jove,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Where oft Ulysses offer'd, and his sire,
Fat thighs of beeves or whether he should

haste,

An earnest suppliant, to embrace his knees.
That course, at length, most pleased him;

then, between

The beaker and an argent-studded throne
He grounded his sweet lyre, and seizing

fast
The Hero's knees, him, suppliant, thus

address'd.

I clasp thy knees, Ulysses! oh respect
My suit, and spare me. Thou shalt not

escape

Regret thyself hereafter, if thou slay
Me, charmer of the woes of Gods and men.
Self-taught am I, and treasure in my mind
Themes of all argument from heav'n in-
spired,

And I can sing to thee as to a God.
Ah, then, behead me not. Put ev'n the

wish

Far from thee! for thy own beloved son
Can witness, that not drawn by choice, or

driv'n

By stress of want, resorting to thine house
I have regaled these revellers so oft,
But under force of mightier far than I.
So he; whose words soon as the sacred

might

Heard of Telemachus, approaching quick
His father, thus, humane, he interposed.
Hold, harm not with the vengeful faul-

chion's edge

This blameless man; and we will also spare
Medon the herald, who hath ever been
A watchful guardian of my boyish years,
Unless Philcetius have already slain him,
Or else Eumaeus, or thyself, perchance,
Unconscious, in the tumult of our foes.
He spake, whom Medon hearing (for he

lay

Beneath a throne, and in a new-stript hide
Enfolded, trembling with the dread of

death)

Sprang from his hiding-place, and casting

off

The skin, flew to Telemachus, embraced
His knees, and in wing'd accents thus

exclaim'd.

Prince ! I am here oh, pity me ! repress
Thine own, and pacify thy father's wrath,
That he destroy not me, through fierce

revenge

Of their iniquities who have consumed
His wealth, and, in their folly scorn'd his

son.

To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied,
Smiling complacent. Fear not; my own

son
Hath pleaded for thee. Therefore (taught

thyself
That truth) teach others the superior

worth

Of benefits with injuries compared.
But go ye forth, thou and the sacred bard,
That ye may sit distant in yonder court
From all this carnage, while I give com-
mand,

Myself, concerning it, to those within.
He ceas'd; they going forth, took each

his seat

Beside Jove's altar, but with careful looks
Suspicious, dreading without cease the

sword.
Meantime Ulysses search'd his hall, in

quest

Of living foes, if any still survived
Unpunish'd; but he found them all alike
Welt'ring in dust and blood; num'rous

they lay
Like fishes when they strew the sinuous

shore
Of Ocean, from the gray gulph drawn

aground

In nets of many a mesh; they on the sands
Lie spread, athirst for the salt wave, til]

hot

The gazing sun dries all their life away;
So lay the suitors heap'd.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO (B. C. 70-19)
THE ^ENEID

The noble story of the flight of ^Eneas with his companions from the sack of Troy, of their perilous
voyage to Carthage, where they were entertained by Queen Dido, of ^Eneas's desertion of her at the
bidding of Jupiter through his messenger Mercury, of his journey to Italy and the wars that ensued be-
fore he could fulfill his destiny in founding the city of Rome, is told in this great national epic of the
Roman race. For beauty of phrase and loftiness of spirit the poem is quite unrivalled.

Book II, which is here given, is the hero's own account, told to Dido, of the sacking of Troy by
the victorious Greeks and his escape from the burning city. The translation is by John Dryden, and
was first published in 1697.

BOOK II

ARGUMENT

/NEAS relates how the city of Troy was taken
after a ten years' siege, by the treachery of
Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse.
He declares the fix'd resolution he had taken
not to survive the rums of his country, and the
various adventures he met with in the defense
of it. At last, having been before advis'd by
Hector's ghost, and now by the appearance
of his mother Venus, he is prevail'd upon to
leave the town, and settle his household gods
in another country. In order to this, he carries
off his father on his shoulders, and leads his
little son by the hand, his wife following him
behind. When he comes to the place ap-
pointed for the general rendezvouze, he finds
a great confluence of people, but misses his
wife, whose ghost afterward appears to him,
and tells him the land which was design'd
for him.

ALL were attentive to the godlike man,
When from his lofty couch he thus began:
" Great queen, what you command me to

relate

Renews the sad remembrance of our fate:
An empire from its old foundations rent.
And ev'ry woe the Trojans underwent;
A peopled city made a desert place:
All that I saw, and part of which I was:
Not ev'n the hardest of our foes could

hear,

Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear.
And now the latter watch of wasting night,
And setting stars, to kindly rest invite;
But, since you take such int'rest in our

woe,

And Troy's disastrous end desire to know,
I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell
What in our last and fatal night befell.

" By destiny compell'd, and in despair,

The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,

And by Minerva's aid a fabric rear'd,

Which like a steed of monstrous height
appear'd:

The sides were plank'd with pine; they
feign'd it made

For their return, and this the vow they
paid.

Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side

Selected numbers of their soldiers hide:

With inward arms the dire machine they
load,

And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.

In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle

(While Fortune did on Priam's empire
smile)

Renown'd for wealth; but, since, a faith-
less bay,

Where ships expos'd to wind and weather
lay.

There was their fleet conceal' d. We
thought, for Greece

Their sails were hoisted, and our fears re-
lease.

The Trojans, coop'd within then- walls so
long,

Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,

Like swarming bees, and with delight sur-
vey

The camp deserted, where the Grecians
lay:

The quarters of the sev'ral chiefs the
show'd;

Here Phcenix, here Achilles, made abode;

Here join'd the battles; there the na^
rode.

Part on the pile their wond'ring eyes em-

EPIC AND ROMANCE

The pile by Pallas rais'd to ruin Troy.

Thymoetes first ('t is doubtful whether
hir'd,

Or so the Trojan destiny requir'd)

Mov'd that the ramparts might be broken
down,

Tc lodge the monster fabric in the town.

But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind,

The fatal present to the flames design'd,

Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore

The hollow sides, and hidden frauds ex-
plore.

The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,

With noise say nothing, and in parts di-
vide.

Laocoon, follow'd by a num'rous crowd,

Ran from the fort, and cried, from far,
aloud:

'0 wretched countrymen! what fury
reigns?

What more than madness has possess'd
your brains?

Think you the Grecians from your coasts
are gone?

And are Ulysses' arts no better known?

This hollow fabric either must inclose,

Within its blind recess, our secret foes;

Or 't is an engine rais'd above the town,

T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter
down.

Somewhat is sure design'd, by fraud or
force :

Trust not their presents, nor admit the
horse.'

Thus having said, against the steed he
threw

His forceful spear, which, hissing as it flew,

Pierc'd thro' the yielding planks of jointed
wood,

And trembling in the hollow belly stood.

The sides, transpierc'd, return a rattling
sound,

And groans oi Greeks inclos'd come issuing
thro' the wound.

And, had not Heav'n the fall of Troy de-
sign'd,

Or had not men been fated to be blind,

Enough was said and done t' inspire a
better mind.

Ihen had our lances pierc'd the treach'rous
wood,

And Ilian tow'rs and Priam's empire stood.

Meantime, with shouts, the Trojan shep-
herds bring

A captive Greek, in bands, before the king;

Taken, to take; who made himself their
prey,

T ' impose on their belief, and Troy betray;

Fix'd on his aim, and obstinately bent

To die undaunted, or to circumvent.

About the captive, tides of Trojans flow;

All press to see, and some insult the foe.

Now hear how well the Greeks their wiles
disguis'd;

Behold a nation in a man compris'd.

Trembling the miscreant stood, unarm'd
and bound;

He star'd, and roll'd his haggard eyes
around,

Then said: 'Alas! what earth remains,
what sea

Is open to receive unhappy me?

What fate a wretched fugitive attends,

Scorn'd by my foes, abandon'd by my
friends?'

He said, and sigh'd, and cast a rueful eye:

Our pity kindles, and our passions die.

We cheer the youth to make his own de-
fense,

And freely tell us what he was, and whence :

What news he could impart, we long to
know,

And what to credit from a captive foe.
"His fear at length dismiss'd, he said:
'Whate'er

My fate ordains, my words shall be sin-
cere:

I neither can nor dare my birth disclaim;

Greece is my country, Sinon is my name.

Tho' plung'd by Fortune's pow'r in misery,

'Tis not in Fortune's pow'r to make me
lie.

If any chance has hither brought the name

Of Palamedes, not unknown to fame,

Who suffer'd from the malice of the times,

Accus'd and sentenc'd for pretended
crimes,

Because these fatal wars he would prevent;

Whose death the wretched Greeks too late
lament

Me, then a boy, my father, poor and
bare

Of other means, committed to his care,

His kinsman and companion hi the war.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

While Fortune favor'd, while his arms sup-
port
The cause, and ruFd the counsels, of the

court,
I made some figure there; nor was my

name

Obscure, nor I without my share of fame.
But when Ulysses, with fallacious arts,
Had made impression in the people's

hearts,

And forg'd a treason in my patron's name
(I speak of things too far divulg'd by

fame),

My kinsman fell. Then I, without sup-
port,
In private mourn'd his loss, and left the

court.

Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate
With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the

state,

And curs'd the direful author of my woes.
'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose.
I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once

Would land me safely on my native shore,
His death with double vengeance to re-
store.
This mov'd the murderer's hate; and soon

ensued

Th' effects of malice from a man so proud.
Ambiguous rumors thro' the camp he

spread,

And sought, by treason, my devoted head;
New crimes invented; left unturn'd no

stone,
To make my guilt appear, and hide his

own;
Till Calchas was by force and threat'ning

wrought
But why why dwell I on that anxious

thought?

If on my nation just revenge you seek,
And 't is t'appear a foe, t' appear a Greek;
Already you my name and country know;
Assuage your thirst of blood, and strike the

blow:
My death will both the kingly brothers

please,

And set insatiate Ithacus at ease.'
This fair unfmish'd tale, these broken

starts,
Rais'd expectations in our longing hearts:

Unknowing as we were in Grecian arts.
His former trembling once again renew'd,
With acted fear, the villain thus pursued:
'"Long had the Grecians (tir'd with

fruitless care,

And wearied with an unsuccessful war)
Resolv'd to raise the siege, and leave the

town;
And, had the gods permitted, they had

gone;

But oft the wintry seas and southern winds
Withstood their passage home, and chang'd

their minds.

Portents and prodigies their souls amaz'd;
But most, when this stupendous pile was

rais'd:
Then flaming meteors, hung in air, were

seen,

And thunders rattled thro' a sky serene.
Dismay'd, and fearful of some dire event,
Eurypylus t' enquire their fate was sent.
He from the gods this dreadful answer

brought:
"O Grecians, when the Trojan shores you

sought,
Your passage with a virgin's blood was

bought:

So must your safe return be bought again,
And Grecian blood once more atone the

main."
The spreading rumor round the people

ran;
All fear'd, and each believ'd himself the

man.

Ulysses took th' advantage of their fright;
Call'd Calchas, and produc'd in open sight:
Then bade him name the wretch, ordain'd

by fate

The public victim, to redeem the state.
Already some presag'd the dire event,
And saw what sacrifice Ulysses meant.
For twice five days the good old seer with-
stood
Th' intended treason, and was dumb

blood,

Till, tir'd with endless clamors and pursuit
Of Ithacus, he stood no longer mute;
But, as it was agreed, pronounc'd that I
Was destin'd by the wrathful gods to die.
All prais'd the sentence, pleas'd the storir

should fall
On one alone, whose fury threaten'd all.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

The dismal day was come; the priests

prepare
Their leaven'd cakes, and fillets for my

hair.

I foflow'd nature's laws, and must avow
I broke my bonds and fled the fatal blow.
Hid in a weedy lake all night I lay,
Secure of safety when they sail'd away.
But now what further hopes for me re-
main,

To see my friends, or native soil, again;
My tender infants, or my careful sire,
Whom they returning will to death re-
quire;

Will perpetrate on them their first design,
And take the forfeit of their heads for

mine?

Which, O! if pity mortal minds can move,
If there be faith below, or gods above,
If innocence and truth can claim desert,
Ye Trojans, from an injur'd wretch avert.'
"False tears true pity move; the king

commands

To loose his fetters, and unbind his hands:
Then adds these friendly words: 'Dismiss

thy fears;
Forget the Greeks; be mine as thou wert

theirs.

But truly tell, was it for force or guile,
Or some religious end, you rais'd the pile? '
Thus said the king. He, full of fraudful

arts,

This well-invented tale for truth imparts:
'Ye lamps of heav'n!' he said, and lifted

high

His hands now free, 'thou venerable sky!
Inviolable pow'rs, ador'd with dread!
Ye fatal fillets, that once bound this head!
Ye sacred altars, from whose flames I fled!
Be all of you adjur'd; and grant I may,
Without a crime, th' ungrateful Greeks

betray,

Reveal the secrets of the guilty state,
And justly punish whom I justly hate!
But you, O king, preserve the faith you

gave,

If I, to save myself, your empire save.
The Grecian hopes, and all th' attempts

they made,

Were only founded on Minerva's aid.
But from the time when impious Diomede,
And false Ulysses, that inventive head,

Her fatal image from the temple drew,
The sleeping guardians of the castle slew,
Her virgin statue with their bloody hands
Polluted, and profan'd her holy bands;
From thence the tide of fortune left their

shore,

And ebb'd much faster than it flow'd be-
fore:
Their courage languish'd, as their hopes

decay 'd;

And Pallas, now averse, refus'd her aid.
Nor did the goddess doubtfully declare
Her alter'd mind and alienated care.
When first her fatal image touch'd the

ground,

She sternly cast her glaring eyes around,
That sparkled as they roll'd, and seem'd to

threat:

Her heav'nly limbs distill'd'a briny sweat.
Thrice from the ground she leap'd, was

seen to wield
Her brandish'd lance, and shake her horrid

shield.

Then Calchas bade our host for flight pre-
pare,
And hope no conquest from the tedious

war,
Till first they sail'd for Greece; with

pray'rs besought
Her injur'd pow'r, and better omens

brought.
And now their navy plows the wat'ry

mam,

Yet soon expect it on your shores again,
With Pallas pleas'd; as Calchas did or-
dain.

But first, to reconcile the blue-ey'd maid
For her stol'n statue and her tow'r be-

tray'd,

Warn'd by the seer, to her offended name
We rais'd and dedicate this wondrous

frame,

So lofty, lest thro' your forbidden gates
It pass, and intercept our better fates:
For, once admitted there, our hopes are

lost;
And Troy may then a new Palladium

boast;

For so religion and the gods ordain,
That, if you violate with hands profane
Minerva's gift, your town in flames shall
burn,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

(Which omen, O ye gods, on Graecia turn!)
But if it climb, with your assisting hands,
The Trojan walls, and hi the city stands;
Then Troy shall Argos and Mycenae burn,
And the reverse of fate on us return.'
" With such deceits he gain'd their easy

hearts,

Too prone to credit his perfidious arts.
What Diomede, nor Thetis' greater son,
A thousand ships, nor ten years' siege, had

done

False tears and fawning words the city won.
"A greater omen, and of worse portent,
Did our unwary minds with fear torment,
Concurring to produce the dire event.
Laocoon, Neptune's priest by lot that year,
With solemn pomp then sacrific'd a steer;
When, dreadful to behold, from sea we

spied
Two serpents, rank'd abreast, the seas

divide,
And smoothly sweep along the swelling

tide.
Their flaming crests above the waves they

show;

Their bellies seem to burn the seas below;
Their speckled tails advance to steer their

course,
And on the sounding shore the flying

billows force.
And now the strand, and now the plain

they held;
Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were

fill'd;
Their nimble tongues they brandish'd as

they came,
And lick'd their hissing jaws, that sputter'd

flame.
We fled amaz'd; their destin'd way they

take,

And to Laocoon and his children make;
And first around the tender boys they

wind,
Then with their sharpen'd fangs their

limbs and bodies grind.
The wretched father, running to their aid
With pious haste, but vain, they next in-
vade;

Twice round his waist then: winding vol-
umes roll'd;
And twice about his gasping throat they

fold,

The priest thus doubly chok'd, their crests
divide,

And tow'ring o'er his head in triumph
ride.

With both his hands he labors at the
knots;

His holy fillets the blue venom blots;

His roaring fills the flitting air around.

Thus, when an ox receives a glancing
wound,

He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies,

And with loud bellowings breaks the yield-
ing skies.

Their tasks perform'd, the serpents quit
their prey,

And to the tow'r of Pallas make their way:

Couch'd at her feet, they lie protected
there

By her large buckler and protended spear.

Amazement seizes all; the gen'ral cry

Proclaims Laocoon justly doom'd to die,

Whose hand the will of Pallas had with-
stood,

And dar'd to violate the sacred wood.

All vote t' admit the steed, that vows be
paid

And incense offer'd to th' offended maid.

A spacious breach is made; the town lies
bare;

Some hoisting-levers, some the wheels pre-
pare

And fasten to the horse's feet; the rest

With cables haul along th' unwieldy beast.

Each on his fellow for assistance calls;

At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls,

Big with destruction. Boys with chaplets
crown'd,

And choirs of virgins, sing and dance
around.

Thus rais'd aloft, and then descending
down,

It enters o'er our heads, and threats the
town.

O sacred city, built by hands divine!

O valiant heroes of the Trojan line!

Four times he struck: as oft the clashing
sound

Of arms was heard, and inward groans re-
bound.

Yet, mad with zeal, and blinded with our
fate,

We haul along the horse in solemn state;

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Then place the dire portent within the

tow'r.
Cassandra cried, and curs'd th' unhappy

hour;

Foretold our fate; but, by the god's de-
cree,

All heard, and none believ'd the prophecy.
With branches we the fanes adorn, and

waste,

In jollity, the day ordain'd to be the last.
Meantime the rapid heav'ns roll'd down

the light,

And on the shaded ocean rush'd the night;
Our men, secure, nor guards nor sentries

held,
But easy sleep their weary limbs com-

pell'd.
The Grecians had embark'd their naval

pow'rs
From Tenedos, and sought our well-known

shores,

Safe under covert of the silent night,
lAnd guided by th' imperial galley's light;
When Sinon, favor'd by the partial gods,
Unlock'd the horse, and op'd his dark

abodes;

Restor'd to vital air our hidden foes,
Who joyful from their long confinement

rose.

Tysander bold, and Sthenelus their guide,
And dire Ulysses down the cable slide:
Then Thoas, Athamas, and Pyrrhus haste;
Nor was the Podalirian hero last,
Nor injur'd Menelaiis, nor the fam'd
Epeiis, who the fatal engine fram'd.
A nameless crowd succeed; their forces join
T' invade the town, oppress'd with sleep

and wine.
Those few they find awake first meet their

fate;

Then to their fellows they unbar the gate.
" 'T was in the dead of night, when sleep

repairs
Our bodies worn with toils, our minds with

cares,

When Hector's ghost before my sight ap-
pears:
A bloody shroud he seem'd, and bath'd in

tears;

Such as he was, when, by Pelides slain,
Thessalian coursers dragg'd him o'er the

plain.

Swol'n were his feet, as when the thongs

were thrust
Thro' the bor'd holes; his body black with

dust;

Unlike that Hector who return'd from toils
Of war, triumphant, in ^Eacian spoils,
Or him who made the fainting Greeks re-
tire,
And launch'd against their navy Phrygian

fire.
His hah- and beard stood stiffen'd with his

gore;

And all the wounds he for his country bore
Now stream'd afresh, and with new purple

ran.

I wept to see the visionary man,
And, while my trance continued, thus

began:

'0 light of Trojans, and support of Troy,
Thy father's champion, and thy country's

joy!
O, long expected by thy friends! from

whence

Art thou so late return'd for our defense?
Do we behold thee, wearied as we are
With length of labors, and with toils oi

war?

After so many fun'rals of thy own
Art thou restor'd to thy declining town?
But say, what wounds are these? What

new disgrace

Deforms the manly features of thy face? :

"To this the specter no reply did frame.

But answer'd to the cause for which he

came,
And, groaning from the bottom of his

breast,
This warning in these mournful words ex-

press'd:

'O goddess-born! escape, by timely flight.
The flames and horrors of this fatal night.
The foes already have possess'd the wall;
Troy nods from high, and totters to her

fall.

Enough is paid to Priam's royal name,
More than enough to duty and to fame.
If by a mortal hand my father's throne
Could be defended, 't was by mine alone.
Now Troy to thee commends her future

state,
And gives her gods companions of thy

fate:

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

From their assistance happier walls ex-
pect,
Which, wand'ring long, at last thou shalt

erect.'
He said, and brought me, from their blest

abodes,

The venerable statues of the gods,
With ancient Vesta from the sacred choir,
The wreaths and relics of th' immortal fire.
"Now peals of shouts come thund'ring

from afar.

Cries, threats, and loud laments, and min-
gled war:

The noise approaches, tho' our palace stood
Aloof from streets, encompass'd with a

wood.
Louder, and yet more loud, I hear th'

alarms

Of human cries distinct, and clashing arms.
Fear broke my slumbers; I no longer stay,
But mount the terrace, thence the town

survey,
And hearken what the frightful sounds

convey.

Thus, when a flood of fire by wind is borne,
Crackling it rolls, and mows the standing

corn;

Or deluges, descending on the plains,
Sweep o'er the yellow year, destroy the

pains

Of lab'ring oxen and the peasant's gains;
Unroot the forest oaks, and bear away
Flocks, folds, and trees, an undistinguish'd

prey:
The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees

from far

The wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war.
Then Hector's faith was manifestly clear 'd,
And Grecian frauds in open light appear'd.
The palace of Dei'phobus ascends
In smoky flames, and catches on his

friends.

Ucalegon burns next: the seas are bright
With splendor not their own, and shine

with Trojan light.

New clamors and new clangors now arise,
The sound of trumpets mix'd with fighting

cries.
With frenzy seiz'd. I run to meet th 3

alarms,
Resolv'd on death, resolv'd to die in

arms.

But first to gather friends, with them t' op

pose

(If fortune favor'd) and repel the foes;
Spurr'd by my courage, by my country

fir'd,

With sense of honor and revenge inspir'd.
"Pantheus, Apollo's priest, a sacred

name,
Had scap'd the Grecian swords, and pass'd

the flame:

With relics loaden, to my doors he fled,
And by the hand his tender grandson led.
' What hope, O Pantheus? whither can we

run?
Where make a stand? and what may yet

be done? '
Scarce had I said, when Pantheus, with a

groan:

'Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town!
The fatal day, th' appointed hour, is come,
When wrathful Jove's irrevocable doom
Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian

hands.

The fire consumes the town, the foe com-
mands;

And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.
Within the gates, proud Sinon throws

about
The flames; and foes for entrance press

without,
With thousand others, whom I fear to

name,

More than from Argos or Mycenae came.
To sev'ral posts their parties they divide;
Some block the narrow streets, some scour

the wide:

The bold they kill, th' unwary they sur-
prise;
Who fights finds death, and death finds

him. who flies.

The warders of the gate but scarce main-
tain

Th' unequal combat, and resist in vain.'
"I heard; and Heav'n, that well-born

souls inspires,
Prompts me thro' lifted swords and rising

fires
To run where clashing arms and clamor

calls,

And rush undaunted to defend the walls,
Ripheus and Iph'itus by my side engage,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

For valor one renown'd, and one for age.
Dymas and Hypanis by moonlight knew
My motions and my mien, and to my

party drew;
With young Corcebus, who by love was

led

To win renown and fair Cassandra's bed,
And lately brought his troops to Priam's

aid,

Forewarn'd in vain by the prophetic maid.
Whom when I saw resolv'd in arms to fall,
And that one spirit animated all:
'Brave souls!' said I, 'but brave, alas!

in vain

Come, finish what our cruel fates ordain.
You see the desp'rate state of our affairs,
And heav'n's protecting pow'rs are deaf to

pray'rs.

The passive gods behold the Greeks defile
Their temples, and abandon to the spoil
Their own abodes: we, feeble few, conspire
To save a sinking town, involv'd in fire.
Then let us fall, but fall amidst our foes:
Despair of life the means of living shows.'
So bold a speech incourag'd their desire
Of death, and added fuel to their fire.
"As hungry wolves, with raging appe-
tite,
Scour thro' the fields, nor fear the stormy

night
Their whelps at home expect the promis'd

food,
And long to temper their dry chaps in

blood

So rush'd we forth at once; resolv'd to die,
Resolv'd, in death, the last extremes to try.
We leave the narrow lanes behind, and

dare

Th' unequal combat in the public square:
Night was our friend; our leader was

despair.
What tongue can tell the slaughter of that

night?
What eyes can weep the sorrows and

affright?

An ancient and imperial city falls;
The streets are fill'd with frequent funerals;
Houses and holy temples float in blood,
And hostile nations make a common flood.
Not only Trojans fall; but, in their turn,
The vanquish'd triumph, and the victors

mourn.

Ours take new courage from despair and

night:

Confus'd the fortune is, confus'd the fight.
All parts resound with tumults, plaints,

and fears;

And grisly Death in sundry shapes ap-
pears.

Androgeos fell among us, with his band,
Who thought us Grecians newly come to

land.
'From whence,' said he, 'my friends, this

long delay?

You loiter, while the spoils are borne away:
Our ships are laden with the Trojan store;
And you, like truants, come too late

ashore.'

He said, but soon corrected his mistake,
Found, by the doubtful answers which we

make:

Amaz'd, he would have shunn'd th' un-
equal fight;
But we, more num'rous, intercept his

flight.

As when some peasant, in a bushy brake,
Has with unwary footing press'd a snake;
He starts aside, astonish'd, when he spies
His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling

eyes;

So from our arms surpris'd Androgeos flies.
In vain; for him and his we compass'd

round,
Possess'd with fear, unknowing of the

ground,

And of their lives an easy conquest found.
Thus Fortune on our first endeavor smil'd.
Corcebus then, with youthful hopes be-

guil'd,

Swoln with success, and of a daring mind,
This new invention fatally design'd.
'My friends,' said he, 'since Fortune shows

the way,
'Tis fit we should th' auspicious guide

obey.
For what has she these Grecian arms

bestow'd,
But their destruction, and the Trojans'

good?
Then ehange we shields, and their devices

bear:

Let fraud supply the want of force in war.
They find us arms.' This said, himself he

dress'd

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

In dead Androgeos' spoils, his upper vest,
His painted buckler, and his plumy crest.
Thus Ripheus, Dymas, all the Trojan

train,
Lay down their own attire, and strip the

skin.
Mix'd with the Greeks, we go with ill

presage,
Flatter'd with hopes to glut our greedy

rage;
Unknown, assaulting whom we blindly

meet,
And strew with Grecian carcasses the

street.
Thus while their straggling parties we

defeat,

Some to the shore and safer ships retreat;
And some, oppress'd with more ignoble

fear,
Remount the hollow horse, and pant in

secret there.
"But, ah! what use of valor can be

made,
When heav'n's propitious pow'rs refuse

their aid!

Behold the royal prophetess, the fair
Cassandra, dragg'd by her dishevel'd hair,
Whom not Minerva's shrine, nor sacred

bands,
In safety could protect from sacrilegious

hands:
On heav'n she cast her eyes, she sigh'd,

she cried
'T was all she could her tender arms

were tied.

So sad a sight Corcebus could not bear;
But, fir'd with rage, distracted with de-
spair,

Amid the barb'rous ravishers he flew:
Our leader's rash example we pursue.
But storms of stones, from the proud tem-
ple's height,
Pour down, and on our batter'd helms

alight:
We from our friends receiv'd this fatal

blow,
Who thought us Grecians, as we seem'd

in show.
They aim at the mistaken crests, from

high;

And ours beneath the pond'rous ruin lie.
Then, mov'd with anger and disdain, to see

Their troops dispers'd, the royal virgin

free,

The Grecians rally, and their pow'rs unite,
With fury charge us, and renew the fight.
The brother kings with Ajax join their

force,
And the whole squadron of Thessalian

horse.

"Thus, when the rival winds their quar-
rel try,

Contending for the kingdom of the sky,
South, east, and west, on airy coursers

borne;
The whirlwind gathers, and the woods are

torn:
Then Nereus strikes the deep; the billows

rise,
And, mix'd with ooze and sand, pollute the

skies.

The troops we squander'd first again ap-
pear
From sev'ral quarters, and enclose the

rear.

They first observe, and to the rest betray,
Our diff'rent speech; our borrow'd arms

survey.
Oppress'd with odds, we fall; Corcebus

first,

At Pallas' altar, by Peneleus pierc'd.
Then Ripheus follow'd, in th' unequal

fight;

Just of his word, observant of the right:
Heav'n thought not so. Dymas their fate

attends,

With Hypanis, mistaken by their friends.
Nor, Pantheus, thee, thy miter, nor the

bands
Of awful Phcebus, sav'd from impious

hands.

Ye Trojan flames, your testimony bear,
What I perform'd, and what I suffer'd

there;

No sword avoiding in the fatal strife,
Expos'd to death, and prodigal of life!
Witness, ye heav'ns! I live not by my

fault:
I strove to have deserv'd the death I

sought.
But, when I could not fight, and would

have died,

Borne off to distance by the growing tide,
Old Iphitus and I were hurried thence,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

With Pelias wounded, and without de-
fense.

New clamors from th' invested palace ring:
We run to die, or disengage the king.
So hot th' assault, so high the tumult

rose,
While ours defend, and while the Greeks

oppose,

As all the Dardan and Argolic race
Had been contracted in that narrow space;
Or as all Ilium else were void of fear,
And tumult, war, and slaughter, only

there.

Their targets in a tortoise cast, the foes,
Secure advancing, to the turrets rose:
Some mount the scaling ladders; some,

more bold,
Swerve upwards, and by posts and pillars

hold;
Their left hand gripes their bucklers in th'

ascent,

While with the right they seize the battle-
ment.
From their demolish'd tow'rs the Trojans

throw
Huge heaps of stones, that, falling, crush

the foe;
And heavy beams and rafters from the

sides

(Such arms their last necessity provides)
And gilded roofs, come tumbling from on

high,

The marks of state and ancient royalty.
The guards below, fix'd in the pass, attend
The charge undaunted, and the gate de-
fend.

Renew'd in courage with recover'd breath,
A second time we ran to tempt our death,
To clear the palace from the foe, succeed
The weary living, and revenge the dead.
"A postern door, yet unobserv'd and

free,

Join'd by the length of a blind gallery,
To the king's closet led: a way well known
To Hector's wife, while Priam held the

throne,

Thro' which she brought Astyanax, un-
seen,
To cheer his grandsire and his grandsire's

queen.

Thro' this we pass, and mount the tow'r,
from whence

With unavailing arms the Trojans make
defense.

From this the trembling king had oft de-
scried

The Grecian camp, and saw their navy
ride.

Beams from its lofty height with swords
we hew,

Then, wrenching with our hands, th' as-
sault renew;

And, where the rafters on the columns
meet,

We push them headlong with our arms and
feet.

The lightning flies not swifter than the fall,

Nor thunder louder than the ruin'd wall:

Down goes the top at once; the Greeks be-
neath

Are piecemeal torn, or pounded into death.

Yet more succeed, and more to death are
sent;

We cease not from above, nor they below
relent.

Before the gate stood Pyrrhus, threat'ning
loud,

With glitt'ring arms conspicuous in the
crowd.

So shines, renew'd in youth, the crested
snake,

Who slept the winter in a thorny brake,

And, casting off his slough when spring
returns,

Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns ;

Restor'd with pois'nous herbs, his ardent
sides

Reflect the sun; and rais'd on spires he
rides;

High o'er the grass, hissing he rolls along,

And brandishes by fits his forky tongue.

Proud Periphas, and fierce Automedon,

His father's charioteer, together run

To force the gate; the Scyrian infantry

Rush on in crowds, and the barr'd passage
free.

Ent'ring the court, with shouts the skies
they rend;

And flaming firebrands to the roofs ascend.

Himself, among the foremost, deals his
blows,

And with his ax repeated strokes bestows

On the strong doors; then all their should-
ers ply,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Till from the posts the brazen hinges fly.

He hews apace; the double bars at length

Yield to his ax and unresisted strength.

A mighty breach is made: the rooms con-
ceal'd

Appear, and all the palace is reveal'd;

The halls of audience, and of public state,

And where the lonely queen in secret sate.

Arm'd soldiers now by trembling maids are
seen,

With not a door, and scarce a space, be-
tween.

The house is fill'd with loud laments and
cries,

And shrieks of women rend the vaulted
skies;

The fearful matrons run from place to
place,

And kiss the thresholds, and the posts em-
brace.

The fatal work inhuman Pyrrhus plies,

And all his father sparkles in his eyes;

Nor bars, nor fighting guards, his force sus-
tain:

The bars are broken, and the guards are
slain.

In rush the Greeks, and all the apartments
fill;

Those few defendants whom they find,
they kill.

Not with so fierce a rage the foaming flood

Roars, when he finds his rapid course with-
stood;

Bears down the dams with unresisted
sway,

And sweeps the cattle and the cots away.

These eyes beheld him when he march'd
between

The brother kings: I saw th' unhappy
queen,

The hundred wives, and where old Priam
stood,

To stain his hallow'd altar with his blood.

The fifty nuptial beds (such hopes had he,

So large a promise, of a progeny),

The posts, of plated gold, and hung with
spoils,

Fell the reward of the proud victor's toils.

Where'er the raging fire had left a space,

The Grecians enter and possess the place.
"Perhaps you may of Priam's fate en-
quire.

He, when he saw his regal town on fire,

His ruin'd palace, and his ent'ring foes,

On ev'ry side inevitable woes,

In arms, disus'd, invests his limbs, de-
cay'd,

Like them, with age; a late and useless aid.

His feeble shoulders scarce the weight
sustain;

Loaded, not arm'd, he creeps along with
pain,

Despairing of success, ambitious to be
slain!

Uncover'd but by heav'n, there stood in
view

An altar; near the hearth a laurel grew,

Dodder'd with age, whose boughs encom-
pass round

The household gods, and shade the holy
ground.

Here Hecuba, with all her helpless train

Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in
vain.

Driv'n like a flock of doves along the sky,

Their images they hug, and to their altars
fly.

The queen, when she beheld her trembling
lord,

And hanging by his side a heavy sword,

'What rage,' she cried, 'has seiz'd my hus-
band's mind?

What arms are these, and to what use de-
sign'd?

These tunes want other aids! Were Hec-
tor here,

Ev'n Hector now in vain, like Priam, would
appear.

With us, one common shelter thou shalt
find,

Or in one common fate with us be join'd.'

She said, and with a last salute embrac'd

The poor old man, and by the laurel plac'd.

Behold! Polites, one of Priam's sons,

Pursued by Pyrrhus, there for safety runs.

Thro' swords and foes, amaz'd and hurt, he
flies

Thro' empty courts and open galleries.

Him Pyrrhus, urging with his lance, pur-
sues,

And often reaches, and his thrusts renews.

The youth, transfix'd, with lamentable
cries,

Expires before his wretched parent's eyes:

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Whom gasping at his feet when Priam saw,
The fear of death gave place to nature's

law;
And, shaking more with anger than with

age,
'The gods,' said he, 'requite thy brutal

rage!
As sure they will, barbarian, sure they

must,
If there be gods in heav'n, and gods be

just

Who tak'st in wrongs an insolent delight;
With a son's death t' infect a father's

sight.

Not he, whom thou and lying fame con-
spire

To call thee his not he, thy vaunted sire,
Thus us'd my wretched age: the gods he

fear'd,

The laws of nature and of nations heard .
He cheer'd my sorrows, and, for sums of

gold,

The bloodless carcass of my Hector sold;
Pitied the woes a parent underwent,
And sent me back in safety from his tent.'
"This said, his feeble hand a javelin

threw,
Which, flutt'ring, seem'd to loiter as it

flew:

Just, and but barely, to the mark it held,
And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield.
"Then Pyrrhus thus: ' Go thou from me

to fate,

And to my father my foul deeds relate.
Now die!' With that he dragg'd the

trembling sire,
Slidd'ring thro' clotter'd blood and holy

mire,
(The mingled paste his murder'd son had

made,)

Haul'd from beneath the violated shade,
And on the sacred pile the royal victim

laid.
His right hand held his bloody fauchion

bare,

His left he twisted in his hoary hair ;
Then, with a speeding thrust, his heart he

found:
The lukewarm blood came rushing thro'

the wound,
And sanguine streams distain'd the sacred

grouvid.

Thus Priam fell, and shar'd one common

fate

With Troy in ashes, and his ruin'd state:
He, who the scepter of all Asia sway'd,
Whom monarchs like domestic slaves

obey'd.
On the bleak shore now lies th' abandon'd

king,

A headless carcass, and a nameless thing.
"Then, not before, I felt my cruddleJ

blood
Congeal with fear, my hair with horror

stood:

My father's image fill'd my pious mind,
Lest equal years might equal fortune find.
Again I thought on my forsaken wife,
And trembled for my son's abandon'd life.
I look'd about, but found myself alone,
Deserted at my need! My friends were

gone.
Some spent with toil, some with despair

oppress'd,
Leap'd headlong from the heights; the

flames consum'd the rest.
Thus, wand'ring in my way, without a

guide,

The graceless Helen hi the porch I spied
Of Vesta's temple; there she lurk'd alone;
Muffled she sate, and, what she could, un-
known:
But, by the flames that cast their blaze

around,
That common bane of Greece and Troy I

found.
For Ilium burnt, she dreads the Trojan

sword;
More dreads the vengeance of her injur'd

lord;
Ev'n by those gods who refug'd her ab-

horr'd.
Trembling with rage, the strumpet I

regard,

Resolv'd to give her guilt the due reward :
'Shall she triumphant sail before the

wind,

And leave in flames unhappy Troy be-
hind?
Shall she her kingdom and her friends

review,

In state attended with a captive crew,
While unreveng'd the good old Priam

falls,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

And Grecian fires consume the Trojan
walls?

For this the Phrygian fields and Xanthian
flood

Were swell'd with bodies, and were drunk
with blood?

'T is true, a soldier can small honor gain,

And boast no conquest, from a woman
slain :

Yet shall the fact not pass without ap-
plause,

Of vengeance taken in so just a cause;

The punish'd crime shall set my soul at
ease,

And murm'ring manes of my friends
appease.'

Thus while I rave, a gleam of pleasing
light

Spread o'er the place; and, shining heav'nly
bright,

My mother stood reveal'd before my sight.

Never so radiant did her eyes appear;

Not her own star confess'd a light so clear:

Great in her charms, as when on gods
above

She looks, and breathes herself into their
love.

She held my hand, the destin'd blow to
break;

Then from her rosy lips began to speak:

'My son, from whence this madness, this
neglect

Of my commands, and those whom I pro-
tect?

Why this unmanly rage? Recall to mind

Whom you forsake, what pledges leave
behind.

Look if your helpless father yet survive,

Or if Ascanius or Creiisa live.

Around your house the greedy Grecians
err;

And these had perish'd in the nightly war,

But for my presence and protecting care.

Not Helen's face, nor Paris, was in fault;

But by the gods was this destruction
brought.

Now cast your eyes around, while I dis-
solve

The mists and films that mortal eyes in-
volve,

Purge from your sight the dross, and make
you see

The shape of each avenging deity.

Enlighten'd thus, my just commands ful-
fil,

Nor fear obedience to your mother's will.

Where yon disorder'd heap of ruin lies,

Stones rent from stones; where clouds of
dust arise

Amid that smother Neptune holds his
place,

Below the wall's foundation drives his
mace,

And heaves the building from the solid base.

Look where, in arms, imperial Juno stands

Full in the Scaean gate, with loud com-
mands,

Urging on shore the tardy Grecian bands.

See! Pallas, of her snaky buckler proud,

Bestrides the tow'r, refulgent thro' the
cloud:

See! Jove new courage to the foe supplies,

And arms against the town the partial
deities.

Haste hence, my son; this fruitless labor
end:

Haste, where your trembling spouse and
sire attend:

Haste; and a mother's care your passage
shall befriend.'

She said, and swiftly vanish'd from my
sight,

Obscure in clouds and gloomy shades of
night.

I look'd, I listen'd; dreadful sounds I hear;

And the dire forms of hostile gods appear.

Troy sunk in flames I saw (nor could pre-
vent),

And Ilium from its old foundations rent;

Rent like a mountain ash, which dar'd the
winds,

And stood the sturdy strokes of lab 'ring
hinds.

About the roots the cruel ax resounds;

The stumps are pierc'd with oft-repeated
wounds:

The war is felt on high; the nodding crown

Now threats a fall, and throws the leafy
honors down.

To their united force it yields, tho' late,

And mourns with mortal groans th' ap-
proaching fate:

The roots no more their upper load sus-
tain;

EPIC AND ROMANCE

But down she falls, and spreads a ruin

thro' the plain.
"Descending thence, I scape thro' foes

and fire:

Before the goddess, foes and flames retire.
Arriv'd at home, he, for whose only sake,
Or most for his, such toils I undertake,
The good Anchises, whom, by timely

flight,

I purpos'd to secure on Ida's height,
Refus'd the journey, resolute to die
And add his fun'rals to the fate of Troy,
Rather than exile and old age sustain.
' Go you, whose blood runs warm in ev'ry

vein.

Had Heav'n decreed that I should life en-
joy*

Heav'n had decreed to save unhappy Troy.
'T is, sure, enough, if not too much, for

one,

Twice to have seen our Ilium overthrown.
Make haste to save the poor remaining

crew,

And give this useless corpse a long adieu.
These weak old hands suffice to stop my

breath;
At least the pitying foes will aid my

death,
To take my spoils, and leave my body

bare:

As for my sepulcher, let Heav'n take care.
'T is long since I, for my celestial wife
Loath'd by the gods, have dragg'd a ling-

'ring life;

Since ev'ry hour and moment I expire,
Blasted from heav'n by Jove's avenging

fire.'

This oft repeated, he stood fix'd to die:
Myself, my wife, my son, my family,
Intreat, pray, beg, and raise a doleful cry
'What, will he still persist, on death re-
solve,

And in his ruin all his house involve!'
He still persists his reasons to maintain;
Our pray'rs, our tears, our loud laments,

are vain.

"Urg'd by despair, again I go to try
The fate of arms, resolv'd in fight to die:
'What hope remains, but what my death

must give?

Can I, without so dear a father, live?
You term it prudence, what I baseness call:

Could such a word from such a parent

fall?

If Fortune please, and so the gods or-
dain,

That nothing should of ruin'd Troy re-
main,

And you conspire with Fortune to be slain,
The way to death is wide, th' approaches

near:

For soon relentless Pyrrhus will appear,
Reeking with Priam's blood the wretch

who slew

The son (inhuman) in the father's view,
And then the sire himself to the dire altar
drew.

goddess mother, give me back to Fate;
Your gift was undesir'd, and came too late !
Did you, for this, unhappy me convey
Thro' foes and fires, to see my house a

prey?

Shall I my father, wife, and son behold,

Welt'ring in blood, each other's arms in-
fold?

Haste ! gird my sword, tho' spent and over-
come:

'T is the last summons to receive our doom.

1 hear thee, Fate; and I obey thy call!
Not unreveng'd the foe shall see my fall.
Restore me to the yet unfinish'd fight:
My death is wanting to conclude the

night.'
Arm'd once again, my glitt'ring sword I

wield,
While th' other hand sustains my weighty

shield,
And forth I rush to seek th' abandon'd

field.

I went; but sad Creiisa stopp'd my way,
And cross the threshold in my passage lay,
Embrac'd my knees, and, when I would

have gone,

Shew'd me my feeble sire and tender son:
' If death be your design, at least,' said she,
'Take us along to share your destiny.
If any farther hopes in arms remain,
This place, these pledges of your love,

maintain.

To whom do you expose your father's life,
Your son's, and mine, your now forgotten

wife!'
While thus she fills the house with clam'r-

ous cries.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Our hearing is diverted by our eyes:

For, while I held my son, in the short space

Betwixt our kisses and our last embrace;

Strange to relate, from young lulus' head

A lambent flame arose, which gently
spread

Around his brows, and on his temples fed.

Amaz'd, with running water we prepared

To quench the sacred fire, and slake his
hair;

But old Anchises, vers'd in omens, rear'd

His hands to heav'n, and this request pre-
ferr'd:

' If any vows, almighty Jove, can bend

Thy will; if piety can pray'rs commend,

Confirm the glad presage which thou art
pleas'd to send.'

Scarce had he said, when, on our left, we
hear

A peal of rattling thunder roll in air:

There shot a streaming lamp along the
sky,

Which on the winged lightning seem'd to
fly;

From o'er the roof the blaze began to
move,

And, trailing, vanish'd hi th' Idaean grove.

It swept a path in heav'n, and shone a
guide,

Then in a steaming stench of sulphur died.
"The good old man with suppliant
hands implor'd

The gods' protection, and their star ador'd.

'Now, now,' said he, 'my son, no more de-
lay!

I yield, I follow where Heav'n shews the
way.

Keep, O my country gods, our dwelling
place,

And guard this relic of the Trojan race,

This tender child! These omens are your
own,

And you can yet restore the ruin'd town.

At least accomplish what your signs fore-
show:

I stand resign'd, and am prepar'd to go.'
"He said. The crackling flames appear
on high,

And driving sparkles dance along the sky.

With Vulcan's rage the rising winds con-
spire,

And near our palace roll the flood of fire.

'Haste, my dear father ('t is no time to

wait),
And load my shoulders with a willing

freight.
Whate'er befalls, your life shall be my

care;
One death, or one deliv'rance, we will

share.

My hand shall lead our little son; and you,
My faithful consort, shall our steps pursue.
Next, you, my servants, heed my strict

commands :

Without the walls a ruin'd temple stands,
To Ceres hallow'd once; a cypress nigh
Shoots up her venerable head on high,
By long religion kept; there bend your

feet,

And in divided parties let us meet.
Our country gods, the relics, and the

bands,
Hold you, my father, in your guiltless

hands:

In me 't is impious holy things to bear,
Red as I am with slaughter, new from wa*,
Till in some living stream I cleanse t^e

guilt

Of dire debate, and blood in battle spilt.'
Thus, ord'ring all that prudence could pro-
vide,

I clothe my shoulders with a lion's hide
And yellow spoils; then, on my bending

back,

The welcome load of my dear father take;
While on my better hand Ascanius hung,
And with unequal paces tripp'd along.
Creiisa kept behind; by choice we stray
Thro' ev'ry dark and ev'ry devious way.
I, who so bold and dauntless, just before,
The Grecian darts and shock of lances

bore,

At ev'ry shadow now am seiz'd with fear,
Not for myself, but for the charge I bear;
Till, near the ruin'd gate arriv'd at last,
Secure, and deeming all the danger past,
A frightful noise of trampling feet we hear.
My father, looking thro' the shades, with

fear,
Cried out: 'Haste, haste, my son, the foes

are nigh;

Their swords and shining armor I descry.'
Some hostile god, for some unknown of-
fense,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Had sure bereft my mind of better sense;
For, while thro' winding ways I took my

flight,
And sought the shelter of the gloomy

night,

Alas! I lost Creiisa: hard to tell
If by her fatal destiny she fell,
Or weary sate, or wander 'd with affright;
But she was lost for ever to my sight.
I knew not, or reflected, till I meet
My friends, at Ceres' now deserted seat.
We met: not one was wanting; only she
Deceiv'd her friends, her son, and wretched

me.
"What mad expressions did my tongue

refuse!

Whom did I not, of gods or men, accuse!
This was the fatal blow, that pain'd me

Than all I felt from ruin'd Troy before.
Stung with my loss, and raving with de-
spair,

Abandoning my now forgotten care,
Of counsel, comfort, and of hope bereft,
My sire, my son, my country gods I left.
In shining armor once again I sheathe
My limbs, not feeling wounds, nor fearing

death.

Then headlong to the burning walls I run,
And seek the danger I was forc'd to shun.
I tread my former tracks; thro' night ex-
plore

Each passage, ev'ry street I cross'd before.
All things were full of horror and affright,
And dreadful ev'n the silence of the night.
Then to my father's house I make repair,
With some small glimpse of hope to find

her there.

Instead of her, the cruel Greeks I met;
The house was fill'd with foes, with flames

beset.
Driv'n on the wings of winds, whole sheets

of fire,

Thro' air transported, to the roofs aspire.
From thence to Priam's palace I resort,
And search the citadel and desert court.
Then, unobserv'd, I pass by Juno's church:
A guard of Grecians had possess'd the

porch;
There Phoenix and Ulysses watch the

prey,
And thither all the wealth of Troy convey:

The spoils which they from ransack'd

houses brought,
And golden bowls from burning altars

caught,

The tables of the gods, the purple vests,
The people's treasure, and the pomp of

priests.
A rank of wretched youths, with pinion'd

hands,

And captive matrons, in long order stands .
Then, with ungovern'd madness, I pro-
claim,

Thro' all the silent street, Creiisa's name:
Creiisa still I call; at length she hears,
And sudden thro' the shades of night ap-
pears

Appears, no more Creiisa, nor my wife,
But a pale specter, larger than the life.
Aghast, astonish'd, and struck dumb with

fear,

I stood; like bristles rose my stiff en'd hair.
Then thus the ghost began to soothe my

grief:
'Nor tears, nor cries, can give the dead

relief.
Desist, my much-lov'd lord, t' indulge your

pain;
You bear no more than what the gods

ordain.

My fates permit me not from hence to fly;
Nor he, the great controller of the sky.
Long wand'ring ways for you the pow'rs

decree;

On land hard labors, and a length of sea.
Then, after many painful years are past,
On Latium's happy shore you shall be cast,
Where gentle Tiber from his bed beholds
The flow'ry meadows, and the feeding

folds.
There end your toils; and there your fates

provide

A quiet kingdom, and a royal bride:
There fortune shall the Trojan line restore,
And you for lost Creiisa weep no more.
Fear not that I shall watch, with servile

shame,
Th' imperious looks of some proud Grecian

dame;

Or, stooping to the victor's lust, disgrace
My goddess mother, or my royal race.
And now, farewell! The parent of the

gods

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Restrains my fleeting soul in her abodes:
I trust our common issue to your care.'
She said, and gliding pass'd unseen in

air.
I strove to speak: but horror tied my

tongue;

And thrice about her neck my arms I flung,
And, thrice deceiv'd, on vain embraces

hung.

Light as an empty dream at break of day,
Or as a blast of wind, she rush'd away.
"Thus having pass'd the night in fruit-
less pain,

I to my longing friends return again,
Amaz'd th' augmented number to behold,

Of men and matrons mix'd, of young and

old;

A wretched exiPd crew together brought,
With arms appointed, and with treasure

fraught,

Resolv'd, and willing, under my command,
To run all hazards both of sea and land.
The Morn began, from Ida, to display
Her rosy cheeks; and Phosphor led the

day:
Before the gates the Greci'ans took their

post,

And all pretense of late relief was lost.
I yield to Fate, unwillingly retire,
And, loaded, up the hill convey my sire."

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Dante Alighieri is usually regarded as one of the greatest poets who have ever written in any language
or at any time within the knowledge of civilized man. In poetic power, uniformity of excellence, and
extent of fame only Shakespeare and Homer equal him, and nobody is credited with being his superior.
He was born in Florence, Italy, in 1265, and he died in Ravenna in 1321. He was a member of a family
of some slight prominence, and this, together with his marriage to a woman who had influential con-
nections, and his native ability and reputation as a poet, enabled him to take a conspicuous part in the
politics of Florence and to rise to be one of its chief magistrates. He was, however, falsely accused of
corruption in office, and he spent the last nineteen years of his life as an exile with a price on his head.

Partly as a result of his burning indignation at the treachery and baseness of the politicians who had
traduced him and, in his opinion, were ruining Italy and undermining civilization, and partly because of
his profoundly religious nature, he produced during the wanderings imposed by his exile the work on
which his fame as a world poet largely depends. He called it Dante Alighieri's "Comedy," because it
had a happy ending; but admiring posterity has added the term "Divine" to his title, to indicate its
superlative excellence.

The "Divine Comedy" is a very complex work. It is the story of a journey made by Dante, while
he was still alive, through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The opportunity to make this journey in or-
der that he might learn the nature of sin and avoid it, was secured for Dante by the intervention of a
certain Beatrice who had known him on earth before her death and ascension to Heaven. She secured
divine permission to have the spirit of Virgil lead him through Hell and Purgatory, and she herself
conducted him through Paradise.

Hell, according to Dante, is a hollow cone with its apex in the centre of the earth, and nine circles
around its sides in which the damned suffer according to the degree of their guilt. Near the top are
the shiners who have yielded to natural impulses: lust, gluttony, avarice, anger. Then come sins by
which the human intellect is perverted and made an instrument of evil, that is, voluntary sins, as the
others are more or less involuntary. The first of these have violence as their foundation, and include :
heresy, tyranny, self-destruction, and insensate covetousness. Finally, in the two lowest circles are the
basest of all sins, those of which fraud and malice are the instigation, and cunning and treachery the means
of accomplishment. Such sinners are: seducers, flatterers, simonists, diviners, grafters, hypocrites,
thieves, false counsellors, sowers of dissension, and forgers. In the lowest circle of all are murderers,
first those who have betrayed their country, then those who have killed their friends or hosts, and
finally those who have murdered their benefactors.

Purgatory is a mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, with its summit directly opposite Jerusalem
and its base washed by an ocean that covers the whole southern half of the earth. Around the sides
of this mountain run seven terraces in which repentant sinners are purged of the Seven Deadly Sins:
Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust. On the top of the mountain is the Earthly
Paradise, in which beneficent worldly activity is symbolically depicted.

Paradise is a series of ten circular heavens, each of which revolves around the earth as its center,
for Dante followed the Ptolomaic system of astronomy, which regarded the sun as a planet moving around
the earth. These heavens are: those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile or revolving sphere which imparts motion to all the others within
it, and finally, the spaceless and motionless Empyrean in which God dwells.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

THE INFERNO

The selection here given is from the "Inferno," and it deals with the increasing difficulty and danger
Dante and Virgil encounter as they go deeper and deeper into Hell. In order to appreciate Dante at all
intelligently, it is necessary to recognize that the chief significance of his work is figurative. He is gen-
erally thought of as remarkable for the power of imagination he displays by which he makes the unreal
seem real, and while he does display great power and skill in this respect, his main success lies in his
having made his poem an analysis of human life and an exhaustive description of moral experiences.
His poem tells us that the human being whose mind is impelled by lust, torn by anger, impeded by weak-
ness of character, or distorted by malice, is in Hell just as effectively as the sinners he so graphically
and convincingly describes; that the person who has suffered for his sins and is trying to overcome
them has both anguish and joy like the inmates of his Purgatory; and that those who have attained to
peace of mind and faith in the goodness and ultimate justness of the Creator's plans are in Heaven,
enjoying delights no less sweet than those he pictures.

The allegory of the selection here translated is not easy to make clear without considerable explana-
tion. Virgil typifies reason, and reason enables us to contemplate sin without becoming its victim.
Reason also abhors anger and violence, hence Virgil's treatment of Filippo Argenti. It, however, takes
something more than reason to enable a person to come closely enough in contact with sin to understand
it and yet not become addicted to it. This something is a good fortune so unusual as to seem the direct
intervention of Heaven, and it is this that the angel that opens the City of Dis typifies. Medusa is
despair, for it is impossible to perceive the full wickedness of the human heart without being frozen into
hopelessness; reason therefore bids us avert our gaze from wanton evil, lest we despair. This seems to
be the main teaching that is "hidden behind the curtain of the verses strange," about which, however,
endless volumes have been written.

Translations of Dante are very numerous, but none as yet has been very successful. The usual
criticism is that they do not present Dante so much as they do his translator, and this translation there-
fore attempts to be as literal as is consistent with smoothness, for Dante is never rough from necessity,
though he often is from choice. This translation is also in verse, because nobody can get an idea of a
poem in verse by reading it in prose. It does not, however, contain any rhyme words, and each line
corresponds to the line it renders in the original, except for very slight occasional variations. It is hoped
in this way that two things at least will be conveyed by the translation: first, Dante's thought in approxi-
mately the order and language in which he expressed it, and second, the fact that that thought is con-
veyed in metrical language and in rhyme.

[This note and the translation have been made by Sidney A. Gunn, a member of the Department of
English and Curator of the United States Naval Academy.]

CANTO VIII

CONTINUING, I say that long before
To that high tower's foot we had drawn

nigh,

Our eyes went carefully its summit o'er;
Because two flames placed there we could

descry,

And from so far another's answer flit
That hardly could we catch it with the

eye.
I, turning to the ocean of all wit,

Said: "What says this? and what has

just replied

That other flame? and who does it trans-
mit?"

And he to me: "Above the filthy tide
Already thou can'st see him they attend,
Unless the marsh's smoke it from thee

hide."
Cord never yet did arrow from it send

Which made its way so quickly through

the ah",

As I beheld a tiny shallop wend
Its way and towards us o'er the waters

fare

Which but a single oarsman did contain
Who cried: "Now cruel spirit, art thou

there?"
"O Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou dost cry in

vain
This time," exclaimed to him thereat

my sage.
"Thou'lt have us but while o'er the

swamp we're ta'en."
As one who hears about a great outrage
Against himself, and then doth it resent,
So acted Phlegyas in his swollen rage.
Then down into the bark my master went,
And after him he made me enter too;
And I alone had weight 'neath which it

bent.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

As quickly as the boat received us two,
It started forth and with its ancient

prow

Cut deeper far than it was wont to do.
While we were passing o'er the stagnant

slough,
A shade, that full of slime rose from the

deep,
Cried: "Soul here ere thy time, pray

who art thou? "
"Although I come, the place shall not me

keep,"
I said, "but who art thou thus foul?"

and he:
"Thou seest I am one of those who

weep."
And I to him: "May tears and mourning

be,

Accursed spirit, evermore thy share,
For though so foul thou yet art known

to me."
Then both his hands towards the boat he

bare,

But him my watchful guide at once re-
pressed,

And said: " Unto the other dogs repair."
Then me with both his arms he to him

pressed,
And kissing me: "Disdainful soul," he

said,
" May she by whom thou wert conceived

be blest.
A life of brutal arrogance he led;

His name no goodness into honor brings,

And this such fury in his shade has bred.

How many who themselves think mighty

kings
Shall here be as the swine are in the

mire,
About whose name the vilest memory

clings."

And I: "My master, much do I desire
To see him plunged within this filthy

swill,

Before we from the gloomy lake retire."
And he to me: " Before the shore there will
Be visible, thou shalt be satisfied;
For such a wish 'tis proper to fulfil."
Soon after that I saw to him applied
Such torments by the muddy people

there,
That for it since I God have glorified.

"At Filippo Argenti," everywhere
They cried, and that shade Florentine

irate

Began himself with his own teeth to tear.
We left, and I'll no more of him relate.
But now a wailing struck upon my ear
Which made me open-eyed, intent,

await.
My master said: "My son, now draweth

near

That city which the name of Dis ac-
quires,

With all its crowds, and citizens aus-
tere."
"Master," said I, "already mosques and

spires

Yonder within its walls seem red to be,
As if they all were issuing from fires."
"The fire eternal," he said unto me,
"Which kindles them within, red makes

them gleam
Within this lower hell, as thou can'st

see."

Fosses we entered now of depth extreme,
Which moat all round that city desolate,
Whose walls to me did made of iron

seem.

But not until we made a circuit great
Came we to where the boatman loudly

cried:
"Now get ye forth, for yonder is the

gate."

Upon the walls I thousands there descried
Whom heaven rained down, who thus

in anger spoke:
"Who is he, who, although he has not

died,
Goes thus throughout the kingdom of dead

folk?"

My master wise thereat a signal made
That he would secret speech with them

invoke.
Then, with their mighty scorn somewhat

allayed,
They said: "Come thou alone, but send

him back

Who comes within this realm so un-
afraid.

Alone let him retrace that reckless track,
If so he can, for thou shalt here remain
Who him hath guided through this
region black."

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Think, reader, whether fear did o'er me

reign,
When I heard speak like this that cursed

corps;

For here I thought ne'er to return again!
"0 guide beloved who hast seven times

and more

Secure me rendered and me safely won
From perils that arose to whelm me o'er,
Leave me not here," I said, " thus all un-
done,

And if the passage further is denied,
Let us retrace at once the path begun."
Then said that lord who unto me was

guide :
"Fear not that we this passage must

forego;

No one can take what one so great sup-
plied.
But wait me here, and feed they spirits

low

With hopes of better fortunes that im-
pend,

For thee I leave not in the world below."
Thus then went forth and left me to

attend,

My father kind, and I remained in fear
While yes and no did in my head con-
tend.
The words he offered them I could not

hear,
But long they did not there with him

await ;

For, rushing back again in mad career,
Our adversaries quickly shut the gate
Upon my leader, who outside forlorn
Came back to me with slow and solemn

gait.
His eyes were on the ground; his brows

were shorn
Of boldness, and he murmured, with a

sigh,
"Who shuts me from the house where

spirits mourn?"

And then to me: "Though I in anger cry,
Do thou not fear, The test I will sustain,
Whatever hindrance they within may

try.

Not new to them is this defiance vain.
Once at a gate less secret they it tried;
One that does yet without a bar remain.
O'er it the dead inscription thou descried.

And now this side of it descends the

slope,
Passing the circles through without a

guide,
One who for us the city there shall ope."

CANTO DC

THAT color fear my countenance had

stained,

When I beheld my leader turning back,
In him more quickly his new tint re-
strained.

He stopped, as if to listen, in the track;
For little was the distance one could see
Through fog so heavy and through air so

black.

"Yet in the fight we must win victory,"
He said; "if not . . . when guar-
anteed such aid.
Till some one comes how long it seems

tome!"

I well perceived how he a cover made
For his beginning with what last he said,
Which different sense from his first

words conveyed.
But none the less his language made me

dread,

Because, perhaps in what he broke off so,
A meaning worse than his intent I read.
"Within this dreary shell thus far below,
Comes ever spirit of the first degree,
Whose only pain is hope cut off to

know?"

Thus questioned I, and: "Rarely," an-
swered he,

" Is it that any one of us goes through
This region that is now traversed by me.
Down once before was I this way, 'tis true,
Here conjured by insensate Erichtho,
Who spirits back into their bodies drew.
Not long was I of flesh denuded so,
When she made me to pass within that

wall

To draw a shade from Judas' ring below.
That is the lowest, blackest spot of all,
And farthest from the Heaven that

round all flies.

I know the way, therefore thy faith re-
call.

That marsh from which the putrid smells
arise

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

All round this doleful city here is spread,
Which entrance, lacking wrath, to us

denies."
And more he spoke, but from my mind it

fled,

Because my eyes entirely me drew
Towards the lofty tower of summit red,
Where all at once had risen up to view
Three hellish furies all besmeared with

gore,
Who female members had and actions

too.

The greenest hydras they as girdles wore,
And tiny snakes with horns had they

for hair,
Which matted was their cruel brows

before.
And he, that they were handmaids well

aware

Of her who of eternal plaints is queen,
Said: "Look thou on the fell Erynnis

there!

Megaera is upon the left hand seen;
Alecto on the right wails, of the rest;
Tesiphone is she who is between."
They with their nails all madly tore the

breast,
And beat themselves, and uttered

shrieks so high

That near the poet I in terror pressed.
"Bring here Medusa him to petrify,"
They all cried out, directing down their

sight;
"Theseus' attack we passed too lightly

by."
"Turn thou around and close thy eyelids

tight,
For if the Gorgon comes and thou her

see,

There will be no returning to the light."
Thus spoke my master, and himself then

Turned me around, nor left me to ar-
range,
But with his hands o'er mine blindfolded

me.
O ye whose minds corruption does not

change,
Observe the teaching which itself doth

hide

Beneath the curtain of these verses
strange!

And now there came across the turbid tide
A crashing that aroused a wild affray
Which caused the shore to quake on

either side.
'Twas just as when a wind-storm makes

its way,

Impetuous from heats' adversity,
Which strikes the forest, and without a

stay,
The branches strips, breaks down, and

teareth free;

With dust before it, on it proudly flies
And makes the wild beasts and the

shepherds flee.
"Direct thy sight," he said, and loosed my

eyes,
"So that the ancient foam thy vision

know,
There yonder where the acrid vapors

rise!"

Just as the frogs before their serpent foe
Rush through the water in disrupted

shoals,
Till on the ground each one is squatting

low,

So I saw many thousand ruined souls
Fleeing from one who at the passage

there
Was crossing o'er the Styx with unwet

soles.

Back from his face he thrust the heavy air,
His left hand pushing forward as he

went,
And weary seemed he solely from this

care.
Well I perceived that he from Heaven was

sent,
And turned to Virgil, who by signs made

plain
That I be still and stand before him

bent.

Ah, how intense to me seemed his disdain !
He came unto the gate, and with a

wand

He opened it, for naught did him re-
strain.

"O heavenly outcasts, O despised band,"
He then began upon the awful sill,
"What you impells to this defiant stand?
Wherefore do you rebel against the will
Which nothing from its object e'er
abates,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

And which so often has increased your

ill?
What profits it to butt against the fates?

Your Cerberus for that, you well have
learned,

The hair still on his throat and chin

awaits."

And then back by the filthy path he
turned,

Nor spoke to us, but all the air he bore

Of one whom other cares impelled and

burned

Than those of them then standing him
before.

Then towards the city we our steps dis-
posed,

Secure after the sacred words once more,
And entered there with no one who op-
posed.

But I who wished exceedingly to see

The state a fortress such as that en-
closed,
When I was in looked round me thoroughly

And saw a mighty plain stretch all
around,

With sorrow filled and wicked agony.
Just as at Aries the Rhone is stagnant
found,

And as at Pola to Quarnaro near,

Where Italy's confines are washed and
bound,

The tombs uneven make the plain appear;

So here on every side it was the same,

Excepting that the mode was more

severe :

For 'mid the tombs were scattered tongues
of flame

By which they were with heat so fully
seared

That hotter iron doth no craft e'er

claim.
They all their covers open had upreared,

And from them did such lamentations
rise

That sad and wounded they indeed ap-
peared.
And I: "My Master, what folk is it lies

Entombed within these chests, who in
this way

Themselves make evident by mournful

sighs?"
And he to me: "Arch heretics are they

With followers of every sect, and more

Than thou believest do these tombs

down weigh.
In this place like with like is covered o'er,

And more and less hot are the monu-
ments."

Then we our steps towards the right
hand bore

Between the torments and high battle-
ments.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Milton, after Shakespeare the chief glory of English literature, is one of the world's greatest poets.
His chief work, "Paradise Lost," though not strictly true to the epic type since it concerns no national
hero is the great English epic that stands in our literature as Homer's "Eiad" and "Odyssey" stand in
Greek, and Virgil's "/Eneid" in Latin. It is the story of the temptation and fall of man; the twelfth and
last book concludes with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It was written
when the poet was poor, past middle life, and blind, in order, as he himself tells us, to

assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

PARADISE LOST
BOOK I

ARGUMENT

THIS First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole
subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss
thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed :
then touches the prime cause of his fall, the
serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who,

revolting from God, and drawing to his side
many legions of angels, was, by the command
of God, driven out of heaven, with all his
crew, into the great deep. Which action
passed over, the poem hastens into the midst
of things, presenting Satan, with his angels,
now fallen into hell, described here, not in
the center (for heaven and earth may be sup-
posed as yet not made, certainly not yet ac-
cursed), but in a place of utter darkness, fit-
liest called Chaos: here Satan with his angels,
lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

astonished, after a certain space recovers, as
from confusion, calls up him who next in order
and dignity lay by him. They confer of their
miserable fall; Satan awakens all his legions,
who lay till then in the same manner con-
founded. They rise; their numbers; array of
battle; their chief leaders named, according to
the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the
countries adjoining. To these Satan directs
his speech, comforts them with hope yet of re-
gaining heaven, but tells them lastly of a new
world and new kind of creature to be created,
according to an ancient prophecy, or report, in
heaven for, that the angels were long before
this visible creation, was the opinion of many
ancient fathers. To find out the truth of this
prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he
refers to a full council. What his associates
thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace
of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep:
the infernal peers there sit in council.

OF MAN'S first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our

woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret

top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, did'st inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen

seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and

earth

Rose out of chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that

flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rime.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and

pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from

the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings out-
spread,
Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast

abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is

dark,

Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first for heaven hides nothing from

thy view,
Nor the deep tract of hell say first, what

cause
Moved our grand Parents, in that happy

state,

Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world

besides.

Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose

guile, t

Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind; what time his

pride
Had cast him out from heaven, with all his

host

Of rebel angels; by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most

High,

If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in heaven, and battle

proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty

Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal

sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day

and night

To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his

doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the

thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pahi
Torments him; round he throws his baleful

eyes,

That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride, and steadfast

hate.

At once, as far as angels' ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from

those flames

No light ; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where

peace
And rest can never dwell; hope never

comes

That comes to all ; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison or-
dained

In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of

heaven,
As from the center thrice to the utmost

pole.
O, how unlike the place from whence they

feU!
There the companions of his fall, o'er-

whelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous

fire,
He soon discerns; and weltering by his

side
C/ne next himself in power, and next in

crime,

Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom the arch-enemy.
And thence in heaven called Satan, with

bold words

Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:
"If thou beest he but O, how fall'n!

how changed
From him who, in the happy realms of

light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness,

didst outshine
Myriads, though bright! If he, whom

mutual league,

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath

joined

In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
From what height fall'n, so much the

stronger proved
He with his thunder: and till then who

knew

The force of those dire arms? Yet not for

those,

Nor what the potent victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed hi outward luster, that

fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured

merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to

contend,

And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me pre-
ferring

His utmost power with adverse power op-
posed

In dubious battle on the plains of heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the

field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shah 1 his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire that were low in-
deed,

That were an ignominy, and shame be-
neath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength

of gods,

And this empyreal substance, cannot fail:
Since, through experience of this great

event,

In arms not worse, in foresight much ad-
vanced,

We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of

joy

Sole reigning, holds the tyrannyof heaven."
So spake the apostate angel, though in

pain,

Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep de-
spair

And him thus answered soon his bold com-
peer:

"O prince, O chief of many-throned
jaowers,.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

That led the embattled seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered heaven's perpetual

King,

And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or

fate;

Too well I see, and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow, and foul defeat,
Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty

host

In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and heavenly essences
Can perish : for the mind and spirit remain
Invincible, and vigor soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy

state

Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I

now

Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Than such could have o'erpowered such

force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength

entire.

Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate'er his business be,
Here in the heart of hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands, in the gloomy deep?
What can it then avail, though yet we

feel

Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?"

Whereto with speedy words the arch-
fiend replied:

" Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil,
Which of ttimes may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined

aim.

But see, the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

Back to the gates of heaven; the sulphur-
ous hail,

Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid

The fiery surge, that from the precipice

Of heaven received us falling; and the
thunder,

Winged with red lightning and impetuous
rage,

Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases
now

To bellow through the vast and boundless
deep.

Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn

Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and
wild,

The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid
flames

Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us
tend

From off the tossing of these fiery waves;

There rest, if any rest can harbor there;

And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,

Consult how we may henceforth most of-
fend

Our enemy; our own loss how repair;

How overcome this dire calamity;

What reinforcement we may gain from
hope;

If not, what resolution from despair."
Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,

With head uplif t above the wave, and eyes

That sparkling blazed; his other parts be-
sides

Prone on the flood, extended long and
large,

Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge

As whom the fables name of monstrous
size,

Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on
Jove;

Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean
stream.

Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway
foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered
skiff,

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under die lee, while

night

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:
So stretched out huge in length the arch-
fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake: nor ever

thence
Had risen, or heaved his head; but that the

will

And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left hun at large to his own dark designs;
/That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he

sought

Evil to others; and, enraged, might see
How all his malice served but to bring

forth

Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
On man by him seduced; but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance

poured.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the

pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the

flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing

spires, and rolled

In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his

flight

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appeared in hue, as when the

force

Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom, all involved
Wil* stench and smoke: such resting found

the sole
Ol unblest feet. Him followed his next

mate:
Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian

flood,
As gods, and by their own recovered

strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.

"Is this the region, this the soil, the

clime,"

Said then the lost archangel, " this the seat
That we must change for heaven; this

mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,
Who now is Sovereign, can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is

best,
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath

made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors!

hail

Infernal world! and thou profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor one who

brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of

heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be; all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here

at least
We shall be free: the Almighty hath not

built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and, in my

choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell, than serve in

heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful

friends,

The associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their

part

In this unhappy mansion; or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in heaven, or what more lost in

hell?"

So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answered: "Leader of those armies

bright,
Which, but the Omnipotent, none could

have foiled,
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest

pledge

Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive; though now they

lie
Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of

fire,

As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious

height."
He scarce had ceased, when the superior

fiend

Was moving toward the shore: his ponder-
ous shield

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon,

whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist

views

At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, ivere but a wand,
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On heaven's azure, and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with

fire:

Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions, angel forms, who lay en-
tranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves, that strew the

brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian

shades,
High over-arched, embower; or scattered

sedge

Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose

waves o'erthrew

Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot- wheels; so thick be-
strewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the

flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.

He called so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of hell resounded. "Princes, potentates,
Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours,

now lost,

If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you

find

To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from heaven-gates dis-
cern
The advantage, and descending, tread UL

down

Thus drooping, or with linked thunder-
bolts

Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n!"
They heard, and were abashed, and up

they sprung
Upon the wing; as when men, wont to

watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they

dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well

awake.

Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not

feel;
Yet to their general's voice they soon

obeyed,

Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy

cloud

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh

hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of

Nile:

So numberless were those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding

fires;

Till, at a signal given, the uplifted spear
Of their great sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they

light

EPIC AND ROMANCE

On the firm brimstone, and fill all the

plain:

A multitude like which the populous north
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhine or the Danube, when her barbarous

sons

Came like a deluge on the south and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith from every squadron and each

band
The heads and leaders thither haste where

stood
Their great commander; godlike shapes

and forms

Excelling human; princely dignities;
And powers that erst in heaven sat on

thrones,
Though of their names in heavenly records

now

Be no memorial; blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the books of life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names; till, wandering o'er

the earth,
Through God's high sufferance, for the

trial of man,

By falsities and lies the greater part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of him that made them, to trans-
form

Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions, full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:
Then were they known to men by various

names,
And various idols through the heathen

world.
Say, Muse, their names then known,

who first, who last,
Roused from the slumber on that fiery

couch,
At their great emperor's call, as next in

worth,
Came singly where he stood on the bare

strand,
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet

aloof.
The chief were those who from the pit of

hell,
Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst

fix

Their seats long after next the seat of God,
Then- altars by his altar, gods adored
Among the nations round, and durst abide
Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned
Between the cherubim; yea, often placed
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned,
And with their darkness durst affront his

light.
First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with

blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and tim-
brels loud,
Their children's cries unheard, that passed

through fire

To his grim idol. Hun the Ammonite
Worshipped in Rabba and her watery

plain,

In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the temple of

God,
On that opprobrious hill; and made his

grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet

thence

And black Gehenna called, the type of hell.
Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of

Moab's sons,

From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines,
And Eleale to the asphaltic pool;
Peor his other name, when he enticed
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them

woe.

Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide: lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to

hell.

With these came they who, from the bor-
dering flood

Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general

names

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Of Baalim and Ashtaroth; those male,
These feminine; for spirits, when they

please,

Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of

bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape

they choose,

Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their living Strength, and unfrequented

left

His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads as

low
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the

spear

Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phenicians

called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent

horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the

moon

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain,

built
By that uxorious king, whose heart,

though large,

Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
To idols foul. Thammuz came next be-
hind,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day;
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded; the love-
tale

Infected Sion's daughters with like heat;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred

porch

Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive

ark

Maimed his brute image, head and hands

lopped off

In his own temple, on the grunsel edge,
Where he fell flat, and shamed his wo*

shippers;

Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish; yet had his temple

high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the

coast

Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
And Accaron and Gazar's frontier bounds.
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful

seat

Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also 'gainst the house of God was bold *
A leper once he lost, and gained a king;
Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burr
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished. After these

appeared

A crew who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
With monstrous shapes and sorceries

abused

Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish

forms
Rather than human. Nor did Israel

'scape
The infection, when their borrowed gold

composed

The caff in Oreb; and the rebel king
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan,
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox
Jehovah, who in one night, when he passed
From Egypt marching, equaled with one

stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating

gods.
Belial came last, than whom a spirit more

lewd

Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself; to him no temple stood,
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the

sons

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that

night

In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.
These were the prime in order and in

might:

The rest were long to tell, though far re-
nowned,

The Ionian gods of Ja van's issue held
Gods, yet confessed later than heaven and

earth,
Their boasted parents: Titan, heaven's

first-born
With his enormous brood, and birthright

seized

By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's son, like measure

found;
So Jove usurping reigned: these first in

Crete

And Ida known, thence on the snowy top
Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air,
Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian

cliff,

Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric land : or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields,
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost

isles.
All these and more came flocking, but

with looks

Downcast and damp; yet such wherein ap-
peared
Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found

their chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves

not lost
In loss itself; which on his countenance

cast

Like doubtful hue; but he, his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that

bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently

raised
Their fainting courage, and dispelled their

fears.

Then straight commands that at the war-

like sound

Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared
His mighty standard; that proud honor

claimed

Azazel as his right, a cherub tall;
Who forthwith from the glittering staff un-
furled

The imperial ensign; which, full high ad-
vanced,

Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind,
With gems and golden luster rich em-
blazed,

Seraphic arms and trophies, all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:
At which the universal host up-sent
A shout, that tore hell's concave, and be-
yond

Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
All hi a moment through the gloom were

seen

Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colors waving; with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging

helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick

array

Of depth immeasurable; anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle, and instead of rage,
Deliberate valor breathed, firm and un-
moved

With dread of death to flight or foul re-
treat;

Nor wanting power to mitigate and 'suage
With solemn touches troubled thoughts,

and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow,

and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Tkus

they,

Breathing united force, with fixed thought,
Moved on in silence, to soft pipes, that

charmed
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil: and

now
Advanced in view they stand; a horrid

front

Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in
guise

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Of warriors old with ordered spear and

shield,
Awaiting what command their mighty

chief

Had to impose: he through the armed files
Darts his experienced eye, and soon tra-
verse

The whole battalion views, their order due,
Their visages and stature as of gods;
Their number last he sums. And now his

heart
Distends with pride, and hardening in his

strength

Glories: for never since created man
Met such embodied force as, named with

these,

Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes: though all the giant

brood

Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined
That fpught at Thebes and Ilium, on each

side

Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what re-
sounds

In fable or romance of Uther's son
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
Damascus, or Morocco, or Trebizond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemagne with all his peerage

fell

By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed
Their dread commander; he, above the

rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not

lost

All its original brightness; nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun, new

risen,

Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the

moon,

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of

change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet

shone
Above them all the archangel; but his face

Deep scars of thunder had entrenched; and

care

Sat on his faded cheek; but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate

pride

Waiting revenge; cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers

rather

(Far other once beheld in bliss), con-
demned

For ever now to have their lot in pain;
Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
Of heaven, and from eternal splendors

flung

For his revolt; yet faithful how they stood,
Their glory withered; as when heaven's

fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain

pines,
With singed top their stately growth,

though bare,

Stands on the blasted heath. He now pre-
pared
To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they

bend
From wing to whig, and half enclose him

round
With all his peers: attention held them

mute.
Thrice he essayed, and thrice, in spite ot

scorn,
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth; at

last
Words, interwove with sighs, found out

their way.
"O myriads of immortal spirits!

powers
Matchless, but with the Almighty; and

that strife
Was not inglorious, though the event was

dire,

As this place testifies, and this dire change,
Hateful to utter! but what power of mind,
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth
Of knowledge, past or present, could have

feared

How such united force of gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know re-
pulse?

For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Hath emptied heaven, shall fail to reascend
Self -raised, and repossess their native seat?
For me, be witness all the host of heaven,
If counsels different, or dangers shunned
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who

reigns

Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on this throne upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom; and his regal state
Put forth at full, but still his strength con-
cealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought

our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know

our own;

So as not either to provoke, or dread
New war, provoked; our better part re-
mains,

To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not; that he no less
At length from us may find, who over-
comes

By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Space may produce new worlds; whereof

so rife
There went a fame in heaven that he ere

long

Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favor equal to the sons of heaven:
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption; thither, or elsewhere;
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these

thoughts

Full counsel must mature; peace is de-
spaired ;
For who can think submission? War,

then, war,

Open or understood, must be resolved."
He spake; and, to confirm his words,

outflew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the

thighs

Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell; highly they

raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with

grasped arms

Clashed on their sounding shields the din
of war,

Hurling defiance toward the vault of

heaven.
There stood a hill not far, whose grisly

top

Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest en-
tire

Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged

with speed,
A numerous brigade hastened: as when

bands
Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe

armed,

Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field,
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on :
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for even in heaven his looks

and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring

more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden

gold,

Than aught, divine or holy, else enjoyed
In vision beatific; by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the center, and with impious

hands

Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures, better hid. Soon had his

crew

Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none ad-
mire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may

best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let

those

Who boast in mortal things, and wonder-
ing tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian

kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of

fame,

And strength and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Severing each kind, and scummed the bul-
lion dross;
A third as soon had formed within the

ground

A various mold, and from the boiling cells,
By strange conveyance, filled each hollow

nook,

As hi an organ, from one blast of wind,
To many a row of pipes the sound-board

breathes.

Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures

graven:

The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence
Equaled in all their glories, to enshrine
'Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria

strove

In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately height: and straight

the doors,

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth
And level pavement; from the arched

roof,

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring entered; and the work some

praise,
And some the architect: his hand was

known
In heaven by many a towered structure

high

Where sceptered angels held their resi-
dence,
And sat as princes; whom the supreme

King

Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven they fabled, thrown by

angry Jove

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from

morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropped from the zenith like a falling star,
On Lemnos, th' ^Egean isle: thus they re-
late,

Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before; nor aught availed hinv

now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor

did he 'scape

By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
Meanwhile, the winged heralds, by com-
mand

Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony
And trumpet's sound, throughout the host

proclaim

A solemn council, forthwith to be held
At Pandemonium, the high capital
Of Satan and his peers: their summons

called

From every band and squared regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they

anon,

With hundreds and with thousands, troop-
ing came,
Attended; all access was thronged; the

gates
And porches wide, but chief the spacious

hall

(Though like a covered field, where cham-
pions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the soldan's

chair

Defied the best of paynim chivalry
To mortal combat, or career with lance),
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in

the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings.

As bees
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus

rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the

hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and

flowers

Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank.
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and
confer

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Their state affairs; so thick the aery crowd
Swarmed and were straitened; till, the sig-
nal given,
Behold a wonder! They, but now who

seemed

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow

room
Throng numberless, like that Pygmean

race

Beyond the Indian mount, or faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over head the

moon

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course; they, on their

mirth and dance

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart re-
bounds.

Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were

at large,
Though without number still, amidst the

hall

Of that infernal court. But far within,
And in their own dimensions, like them-
selves,

The great seraphic lords and cherubim
In close recess and secret conclave sat;
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats
Frequent and full. After short silence

then,

And summons read, the great consult be-
gan.

BOOK II

ARGUMENT

THE consultation begun, Satan debates whether
another battle be to be hazarded for the re-
covery of Heaven: some advise it, others
dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, men-
tioned before by Satan to search the truth
of that prophecy or tradition in Heaven con-
cerning another world, and another kind of
creature, equal, or not much inferior, to them-
selves, about this time to be created. Their
doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search;
Satan, their chief, undertakes alone the voy-
age; is honored and applauded. The council
thus ended, the rest betake them several ways
and to several employments, as their inclina-

tions lead them, to entertain the time till
Satan return. He passes on his journey to
Hell-gates; finds them shut, and who sat there
to guard them; by whom at length they are
opened, [and discover to him the great gulf
between Hell and Heaven. With what diffi-
culty he passes through, directed by Chaos,
the Power of that place, to the sight of this
new World which he sought.

HIGH on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest

hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and

gold,

Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success un-
taught,

His proud imaginations thus displayed:
"Powers and dominions, deities of

heaven;

For since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigor, though oppressed and

fallen,

I give not heaven for lost. From this de-
scent

Celestial virtues rising, will appear
More glorious and more dread than from

no fall,

And trust themselves to fear no second fate.
Me, though just right, and the fixed laws

of heaven,
Did first create your leader; next, free

choice,

With what besides, in council or in fight,
Hath been achieved of merit; yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much

Established in a safe unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier

state
In heaven, which follows dignity, might

draw

Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's

aim,
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Of endless pain? Where there is then no

good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up

there
From faction; for none sure will claim in

hell

Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain, that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. With this advantage,

then,

To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in heaven, we now re-
turn

To claim our just inheritance of old.
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and, by what best

way,

Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate: who can advise, may

speak."
He ceased; and next him Moloch, scep-

tered king,
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest

spirit
That fought in heaven, now fiercer by

despair.
His trust was with the Eternal to be

deemed

Equal hi strength; and rather than be less,
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or hell, or worse,
He recked not; and these words thereafter

spake:

"My sentence is for open war: of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not; them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not

now.
For, while they sit contriving, shall the

rest,
Millions that stand in arms, and longing

wait

The signal to ascend, sit lingering here
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling

place
Accept this dark, opprobrious den of

shame,

The prison of his tyranny who reigns
By our delay? No, let us rather choose,
Armed with hell-flames and fury, all at

once,

O'er heaven's high towers to force resist-
less way,

Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the torturer; when, to meet the

noise

Of his almighty engine, he shall hear
Infernal thunder; and, for lightning, see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his angels; and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur, and strange

fire,

His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our proper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat ; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken

rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the

deep,

With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy

then;

The event is feared; should we again pro-
voke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath

may find

To our destruction; if there be in hell
Fear to be worse destroyed; what can be

worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss,

condemned

In this abhorred deep to utter woe;
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end,
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge
Inexorable, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than

thus,

We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we, then? what doubt we to in-
cense

His utmost ire? which, to the height en-
raged,

Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential (happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being),
Or, if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne;
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge."
He ended frowning, and his look de-
nounced

Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On the other side up-
rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not heaven ; he seemed
For dignity composed, and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow, though his

tongue
Dropt manna, and could make the worse

appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were

low:

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful; yet he pleased the

ear,

And with persuasive accent thus began:
" I should be much for open war, O peers,
As not behind in hate; if what was urged
Main reason to persuade immediate war,
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success
When he who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution as the scope
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.
First, what revenge? The towers of

heaven are filled

With armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable; oft on the bordering deep
Encamp their legions; or, with obscure

wing,

Scout far and wide into the realm of night,
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our

way
By force, and at our heels all hell should

rise

With blackest insurrection, to confound
Heaven's purest light; yet our great

enemy,

All incorruptible, would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mold,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate

The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage,
And that must end us; that must be our

cure,
To be no more. Sad cure! for who would

lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eter-
nity,

To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion? And who

knows,

Let this be good, whether our angry foe
Can give it, or will ever? how he can,
Is doubtful; that he never will, is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire
Belike through impotence, or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger whom his anger saves
To punish endless? ' Wherefore cease we

then?'

Say they who counsel war. 'We are de-
creed,

Reserved, and destined to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse? ' Is this then

worst,

Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What, when we fled amain, pursued, and

struck

With heaven's afflicting thunder, and be-
sought
The deep to shelter us? this hell then

seemed
A refuge from those wounds; or when we

lay
Chained on the burning lake? that sure was

worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim

fires,
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold

rage,
And plunge us in the flames? or, from

above,

Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What

if all

Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we, per-
haps,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and

prey

Of racking whirlwinds; or for ever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains;
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end? This would be

worse.

War, therefore, open or concealed, alike
My voice dissuades; for what can force or

guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose

eye
Views all things at one view? He from

heaven's height

All these our motions vain sees and de-
rides:

Not more almighty to resist our might,
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and

wiles.
Shall we then live thus vile, the race of

heaven
Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer

here
Chains and these torments? Better these

than worse,

By my advice; since fate inevitable
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The victor's will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust
That so ordains; this was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might

faU.
I laugh, when those who at the spear are

bold
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink

and fear

What yet they know must follow, to en-
dure

Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their conqueror; this is

now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and

bear,

Our supreme foe in time may much remit
His anger; and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these rag-
ing fires

Will slacken, if his breath stir not their

flames.

Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapor; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place

conformed

In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;
This horror will grow mild, this darkness

light;

Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance,

what change

Worth waiting; since our present lot ap-
pears

For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,

If we procure not to ourselves more woe."

Thus Belial, with words clothed in

reason's garb,

Counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon

spake:
"Either to disenthrone the King of

heaven

We war, if war be best, or to regain
Our own right lost: him to unthrone we

then

May hope, when everlasting fate shall yield
To fickle chance, and Chaos judge the

strife:

The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter; for what place can be for us
Within heaven's bound, unless heaven's

Lord supreme

We overpower? Suppose he should relent,
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could

Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead

sing

Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his altar

breathes

Ambrosial odors and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our

task

In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome
Eternity so spent, in worship paid
To whom we hate ! Let us not then pursue
By force impossible, by leave obtained

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Unacceptable, though in heaven, our

state

Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our

own

Live to ourselves, though in this vast re-
cess,

Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will ap-
pear
Then most conspicuous, when great things

of small,

Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
We can create; and in what place soe'er
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of

pain,
Through labor and endurance. This deep

world
Of darkness do we dread? How oft

amidst

Thick clouds and dark doth heaven's all-
ruling Sire

Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne; from whence deep thun-
ders roar,

Mustering their rage, and heaven resem-
bles hell!

As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden luster, gems and

gold;
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to

raise
Magnificence; and what can heaven show

more?

Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements; these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs re-
move

The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are, and where; dismissing

quite

All thoughts of war. Ye have what I ad-
vise."

He scarce had finished, when such mur-
mur filled

The assembly, as when hollow rocks re-
tain
The sound of blustering winds which all

night long

Had roused the sea, now with hoarse ca-
dence lull
Seafaring men o'er-watched, whose bark

by chance

Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest: such applause was

heard
As Mammon ended, and his sentence

pleased,

Advising peace; for such another field
They dreaded worse than hell; so much the

fear

Of thunder and the sword of Michael
Wrought still within them, and no less

desire
To found this nether empire, which might

rise

By policy, and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to heaven.
Which when Beelzebub perceived, than

whom,

Satan except, none higher sat, with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front en-
graven

Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin; sage he stood.
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his

look

Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he

spake :
" Thrones and imperial powers, offspring

of heaven,

Ethereal virtues! or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be

called

Princes of hell, for so the popular vote
Inclines, here to continue and build up

here
A growing empire; doubtless, while we

dream,
And know not that the King of heaven

hath doomed

This place our dungeon; not our safe re-
treat

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Beyond his potent arm; to live exempt
From heaven's high jurisdiction, in new

league

Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest bondage, though thus far re-
moved,

Under the inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude; for he, be sure,
In height or depth, still first and last will

reign

Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over hell extend
His empire, and with iron scepter rule
Us here, as with his golden those in heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and

war?
War hath determined us, and foiled with

loss

Irreparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will

be given

To us enslaved but custody severe,
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,
But to our power hostility and hate,
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though

slow,

Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least re-
joice

In doing what we most in suffering feel?
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need
With dangerous expedition to invade
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault

or siege,
Or ambush from the deep. What if we

find

Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame hi heaven
Err not), another world, the happy seat
Of some new race, called Man, about this

time

To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favored more
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounced among the gods; and by an

oath
That shook heaven's whole circumference

confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to

learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mold

Or substance, how endued, and what their

power,
And where their weakness, how attempted

best,
By force or subtlety. Though heaven be

shut,

And heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lie

exposed,

The utmost border of his kingdom, left
To their defense who hold it ; here perhaps
Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset ; either with hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive, as we were

driven,

The puny habitants; or, if not drive,
Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting

hand

Abolish his own works. This would sur-
pass

Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance, when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall

curse

Their frail original and faded bliss,
Faded so soon. Advise, if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised
By Satan, and in part proposed : for whence
But from the author of all ill could spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race
Of mankind in one root, and earth with

hell

To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great Creator? But their spite still

serves

His glory to augment. The bold design
Pleased highly those infernal states, and

joy

Sparkled in all their eyes: with full assent
They vote: whereat his speech he thu< re-
news:
"Well have ye judged, well ended long

debate,

Synod of gods, and, like to what ye are,
Great things resolved, which from the

lowest deep
Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Nearer our ancient seat: perhaps in view
Of those bright confines, whence, with

neighboring arms,

And opportune excursion, we may chance
Re-enter heaven; or else in some mild

zone

Dwell, not unvisited of heaven's fair light,
Secure ; and at the brightening orient beam
Purge off this gloom ; the soft delicious air,
To heal the scar of these corrosive fires,
Shall breathe her balm. But first, whom

shall we send
In search of this new world? whom shall

we find
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering

feet

The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss,
And through the palpable obscure find

out

His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight,
Upborne with indefatigable wings,
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy isle? What strength, what art,

can then

Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe
Through the strict senteries and stations

thick
Of angels watching round? Here he had

need

All circumspection, and we now no less
Choice in our suffrage; for, on whom we

send,

The weight of all, and our last hope relies."
This said, he sat; and expectation held
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared
To second, or oppose, or undertake
The perilous attempt: but all sat mute,
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts;

and each

In other's countenance read his own dis-
may,
Astonished: none among the choice and

prime
Of those heaven-warring champions could

be found

So hardy as to proffer or accept,
Alone, the dreadful voyage; till at last
Satan, whom now transcendent glory

raised

Above his fellows, with monarchal pride,
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus

spake :

"O progeny of heaven! empyreal

thrones!

With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is

the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to

light;

Our prison strong; this huge convex of fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,
Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
These passed, if any pass, the void pro-
found

Of unessential night receives him next,
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him plunged in that abortive

gulf.

If thence he 'scape into whatever world
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers and as hard es-
cape?
But I should ill become this throne, O

peers,

And this imperial sovereignty, adorned
With splendor, armed with power, if aught

proposed

And judged of public moment, in the shape
Of difficulty or danger, could deter
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I

assume

These royalties, and not refuse to reign,
Refusing to accept as great a share
Of hazard as of honor, due alike
To him who reigns, and so much to him due
Of hazard more, as he above the rest
High honored sits? Go, therefore, mighty

powers,
Terror of heaven, though fallen; intend at

home
(While here shall be our home) what best

may ease

The present misery, and render hell
More tolerable; if there be cure or charm
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain
Of this ill mansion; intermit no watch
Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad
Through all the coasts of dark destruction

seek

Deliverance for us all: this enterprise
None shall partake with me." Thus say-
ing, rose
The monarch, and prevented all reply;

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Prudent, lest from his resolution raised
Others among the chief might offer now
(Certain to be refused) what erst they

feared;

And, so refused, might in opinion stand
His rivals; winning cheap the high repute
Which he through hazard huge must earn.

But they
Dreaded not more the adventure than his

voice

Forbidding; and at once with him they rose.
Their rising all at once was as the sound
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him

they bend

With awful reverence prone; and as a god
Extol him equal to the Highest in heaven.
Nor failed they to express how much they

praised

That for the general safety he despised
'His own: for neither do the spirits damned
Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should

boast
Their specious deeds on earth, which glory

excites

Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal.
Thus they their doubtful consultations

dark

Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief.
As when from mountain-tops the dusky

clouds
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps,

o'erspread

Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element
Scowls o'er the darkened landscape snow

or shower;
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell

sweet,

Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating

herds

Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
O shame to men ! devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace; and, God proclaiming

peace,

Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enough besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait.

(1667).

BEOWULF

Beowulf (composed in its present form about 900 A. D.), is the epic poem of the Anglo-Saxon race,
the materials for which had been brought from its original Germanic home. Beowulf, with fourteen
companions, sails to Denmark to offer his help to King Hrothgar, whose hall has for years been ravaged
by a sea-monster named Grendel. After an evening of feasting, Beowulf and his friends are left in the
hall alone, Grendel enters, and there follows a fearful struggle between the monster and Beowulf, whose
grip is equal to that of thirty men. The monster escapes but leaves his arm, torn from the shoulder, in
his conqueror's grasp. The next day, all unexpectedly, the mother of Grendel, seeking revenge for the
death of her son, invades the hall and devours one of the Danish thanes. Beowulf pursues her with
his sword and shield to the bottom of the sea where he finally slays her after a severe combat. The
latter half of the poem recounts the hero's fifty years' reign over his people and his death in defense of
his land from the terror of a dragon.

This, in substance, is the heroic poem which reveals to us the habits of our ancestors, their manner
of living, then- ideals of hospitality and generosity and honor to their women. The episode of the com-
bat with GrendePs dam is given below.

BEOWULF AND GRENDEL'S MOTHER*

XIX

GRENDEL'S mother cometh to avenge her son. She
seizes jEschere in Heorot.

THEN they sank to sleep. But one paid
dearly for his evening rest, as had often

From Beowulf, translated out of the Old English by
the publishers, Messrs. Newson and Company.

happened when Grendel occupied that
gold-hall and wrought evil till his end
came, death for his sins. It now became
evident to men that, though the foe was
dead, there yet lived for a long time after
the fierce combat, an avenger Grendel's
mother. The witch, woman-monster,
brooded over her woes, she who was

Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Ph. D. Used by permission of

EPIC AND ROMANCE

doomed to dwell among the terrors of the
waters, in the cold streams, from the time
when Cain slew with the sword his only
brother, his own father's son, then he
departed, banished, marked with murder,
fleeing from the joys of men and dwelt in
the wilderness. From him there woke to
life many Fate-sent demons. One of these
was Grendel, a fierce wolf, full of hatred.
But he had found at Heorot a man on the
watch, waiting to give him battle. Then
the monster grappled with him, but Beo-
wulf bethought him of his mighty strength,
the gift of God, and in Him as the Al-
mighty he trusted for favor, for help and
succor; in this trust he overcame the fiend,
laid low that spirit of hell. Then Grendel,
enemy to mankind, went forth joyless to
behold the abode of death. But his
mother, still wroth and ravenous, deter-
mined to go a sad journey to avenge the
death of her son; and she came to Heorot,
where the Ring-Danes lay asleep about
the hall. Straightway terror fell upon
the heroes once again when Grendel's
mother burst in upon them. But the fear
was less than in the time of Grendel, even
as the strength of maids, or a woman's
rage in war, is less than an armed man's,
what time the hilted sword, hammer-
forged, stained with blood, cleaves with its
keen blade the boar on the foeman's
helmet. There above the benches in the
hall the hard-edged sword was drawn,
and many a shield upreared, fast in the
hand; none thought of helm or broad
corslet when the terror got hold of him.
She was in haste, for she was discovered;
he wished to get thence with her life. Of
a sudden she clutched one of the heroes,
and was off to the fen. The mighty war-
rior, the famed hero whom the hag mur-
dered in his sleep, was the dearest to
Hrothgar of all the men in his band of
comrades between the seas. Beowulf was
not there; for another lodging-place had
been assigned to the mighty Geat after the
giving of treasure. A cry arose in Heorot.
All in its gore she had taken the well-known
arm; sorrow was renewed again in the
dwellings. No good exchange was that
which cost both peoples the lives of friends.

Then the old king, the hoary warrior,
was sad at heart when he learned that his
chief thane had lost his life, that his dear-
est friend was dead. Straightway Beo-
wulf, the hero blessed with victory, was
brought to the bower; the prince, the noble
warrior, went at daybreak with his com-
rades to where the prudent king was wait-
ing to know if perchance the Almighty
would ever work a happy change for him,
after the tidings of woe. And the hero,
famed in war, went o'er the floor with
his band of thanes, while loud the hall
resounded, to greet the wise lord of the
Ingwines; he asked if his night had been
restful, as he had wished.

HSOTHGAR lamenteth for ^Eschere. He tells
Beowulf of the monster and her haunt.

HROTHGAR, defence of the Scyldings,
spoke: "Ask not after bliss, sorrow is
renewed in the hall for the Danish people.
^Eschere is dead, Yrmenlaf 's elder brother,
my councilor and my adviser, who stood
by me, shoulder to shoulder, when we
warded our heads in battle, while hosts
rushed together and helmets crashed.
Like ^Eschere should every noble be, an
excellent hero. He was slain in Heorot by
a restless destroyer.

"I know not whither the awful monster,
exulting over her prey, has turned her
homeward steps, rejoicing in her fill.
She has avenged the strife in which thou
slewest Grendel yesternight, grappling
fiercely with him, for that he too long had
wasted and destroyed my people. He fell
in battle, forfeiting his life, and now an-
other is come, a mighty and a deadly foe,
thinking to avenge her son. She has
carried the feud further; wherefore it may
well seem a heavy woe to many a thane
who grieveth in spirit for his treasure-giver.
Low lies the hand which did satisfy all
your desires.

"I have heard the people dwelling in
my land, hall-rulers, say that they had
often seen two such mighty stalkers of the
marches, spirits of otherwhere, haunting

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the moors. One of them, as they could
know full well, was like unto a woman; the
other miscreated being, in the image of
man wandered in exile (save that he was
larger than any man), whom in the olden
tune the people named Grendel. They
know not if he ever had a father among
the spirits of darkness. They dwell in a
hidden land amid wolf-haunted slopes and
savage fen-paths, nigh the wind-swept
cliffs where the mountain-stream falleth,
shrouded in the mists of the headlands, its
flood flowing underground. It is not far
thence in measurement of miles that the
mere lieth. Over it hang groves in hoary
whiteness; a forest with fixed roots bend-
eth over the waters. There in the night-
tide is a dread wonder seen, a fire on
the flood! There is none of the children
of men so wise that he knoweth the
depths thereof. Although hard pressed
by hounds, the heath-ranging stag, with
mighty horns, may seek out that forest,
driven from afar, yet sooner will he yield
up life and breath upon the bank than hide
his head within its waters. Cheerless is
the place. Thence the surge riseth, wan
to the clouds, when the winds stir up foul
weather, till the air thicken and the
heavens weep.

"Now once again help rests with thee
alone. Thou knowest not yet the spot,
the savage place where thou mayst find
the sinful creature. Seek it out, if thou
dare. I will reward thee, as I did afore-
time with olden treasures and with twisted
gold, if thou get thence alive."

XXI

THEY track Grendel's mother to the mere. Beo-
wulf slayeth a sea-monster.

THEN spoke Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow:
" Sorrow not, thou wise man. It is better
for a man to avenge his friend than mourn
exceedingly. Each of us must abide the
end of the worldly life, wherefore let him
who may win glory ere he die; thus shall
it be best for a warrior when life is past.
Arise, O guardian of the kingdom, let us
straightway go and look upon the tracks of

Grendel's dam. I promise thee this: she
shall not escape to the covert, nor to the
bosom of the earth, nor to the bottom of
the sea, go where she will. This day do
thou bear in patience every woe of thine,
as I expect of thee."

Then the old man sprang up and
thanked God, the mighty Lord, for what
that man had said. And they bridled
Hrothgar's horse, a steed with wavy mane.
The wise prince rode out in stately wise,
and a troop of warriors marched forth
with their shields. Footprints were clearly
to be seen along the forest-path, her track
across the lands. She had gone forth,
right over the murky moor, and borne
away lifeless that best of thanes, who with
Hrothgar ruled the hall.

And the offspring of princes went over
steep and rocky slopes and narrow ways;
straight lonely passes, an unknown course;
over sheer cliffs where were many haunts
of the sea-monsters. He, with a few pru-
dent men, went on before to view the
spot, until he suddenly came upon moun-
tain-trees o'er-hanging the gray rock, a
cheerless wood. Beneath it lay a water,
bloody and troubled. All the Danes, all
the friends of the Scyldings, each hero and
many a thane, were sad at heart and had
to suffer sore distress; for there upon the
sea-cliff they found the head of ^schere.
The waters were seething with blood and
hot gore; the people looked upon it.

At times the horn sang out an eager
battle-lay. All the troop sat down. They
saw in the water many of the serpent kind,
strange dragons swimming the deep.
Likewise they saw sea-monsters lying along
the headland-slopes, serpents and wild
beasts, who oft at morning-tide make a
journey, fraught with sorrow, over the
sail-road. They sped away, bitter and
swollen with wrath, when they heard the
sound, the song of the battle-horn. But
the lord of the Geats with bow and arrow
took the life of one of them, as it buffeted
the waves, so that the hard shaft pierced
the vitals; he was then the slower in his
swimming on the sea, for death seized him.
Straightway he was hard pressed with the
sharp-barbs of the boar-spears, fiercely at-

EPIC AND ROMANCE

tacked, and drawn up on the cliff, a won-
drous wave-tosser. The men looked on
the strange and grisly beast.

Then Beowulf girded him with noble
armor; he took no thought for his life.
His byrnie, hand-woven, broad, and of
many colors, was to search out the deeps.
This armor could well protect his body so
that the grip of the foe could not harm his
breast, nor the clutch of the angry beast
do aught against his life. Moreover, the
white helmet guarded his head, e'en that
which was to plunge into the depths of
the mere, passing through the tumult of
the waters; it was all decked with gold, en-
circled with noble chains, as the weapon-
smith wrought it in the days of yore;
wondrously he made it, and set it about
with boar-figures so that no brand nor
battle-sword could bite it.

Nor was that the least of his mighty aids
which Hrothgar's spokesman lent him in
his need; the name of the hilted sword
was Hrunting, and it was one of the great-
est among the olden treasures; its blade
was of iron, stained with poison-twigs,
hardened with the blood of battle; it had
never failed any man whose hand had
wielded it in the fight, any who durst go
on perilous adventures to the field of
battle; it was not the first time that it had
need to do high deeds. Surely when
the son of Ecglaf, strong in his might,
lent that weapon to a better swordsman,
he did not remember what he had said
when drunk with wine; for, himself he
durst not risk his life beneath the warring
waves and do a hero's deeds; there he lost
the glory, the fame of valor. It was not
so with the other when he had armed him
for the fight.

XXII

BEOWULF bids farewell to Hrothgar and plunges
into the mere. The monster seizes upon him.
They fight.

THEN spoke Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow:
" Remember, thou great son of Healf dene,
wise chieftain, gracious friend of men, now
that I am ready for this exploit, what we

two spoke of aforetime; that, if I must
needs lose my life for thee, thou wouldst
ever be as a father to me when I was gone
hence. Guard thou my thanes, my own
comrades, if the fight take me, and do
thou also send unto Hygelac the treasures
that thou gavest me, beloved Hrothgar.
Then, when the son of Hrethel, lord of
the Geats, shall look upon that treasure,
he may behold and see by the gold that I
found a bountiful benefactor, and en-
joyed these gifts while I might. And do
thou let Unferth, that far-famed man,
have the old heirloom, the wondrous wavy
sword of tempered blade. I will win glory
with Hrunting, or death shall take me."

After these words the lord of the Weder-
Geats boldly made haste; he would await
no answer, but the surging waters swal-
lowed up the warrior. It was the space of
a day ere he got sight of the bottom.

Soon the blood-thirsty creature, she who
had lived for a hundred seasons, grim and
greedy, in the waters' flow, found that one
was there from above seeking out the
abode of monsters. She seized upon the
warrior and clutched him with her horrid
claws; nevertheless she did no harm to his
sound body, for the ringed armor girt him
round about, so that she could not pierce
the byrnie, the linked coat of mail, with
her hateful fingers. Then the mere-wolf,
when she came to the bottom, bore the
ring-prince to her dwelling, so that he
could nowise wield his weapons, brave
though he was; for many monsters came
at him, many a sea-beast with awful tusks
broke his battle-sark, the evil creatures
pressed him hard.

Then the hero saw that he was in some
dreadful hall, where the water could not
harm him a whit; the swift clutch of the
current could not touch him, because of the
roofed hall. He saw a fire-light, a gleam-
ing flame brightly shining. Then the hero
got sight of the mighty mere-woman the
she-wolf of the deep. He made at her
fiercely with his war-sword. His hand
did not refuse the blow, so that the ringed
blade sang out a greedy war-song on her
head. But the stranger found that the
gleaming sword would make no wound,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

would do no harm to her life; so the blade
failed the prince in his need. It had afore-
time endured many a hard fight, had often
cleft the helmet and the byrnie of the
doomed; this was the first time that the
precious treasure ever failed of its glory.
Yet the kinsman of Hygelac, heedful of
great deeds, was steadfast of purpose, not
faltering in courage. Then the angry
warrior threw from him the carved sword,
strong and steel-edged, studded with
jewels, and it lay upon the ground. He
trusted to his strength, to the mighty grip
of his hand. So must a brave man do
when he thinketh to win lasting praise;
he taketh no thought for his life.

Then the lord of the War-Geats, shrink-
ing not from the fight, seized Grendel's
mother by the shoulder, and full of wrath,
the valiant in battle threw his deadly foe
so that she fell to the floor. Speedily she
paid him his reward again with fierce
grapplings and clutched at him, and being
exhausted, he stumbled and fell, he, the
champion, strongest of warriors. Then
she leaped and sat upon him, and drew
her dagger, broad and brown-edged, to
avenge her son, her only offspring. But
on his shoulder lay his woven coat of mail;
it saved his life, barring the entrance
against point and blade. Thus the son of
Ecgtheow, the chief of the Geats, would
have perished 'neath the sea-bottom, had
not his battle-byrnie, his hard war-corslet,
been of aid to him, and Holy God, the
wise Lord, brought victory to pass, the
King of heaven easily adjudging it aright.
Thereafter he stood up again.

XXIII

BEOWULF lays hold upon a giant sword and slays
the evil beast. He finds Grendel's dead body
and cuts off the head, an:i swims up to his
thanes upon the shore. They go back to
Heorot.

THEN he saw among the armor a vic-
torious blade, an old sword of the giant-
age, keen-edged, the glory of warriors;
it was the choicest of weapons, save that
it was larger than any other man was able
to carry into battle, good, and splendidly

wrought, for it was the work of the giants.
And the warrior of the Scyldings seized
the belted hilt; savage and angry, he drew
forth the ring-sword, and, hopeless of life,
smote so fiercely that the hard sword
caught her by the neck, breaking the ring-
bones; the blade drove right through
her doomed body, and she sank upon the
floor. The sword was bloody; the hero
exulted in his deed.

The flame burst forth; light filled the
place, even as when the candle of heaven
is shining brightly from the sky. He
gazed about the place and turned him to
the wall; the thane of Hygelac, angry and
resolute, lifted the great weapon by the
hilt. The blade was not worthless to the
warrior, for he wished to repay Grendel
straightway for the many attacks which he
had made upon the West-Danes, oftener
far than once, what time he slew Hroth-
gar's hearth-companions in their slumber
and devoured fifteen of the sleeping Danes
and carried off as many more, a horrid
prey. The fierce warrior had given him
his reward, insomuch that he now saw
Grendel lying lifeless in his resting-place,
spent with his fight, so deadly had the
combat been for him in Heorot. The
body bounded far when it suffered a blow
after death, a mighty sword-stroke. Thus
he smote off the head.

Soon the prudent men who were watch-
ing the mere with Hrothgar saw that the
surging waves were all troubled, and the
water mingled with blood. The old men,
white-haired, talked together of the hero,
how they thought that the prince would
never come again to their great lord, exult-
ant in victory; for many believed that the
sea-wolf had rent him in pieces.

Then came the ninth hour of the day.
The bold Scyldings left the cliff, the boun-
teous friend of men departed to his home.
But the strangers sat there, sick at heart,
and gazed upon the mere; they longed but
did not ever think to see their own dear
lord again.

Meanwhile the sword, that war-blade,
being drenched with blood, began to waste
away in icicles of steel; it melted won-
drously away, like ice when the Father

EPIC AND ROMANCE

looseneth the frost, unwindeth the ropes
that bind the waves; He who ruleth the
times and seasons, He is a God of right-
eousness. The lord of the Weder-Geats took
no treasure from that hall, although he saw
much there, none save the head, and the
hilt bright with gold; the blade had mel-
ted, the graven sword had burned away,
so hot had been the blood, so venomous
the strange spirit that had perished there.

Soon he was swimming off, he who had
survived the onset of his foes; he dived up
through the water. The surging waves
were cleansed, the wide expanse where that
strange spirit had laid down her life and
the fleeting days of this world.

And the defence of seamen came to land,
stoutly swimming; he rejoiced in his sea-
spoil, the great burden that he bore with
him. And his valiant band of thanes
went unto him, giving thanks to God; they
rejoiced in their chief, for that they could
see him safe and sound. Then they

quickly loosed helm and byrnie from the
valiant man. The mere grew calm, but
the water 'neath the clouds was discolored
with the gore of battle.

They set forth along the foot-path glad
at heart; the men, kingly bold, measured
the earth-ways, the well-known roads.
They bore away the head from the sea-
cliff, a hard task for all those men, great-
hearted as they were; four of them must
needs bear with toil that head of Grendel
upon a spear to the gold-hall. And forth-
with the fourteen Geats, bold and warlike,
came to the hall, and their brave lord in
their midst trod the meadows. And the
chief of the thanes, the valiant man
crowned with glory, the warrior brave in
battle, went in to greet Hrothgar. And
Grendel's head was borne by the hair
into the hall where the men were drinking,
an awful sight for the heroes and the
lady too. The people gazed upon that
wondrous spectacle.

THE SONG OF ROLAND

The heroic tale of the rearguard action of Roland, Oliver, and their following, against the Saracen
hordes in the pass of Roncesvalles, the blowing of Roland's mighty horn the sound of which penetrated to
the host of Charlemagne on the other side of the mountains, the death of the Paladins, and the vengeance
of their master, grew out of legendary stories, or sagas, of the early struggles by the Frankish peoples
against the onrush of the Moors from the south which finally saved Europe from Mahommedan domina-
tion. This is the heroic background of the history of the nation of France. It is interesting to note that
at the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, Taillefer, the Norman minstrel, marched ahead of the invading army
singing the lines of this poem as a kind of defiance of the Anglo-Saxon host. On another occasion, dur-
ing the dark days of the siege of Paris in 1871, an attempt was made to revive in the hearts of the de-
fenders of the city the martial strains of their national epic as a means of patriotic endurance to the end.
The translation has been prepared by Percy Hazen Houston.

THE DEATH OF THE PEERS AT
RONCESVALLES

OLIVER feeling that his wound is mortal,
hasteneth the more to vengeance. Full
knightly he bears himself in the great press,
shivering lances and crushing shields, and
he severeth shoulders and arms and feet.
Vull well might he who beholdeth now
now he smote down the Saracen foe, leav-
ing body piled upon body, recall great
deeds of prowess. Nor forgetteth he the
cry of Charles, "Montjoie," and he
giveth it full loud and clear. Then saith
he unto Roland, his friend and peer,

"Sir comrade, ride thou close by, for full
well I wot that to our great dolor shall we
be divided."

Then Roland looketh upon Oliver full
well in the face. Pale he is and ghastly,
discolored and bloodless, and the bright
blood floweth from his corslet gushing to
the earth. " O God ! " cried he. " I know
what will come to pass, Sir comrade, for
thy valiance hath come to woe, and never
more shall thy peer be upon this earth.
Oh, sweet France, how hast thou been
overcome, and great loss from this will
come unto the Emperor." And when he
ceased, he swooned upon his horse.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Now Roland has swooned upon his
horse, and Oliver draweth so nigh unto
death that nor here nor there, far nor near,
knoweth he a mortal man from another,
and when his comrade presseth close unto
him, with great force smiteth he his helmet
of gold, so that he cleaveth it to the nasal,
but touching not the head. At such a
blow Roland looketh up full well amazed
and asketh with great gentleness, "Sir
comrade, hast thou done this knowingly?
For wottest thou not I am Roland whom
thou lovest full well and in no way hast
thou a quarrel with me?" Then saith
Oliver, "Full well I wot it is thee I hear
, speak, but I see thee not. God the Lord
seeth thee. Was it indeed thee I smote?
I pray thy pardon!" And Roland made
reply: "No hurt has befallen me and I
forgive thee here and before God." At
this word the one to the other bent with
love, and in this wise made they their
farewell.

Now Oliver felt that death drew nigh
unto him, his eyes turned within his head,
nor had he sight nor hearing any more.
He dismounted from his horse and found
for his head a pillow upon the soft earth.
Aloud he uttered his mea culpa, the
while he held both hands joined together
up to heaven and prayed God that he
receive him into Paradise; nor failed he to
call benedictions upon Charles and France
and his comrade Roland first before all
men. Then sank his body, his head bent
low, and he lay stretched out on the
ground. Dead was he, the Count, and
there was an end to his stay among mortal
men. Full sore did Roland weep and
make great moan for the baron, and never
had man been so dolorous upon this earth.

When Count Roland saw his friend
how that he lay stretched at length and his
face to the ground, full tenderly did he
make moan: "Sir comrade, thy strength
hath brought thee woe! Together have
we been many long years and days, and
well I wot that never hast thou wronged
me, nor have I in any way betrayed thee.
Since thou art dead, woe is it that I live."
At this word he swooned upon his horse
whom men call Veillantif, nor might fall

wherever he might turn so fast was he held
by his stirrups of gold.

Then it befell when Roland was re-
stored from his swoon and his senses had
returned unto him, he was full well aware
of the ruin on all sides. Dead are the
Franks; perished are they all save the
Archbishop and Walter del Hum only,
who had returned from the mountain
where he gave battle to the hosts of Spain,
and where the heathen won and his men
all were overcome. To the valley he came
whether he would or no and then called
he unto Roland that he would seek his aid:
"Oh! gentle Count, brave knight, where
art thou? Never know I fear when thou
art nigh. I am Walter, the same who
vanquished Maelgut nephew of Droon,
the ancient and white of hair. I was wont
to follow thee in deeds of chivalry. Now
my lance is shivered and my shield pierced,
and my coat of mail is battered and
hacked and in my body are eight thrusts
of spear. Full well I wot that I shall die,
but dearly have I sold my life." Then
did Roland become aware of the knight,
and spurring his steed he came toward
him.

Of great sorrow was Roland and full
of anger, so that in the thick of the fray he
began to slay, and of those of Spain twenty
did he smite down, and Walter six, and
the Archbishop to the number of five.
Then said the heathen: "Fearful and
fell are these men. Heed ye well, lords,
that they make not their escape and alive !
Fell is he who meeteth them not and
recreant he who letteth them escape!
Then did the hue and cry begin again so
that from all sides came they back into
the fray.

A most noble warrior was Count Ro-
land, Walter del Hum a valiant cavalier,
and proved and well tried was the Arch-
bishop, and never would one leave the
other. Together in the great press do
they smite down the Paynims. The
Saracens to the number of a thousand
leapt from their steeds, while there were
still forty thousand in their saddles; yet
truly they dared not approach too near
but hurled their lances and their swords

EPIC AND ROMANCE

and their darts and sharp javelins. At
the first onset slew they Walter, pierced
the Archbishop's helm and brake hauberk
and wounded his head, so that he was rent
in the body by four lances. Great pity
it was that the Archbishop should fall.

When Turpin of Rheims felt himself
smitten to earth and his body pierced by
four lances, swiftly uprose the baron.
And now when Roland saw him, he would
go to his aid, but he cried: "Not yet am I
overcome; let vassals yield only with
life." Then drew he Almace, his sword of
steel, and in the thick of the press he lay
about him more than a thousand strokes.
In sooth it was said by Charles the Em-
peror that he spared none and there
around him he found bodies to the number
of four hundred, some wounded and some
struck down and lying on the plain, some
whose heads had been severed from their
bodies. So saith the geste and Giles, he
who was on the field, the same for whom
God worked miracles: and in the cell at
Laon wrote he the manuscript, and he
who wots not this wots nothing at all.

Count Roland fought full nobly nor did
he heed his body burning and bathed in
sweat and in his head were great pain and
torture since when he first sounded his
horn and his temple burst. But of
Charles's coming was he fain to know and
he drew his horn of ivory and fully he
sounded it. The Emperor stopped full
short and listened: "Lords," quoth he,
"it goeth full sore. Full hardly shall
Roland, my nephew, escape death; I
hear his horn as that of a dying man. Let
him who would reach the field ride fast,
and sound your trumpet everywhere
throughout the host." Sixty thousand
horns resounded on high and echoed in the
hills and rebounded in the valleys; so that
the Paynims heard it; it is no jest, and one
saith to another, " Charles is at hand."

Then quoth the heathen: "The Em-
peror cometh, wherefore the men of France
sound their trumpets, and if Charles come,
no hope will there be left unto us; yet
indeed if Roland live, we must fight again
and Spain our country have we lost."
Four hundred do battle together, and the

bravest in the field, and full fierce and
terrible they press upon Roland that he
feels it greater than he can endure.

Now when Count Roland saw that they
drew near, such strength and might came
unto him that yield would he not while
breath remained in his body. He sat
upon his horse whom men call Veillantif
and urged him well with spurs of fine gold
so that they rode together upon the
heathen host, and the Archbishop Turpin
rode at his side. Said one to the other,
"Save thyself, friend. The trumpets of
France have we heard, and Charles the
mighty monarch approacheth."

Now Count Roland had never loved
coward nor the proud of spirit nor evil of
heart nor knight who had not proved
himself true vassal; and upon Archbishop
Turpin he cried: " Sir, on foot art thou, and
I mounted on horseback, and for thy love
therefore will I dismount and together
will we share good and ill, nor will I leave
thee for any living man. Thus will we
return their assault and shall no sword
smite better than Durendal." "Base
is he," quoth the Archbishop, "who
faileth to smite, for that Charles cometh
to avenge us so well." And the heathen
cried: "So were we born to ill. Fearful
is this day that has dawned, for that we
have lost our lords and peers, and Charles
the great baron cometh with his mighty
host. We hear the trumpets of the host
of France, and full loud is the cry of
'Montjoie.' So great is the might of
Roland that he cannot be vanquished by
any man; therefore let us fling our mis-
siles against him and fall back." Where-
upon they hurled their darts and their
spears and feathered missiles. Roland's
buckler was battered and pierced ind his
mail ripped and broken, yet did they not
enter into his body. Thirty times did
they pierce Veillantif, and he fell dead
from under the Count. Then did the
Paynims flee and leave him, and Count
Roland remained on foot alone.

And the Paynims fled in great rage and
fear, and toward Spain returned they
as they had come. Not now could Count
Roland pursue, for that he had lost his

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

steed Veillantif, and whether he would or
no he had fallen on his feet. Then went
he to see if perchance he might aid the
Archbishop. He unlaced his helmet of
gold from his head, and undid the white
corslet over his breast and into strips
tore his undergarment that he might
staunch the great wounds of the Arch-
bishop. Against his heart he held him
embraced and laid him full tenderly upon
the green grass, and thus gently spake
unto him: "Ah! gentle sir, let me now
take farewell; our comrades whom we
loved so greatly have gone to their death,
yet it behooves us not that we should
leave them. I fain would seek them that
I may lay them before thee in seeming
fashion." Quoth the Archbishop: "Go
and return betimes as the field is thine
and mine, thanks be to God."

And so Roland turned away and alone
went he over the field, over valley and
hill did he search. Gerin found he and
Gerier that was his comrade in arms, and
Berangier and Otho, and Anseis and
Samson, and he found Gerard-the-Old
of Rousillon. One by one he bore the
barons and laid them before the Arch-
bishop, and in a row before his knees he
put them. The Archbishop could not but
weep as he raised his hand in benediction.
Then said he: "Alas for you, my lord!
And may God the glorious receive you
into his mercy! In Paradise may you
repose on blessed flowers! My own death
cometh and it giveth me great anguish
that I may never see my Emperor more."

Once again did Roland return that he
might search the field. Oliver his com-
rade he found and to his heart he pressed
him. With what strength there yet re-
mained to him he bore him to the Arch-
bishop; upon a buckler he laid him beside
the rest, and the Archbishop assoiled and
blessed them, and his grief waxed strong
and he had great pity. And then said
Roland: "Oliver, fair comrade, son wert
thou to the noble Duke Renier, he who
held the marches of Genoa and Rivier;
and there was no better cavalier for the
breaking of spears or piercing of shields
or for the smiting or the putting to flight

of the proud or for the giving of counsel
to the good."

When Count Roland saw his peers
and Oliver whom he so loved lying dead,
he was filled with great dolor and his face
was discolored from much weeping; and
so great was his grief that no longer was
he able to stand upon his feet, whether
he would or no he fell to the ground in a
swoon. "Alas for thee, baron," cried the
Archbishop.

When the Archbishop saw how that
Roland had swooned, he felt the greatest
dolor that ever he had felt before. Then
did he extend his hand and grasp the horn
that was of ivory. In the valley was a
spring, and he would fain go thither that
he might bring water unto Roland; and
with a great effort was he able to rise
and set off full slow and falteringly, but
such weakness came upon him that he
could go no farther. So much was the
blood that he had lost that no strength
had he left; wherefore when he had gone
but the distance of a rood his heart failed
him, so that he fell with his face to the
ground and mortal anguish seized upon
him.

Count Roland, when he had regained
his senses, with great effort raised himself
and looked about him; upon the green
grass beyond his companions saw he the
noble baron, the Archbishop, whom God
ordained in his name, sink upon the earth.
He looked up to Heaven, extended his
two hands, and uttered his mea culpa and
prayed God that he would indeed grant
him Paradise. Turpin died and in the
service of Charles, and wit ye well that
both in battles and by fair sermons did he
never cease to do battle with the heathen.
God grant him his benediction !

Count Roland saw the Archbishop upon
the ground and that his bowels burst
from his body and his brains gushed from
his forehead. Upon his breast did Roland
cross his white hands and then, according
to the custom of his country, full pitifully
did he make moan: "Ah! gentle lord,
knight of a noble race, to the glorious
King of Heaven do I recommend thee to-
day, and well I wot that never more will

EPIC AND ROMANCE

man serve Him as thou hast served Him
nor more willingly. Not since the time
of the Apostles hath there been such a
prophet to uphold the law of the Chris-
tians and to draw men unto it. Hence-
forth may thy soul wot not of grief or
torment and may the Gate of Paradise
be opened unto it.

Roland felt that his death drew nigh;
his brain oozed forth by either ear; there-
fore did he pray for his peers that God
might call them, and for himself did he
implore the angel Gabriel. That he might
be reproached for naught, did he with
one hand grasp the horn of ivory and
with the other Durendal his sword. As
far as the shot of a crossbow in fallow
land did he advance toward Spain. There
were four steps of marble near unto the
crest of a hillock, under two fair trees, and
there it is that he fell back upon the grass
as his death approached.

Now where Count Roland had swooned
the mountains were high and full tall the
trees, and there were four steps of glisten-
ing marble. And in the meanwhile a
Saracen had been watching him, and he
it was who feigned death and lay among
the others. He had smeared his body
with blood and his visage. Handsome
was he and full strong and of great courage
so that in his pride he would do a deed of
mortal folly, and he rose and laid his hand
upon the body and the arms of Roland and
cried: "The nephew of Charles is van-
quished and this sword will I carry into
Arabia." Forthwith he seized it and
then lay hold of the beard of Roland.
Then was the Count roused by the pain so
that his senses returned unto him.

Now no sooner had Roland felt that
his sword had been taken from him than
he opened his eyes and spake: "Well I
wot that thou art not of ours." With the
horn of ivory which he held and which he
would never let go, did he smite the foe
full upon the helmet. The horn, adorned
with precious gems and gold, crushed
through steel and head and bones, and
made the eyes that they fell from his head,
and threw him back dead at Roland's fret.
Then cried he: " Vile man, who hath made

thee so bold that thou wouldst lay hand
upon me, whether right or no? No man
shall hear it said but shall deem thee mad.
Now is my horn of ivory broken, and the
crystal and the gold have fallen from it."

Roland felt that death pressed closely
upon him and he rose to his feet as quickly
as he might; his countenance had lost
all its color. He grasped his sword
Durendal all unsheathed, and seeing a
brown rock before him, ten blows did he
smite it, so great was his anger and
chagrin. Then did the steel grate but
it broke not nor splintered. "Blessed
Mary," cried the Count, "aid me now!
Ah! Durendal, my good sword, alack
for thee! For now I die and no more
shall have to do with thee; with thee have
I won many battles and conquered broad
lands the which are held by Charles of the
white beard! Whilst I live shalt thou not
be borne away, that thou mayest never
belong to him who would flee before an-
other. How brave a warrior hath borne
thee for many a long day! Never more 1
will there be another and such as he in
France, the blessed land."

Roland struck upon the hard rock, and
then did the steel grate but brake not nor
splintered. Now when the count saw
that he might not break his sword, did he
make moan unto himself: "Ah, Durendal,
how clear and white thou art, how thou
dost flash and glisten in the sun ! Charles
was in Maurienne valley, and from Heaven
God bade him by his angel that he give
thee unto a Count and chieftain of his
host, and then did the gentle king, the
most noble warrior, gird it on me. With
thee did I conquer Anjou and Brittany,
Poitou and Maine, with thee I gained
Normandy the free, Provence and Aqui-
taine, and Lombardy and the whole of
Romagna; with thee I overcame Bavaria
and all of Flanders and Bulgaria and Po-
land, Constantinople of which he holds the
fealty, and Saxony, of which he is sov-
ereign; for him did I conquer Scotland and
Ireland and England, the which he holds
as his own domain. How many countries,
how many lands, have I won, that Charles
of the white beard might hold them in fee!

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

For this sword do I suffer sore and am in
great torment; sooner would I die than
leave it to the heathen host. Lord God,
our Father, let not this shame come unto
France!"

Now Roland feels that death is upon
him and that it descends from his head
unto his heart, and he couches himself close
by a pine tree and upon the green grass,
and his face is upon the ground. Beneath
him does he place his horn of ivory and
his sword, and turns toward Spain, as
if he would fain have it that Charlemagne
and all his knights might tell how that
the noble count died as seeming a con-
queror. His sins doth he confess once
and again, and that they might be re-
quited doth he offer his glove unto God.

Roland f eeleth that his hour is come, and
ha lieth on the crest of a hill and turneth
toward Spain. With one hand doth he
beat his heart. "God, I invoke thy
power and my sins do I confess, great
and small, which I have committed from
the hour in which I was born unto this
day when it is that death overtakes me."

Then doth he stretch out unto God his
right glove, and the angel of Heaven de-
scendeth unto him.

Count Roland lay under a pine tree and
his face was turned toward Spain. Many
things would he fain recall: how many
lands he had won to the honor of sweet
France, the men of his lineage, Charle-
magne his lord, who had reared him hi his
hall, and the men of France of whom he
had great love. At this he could not but
weep and sigh, but forget himself did he
not, and he composed himself and prayed
forgiveness of God. " God, the truth, thou
who liest not, who hast raised Lazarus
from the dead, who hast preserved Daniel
from the lions, save my soul from all the
perils brought unto it by the sins which I
have committed in this my life!" His
right glove he offered unto God, and the
Holy Saint Gabriel took it from his hand.
His head fell upon his arm, and, his hands
joined, passed he unto his end. Then did
God send unto him his cherubim and Saint
Michael of the Peril of the Sea, and Saint
Gabriel came with them also, and together
did they bear the soul of the Count into
Paradise.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED*

This ancient German epic, composed in its present form probably early in the twelfth century, repre-
sents the accumulation of the rich store of legends out of the dim mythological past which accompanied
the vast Germanic migrations that finally overwhelmed the Empire of Rome.

The poem falls into two parts. The first relates the coming of the young warrior Siegfried with the
magic hoard of the Nibelungs to the land of Burgundy where he wins the lovely Kriemhild to wife.
But before the wedding he aids his friend Gunther to win the warrior-queen Brunhild, queen of Iceland,
by surpassing her in three games. By wearing an invisible cloak he is able to come to the help of his
friend and overcomes the warlike queen, taking from her her ring and girdle, thus rendering her power-
less before her lord. Later, just before the celebration of the double wedding, the two queens engage in
a quarrel over a question of precedence, and Kriemhild boasts her possession of the magic ring and girdle.
Brunhild, maddened, induces Hagen to kill Siegfried after she has learned of one vulnerable spot on the
hero's body where a linden leaf had fallen as he was bathing in the blood of a dragon.

The second part, which may be entitled Kriemhild 's revenge, is, unlike the first part of the story,
sombre and tragic. For thirteen years the grief-stricken queen mourns her lord. Then for thirteen
years she lives as the wife of Attila, king of Hungary. At the end of that time she invites the Burgun-
dians (who are now called Nibelungs) to a great festival at her court. In spite of forebodings they go,
never to return. In a dramatic conclusion, the whole army is slain, their bodies thrown out of the
window, and the hall set on fire. Kriemhild herself cuts off Hagen's head with Siegfried's sword Balming
and in turn is slain by one of the Hungarians. Thus perish the whole race of Nibelungs, and with them
is lost forever the secret of their great hoard.

*These selections are from "The Fall of the Niebelungs," translated by Margaret Armour; published in the Everyman's
Library by Messrs. E. P. Button and Company, New York,

EPIC AND ROMANCE

It is interesting to note that this great primitive epic, like the Song of Roland, served to revive the
spirits of a people at a time of national crisis. This time it was the revolt of liberal Germans from the
despotism of Napoleon, inaugurating the liberal movement in Germany which was destined to be crushed
by the Prussian king when he rejected the resolutions of the Diet of Frankfort in 1848.

The most notable modern treatment of this story is to be found in Richard Wagner's operatic cycle,
"The Ring of the Nibelungs."

EPISODES OF SIEGFRIED AND KRIEMHILD

KRIEMHILD

AND lo! the fair one appeared, like the
dawn from out the dark clouds. And he
that had borne her so long in his heart
was no more aweary, for the beloved one,
his sweet lady, stood before him in her
beauty. Bright jewels sparkled on her
garments, and bright was the rose-red of
her hue, and all they that saw her pro-
claimed her peerless among maidens.

As the moon excelleth in light the stars
shining clear from the clouds, so stood she,
fair before the other women, and the hearts
of the warriors were uplifted. The cham-
berlains made way for her through them
that pressed in to behold her. And Sieg-
fried joyed, and sorrowed likewise, for he
said in his heart, "How should I woo such
as thee? Surely it was a vain dream; yet
I were liefer dead than a stranger to thee."

Thinking thus he waxed oft white and
red; yea, graceful and proud stood the
son of Sieglind, goodliest of heroes to be-
hold, as he were drawn on parchment
by the skill of a cunning master. And the
knights fell back as the escort commanded,
and made way for the high-hearted women,
and gazed on them with glad eyes. Many
a dame of high degree was there.

Said bold Sir Gernot, the Burgundian,
then, "Gunther, dear brother, unto the'
gentle knight, that hath done thee service,
show honor now before thy lieges. Of this
counsel I shall never shame me. Bid
Siegfried go before my sister, that the
maiden greet him. Let her, that never
greeted knight, go toward him. For this
shall advantage us, and we shall win the
good warrior for ours."

Then Gunther's kinsmen went to the
knight of the Netherland, and said to him,
"The king bids thee to the court that his
sister may greet thee, for he would do
thee honor."

It rejoiced Siegfried that he was to
look upon Uta's fair child, and he forgot
his sorrow.

She greeted him mild and maidenly, and
her color was kindled when she saw before
her the high-minded man, and she said,
"Welcome, Sir Siegfried, noble knight and
good." His courage rose at her words,
and graceful, as beseemed a knight, he
bowed himself before her and thanked her.
And love that is mighty constrained them,
and they yearned with their eyes in secret.
I know not whether, from his great love,
the youth pressed her white hand, but
two love-desirous hearts, I trow, had else
done amiss.

Nevermore, in summer or in May, bore
Siegfried in his heart such high joy, as
when he went by the side of her whom he
coveted for his dear one. And many a
knight thought, "Had it been my hap
to walk with her, as I have seen him do,
or to lie by her side, certes, I had suffered
it gladly! Yet never, truly, hath warrior
served better to win a queen." From
what land soever the guests came, they
were ware only of these two. And she
was bidden kiss the hero. He had never
had like joy before hi this world.

Said the King of Denmark then, "By
reason of this high greeting many good men
lie low, slain by the hand of Siegfried, the
which hath been proven to my cost. God
grant he return not to Denmark!"

Then they ordered to make way for fair
Kriemhild. Valiant knights in stately
array escorted her to the minster, where
she was parted from Siegfried. She went
thither followed by her maidens; and so
rich was her apparel that the other women,
for all their striving, were as naught beside
her, for to glad the eyes of heroes she was
born.

Scarce could Siegfried tarry till they had
sung mass, he yearned so to thank her
for his gladness, and that she whom he

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

bore in his heart had inclined her desire
toward him, even as his was to her, which
was meet.

Now when Kriemhild was come forth
to the front of the minster, they bade the
warrior go to her again, and the damsel
began to thank him, that before all others
he had done valiantly. And she said,
"Now, God requite thee, Sir Siegfried,
for they tell me thou hast won praise and
honor from all knights."

He looked on the maid right sweetly,
and he said, "I will not cease to serve
them. Never, while I live, will I lay
head on pillow, till I have brought their
desire to pass. For love of thee, dear
lady, I will do this."

And every day of twelve, in the sight
of all the people, the youth walked by
the side of the maiden as she went to the
court. So they showed their love to the
knight.

HOW THE QUEENS QUARRELLED

ONE day, before vespers, there arose
in the court of the castle a mighty din of
knights that tilted for pastime, and the
folk ran to see them.

The queens sat together there, thinking
each on a doughty warrior. Then said
fair Kriemhild, "I have a husband of such
might that all these lands might well
be bis."

But Brunhild answered, "How so? If
there lived none other save thou and he,
our kingdom might haply be his, but
while Gunther is alive it could never be."

But Kriemhild said, "See him there.
How he surpasseth the other knights, as
the bright moon the stars! My heart
is uplifted with cause."

Whereupon Brunhild answered, "How-
so valiant thy husband, comely and fair,
thy brother Gunther excelleth him, for
know that he is the first among kings."

But Kriemhild said, "My praise was
not idle; for worshipful is my husband in
many things. Trow it, Brunhild. He is,
at the least, thy husband's equal."

"Mistake me not hi thine anger, Kriem-

hild. Neither is my word idle; for they
both said, when I saw them first, and the
king vanquished me in the sports, and on
knightly wise won my love, that Siegfried
was his man. Wherefore I hold him for a
vassal, since I heard him say it."

Then Kriemhild cried, "Evil were my
lot if that were true. How had my
brothers given me to a vassal to wife?
Prithee, of thy courtesy, cease from such
discourse."

"That will I not," answered Brunhild.
"Thereby should I lose many knights
that, with him, owe us homage."

Whereat fair Kriemhild waxed very
wroth. "Lose them thou must, then, for
any service he will do thee. He is nobler
even than Gunther, my noble brother.
Wherefore, spare me thy foolish words.
I wonder, since he is thy vassal, and thou
art so much mightier than we, that for so
long time he hath failed to pay tribute.
Of a truth thine arrogancy irketh me."

"Thou vauntest thyself too high," cried
the queen; "I would see now whether thy
body be holden in like honor with mine."

Both the women were angry.

Kriemhild answered, "That shalt thou
see straightway. Since thou hast called
Siegfried thy vassal, the knights of both
kings shall see this day whether I dare
enter the minster before thee, the queen.
For I would have thee know that I am
noble and free, and that my husband is
of more worship than thine. Nor will I
be chidden by thee. To-day thou shalt
see thy vassals go at court before the
Burgundian knights, and me more honored
than any queen that ever wore a crown."

Fierce was the wrath of the women.

"If thou art no vassal," said Brunhild,
" thou and thy women shall walk separate
from my train when we go to the minster."

And Kriemhild answered, "Be it so."

"Now adorn ye, my maidens," said
Siegfried's wife, "that I be not shamed.
If ye have rich apparel, show it this day.
She shall take back what her mouth hath
spoken.'*

She needed not to bid twice; they sought
out their richest vesture, and dames and
damsels were soon arrayed.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Then the wife of the royal host went
forth with her attendants. Fair to heart's
desire were clad Kriemhild and the for<vy
and three maidens that she had brought
with her to the Rhine. Bright shone the
stuffs, woven in Araby, whereof their
robes were fashioned. And they came to
the minster, where Siegfried's knights
waited for them.

The folk marvelled much to see the
queens apart, and going not together as
afore. Many a warrior was to rue it.

Gunther's wife stood before the minster,
and the knights dallied in converse with
the women, till that Kriemhild came up
with her meiny. All that noble maidens
had ever worn was but as a wind to what
these had on. So rich was Kriemhild
that thirty king's wives together had not
been as gorgeous as she was. None could
deny, though they had wished it, that the
apparel Kriemhild's maidens wore that
day was the richest they had ever seen.
Kriemhild did this on purpose to anger
Brunhild.

So they met before the minster. And
Brunhild, with deadly spite, cried out to
Kriemhild to stand still. "Before the
queen shall no vassal go."

Out then spake Kriemhild, for she was
wroth. "Better hadst thou held thy
peace. Thou hast shamed thine own
body. How should the leman of a vassal
become a king's wife?"

"Whom namest thou leman?" cried the
queen.

"Even thee," answered Kriemhild.
" For it was Siegfried my husband, and not
my brother, that won thee first. Where
were thy senses? It was surely ill done
to favor a vassal so. Reproaches from
thee are much amiss."

"Verily," cried Brunhild. "Gunther
shall hear of it."

" What is that to me? Thine arrogancy
hath deceived thee. Thou hast called
me thy vassal. Know now of a truth it
hath irked me, and I am thine enemy
evermore."

Then Brunhild began to weep, and
Kriemhild tarried not longer, but went
with her attendants into the minster

before the king's wife. There was deadly
hate, and bright eyes grew wet and dim.

Whether they prayed or sang, the ser-
vice seemed too long to Brunhild, for hrr
heart and her mind were troubled, the
which many a bold and good man paid
for afterward.

Brunhild stopped before the minster
with her women, for she thought, "Kriem-
hild, the foul-mouthed woman, shall tell
me further whereof she so loud accuseth
me. If he hath boasted of this thing, he
shall answer for it with his life."

Then Kriemhild with her knights came
forth, and Brunhild began, "Stop! thou
hast called me a wanton and shalt prove
it, for know that thy words irk me sore."

Said Kriemhild, "Let me pass. With
this gold that I have on my hand I can
prove it. Siegfried brought it when he
came from thee."

It was a heavy day for Brunhild. She
said, "That gold so precious was stolen
from me, and hath been hidden these
many years. Now I know who hath
taken it." Both the women were furious.

"I am no thief," cried Kriemhild.
"Hadst thou prized thine honor thou
hadst held thy peace, for, with this girdle
round my waist, I can prove my word, and
that Siegfried was verily thy leman."
She wore a girdle of silk of Nineveh, goodly
enow, and worked with precious stones.

When Brunhild saw it she started to
weep. And soon Gunther knew it, and
all his men, for the queen cried, "Bring
hither the King of Rhineland; I would
tell him how his sister hath mocked me,
and sayeth openly that I be Siegfried's
leman."

The king came with his warriors, and,
when he saw that his dear one wept, he
spake kindly, "What aileth thee, dear
wife?"

She answered, "Shamed must I stand,
for thy sister would part me from mine
honor? I make my plaint to thee. She
proclaimeth aloud that Siegfried hath had
me to his leman."

Gunther answered, "Evilly hath she
done."

"She weareth here a girdle that I have

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURP:

long lost, and my red gold. Woe is me
that ever I was born! If thou clearest
me not from this shame, I will never love
thee more."

Said Gunther, "Bid him hither, that he
confess whether he hath boasted of this,
or no."

They summoned Siegfried, who, when
he saw their anger and knew not the cause,
spake quickly, "Why weep these women?
Tell me straight; and wherefore am I
summoned?"

Whereto Gunther answered, "Right
vexed am I. Brunhild, my wife, telleth
me here that thou hast boasted thou wert
her leman. Kriemhild declareth this.
;Hast thou done it, knight?"

Siegfried answered, "Not I. If she
hath said so, I will rest not till she repent
jit. I swear with a high oath, in the pres-
ence of all thy knights, that I said not this
thing."

The king of the Rhine made answer,
"So be it. If thou swear the oath here,
I will acquit thee of the falsehood."
Then the Burgundians stood round in a
ring, and Siegfried swore it with his hand;
whereupon the great king said, "Verily,
I hold thee guiltless, nor lay to thy charge
the word my sister imputeth to thee."

Said Siegfried further, "If she rejoice th
to have troubled thy fair wife, I am grieved
beyond measure." The knights glanced
at each other.

"Women must be taught to bridle their
tongues. Forbid proud speech to thy
wife: I will do the like to mine. Such
bitterness and pride are a shame."

Angry words have divided many women.
Brunhild made such dole, that Gunther's
men had pity on her. And Hagen of
Trony went to her and asked what ailed
her, for he found her weeping. She told
him the tale, and he sware straightway
that Kriemhild's husband should pay for
it, or never would Hagen be glad again.

While they talked together, Ortwin
and Gernot came up, and the warriors
counselled Siegfried's death. But when
Giselher, Uta's fair child, drew nigh and
heard them, he spake out with true heart,
"Alack, good knights, what would ye do?

How hath Siegfried deserved such hate
that he should lose his life? A woman
is lightly angered."

"Shall we rear bastards?" cried Hagen.
"That were small honor to good knights.
I will avenge on him the boast that he
hath made, or I will die."

But the king himself said, "Good, and
not evil, hath he done to us. Let him live.
Wherefore should I hate the knight? He
hath ever been true to me."

But Ortwin of Metz said, "His great
strength shall not avail him. Allow,
O Lord, that I challenge him to his
death." So, without cause, they banded
against him. Yet none had urged it
further, had not Hagen tempted Gunther
every day, saying, that if Siegfried lived
not, many kings' lands were subject to
him.

Whereat the warrior began to grieve.

Meanwhile they let the matter lie, and
returned to the tourney. Ha! what stark
spears they brake before Kriemhild,
atween the minster and the palace; but
Gunther's men were wroth.

Then said the king, "Give over this
deadly hate. For our weal and honor he
was born. Thereto the man is so won-
derly stark and grim, that, if he were
ware of this, none durst stand against
him."

"Not so," said Hagen. "Assure thee
on that score. For I will contrive secretly
that he pay for Brunhild's weeping.
Hagen is his foe evermore."

But said Gunther, "How meanest
thou?"

And Hagen answered, "On this wise.
Men that none here knoweth shall ride as
envoys into this land and declare war.
Whereupon thou wilt say before thy guests
that thou must to battle with thy liege-
men. When thou hast done this, he will
promise to help thee. Then he shall die,
after I have learnt a certain thing from his
wife."

Evilly the king followed Hagen, and
they plotted black treason against the
chosen knight, without any suspecting it.
So, through the quarrel of two women, died
many warriors.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

HOW SIEGFRIED WAS BETRAYED

ON THE fourth morning, thirty and two
men were seen riding to the court. They
brought word to Gunther that war was
declared against him. The women were
woeful when they heard this lie.

The envoys won leave to go in to the
king, and they said they were Ludger's
men, that Siegfried's hand had overcome
in battle and brought captive into Gun-
ther's land.

The king greeted them, and bade them
sit, but one of them said, "Let us stand,
till that we have declared the message
wherewith we are charged to thee. Know
that thou hast to thy foeman many a
mother's son. Ludger and Ludgast, whom
thou hast aforetime evilly entreated, ride
hither to make war against thee in this
land."

The king fell in a rage, as if he had known
naught thereof. Then they gave the
false messengers good lodging. How could
Siegfried or any other guess their treason,
whereby, or all was done, they themselves
perished?

The king went whispering up and down
with his friends. Hagen of Trony gave
him no peace. Many of the knights were
fain to let it drop, but Hagen would not
be turned from it.

On a day that Siegfried found them
whispering, he asked them, "Wherefore
are the king and his men so sorrowful?
If any hath done aught to their hurt, I will
stand by them to avenge it."

Gunther answered, "I grieve not with-
out cause. Ludgast and Ludger ride
hither to war against me in my land."

Then said the bold knight, "Siegfried's
arm will withstand them on such wise,
that ye shall all come off with honor. I
will do to these warriors even as I did afore-
time. Waste will be their lands and their
castles, or I be done. I pledge my head
thereto. Thou and thy men shall tarry
here at home, and I will ride forth with
my knights that I have with me. I serve
thee gladly, and will prove it. Doubt
not that thy foemen shall suffer scathe
at my hand."

"These be good words," answered the
king, as he were truly glad, and craftily
the false man bowed low.

Then said Siegfried further, "Have no
fear."

The knights of Burgundy made ready
for war, they and their squires, and dis-
sembled before Siegfried and his men.
Siegfried bade them of the Netherland
lose no time, and they sought out. their
harness.

Then spake stark Siegfried, "Tarry here
at home, Siegmund, my father. If God
prosper us, we shall return or long to the
Rhine. Meanwhile, be thou of good cheer
here by the king."

They made as if to depart, and bound on
the standard. Many of Gunther's knights
knew nothing of how the matter stood,
and a mighty host gathered round Sieg-
fried. They bound their helmets and
their coats of mail on to the horses and
stood ready. Then went Hagen of Trony
to Kriemhild, to take his leave of her, for
they would away.

"Well for me," said Kriemhild, "that
ever I won to husband a man that standeth
so true by his friends, as doth Siegfried
by my kinsmen. Right proud am I.
Bethink thee now, Hagen, dear friend,
how that in all things I am at thy service,
and have ever willed thee well. Requite
me through my husband, that I love, and
avenge not on him what I did to Brunhild.
Already it repenteth me sore. My body
hath smarted for it, that ever I troubled
her with my words. Siegfried, the good
knight, hath seen to that."

Whereto Hagen answered, "Ye will
shortly be at one again. But Kriemhild,
prithee tell me wherein I can serve thee
with Siegfried, thy husband, and I will
do it, for I love none better."

"I should fear naught for his life in
battle, but that he is foolhardy, and of too
proud a courage. Save for that, he were
safe enow."

Then said Hagen, "Lady, if thou fear-
est hurt for him in battle, tell me now by
what device I may hinder it, and I will
guard him afoot and on horse."

She answered, " Thou art my cousin, and

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

I thine. To thy faith I commend my dear
husband, that thou mayst watch and
keep him."

Then she told him what she had better
have left unsaid.

" My husband is stark and bold. When
that he slew the dragon on the mountain,
he bathed him in its blood; wherefore no
weapon can pierce him. Nevertheless,
when he rideth in battle, and spears fly
from the hands of heroes, I tremble lest I
lose him. Alack! for Siegfried's sake how
oft have I been heavy of my cheer! And
now, dear cousin, I will trust thee with the
secret, and tell thee, that thou mayst
prove thy faith, where my husband may
be wounded. For that I know thee honor-
able, I do this. When the hot blood flowed
from the wound of the dragon, and Sieg-
fried bathed therein, there fell atween
his shoulders the broad leaf of a lime tree.
There one might stab him, and thence is
my care and dole."

Then answered Hagen of Trony, " Sew,
with thine own hand, a small sign upon his
outer garment, that I may know where to
defend him when we stand in battle."

She did it to profit the knight, and
worked his doom thereby. She said,
"I will sew secretly, with fine silk, a little
cross upon his garment, and there, O
knight, shalt thou guard to me my hus-
band when ye ride in the thick of the
strife, and he withstandeth his foemen in
the fierce onset."

"That will I do, dear lady," answered
Hagen.

Kriemhild thought to serve Siegfried;
so was the hero betrayed.

Then Hagen took his leave and went
forth glad; and his king bade him say
what he had learned.

"If thou wouldst turn from the journey,
let us go hunting instead ; for I have learned
the secret, and have him in my hand.
Wilt thou contrive this?"

"That will I," said the king.

And the king's men rejoiced. Never
more, I ween, will knight do so foully as
did Hagen, when he brake his faith with
the queen.

The next morning Siegfried, with his

thousand knights, rode merrily forth; for
he thought to avenge his friends. And
Hagen rode nigh him, and spied at his
vesture. When he saw the mark, he sent
forward two of his men secretly, to ride
back to them with another message:
that Ludger bade tell the king his land
might remain at peace.

Loth was Siegfried to turn his rein or
he had done battle for his friends. Gun-
ther's vassals scarce held him back. Then
he rode to the king, that thanked him.

"Now, God reward thee, Siegfried, my
kinsman, that thou didst grant my prayer
so readily. Even so will I do by thee,
and that justly. I hold thee trustiest of
all my friends. Seeing we be quit of this
war, let us ride a hunting to the Odenwald
after the bear and the boar, as I have
often done."

Hagen, the false man, had counselled this.

"Let it be told to my guests straightway
that I will ride early. Whoso would hunt
with me, let him be ready betimes. But
if any would tarry behind for pastime
with the women, he shall do it, and please
me thereby."

Siegfried answered on courtly wise, "I
will hunt with thee gladly, and will ride to
the forest, if thou lend me a huntsman
and some brachs."

" Will one suffice? " asked Gunther. " I
will lend thee four that know the forest
well, and the tracks of the game, that
thou come not home empty-handed."

Then Siegfried rode to his wife.

Meanwhile Hagen had told the king
how he would trap the hero. Let all men
evermore avoid such foul treason. When
the false men had contrived his death,
they told all the others. Giselher and
Gernot went not hunting with the rest.
I know not for what grudge they warned
him not. But they paid dear for it.

HOW SIEGFRIED WAS SLAIN

GUNTHER and Hagen, the fierce warriors,
went hunting with false intent in the for-
est, to chase the boar, the bear, and the
wild bull, with their sharp spears. Wha*
fitter sport for brave men?

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Siegfried rode with them in kingly pomp.
They took with them good store of meats.
By a cool stream he lost his life, as Brun-
hild, King Gunther's wife, had devised it.

But or he set out, and when the hunting-
gear was laid ready on the sumpters that
they were to take across the Rhine, he
went to Kriemhild, that was right doleful
of her cheer. He kissed his lady on the
mouth. " God grant I may see thee safe
and well again, and thou me. Bide here
merry among thy kinsfolk, for I must
forth."

Then she thought on the secret she had
betrayed to Hagen, but durst not tell him.
The queen wept sore that ever she was
born, and made measureless dole.

She said, " Go not hunting. Last night
I dreamed an evil dream: how that two
wild boars chased thee over the heath;
and the flowers were red with blood.
Have pity on my tears, for I fear some
treachery. There be haply some offended,
that pursue us with deadly hate. Go not,
dear lord; in good faith I counsel it."

But he answered, "Dear love, I go but
for a few days. I know not any that
beareth me hate. Thy kinsmen will me
well, nor have I deserved otherwise at
their hand."

"Nay, Siegfried, I fear some mischance.
Last night I dreamed an evil dream: how
that two mountains fell on thee, and I
saw thee no more. If thou goest, thou
wilt grieve me bitterly."

But he caught his dear one in his arms
and kissed her close; then he took leave
of her and rode off.

She never saw him alive again.

They rode thence into a deep forest
to seek sport. The king had many bold
knights with him, and rich meats, that
they had need of for the journey. Sump-
ters passed laden before them over the
Rhine, carrying bread and wine, and
flesh and fish, and meats of all sorts, as
was fitting for a rich king.

The bold huntsmen encamped before the
green wood where they were to hunt, on
a broad meadow. Siegfried also was there,
which was told to the king. And they
set a watch round the camp.

Then said stark Siegfried, "Who will
into the forest and lead us to the game?"

"If we part or we begin the chase in
the wood," said Hagen, "we shall know
which is the best sportsman. Let us
divide the huntsmen and the hounds; then
let each ride alone as him listeth, and he
who hunteth the best shall be praised."
So they started without more ado.

But Siegfried said, "One hound that
hath been well trained for the chase will
suffice for me. There will be sport
enow!"

Then an old huntsman took a lime-
hound, and brought the company where
there was game in plenty. They hunted
down all the beasts they started, as good
sportsmen should.

Whatsoever the limehound started, the
hero of the Netherland slew with his hand.
His horse ran so swift that naught escaped
him; he won greater praise than any in
the chase. In all things he was right
manly. The first that he smote to the
death was a half-bred boar. Soon after,
he encountered a grim lion, that the lime-
hound started. This he shot with his
bow and a sharp arrow; the lion made
only three springs or he fell. Loud was
the praise of his comrades. Then he
killed, one after the other, a buffalo, an
elk, four stark ure-oxen, and a grim sheik.
His horse carried him so swiftly that noth-
ing outran him. Deer and hind escaped
him hot.

The limehound tracked a wild boar next
that began to flee. But Siegfried rode
up and barred the path, whereat the mon-
ster ran at the knight. He slew him with
his sword. Not so lightly had another
done it.

They leashed the limehound then, and
told the Burgundians how Siegfried had
prospered. Whereupon his huntsmen said,
"Prithee, leave something alive; thou
emptiest to us both mountain and forest."
And Siegfried laughed.

The noise of the chase was all round
them; hill and wood rang with shouting
arid the baying of dogs, for the huntsmen
had loosed twenty and four hounds.
Many a beast perished that day, for each

8 4

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

thought to win the prize of the chase.
But when stark Siegfried rode to the
tryst-fire, they saw that could not be.

The hunt was almost over. The sports-
men brought skins and game enow with
them to the camp. No lack of meat for
cooking was there, I ween.

Then the king bade tell the knights
that he would dine. And they blew a
blast on a horn, that told the king was
at the tryst-fire.

Said one of Siegfried's huntsmen, "I
heard the blast of a horn bidding us back
to the camp. I will answer it." And
they kept blowing to assemble the com-
pany.

Siegfried bade quit the wood. His
horse bare him smoothly, and the others
pricked fast behind. The noise roused
a grim bear, whereat the knight cried to
them that came after him, "Now for
sport! Slip the dog, for I see a bear that
shall with us to the tryst-fire. He cannot
escape us, if he ran ever so fast."

They slipped the limehound; off rushed
the bear. Siegfried thought to run him
down, but he came to a ravine, and could
not get to him; then the bear deemed him
safe. But the proud knight sprang from
his horse, and pursued him. The beast
had no shelter. It could not escape from
him, and was caught by his hand, and,
or it could wound him, he had bound it,
that it could neither scratch nor bite.
Then he tied it to his saddle, and, when
he had mounted up himself, he brought it
to the tryst-fire for pastime.

How right proudly he rode to the camp-
ing ground! His boar-spear was mickle,
stark and broad. His sword hung down
to the spur, and his hunting-horn was
of ruddy gold. Of better hunting-gear I
never heard tell. His coat was black
samite, and 'his hat was goodly sable.
His quiver was richly laced, and covered
with a panther's hide for the sake of the
sweet smell. He bare, also, a bow that
none could draw but himself, unless with a
windlass. His cloak was a lynx-skin, pied
from head to foot, and embroidered over
with gold on both sides. Also Balmung
had he done on, whereof the edges were

so sharp that it clave every helmet it
touched. I ween the huntsman was merry
of his cheer. Yet, to tell you the whole,
I must say how his rich quiver was filled
with good arrows, gilt on the shaft, and
broad a hand's breadth or more. Swift
and sure was the death of him that he
smote therewith.

So the knight rode proudly from the
torest, and Gunther's men saw him coming,
and ran and held his horse.

When he had alighted, he loosed the
band from the paws and from the mouth
of the bear that he had bound to his
saddle.

So soon as they saw the bear, the dogs
began to bark. The animal tried to win
back to the wood, and all the folk fell in
great fear. Affrighted by the noise, it
ran through the kitchen. Nimbly started
the scullions from their place by the fire.
Pots were upset and the brands strewed
over all. Alack! the good meats that
tumbled into the ashes !

Then up sprang the princes and their
men. The bear began to growl, and the
king gave order to slip the hounds that
were on leash. I' faith, it had been a
merry day if it had ended so.

Hastily, with their bows and spears,
the warriors, swift of foot, chased the bear,
but there were so many dogs that none
durst shoot among them, and the forest
rang with the din. Then the bear fled
before the dogs, and none could keep pace
with him save Kriemhild's husband, that
ran up to him and pierced him dead with
his sword, and carried the carcase back
with him to the fire. They that saw it
said he was a mighty man.

Then they bade the sportsmen to the
table, and they sat down, a goodly com-
pany enow, on a fair meadow. Ha! what
dishes, meet for heroes, were set before
them. But the cup-bearers were tardy,
that should have brought the wine. Save
for that, knights were never better served.
If there had not been false-hearted men
among them, they had been without re-
proach. The doomed man had no sus-
picion that might have warned him, for
his own heart was pure of all deceit.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Many that his death profited not at all
had to pay for it bitterly.

Then said Sir Siegfried, "I marvel, since
they bring us so much from the kitchen,
that they bring not the wine. If good
hunters be entreated so, I will hunt no
more. Certes, I have deserved better at
your hands."

Whereto the king at the table answered
falsely, "What lacketh to-day we will
make good another time. The blame is
Hagen's, that would have us perish of
thirst."

Then said Hagen of Trony, "Dear
master, methought we were to hunt to-day
at Spessart, and I sent the wine thither.
For the present we must go thirsty; an-
other time I will take better care."

But Siegfried cried, "Small thank to
him. Seven sumpters with meat and
spiced wines should he have sent here at
the least, or, if that might not be, we
should have gone nigher to the Rhine."

Hagen of Trony answered, " I know of a
cool spring close at hand. Be not wroth
with me, but take my counsel, and go
thither." The which was done, to the
hurt of many warriors. Siegfried was
sore athirst and bade push back the table,
that he might go to the spring at the foot
of the mountain. Falsely had the knights
contrived it. The wild beasts that Sieg-
fried's hand had slain they let pile on a
waggon and take home, and all they that
saw it praised him.

Foully did Hagen break faith with Sieg-
fried. He said, when they were starting
for the broad lime tree, "I hear from all
sides that none can keep pace with Kriem-
hild's husband when he runneth. Let us
see now."

Bold Siegfried of the Netherland an-
swered, "Thou mayst easily prove it, if
thou wilt run with me to the brook for a
wager. The praise shall be to him that
winneth there first."

"Let us see then," said Hagen the
knight.

And stark Siegfried answered, "If I lose,
I will lay me at thy feet in the grass."

A glad man was King Gunther when he
heard that i

Said Siegfried further, "Nay, I will
undertake more. I will carry on me all
that I wear spear, shield, and hunting
gear." Whereupon he girded on his
sword and his quiver in haste. Then the
others did off their clothes, till they stood
in their white shirts, and they ran through
the clover like two wild panthers; but bold
Siegfried was seen there the first. Before
all men he won the prize in everything.
He loosed his sword straightway, and laid
down his quiver. His good spear he
leaned against the lime tree; then the
noble guest stood and waited, for his cour-
tesy was great. He laid down his shield
by the stream. Albeit he was sore athirst,
he drank not till that the king had finished,
who gave him evil thanks.

The stream was cool, pure, and good.
Gunther bent down to the water, and rose
again when he had drunk. Siegfried had
gladly done the like, but he suffered for his
courtesy. Hagen carried his bow and
his sword out of his reach, and sprang
back and gripped the spear. Then he
spied for the secret mark on his vesture;
and while Siegfried drank from the stream,
Hagen stabbed him where the cross was,
that his heart's blood spurted out on the
traitor's clothes. Never since hath knight
done so wickedly. He left the spear stick-'
ing deep in his heart, and fled in grimmer
haste than ever had he done from any
man on this earth afore.

When stark Siegfried felt the deep
wound, he sprang up maddened from the
water, for the long boar spear stuck out
from his heart. He thought to find bow
or sword; if he had, Hagen had got his due.
But the sore-wounded man saw no sword,
and had nothing save his shield. He
picked it up from the water's edge and
ran at Hagen. King Gunther's man could
not escape him. For all that he was
wounded to the death, he smote so mightily
that the shield well-nigh brake, and the
precious stones flew out. The noble
guest had fain taken vengeance.

Hagen fell beneath his stroke. The
meadow rang loud with the noise of the
blow. If he had had his sword to hand,
Hagen had been a dead man. But the,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

anguish of his wound constrained him.
His color was wan; he could not stand
upright; and the strength of his body
failed him, for he bare death's mark on
his white cheek. Fair women enow made
dole for him.

Then Kriemhild's husband fell among
the flowers. The blood flowed fast from
his wound, and in his great anguish he
began to upbraid them that had falsely
contrived his death. "False cowards!"
cried the dying knight. "What availeth
all my service to you, since ye have slain
me? I was true to you, and pay the price
for it. Ye have.' done ill by your friends.
Cursed by this deed are your sons yet un-
born. Ye have avenged your spite on
my body all too bitterly. For your crime
ye shall be shunned by good knights."

All the warriors ran where he lay
stabbed. To many among them it was a
woeful day. They that were true mourned
for him, the which the hero had well de-
served of all men.

The King of Burgundy, also, wept for
his death, but the dying man said, "He
needeth not to weep for the evil, by whom
the evil cometh. Better had he left it
undone, for mickle is his blame."

Then said grim Hagen, "I know not
what ye rue. All is ended for us care
and trouble. Few are they now that will
withstand us. Glad am I that, through
me, his might is fallen."

"Lightly mayst thou boast now," said
Siegfried; "if I had known thy murderous
hate, it had been an easy thing to guard
my body from thee. My bitterest dole
is for Kriemhild, my wife. God pity me
that ever I had a son. For all men will
reproach him that he hath murderers to
his kinsmen. I would grieve for that, had
I the time."

He said to the king, "Never in this
world was so foul a murder as thou hast
done on me. In thy sore need I saved
thy life and thine honor. Dear have I
paid for that I did well by thee." With a
groan the wounded man said further,
"Yet if thou canst show truth to any on
this earth, O King, show it to my dear
wife, that I commend to thee. Let it

advantage her to be thy sister. By all
princely honor stand by her. Long must
my father and my knights wait for my
coming. Never hath woman won such
woe through a dear one."

He writhed in his bitter anguish, and
spake painfully, "Ye shall rue this foul
deed in the days to come. Know this of a
truth, that in slaying me ye have slain
yourselves."

The flowers were all wet with blood.
He strove with death, but not for long, for
the weapon of death cut too deep. And
the bold knight and good spake no more.

When the warriors saw that the hero
was dead, they laid him on a shield of
ruddy gold, and took counsel how they
should conceal that Hagen had done it.
Many of them said, "Evil hath befalleu
us. Ye shall all hide it, and hold to one
tale when Kriemhild's husband was rid-
ing alone in the forest, robbers slew him."

But Hagen of Trony said, "I will take
him back to Burgundy. If she that hath
troubled Brunhild know it, I care not. It
concerneth me little if she weep."

Of that very brook where Siegfried was
slain ye shall hear the truth from me. In
the Odenwald is a village that hight Oden-
heim, and there the stream runneth still;
beyond doubt it is the same.

HOW KRIEMHILD RECEIVED HAGEN

WHEN the Burgundians came into the
land, old Hildebrand of Bern heard there-
of, and told his master, that was grieved
at the news. He bade him give hearty
welcome to the valiant knights.

Bold Wolf hart called for the horses, and
many stark warriors rode with Dietrich to
greet them on the plain, where they had
pitched their goodly tents.

When Hagen of Trony saw them from
afar, he spake courteously to his masters,
"Arise, ye doughty heroes, and go to meet
them that come to welcome you. A com-
pany of warriors that I know well draw
hither the heroes of the Amelung land.
They are men of high courage. Scorn
not their service."

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Then, as was seemly, Dietrich, with
many knights and squires, sprang to the
ground. They hasted to the guests, and
welcomed the heroes of Burgundy lovingly.

When Dietrich saw them, he was both
glad and sorry; he knew what was toward,
and grieved that they were come. He
deemed that Rudeger was privy to it, and
had told them. " Ye be welcome, Gunther
and Giselher, Gernot and Hagen; Folker,
likewise, and Dankwart the swift. Know
ye not that Kriemhild still mourneth
bitterly for the hero of the Nibelungs?"

"She will weep awhile," answered
Hagen. "This many a year he lieth slain.
She did well to comfort her with the king
of the Huns. Siegfried will not come
again. He is long buried."

"Enough of Siegfried's wounds. While
Kriemhild, my mistress, liveth, mischief
may well betide. Wherefore, hope of the
Nibelungs, beware!" So spake Dietrich
of Bern.

"Wherefore should I beware?" said the
king. "Etzel sent us envoys (what more
could I ask?) bidding us hither to this
land. My sister Kriemhild, also, sent us
many greetings."

But Hagen said, "Bid Sir Dietrich and
his good knights tell us further of this
matter, that they may show us the mind
of Kriemhild."

Then the three kings went apart: Gun-
ther and Gernot and Dietrich.

"Now tell us, noble knight of Bern,
what thou knowest of the queen's mind."

The prince of Bern answered, "What
can I tell you, save that every morning I
have heard Etzel's wife weeping and wail-
ing in bitter woe to the great God of
Heaven, because of stark Siegfried's
death?"

Said bold Folker, the fiddler, "There is
no help for it. Let us ride to the court
and see what befalleth us among the
Huns."

The bold Burgundians rode to the court
right proudly, after the custom of their
land. Many bold Huns marvelled much
what manner of man Hagen of Trony
might be. The folk knew well, from hear-
say, that he had slain Siegfried of the

Netherland, the starkest of all knights,
Kriemhild's husband. Wherefore many
questions were asked concerning him.
The hero was of great stature; that is
certain. His shoulders were broad, his
hair was grisled; his legs were long, and
terrible was his face. He walked with a
proud gait.

Then lodging was made ready for the
Burgundians. Gunther's attendants lay
separate from the others. The queen,
that greatly hated Gunther, had so ordered
it. By this device his yeomen were slain
soon after.

Dankwart, Hagen's brother, was mar-
shal. The king commended his men earn-
estly to his care, that he might give them
meat and drink enow, the which the bold
knight did faithfully and with good will.

Kriemhild went forth with her atten-
dants and welcomed the Nibelungs with
false heart. She kissed Giselher and took
him by the hand. When Hagen of Trony
saw that, he bound his helmet on tighter.

"After such greeting," he said, "good
knights may well take thought. The
kings and their men are not all alike wel-
come. No good cometh of our journey to
this hightide."

She answered, "Let him that is glad to
see thee welcome thee. I will not greet
thee as a friend. What bringest thou for
me from Worms, beyond the Rhine, that
thou shouldst be so greatly welcome? "

"This is news," said Hagen, "that
knights should bring thee gifts. Had I
thought of it, I had easily brought thee
something. I am rich enow."

"Tell me what thou hast done with the
Nibelung hoard. That, at the least, was
mine own. Ye should have brought it
with you into Etzel's land."

"By my troth, lady, I have not touched
the Nibelung hoard this many a year.
My masters bade me sink it in the Rhine.
There it must bide till the day of doom."

Then said the queen, "I thought so.
Little hast thou brought thereof, albeit
it was mine own, and held by me afore-
time. Many a sad day I have lived for
lack of it and its lord."

"I bring thee the devil!" cried Hagen.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

" My shield and my harness were enow to
carry, and my bright helmet, and the
sword in my hand. I have brought thee
naught further."

"I speak not of my treasure, because I
desire the gold. I have so much to give
that I need not thy offerings. A murder
and a double theft it is these that I,
unhappiest of women, would have thee
make good to me."

Then said the queen to all the knights,
"None shall bear weapons in this hall.
Deliver them to me, ye knights, that they
be taken in charge."

"Not so, by my troth," said Hagen;
" I crave not the honor, great daughter of
kings, to have thee bear my shield and
other weapons to safe keeping. Thou
art a queen here. My father taught me
to guard them myself."

" Woe is me ! " cried Kriemhild. "Why
will not Hagen and my brother give up
their shields? They are warned. If I
knew him that did it, he should die."

Sir Dietrich answered wrathfully then,
"I am he that warned the noble kings,
and bold Hagen, the man of Burgundy.
Do thy worst, thou devil's wife, I care
not!"

Kriemhild was greatly ashamed, for she
stood in bitter fear of Dietrich. She went
from him without a word, but with swift
and wrathful glances at her foes.

Then two knights clasped hands the
one was Dietrich, the other Hagen. Diet-
rich, the valiant warrior, said courteously,
"I grieve to see thee here, since the queen
hath spoken thus."

Hagen of Trony answered, "It will all
come right."

So the bold men spake together, and
King Etzel saw them, and asked, " I would
know who yonder knight is that Dietrich
welcometh so lovingly. He beareth him
proudly. Howso is his father hight, he is,
certes, a goodly warrior."

One of Kriemhild's men answered the
king, "He was born at Trony. The name
of his father was Aldrian. Albeit now he
goeth gently, he is a grim man. I will
prove to thee yet that I lie not."

"How shall I find him so grim?" He

knew nothing, as yet, of all that the queea
contrived against her kinsmen: by reason
whereof not one of them escaped alive from
the Huns.

"I know Hagen well. He was my vas-
sal. Praise and mickle honor he won here
by me. I made him a knight, and gave
him my gold. For that he proved him
faithful, I was ever kind to him. Where-
fore I may well know all about him. I
brought two noble children captive to this
land him and Walter of Spain. Here
they grew to manhood. Hagen I sent
home again. Walter fled with Hilde-
gund."

So he mused on the good old days, and
what had happed long ago, for he had
seen Hagen, that did him stark service in
his youth. Yet now that he was old, he
lost by him many a dear friend.

HOW THE QUEEN BAD THEM BURN DOWH
THE HALL

"Now do off your helmets," said Hagen
the knight. "I and my comrade will
keep watch. And if Etzel's men try it
again, I will warn my masters straight-
way."

Then many a good warrior unlaced his
helmet. They sat down on the bodies
that had fallen in the blood by their hands.
With bitter hate the guests were spied at
by the Huns.

Before nightfall the king and queen had
prevailed on the men of Hungary to dare
the combat anew. Twenty thousand or
more stood before them ready for battle.
These hasted to fall on the strangers.

Dankwart, Hagen's brother, sprang
from his masters to the foemen at the
door. They thought he was slain, but
he came forth alive.

The strife endured till the night. The
guests, as beseemed good warriors, had
defended them against Etzel's men all
through the long summer day. Ha!
what doughty heroes lay dead before them.
It was on a midsummer that the great
slaughter fell, when Kriemhild avenged''
her heart's dole on her nearest kinsmen.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

and on many another man, and all King
Etzel's joy was ended. Yet she purposed
not at the first to bring it to such a bloody
encounter, but only to kill Hagen ; but the
devil contrived it so that they must all
perish.

The day was done; they were in sore
straits. They deemed a quick death had
been better than long anguish. The
proud knights would fain have had a
truce. They asked that the king might
be brought to them.

The heroes, red with blood, and black-
ened with the soil of their harness, stepped
out of the hall with the three kings. They
knew not whom to bewail their bitter
woe to.

Both Etzel and Kriemhild came. The
land all round was theirs, and many had
joined their host. Etzel said to the guests,
" What would ye with me? Haply ye seek
for peace. That can hardly be, after such
wrong as ye have done me and mine. Ye
shall pay for it while I have life. Because
of my child that ye slew, and my many
men, nor peace nor truce shall ye have."

Gunther answered, "A great wrong
constrained us thereto. All my followers
perished in their lodging by the hands of
thy knights. What had I done to deserve
that? I came to see thee in good faith,
for I deemed thou wert my friend."

Then said Giselher, the youth, of Bur-
gundy, "Ye knights of King Etzel that
yet live, what have ye against me? How
had I wronged you? I that rode hither
with loving heart?"

They answered, "Thy love hath filled
all the castles of this country with mourn-
ing. We had gladly been spared thy jour-
ney from Worms beyond the Rhine.
Thou hast orphaned the land thou and
thy brothers."

Then cried Gunther in wrath, "If ye
would lay from you this stark hate against
us homeless ones, it were well for both
sides, for we are guiltless before Etzel."

But the host answered the guests,
"My scathe is greater than thine; because
of the mickle toil of the strife, and its
shame, not one of you shall come forth
alive."

Then said stark Gernot to the king,
"Herein, at the least, incline thy heart to
do mercifully with us. Stand back from
the house, that we win out to you. We
know that our life is forfeit; let what must
come, come quickly. Thou hast many
knights un wounded; let them fall on us,
and give us battle-weary ones rest. How
long wouldst thou have us strive?"

King Etzel's knights would have let
them forth, but when Kriemhild heard it,
she was wroth, and even this boon was
denied to the strangers.

"Nay now, ye Huns, I entreat you, hi
good faith, that ye let not these lusters
after blood come out from the hall, lest
thy kinsmen all perish miserably. If
none of them were left alive save Uta's
children, my noble brothers, and won they
to the air to cool their harness, ye were
lost. Bolder knights were never born
into the world."

Then said young Giselher, "Fairest
sister mine, right evil I deem it that thou
badest me across the Rhine to this bitter
woe. How have I deserved death from
the Huns? I was ever true to thee, nor
did thee any hurt. I rode hither, dearest
sister, for that I trusted to thy love.
Needs must thou show mercy."

"I will show no mercy, for I got none.
Bitter wrong did Hagen of Trony to me
in my home yonder, and here he hath
slam my child. They that came with
him must pay for it. Yet, if ye will de-
liver Hagen captive, I will grant your
prayer, and let you live; for ye are my
brothers, and the children of one mother.
I will prevail upon my knights here to
grant a truce."

"God in heaven forbid!" cried Gernot.
"Though we were a thousand, liefer would
we all die by thy kinsmen, than give one
single man for our ransom. That we will
never do."

"We must perish then," said Giselher;
"but we will fall as good knights. We
are still here; would any fight with us?
I will never do falsely by my friend."

Cried bold Dankwart too (he had done
ill to hold his peace), "My brother Hagen
standeth not alone. They that have

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

denied us quarter may rue it yet. By
my troth, ye will find it to your cost."

Then said the queen, "Ye heroes un-
dismayed, go forward to the steps and
avenge our wrong. I will thank you for-
ever, and with cause. I will requite
Hagen's insolence to the full. Let not
one of them forth at any point, and I will
kindle the hall at its four sides. So will
my heart's dole be avenged."

Etzel's knights were not loth. With
darts and with blows they drave back into
the house them that stood without. Loud
was the din; but the princes and their
men were not parted, nor failed they in
faith to one another.

Etzel's wife bade the hall be kindled,
and they tormented the bodies of the
heroes with fire. The wind blew, and the
house was soon all aflame. Folk never
suffered worse, I ween. There were many
that cried, "Woe is me for this pain!
Liefer had we died in battle. God pity
us, for we are all lost. The queen taketh
bitter vengeance."

One among them wailed, "We perish
by the smoke and the fire. Grim is ouf
torment. The stark heat maketh me so
athirst, that I die."

Said Hagen of Trony, " Ye noble knights
and good, let any that are athirst drink
the blood. In this heat it is better than
wine, and there is naught sweeter here."

Then went one where he found a dead
body. He knelt by the wounds, and did
off his helmet, and began to drink the
streaming blood. Albeit he was little
used thereto, he deemed it right good.
"God quit thee, Sir Hagen!" said the
weary man, "I have learned a good drink.
Never did I taste better wine. If I live,
I will thank thee."

When the others heard his praise, many
more of them drank the blood, and their
bodies were strengthened, for the which
many a noble woman paid through her
dear ones.

The fire-flakes fell down on them in the
hall, but they warded them off with their
shields. Both the smoke and the fire
tormented them. Never before suffered
heroes such sore pain.

Then said Hagen of Trony, "Stand fast
by the wall. Let not the brands fall on
your helmets. Trample them with your
feet deeper in the blood. A woeful high-
tide is the queen's."

The night ended at last. The bold
gleeman, and Hagen, his comrade, stood
before the house and leaned upon their
shields. They waited for further hurt
from Etzel's knights. It advantaged the
strangers much that the roof was vaulted.
By reason thereof more were left alive.
Albeit they at the windows suffered scathe,
they bare them valiantly, as their bold
hearts bade them.

Then said the fiddler, " Go we now into
the hall, that the Huns deem we be all
dead from this torment, albeit some among
them shall yet feel our might."

Giselher, the youth, of Burgundy, said,
"It is daybreak, I ween. A cool wind
bloweth. God grant we may see happier
days. My sister Kriemhild hath bidden
us to a doleful hightide."

One of them spake, "I see the dawn.
Since we can do no better, arm you, ye
knights, for battle, that, come we never
hence, we may die with honor."

Etzel deemed the guests were all dead
of their travail and the stress of the fire.
But six hundred bold men yet lived.
Never king had better knights. They
that kept ward over the strangers had
seen that some were left, albeit the princes
and their men had suffered loss and dole.
They saw many that walked up and down
in the house.

They told Kriemhild that many were
left alive, but the queen answered, "It
cannot be. None could live in that fire.
I trow they all lie dead."

The kings and their men had still gladly
asked for mercy, had there been any to
show it. But there was none in the whole
country of th Huns. Wherefore they
avenged their death with willing hand.

They were greeted early in the morning
with a fierce onslaught, and came in great
scathe. Stark spears were hurled at them.
Well the knights within stood on their
defence.

Etzel's men were the bolder, that they

EPIC AND ROMANCE

might win Kriemhild's fee. Thereto,
they obeyed the king gladly; but soon they
looked on death.

One might tell marvels of her gifts and
promises. She bade them bear forth red
gold upon shields, and gave thereof to all
that desired it, or would take it. So
great treasure was never given against
foemen.

The host of warriors came armed to
the hall. The fiddler said, "We are here.
I never was gladder to see any knights
than those that have taken the king's gold
to our hurt."

Not a few of them cried out, "Come
nigher, ye heroes! Do your worst, and
make an end quickly, for here are none
but must die."

Soon their bucklers were filled full of
darts. What shall I say more? Twelve
hundred warriors strove once and again
to win entrance. The guests cooled their
hardihood with wounds. None could
part the strife. The blood flowed from
death-deep wounds. Many were slain.
Each bewailed some friend. All Etzel's
worthy knights perished. Their kinsmen
sorrowed bitterly.

HOW GUNTHER, HAGEN, AND KRIEMHILD
WERE SLAIN

THEREUPON Sir Dietrich went and got
his harness himself. Old Hildebrand
helped to arm him. The strong man wept
so loud that the house rang with his voice.
But soon he was of stout heart again, as
beseemed a hero. He did on his armor in
wrath. He took a fine-tempered shield in
his hand, and they hasted to the place
he and Master Hildebrand.

Then said Hagen of Trony, "I see Sir
Dietrich yonder. He cometh to avenge
his great loss. This day will show which
of us twain is the better man. Howso
stark of body and grim Sir Dietrich may
deem him, I doubt not but I shall stand
against him, if he seek vengeance." So
spake Hagen.

Dietrich, that was with Hildebrand,
heard him. He came where both the

knights stood outside the house, leaning
against the wall. Good Dietrich laid down
his shield, and, moved with deep woe, he
said, " Why hast thou so entreated a home-
less knight? What had I done to thee?
Thou hast ended all my joy. Thou
deemedst it too little to have slain Rudeger
to our scathe; now thou hast robbed me
of all my men. I had never done the like
to you, O knights. Think on yourselves,
and your loss the death of your friends,
and your travail. By reason thereof are
ye not heavy of your cheer? Alack!
how bitter to me is Rudeger's death!
There was never such woe in this world.
Ye have done evilly by me and by your-
selves. All the joy I had ye have slain.
How shall I ever mourn enough for all my
kinsmen?"

"We are not alone to blame," answered
Hagen. ' ' Your knights came hither armed
and ready, with a great host. Methinketh
the tale hath not been told thee aright."

"What shall I believe then? Hilde-
brand said that when my knights of
Amelung begged you to give them Rude-
ger's body, ye answered mockingly as
they stood below."

Then said the prince of Rhineland,
"They told me they were come to bear
Rudeger hence. I denied them, not to
anger thy men, but to grieve Etzel withal.
Whereat Wolf hart flew in a passion."

Said the prince of Bern, "There is noth-
ing for it. Of thy knightliness, atone to
me for the wrong thou hast done me, and
I will avenge it no further. Yield thee
captive, thee and thy man, and I will de-
fend thee to the uttermost, against the
wrath of the Huns. Thou wilt find me
faithful and true."

"God in heaven forbid," cried Hagen,
"that two knights, armed as we are for
battle, should yield them to thee ! I would
hold it a great shame, and ill dene."

"Deny me not," said Dietrich. "Ye
have made me heavy-hearted enow, O
Gunther and Hagen; and it is no more
than just that ye make it good. I swear
to you, and give you my hand thereon,
that I will ride back with you to your
own country. I will bring you safely

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

thither, or die with you, and forget my
great wrong for your sakes."

"Ask us no more," said Hagen. "It
were a shameful tale to tell of us, that
two such bold men yielded them captive.
I see none save Hildebrand by thy side."

Hildebrand answered, "Ye would do
well to take my master's terms; the hour
will come, or long, when ye would gladly
take them, but may not have them."

"Certes, I had liefer do it," said Hagen,
"than flee mine adversary like a coward,
as thou didst, Master Hildebrand. By
my troth, I deemed thou hadst withstood
a foeman better."

Cried Hildebrand, "Thou needest not
to twit me. Who was it that, by the wask-
stone, sat upon his shield when Walter
of Spain slew so many of his kinsmen?
Thou, thyself, art not void of blame."

Said Sir Dietrich then, "It beseemeth
not warriors to fight with words like old
women. I forbid thee, Master Hilde-
brand, to say more. Homeless knight
that I am, I have grief enow. Tell me
now, Sir Hagen, what ye good knights
said when ye saw me coming armed. Was
it not that thou alone wouldst defy
me?"

"Thou hast guessed rightly," answered
Hagen. "I am ready to prove it with
swift blows, if my Nibelung sword break
not. I am wroth that ye would have had
us yield us captive."

When Dietrich heard grim Hagen's
mind, he caught up his shield, and sprang
up the steps. The Nibelung sword rang
loud on his mail. Sir Dietrich knew well
that the bold man was fierce. The prince
of Bern warded off the strokes. He needed
not to learn that Hagen was a valiant
knight. Thereto, he feared stark Bal-
mung. But ever and anon he struck out
warily, till he had overcome Hagen in the
strife. He gave him a wound that was
deep and wide. Then thought Sir Diet-
rich, "Thy long travail hath made thee
weak. I had little honor hi thy death.
Liefer will I take thee captive." Not
lightly did he prevail. He threw down
his shield. He was stark and bold, and
he caught Hagen of Trony in his arms.

So the valiant man was vanquished. King
Gunther grieved sore.

Dietrich bound Hagen, and led him to
the queen, and delivered into her hand
the boldest knight that ever bare a sword.
After her bitter dole, she was glad enow.
She bowed before the knight for joy.
"Blest be thou in soul and body. Thou
hast made good to me all my woe. I
will thank thee till my dying day."

Then said Dietrich, "Let him live,
noble queen. His service may yet atone
to thee for what he hath done to thy hurt.
Take not vengeance on him for that he is
bound."

She bade them lead Hagen to a dungeon.
There he lay locked up, and none saw him.

Then King Gunther called aloud,
"Where is the hero of Bern? He hath
done me a grievous wrong."

Sir Dietrich went to meet him. Gun-
ther was a man of might. He tarried not,
but ran toward him from the hall. Loud
was the din of their swords.

Howso famed Dietrich was from afore-
time, Gunther was so wroth and so fell,
and so bitterly his foeman, by reason of
the wrong he had endured, that it was a
marvel Sir Dietrich came off alive. They
were stark and mighty men both. Palace
and towers echoed with their blows, as
their swift swords hewed their good hel-
mets. A high-hearted king was Gunther. '

But the knight of Bern overcame him, as
he had done Hagen . His blood gushed from
his harness by reason of the good sword
that Dietrich carried. Yet Gunther had
defended him well, for all he was so weary.

The knight was bound by Dietrich's
hand, albeit a king should never wear
such bonds. Dietrich deemed, if he left
Gunther and his man free, they would
kill all they met.

He took him by the hand, and led him
before Kriemhild. Her sorrow was lighter
when she saw him. She said, "Thou art
welcome, King Gunther."

He answered, "I would thank thee,

dear sister, if thy greeting were in love.

But I know thy fierce mind, and that thou

mockest me and Hagen."

Then said the prince of Bern, "Most

EPIC AND ROMANCE

high queen, there were never nobler cap-
tives than these I have delivered here into
thy hands. Let the homeless knights live
for my sake."

She promised him she would do it gladly,
and good Dietrich went forth weeping.
Yet soon Etzel's wife took grim vengeance,
by reason whereof both the valiant men
perished. She kept them in dungeons,
apart, that neither saw the other again till
she bore her brother's head to Hagen.
Certes, Kriemhild's vengeance was bitter.

The queen went to Hagen, and spake
angrily to the knight. "Give me back
what thou hast taken from me, and ye
may both win back alive to Burgundy."

But grim Hagen answered, "Thy words
are wasted, noble queen. I have sworn
to show the hoard to none. While one
of my masters liveth, none other shall
have it."

"I will end the matter," said the queen.
Then she bade them slay her brother, and
they smote off his head. She carried it
by the hair to the knight of Trony. He
was grieved enow.

When the sorrowful man saw his mas-
ter's head, he cried to Kriemhild, "Thou
hast wrought all thy will. It hath fallen
out as I deemed it must. The noble King
of Burgundy is dead, and Giselher the
youth, and eke Gernot. None knoweth of
the treasure now save God and me. Thou
shalt never see it, devil that thou art."

She said, " I come off ill in the reckoning.
I will keep Siegfried's sword at the least.
My true love wore it when I saw him last.
My bitterest heart's dole was for him."

She drew it from the sheath. He could
not hinder it. She purposed to slay the
knight. She lifted it high with both
hands, and smote off his head.

King Etzel saw it, and sorrowed.
"Alack!" cried the king. "The best
warrior that ever rode to battle, or
bore a shield, hath fallen by the hand of a
woman ! Albeit I was his foeman, I must
grieve."

Then said Master Hildebrand, "His
death shall not profit her. I care not what
come of it. Though I came in scathe by
him myself, I will avenge the death of the
bold knight of Trony."

Hildebrand sprang fiercely at Kriemhild,
and slew her with his sword. She suffered
sore by his anger. Her loud cry helped
her not.

Dead bodies lay stretched over all.
The queen was hewn in pieces. Etzel and
Dietrich began to weep. They wailed
piteously for kinsmen and vassals. Mickle
valor lay there slain. The folk were dole-
ful and dreary.

The end of the king's hightide was woe,
even as, at the last, all joy turneth to
sorrow.

I know not what fell after. Christian
and heathen, wife, man, and maid, were
seen weeping and mourning for their
friends.

I WILL TELL YOU NO MORE. LET THE DEAD

LIE. HOWEVER IT FARED AFTER WITH

THE HUNS, MY TALE IS ENDED.

THIS IS THE FALL OF THE

NIBELUNGS.

SIR THOMAS MALORY (c. 1400-1471)

King Arthur, who was originally a semi-mythical hero of Celtic story, became during the Middle
Ages the personification of the virtues embodied in the institution of Chivalry, and his knights forming
the famous Round Table engaged in the romantic adventures which satisfied the desire of the people
of the period for the strange and the new. Toward the end of the fifteenth century Sir Thomas Malory
collected these various stories, reduced them to something like connected form, and published them in
vigorous prose as one of the books to be issued from Caxton's printing press. The adventures
of the Knights Sir Gawain, Sir Tristan, Sir Percival, Sir Galahad, and the winning of the Holy Grail-
are recounted in the several books, their prowess and the whole romantic background of chivalry are
described, and the gradual decay of this noble spirit through the presence of evil in the heart of the court
is related with the concluding book, here given, which tells of the destruction of this ideal life and the
passing of the great king.

Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" draw upon Malory for materials for an elaborate poetic treatment
Of the same theme.

'94

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

THE DEATH OF ARTHUR
BOOK XXI OF THE MORTE D'ARTHTJR

As SIR Mordredwas ruler of all England,
he caused letters to be made, as though
they came from beyond the sea, and the
letters specified that King Arthur was
slain in battle with Sir Launcelot; where-
fore Sir Mordred made a parliament, and
called the lords together, and there he
made them to chuse him King, and so he
was crowned at Canterbury, and held a
feast there fifteen days. And afterward
he drew him to Winchester, and there he
took Queen Guenever, and said plainly
that he would wed her, which was his
uncle's wife, and his father's wife: and so
he made ready for the feast, and a day
prefixed that they should be wedded.
Wherefore Queen Guenever was passing
heavy, but she durst not discover her
heart; but spake fair, and agreed to Sir
Mordred's will. Then she desired of Sir
Mordred for to go to London, for to buy
all manner of things that belonged unto
the wedding: and, because of her fair
speech, Sir Mordred trusted her well
enough, and gave her leave to go; and,
when she came to London, suddenly, in all
haste possible, she stuffed it with all man-
ner of victuals, and well garnished it with
men, and so kept it. Then, when Sir
Mordred wist and understood how he
was deceived, he was passing wroth out of
measure. And, to make short tale, he
went and laid a mighty siege about the
Tower of London, and made many great
assaults thereat, and threw many great
engines unto them, and shot great guns.
But all might not prevail Sir Mordred.
For Queen Guenever would never, for fair
speech, nor for foul, trust to come in his
hands again. And then came the Bishop
of Canterbury, the which was a noble clerk,
and a holy man, and thus he said to Sir
Mordred, "Sir, what will ye do? will ye
first displease God, and after shame your-
self, and all knighthood? Is not King
Arthur your uncle, no further but your
mother's brother, and on her himself King

Arthur begat you upon his own sister,
therefore how may ye wed your father's
wife? Sir," said the noble clerk, "leave
this opinion, or else I shall curse you with
book, bell, and candle." " Do thy worst,"
said Sir Mordred, "wit thou well that I
utterly defy thee." " Sir," said the bishop,
"I shall not fear me to do that I ought t<>
do. Also, whereas ye noise that my lord
King Arthur is slain, it is not so; and there-
fore ye will make an abominable work in
this land." "Peace! thou false priest,"
said Sir Mordred, "for and thou chafe
me any more, I shall make thy head to be
stricken off." So the bishop departed,
and did the curse in the most orgulous
wise that might be done. And then Sir
Mordred sought the Bishop of Canterbury,
for to have slain him. And when the
bishop heard that, he fled, and took part
of his goods with him, and went nigh unto
Glastonbury, and there he was a religious
hermit in a chapel, and lived in poverty,
and in holy prayers. For well he under-
stood that a mischievous war was near at
hand. Then Sir Mordred sought upon
Queen Guenever, by letters and messages,
and by fair means and foul, for to have
her come out of the Tower of London.
But all this availed him not, for she an-
swered him shortly, openly and privily,
that she had lever slay herself than to be
married with him. Then came word to
Sir Mordred, that King Arthur had raised
the siege from Sir Launcelot, and that he
was coming homeward with a great host,
for to be avenged upon Sir Mordred.
Wherefore Sir Mordred made to write
letters unto all the barony of this land,
arid much people drew unto him; for then
was the common voice among them, that
with King Arthur was none other life but
war and strife, and with Sir Mordred was
great joy and bliss. Thus was King
Arthur deprived, and evil said of; and
many there were that King Arthur had
made up of nought, and had given them
lands, might not say of him then a good
word.

Lo! ye all Englishmen see what a mis-
chief here was: for he that was the noblest
knight and king of the world, and most

EPIC AND ROMANCE

loved the fellowship of noble knights and
men of worship, and by him they were all
upholden. Now, might not we English-
men hold us content with him; lo! this
was the old custom and usage of this land.
And also men say, that we of this land
have not yet lost nor forgotten the custom
and usage. Alas! alas! this is a great de-
fault of us Englishmen, for there may noth-
ing please us no term. And so fared the
people at that time. For they were better
pleased with Sir Mordred than they were
with King Arthur; and much people drew
unto Sir Mordred, and said they would
abide with him, for better and for worse.
And so Sir Mordred drew with great haste
toward Dover, for there he heard say that
King Arthur would arrive; and so he
thought to beat his own father from his
lands: and the most part of ail England
held with Sir Mordred, the people were so
new-fangled.

AND so, as Sir Mordred was at Dover,
with his host, there came King Arthur,
with a great many ships, galleys, and
carracks; and there was Sir Mordred ready,
waiting upon his landing, to hinder his
own father to land upon the land that he
was king of. Then was there launching
of great boats and small, and all were full
of noble men of arms ; and there was much
slaughter of gentle knights, and many a
full bold baron was laid full low, on both
parties. But King Arthur was so cour-
ageous, that there might no manner of
knight let him to land, and his knights
fiercely followed him; and so they landed,
maugre Sir Mordred and all his power:
and put Sir Mordred back, that he fled,
and all his people. So when this battle
was done, King Arthur let bury his people
that were dead: and then was the noble
knight, Sir Gawaine, found in a great
boat, lying more than half dead. When
King Arthur wist that Sir Gawaine was
laid so low, he went unto him, and there
the King made sorrow out of measure, and
took Sir Gawaine in his arms, and thrice
he swooned: and then he came to himself

again, and said, "Alas! my sister's son,
here now thou liest, the man in the world
that I loved most; and now is my joy gone.
For now, my nephew, Sir Gawaine, I will
discover me unto your person: in Sir
Launcelot and you I most had my joy
and mine affiance, and now have I lost
my joy of you both, wherefore all mine
earthly joy is gone from me." " My uncle,
King Arthur," said Sir Gawaine, "wit you
well, that my death's-day is come, and
all is through mine own hastiness and
wilfulness; for I am smitten upon the old
wound that Sir Launcelot du Lake gave
me, of the which I feel that I must die;
and if Sir Launcelot had been with you as
he was, this unhappy war had never be-
gun, and of all this I myself am causer:
for Sir Launcelot and his blood, through
their prowess, held all your cankered ene-
mies in subjection and danger. And now,"
said Sir Gawaine, "ye shall miss Sir
Launcelot: but, alas! I would not accord
with him, and therefore," said Sir Ga-
waine, "I pray you, fair uncle, that I
may have paper, pen, and ink, that I
may write unto Sir Launcelot a letter with
mine own hands." And when paper and
ink was brought, Sir Gawaine was set
up, weakly, by King Arthur, for he had
been shriven a little before, and he wrote
thus:

"UNTO SIR LAUNCELOT, flower of all
noble knights that ever I heard of or saw
in my days.

"I, Sir Gawaine, King Lot's son, of
Orkney, sister's son unto the noble King
Arthur, send unto thee, greeting, and let
thee have knowledge, that the tenth
day of May I was smitten upon the old
wound which thou gavest me before the
city of Benwicke; and through the same
wound thou gavest me I am come unto my
death-day, and I will that all the world
wit that I, Sir Gawaine, knight of the
Round Table, sought my death, and not
through thy deserving, but it was mine
own seeking; wherefore I beseech thee,
Sir Launcelot, for to return again unto this
realm, and see my tomb, and pray some
prayer, more or less, for my soul. And
that same day that I wrote this letter I

9 6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

was hurt to the death in the same wound,
the which I had of thy hands, Sir Launce-
lot. For of a nobler man might I not be
slain. Also, Sir Launcelot, for all the
love that ever was between us, make no
tarrying, but come over the sea in all the
haste that thou mayest, with thy noble
knights, and rescue that noble King that
made thee knight, that is my lord and
uncle, King Arthur, for he is full straitly
bestood with a false traitor, which is my
false brother, Sir Mordred, and he hath let
crown himself king, and he would have
wedded my lady, Queen Guenever; and
so had he done, if she had not put herself
in the Tower of London. And so the
tenth day of May last past, my lord and
uncle, King Arthur, and we, all landed
upon them at Dover, and there we put
that false traitor, Sir Mordred, to flight;
and there it misfortuned me for to be
stricken upon thy stroke. And, at the
date of this letter was written, but two
hours and a half before my death, written
with mine own hand, and so subscribed
with part of my heart's blood, and I re-
quire thee, as thou art the most famous
knight of the world, that thou wilt see
my tomb."

And then Sir Gawaine wept, and also
King Arthur wept, and then they swooned
both; and when they awaked both, the
King made Sir Gawaine to receive his
Saviour. And then Sir Gawaine prayed
the King to send for Sir Launcelot, and
to cherish him above all other knights.
And so, at the hour of noon, Sir Gawaine
betook his soul into the hands of our Lord
God. And there the King let bury him in
a chapel within the castle of Dover: and
there, yet unto this day, all men may see
the skull of Sir Gawaine, and the same
wound is seen that Sir Launcelot gave
him in battle. Then was it told to King
Arthur that Sir Mordred had pitched a
new field upon Barendown, and on the
morrow the King rode thither to him, and
there was a great battle between them, and
much people were slain on both parts;
but at the last King Arthur's party stood
best, and Sir Mordred and his party fled
Onto Canterbury.

Ill

AND then the King searched all towns
for his knights that were slain, and made
to bury them; and those that were sore
wounded he caused them to be salved
with soft salves. Then much people
drew unto King Arthur, and said that Sir
Mordred warred on King Arthur wrong-
fully. And then the King drew him and
with his host down unto the sea-side,
westward, unto Salisbury, and there was
a day assigned between King Arthur
and Sir Mordred, and they should meet
upon a down beside Salisbury, and not far
from the sea-side; and this day was as-
signed upon a Monday after Trinity
Sunday, whereof King Arthur was pass-
ing glad, that he might be avenged upon
that traitor, Sir Mordred. Then Sir
Mordred raised much people about Lon-
don, for they of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey,
Essex, and Suffolk, and of Norfolk, held
for the most part with Sir Mordred, and
many a noble knight drew unto Sir Mor-
dred, and unto King Arthur; but they that
loved Sir Launcelot drew unto Sir Mordred.

And so, upon Trinity Sunday, at night,
King Arthur dreamed a right wonderful
dream, and that was this: that him thought
he sat upon a scaffold in a chair, and the
chair was fast unto a wheel, and thereupon
sat King Arthur, in the richest cloth of
gold that might be made; and the King
thought there was under him, far from him,
a hideous and a deep black water, and
therein was all manner of serpents and
worms, and wild beasts, foul and horrible ;
and suddenly the King thought that the
wheel turned upside down, and that he
fell among the serpents and wild beasts,
and every beast took him by a limb: and
then the King cried, as he lay in his bed
and slept, "Help!"

And then knights, squires, and yeomen
awaked the King, and then he was so
amazed, that he wist not where he was;
and then he fell in a slumbering again,
not sleeping, nor through waking. So
King Arthur thought there came Sir Ga-
waine unto him verily, with a number of
fair ladies with him; and so, when King

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Arthur saw him, he said, "Welcome, my
sister's son, I weened thou hast been dead,
and now I see thee alive; much am I be-
holden unto Almighty Jesu. Oh! fair
nephew, and my sister's son, what be these
ladies that be come hither with you?"
"Sir," said Sir Gawaine, "all these be
the ladies for whom I have fought when
I was a man living; and all these are those
that I did battle for in a rightwise quarrel,
and God hath given them that grace at
their great prayer, because I did battle
for them, that they should bring me hither
to you; thus much hath God given me
leave for to warn you of your death;
for and ye fight as to-morrow with Sir
Mordred, as both ye have assigned, doubt
ye not ye must be slain, and the most
part of your people, on both parties: and
for the great grace and goodness that
Almighty Jesu hath unto you, and for
pity of you, and many more other good
men, that there should be slain, God
hath sent me unto you, of His most special
grace, for to give you warning, that in no
wise ye do battle as to-morrow, but that
ye take a treaty for a month's day, and
proffer him largely, so as to-morrow to be
put in a delay; for within a month shall
come Sir Launcelot, with all his noble
knights, and shall rescue you worship-
fully, and slay Sir Mordred and all that
ever will hold him." Then Sir Gawaine
and all the ladies vanished. And anon
the King called upon his knights, squires,
and yeomen, and charged them lightly
to fetch his noble lords and wise bishops
unto him; and when they were come, the
King told them his vision, what Sir Ga-
waine told him, and warned him, that if
he fought on the morrow he should be slam.
Then the King commanded Sir Lucan, the
butler; and his brother, Sir Bedivere; and
two bishops with them, and charged them
in any wise if they might take a treaty for
a month with Sir Mordred; and spare not
to proffer him lands and goods, as much
as ye think best. So then they departed
and came to Sir Mordred, where he had
a grimly host of a hundred thousand men,
and thereby entreated Sir Mordred long
time; and, at the last, Sir Mordred was

agreed to have Cornwall and Kent by
King Arthur's days, and after the days of
King Arthur to have all England to his
obeisance.

So THEN were they condescended that
King Arthur and Sir Mordred should meet
between both their hosts, and every each
of them should bring fourteen persons;
and then came this word unto King
Arthur. "And then," said he, "I am
glad that this is done." And so he went
into the field; and when King Arthur
should depart, he warned all his host,
"that and they saw any sword drawn,
look that ye come on fiercely, and slay
that traitor, Sir Mordred, for hi nowise
trust him." In likewise Sir Mordred
did warn his host, " that if ye see any man-
ner of sword drawn, look that ye come on
fiercely, and so slay all that ever standeth
before you; for in nowise I will not trust
for this treaty, for I know well that my
father will be avenged upon me." And
so they were agreed and accorded thor-
oughly, and wine was set, and they drank.
Right so came an adder out of a little
heath bush, and stung a knight on the
foot. And when the knight felt him stung,
he looked down and saw the adder, and
then he drew his sword to slay the adder,
and thought of none other harm. And
when the hosts on both parties saw that
sword drawn, they blew beames, trumpets,
and horns, and shouted grimly. And so
both hosts dressed them together, and
King Arthur took his horse, and said,
"Alas! this unhappy day:" and so. rode he
to his part. And so Sir Mordred did in
likewise, and never was there seen a more
dolefuller battle in no Christian land:
for there was but rushing and riding, foin-
ing and striking, and many a grim word
was there spoken, either to other, and
many a deadly stroke. But alway King
Arthur rode throughout the battle of Sir
Mordred many times, and did there right
nobly as a noble King should do; and at
all tunes he never fainted. And Sir Mor-
dred that day put him in devoir and in

9 8

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

great peril, and thus they fought all the
long day, and never stinted till the noble
knights were laid to the cold ground.
And ever they fought still till it was nigh
night, and by that time was there a hun-
dred thousand laid dead upon the down.
Then was King Arthur wroth out of
measure, when he saw his people so slain
from him. Then the King looked about
him, and then was he ware that of all his
host, and of his good knights, were left
no more alive but two knights; that were
Sir Lucan, the butler, and Sir Bedivere, his
brother, and they were right sore wounded.
"Jesu mercy," said King Arthur, "where
are all my noble knights become? Alas!
that ever I should see this doleful day:
for now," said King Arthur, "I am come
unto mine end. But would to God that
I wist where that traitor, Sir Mordred, is,
which hath caused all this mischief?"
Then was King Arthur aware where Sir
Mordred leaned upon his sword among a
great heap of dead men. "Now give me
my spear," said King Arthur to Sir Lucan,
"for yonder I have espied the traitor
which hath wrought all this woe." "Sir,
let him be," said Sir Lucan, "for he is
unhappy; and if ye pass this unhappy day,
ye shall be right well revenged upon him.
My good lord, remember well your dream
that ye had this night, and what the spirit
of Sir Gawaine told you this night; yet
God of his great goodness hath preserved
you hither, therefore, for God's sake, my
lord, leave off by this; for, blessed be
God, ye have won the field, for here we
be three alive, and with Sir Mordred is
none alive, and if ye leave off now this
wicked day of destiny is done." "Betide
me death, betide me life," said the King;
"now I see him yonder alone, he shall
never escape my hands, for at better ad-
vantage shall I never have him." "God
speed you well," said Sir Bedivere. Then
King Arthur gat his spear in both his
hands, and ran toward Sir Mordred, crying,
"Traitor, now is thy death-day come."
And when Sir Mordred heard King Arthur,
he ran unto him with his sword drawn in
his hand, and there King Arthur smote
Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin

of his spear, throughout the body more
than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred
felt that he had his death wound, he
thrust himself with all the might that he
had up to the end of King Arthur's spear.
And right so he smote his father Arthur
with his sword, that he held in both his
hands, on the side of the head, that the
sword pierced the helmet and the brain-
pan. And therewith Sir Mordred fell
down stark dead to the earth, and the
noble King Arthur fell in a swoon to the
earth, and there he swooned oftentimes.
And Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere often-
times heaved him up, and so weakly they
laid him between them both unto a little
chapel, not far from the sea-side. And
when the King was there, he thought him
well eased. Then heard they people cry
in the field. "Now go thou, Sir Lucan,"
said the King, "and do me to wit what
betokeneth that noise in the field." So
Sir Lucan departed, and he was grievously
wounded in many places; and so, as he
went, he saw and hearkened by the moon-
light, how the pilfers and robbers were
come into the field, for to pilfer and rob
many a noble knight of broaches and
beads, of many a good ring, and of many
a rich jewel. And who that were not
dead all out, there they slew them for to
have their harness, and their riches. And
when Sir Lucan understood this work, he
came unto the King as soon as he might,
and told him all that he had heard and
seen. "Therefore, by mine advice," said
Sir Lucan, "it is best that we bring you
unto some town." "I would it were so,"
said the King.

"Bux I may not stand, my head acheth
so. Ah! Sir Launcelot," said King Ar-
thur, "this same day have I sore missed
thee; alas! that ever I was against thee,
for now have I my death, whereof Sir
Gawaine warned me in my dream." Then
Sir Lucan took up King Arthur on the
one part, and Sir Bedivere on the other
part, and in the lifting the King swooned.
And Sir Lucan fell in a swoon with that

EPIC AND ROMANCE

lift, that therewith the noble knight's
heart burst. And when King Arthur
came to himself again, he beheld Sir
Lucan how he lay foaming at the mouth.
"Alas!" said King Arthur, "this is unto
me a full heavy sight for to see this noble
duke so to die for my sake; for he would
have holpen me, that had more need of
help than I have. Alas! he would not
complain him, his heart was so set for to
help me. Now, Jesu, have mercy upon
his soul." Then Sir Bedivere wept for
the death of his brother. "Leave this
weeping and mourning," said King Arthur,
"for all this will not avail me; for wit
thou well I might live myself, the death
of Sir Lucan would grieve me evermore.
But my time hieth fast," said King Arthur
unto Sir Bedivere, "therefore take thou
Excalibur, my good sword, and go with it
unto yonder water-side; and when thou
comest there, I charge thee, throw my
sword into that water, and come again and
tell me what thou shalt see there." "My
lord," said Sir Bedivere, "your command
shall be done, and lightly bring you word
again." And so Sir Bedivere departed,
and by the way he beheld that noble
sword, where the pommel and the haft
were all of precious stones. And then he
said to himself, " If I throw this rich sword
into the water, thereof shall never come
good, but harm and loss." And then
Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree,
and as soon as he might, he came again
unto King Arthur, and said he had been
at the water, and had thrown the sword
into the water. "What sawest thou
there?" said the King. "Sir," said he,
"I saw nothing but waves and wind."
"That is untruly said of thee," said King
Arthur, "therefore go thou lightly and do
my command, as thou art to me life and
dear, spare not but throw it in." Then
Sir Bedivere returned again, and took the
sword in his hand; and then he thought it
sin and shame to throw away that noble
sword: and so after he hid the sword, and
returned again, and told to the King that
he had been at the water and done his
command. "What saw ye there?" said
the King. "Sir," said he, "I saw nothing

but the water lap and waves wan. " " Ah !
traitor, untrue," said King Arthur, "now
hast thou betrayed me two times, who
would have weened that thou that hast
been unto me so self and dear, and thou
art named a noble knight, and wouldest
betray me for the rich sword. But now
go again lightly, for thy long tarrying
putteth me in great jeopardy of my life,
for I have taken cold; and but if thou do
as I command thee, and if ever I may see
thee, I shall slay thee with mine own
hands, for thou wouldest for my rich
sword see me dead." Then Sir Bedivere
departed, and went to the sword, and
lightly took it up and went to the water's
side, and there he bound the girdle about
the hilts. And then he threw the sword
into the water as far as he might, and there
came an arm and a hand above the water,
and met it and caught it, and so shook it
thrice and brandished. And then the
hand vanished away with the sword in the
water.

So Sir Bedivere came again to the King,
and told him what he had seen. "Alas!"
said the King, "help me from hence;
for I dread me I have tarried over long."
Then Sir Bedivere took King Arthur
upon his back, and so went with him to the
water's side; and, when they were at the
water's side, even fast by the bank hovered
a little barge, with many fair ladies in it:
and among them all was a queen, and all
they had black hoods; and they wept and
shrieked when they saw King Arthur.

"Now put me into the barge," said the
King. And so he did softly, and there
received him three queens with great
mourning; and so these three queens sat
them down, and in one of their laps King
Arthur laid his head. And then that
queen said, "Ah! dear brother, why have
ye tarried so long from me? Alas! this
wound on your head hath taken overmuch
cold." And so then they rowed from the
land; and Sir Bedivere beheld all those
ladies go from him. Then Sir Bedivere
cried, "Ah! my lord Arthur, what shall
become of me now ye go from me, and
leave me here alone among mine ene-
mies?" "Comfort thyself," said King

100

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Arthur, "and do as well as thou mayest;
for in me is no trust for to trust in: for I
will into the vale of Avallon, for to heal
me of my grievous wound; and, if thou
never hear more of me, pray for my soul."
But evermore the queens and the ladies
wept and shrieked, that it was pitiful for
to hear them: and, as soon as Sir Bedivere
had lost the sight of the barge, he wept
and wailed, and so took the forest, and
so he went all the night; and, in the morn-
ing, he was aware, between two hills, of a
chapel and a hermitage.

THEN was Sir Bedivere glad, and thither
he went; and, when he came into the
chapel, he saw where lay a hermit grovel-
ling upon all fours there, fast by a tomb
newly graven. When the hermit saw Sir
Bedivere he knew him well; for he was, but
a little before, Bishop of Canterbury, that
Sir Mordred had banished away. "Sir,"
said Sir Bedivere, "what man is there
buried that ye pray so fast for?" "My
fair son," said the hermit, "I wot not
verily but by deeming; but this night, at
midnight, here came a great number of
ladies, which brought this dead corpse,
and prayed me to bury him; and here they
offered a hundred tapers, and gave me a
hundred besants." " Alas ! " said Sir Bedi-
vere, "that was my lord, King Arthur,
that here lieth buried in this chapel."
Then Sir Bedivere swooned; and, when he
awoke, he prayed the hermit that he might
abide with him here still, to live with
fasting and prayers; "For from hence will
I never go," said Sir Bedivere, "by my
will; but all the days of my life here to
pray for my lord, King Arthur." "Ye
are welcome to me," said the hermit; "for
I know you better than ye ween that I do :
for ye are that bold Bedivere, and the
noble duke Sir Lucan, the butler, was your
own brother."

Then Sir Bedivere told the hermit all as
ye heard before. So Sir Bedivere abode
there still with the hermit, which had been

before the Bishop of Canterbury: and there
Sir Bedivere put upon him poor clothes,
and served the hermit full lowly in fasting
and in prayers. This of King Arthur I
find no more written in my copy of the
certainty of his death: but thus was he
led away in a barge, wherein were three
queens: that one was King Arthur's sister,
Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen
of Northgalis; and the third was the Queen
of the Waste Lands. And there was
Nimue, the chief Lady of the Lake, which
had wedded Sir Pelleas, the good knight.
And this lady had done much for King
Arthur; for she would never suffer Sir
Pelleas to be in any place whereas he
should be in danger of his life: and so he
lived to the uttermost of his days with her
in great rest. More of the death of King
Arthur could I never find, but that ladie?
brought him unto the burials. And such
one was buried here, that the hermit bare
witness, that sometimes was Bishop of
Canterbury: but yet the hermit knew not
of a certain that it was verily the body of
King Arthur. For this tale Sir Bedivere,
knight of the Round Table, made it plainly
to be written.

VII

SOME men yet say, in many parts of
England, that King Arthur is not dead;
but had by the will of our Lord Jesu Christ
into another place: and men say that he
will come again, and he shall win the holy
cross. I will not say that it shall be so;
but rather I will say, that here in this world
he changed his life. But many men say
that there is written upon his tomb this
verse:

Hie jacet Arthurus rex quondam, rexque
futurus.

Thus leave we here Sir Bedivere with
the hermit, that dwelled that time in a
chapel beside Glastonbury, and there was
his hermitage; and so they lived in prayers,
and fastings, and great abstinence.

NARRATIVE POETRY

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)
IAM O'SHANTER

A TALE

Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this buke.
GAWIN DOUGLAS.

WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors meet
As market-days are wearing late
And folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousin at the nappy
And gettin fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses.)

O Tam! had'st thou but been sae wise
As taen thy ain wife Kate's advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A bletherin, blusterin, drunken blellum;
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was na sober;
That ilka melder wi' the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;
That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roarin fou on;
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesied, that, late or soon,
Thou would be found deep drown'd in

Boon;

Or catch't wi' warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,

How mony lengthened sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

But to our tale: Ae market night,
Tam had got planted unco right,
Fast by an ingle, bleezin finely,
Wi' reamin swats that drank divinely;
And at his elbow, Souter Johnie,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony:
Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter;
And ay the ale was growing better:
The landlady and Tam grew gracious
Wi' secret favors, sweet, and precious:
The souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle
Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy:
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleas-
ure;
Kings may be blest, but Tam was

glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
Nae man can tether tune or tide:
The hour approaches Tam maun ride,
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-

stane,

That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic a night he taks the road in,
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.

101

102

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The wind blew as 't wad blown its last;
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd;
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow'd:
That night, a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand.

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tarn skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
Despising wind and rain and fire;
Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet,
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots son-
net,

Whiles glowrin round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares.
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

By this time he was cross the ford,
Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd;
And past the birks and meikie stane,
Whare drucken Charlie brak 's neck-bane;
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn,
Whare hunters fand the murder 'd bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole,
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seemed in a bleeze :
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou can'st make us scorn!
Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle,
Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle.
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd,
She ventur'd forward on the light;
And, wow! Tarn saw an unco sight!

Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillon brent-new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels
Put life and mettle in their heels:
A winnock bunker in the east,
There sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast;

A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge;
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip sleight
Each in its cauld hand held a light,
By which heroic Tarn was able
To note upon the haly table
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns,
A thief, new-cutted frae the rape
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted;
Five scymitars, wi' murder crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled;
Whom his ain son o' life bereft
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'.

As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd and curious.
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious 1
The piper loud and louder blew,
The dancers quick and quicker flew;
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they

cleekit,

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit
And coost her duddies to the wark
And linket at it in her sark!

Now Tarn, O Tarn! had thae been

queans,

A' plump and strapping in their teens!
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen,
Been snaw- white seven teen hunder linen!
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair,
I wad hae gien them aff my hurdies,
For ae blink o' the bonie burdies!
But wither'd beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Louping an' flinging on a crummock,
I wonder did na turn thy stomach.

But Tarn ken'd what was what fu*

brawlie;

There was ae winsom wench and walie,
That night enlisted in the core
(Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore:

NARRATIVE POETRY

103

For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish'd mony a bonie boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear) ;
Her cutty sark o' Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.
Ah! little kent thy reverend grannie,
That sark she cof t for her wee Nannie,
Wi' twa pund Scots ('t was a' her riches),
Wad ever graced a dance o' witches!

But here my Muse her wing maun cow'r,
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jad she was and strang),
And how Tarn stood like ane bewitch'd,
And thought his very een enrich'd;
Even Satan glowr'd and fidg'd fu' fain,
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tarn tint his reason a' thegither,
And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke,
When plundering herds assail their byke;

As open pussie's mortal foes,

When pop! she starts before their nose;

As eager runs the market-crowd,

When "Catch the thief!" resounds aloud;

So Maggie runs, the witches follow,

Wi' mony an eldritch skriech and hollo.

Ah, Tarn! ah, Tarn! thou'llgetthy fairin!
In hell they '11 roast thee like a herrin!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig:
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle
Ae spring brought aff her master hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail.

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man, and mother's son, take heed:
Whene'er to Drink you are inclin'd,
Or Cutty-sarks rin in your mind,
Think ye may buy the joys o'er dear;
Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mare.

(i793)
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

Byron was a man whose whole life and character seemed made up of spectacular contrasts. He was
a poet and a peer; an aristocrat, proud as Satan, yet passionately devoted to justice and liberty; in poetic
theory opposed to romanticism; in his life, and much of his poetry, wildly romantic; to the casual ob-
server, merely theatrical; looked at closely, truly and deeply sincere.

DON JUAN

FROM CANTO U

"Don Juan" is a long poem, an unfinished mock epic, in which Byron strangely mingles romance with
realism, turning with disconcerting ease and swiftness from pure pathos and wild beauty to pungent
satire and brutal fact. The hero is a young scapegrace sent upon his travels by a doting mother who
thinks thus to save him from evil influences. He is shipwrecked upon a Turkish island, and thereafter
undergoes many strange experiences.

The account of the shipwreck, in Byron's most realistic style, is built upon the poet's own familiarity
with the sea, supplemented by a wide reading of accounts of shipwreck, and of his grandfather Vice-
Admiral Byron's narrative of a voyage around the world.

'Twas for a voyage that the young man

was meant,

As if a Spanish ship were Noah's ark,
To wean him from the wickedness of

earth,
And send him like a dove of promise forth.

VIII

BUT to our tale: the Donna Inez sent
Her son to Cadiz only to embark :
To stay there had not answer'd her intent,
But why? we leave the reader in the dark

104

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Don Juan bade his valet pack his things
According to direction, then received
A lecture and some money: for four

springs

He was to travel; and though Inez grieved
(As every kind of parting has its stings),
She hoped he would improve perhaps

believed:

A letter, too, she gave (he never read it)
Of good advice and two or three of

credit.

In the mean time, to pass her hours away,
Brave Inez now set up a Sunday school
For naughty children, who would rather

play

(Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool;
Infants of three years old were taught that

day,

Dunces were whipt, or set upon a stool:
The great success of Juan's education,
Spurr'd her to teach another generation.

Juan embark'd the ship got under way,
The wind was fair, the water passing

rough;

A devil of a sea rolls in that bay,
As I, who've cross'd it oft, know well

enough ;
And, standing upon deck, the dashing

spray

Flies in one's face, and makes it weather-
tough:

And there he stood to take, and take again,
His first perhaps his last farewell of
Spain.

I can't but say it is an awkward sight
To see one's native land receding through
The growing waters; it unmans one quite,
Especially when life is rather new:
I recollect Great Britain's coast looks

white,
But almost every other country's blue,

When gazing on them, mystified by dis-
tance,
We enter on our nautical existence.

XIII

So Juan stood, bewilder'd on the deck:
The wind sung, cordage strain'd, and

sailors swore,
And the ship creak'd, the town became

a speck,
From which away so fair and fast they

bore.

The best of remedies is a beef-steak
Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before
You sneer, and I assure you this is true,
For I have found it answer so may you.

XIV

Don Juan stood, and, gazing from the

stern,

Beheld his native Spain receding far:
First partings form a lesson hard to learn,
Even nations feel this when they go to war ;
There is a sort of unexprest concern,
A kind of shock that sets one's heart ajar:
At leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the

steeple.

But Juan had got many things to leave,
His mother, and a mistress, and no wife,
So that he had much better cause to grieve
Than many persons more advanced in life;
And if we now and then a sigh must heave
At quitting even those we quit in strife,
No doubt we weep for those the heart

endears
That is, till deeper griefs congeal our tears.

XVI

So Juan wept, as wept the captive Jews
By Babel's waters, still remembering Sion:
I'd weep, but mine is not a weeping

Muse,
And such light griefs are not a thing to

die on;

Young men should travel, if but to amuse
Themselves; and the next time tb**w

servants tie on

NARRATIVE POETRY

105

Behind their carriages their new port-
manteau,
Perhaps it may be lined with this my canto.

XVII

And Juan wept, and much he sigh'd and

thought,
While his salt tears dropp'd into the salt

sea,
"Sweets to the sweet;" (I like so much to

quote;
You must excuse this extract, 't is

where she,
The queen of Denmark, for Ophelia

brought
Flowers to the grave;) and, sobbing often,

Reflected on his present situation,
And seriously resolved on reformation.

XVIII

"Farewell, my Spain! a long farewell!" he

cried,

"Perhaps I may revisit thee no more,
But die, as many an exiled heart hath died,
Of its own thirst to see again thy shore:
Farewell, where Guadalquivir's waters

glide!

Farewell, my mother! and, since all is o'er,
Farewell, too, dearest Julia! (here

he drew
Her letter out again, and read it through.)

XIX

"And oh! if e'er I should forget, I swear
But that's impossible, and cannot be
Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,
Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair!
Or think of any thing excepting thee;
A mind diseased no remedy can physic
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew
sea-sick.)

"Sooner shall heaven kiss earth (here he

fell sicker)

Oh, Julia! what is every other woe?
(For God's sake let me have a glass of

liquor;

Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)
Julia, my love! (you rascal, Pedro,

quicker !)

Oh, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so)
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!"
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)

XXI

He felt that chilling heaviness of heart,
Or rather stomach, which, alas! attends,
Beyond the best apothecary's art,
The loss of love, the treachery of friends,
Or death of those we dote on, when a part
Of us dies with them as each fond hope

ends:
No doubt he would have been much more

pathetic,
But the sea acted as a strong emetic.

XXII

Love's a capricious power: I've known it

hold
Out through a lever caused \>y its own

heat,

But be much puzzled by a cough and cold,
And find a quinsy very hard to treat;
Against all noble maladies he's bold,
But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet,
Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh
Nor inflammations redden his blind eye.

XXIII

But worst of all is nausea, or a pain
About the lower region of the bowels;
Love, who heroically breathes a vein,
Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
Sea-sickness death: his love was perfect,

how else
Could Juan's passion, while the billows

roar,
Resist his stomach, ne'er at sea before?

XXIV

The ship, call'd the most holy "Trinidada"
Was steering duly for the port Leghorn;
For there the Spanish family Moncada
Were settled long ere Juan's sire was born:

io6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

They were relations, and for them he had a
Letter of introduction, which the morn
Of his departure had been sent him by
His Spanish friends for those in Italy.

xxv

His suite consisted of three servants and

A tutor, the licentiate Pedrillo,

Who several languages did understand,

But now lay sick and speechless on his
pillow,

And, rocking in his hammock, long'd for
land,

His headache being increased by every
billow;

And the waves oozing through the port-
hole made

His berth a little damp, and him afraid.

XXVI

'T was not without some reason, for the

wind

Increased at night, until it blew a gale;
And though 't was not much to a naval

mind,
Some landsmen would have look'd a little

pale,

For sailors are, in fact, a different kind:
At sunset they began to take in sail,
For the sky show'd it would come on to

blow,
And carry away, perhaps, a mast or so.

XXVII

At one o'clock the wind with sudden
shift

Threw the ship right into the trough of the
sea,

Which struck her aft, and made an awk-
ward rift,

Started the stern-post, also shatter'd the

Whole of her stern-frame, and, ere she
could lift

Herself from out her present jeopardy,

The rudder tore away: 't was time to
sound

The pumps, and there were four feet water
found.

XXVIII

One gang of people instantly was put
Upon the pumps, and the remainder set
To get up part of the cargo, and what not;
But they could not come at the leak as yet;
At last they did get at it really, but
Still their salvation was an even bet:
The water rush'd through in a way quite

puzzling,
While they thrust sheets, shirts, jackets,

bales of muslin,

XXIX

Into the opening; but all such ingredients
Would have been vain, and they must

have gone down,

Despite of all their efforts and expedients,
But for the pumps: I'm glad to make

them known
To all the brother tars who may have need

hence,

For fifty tons of water were up thrown
By them per hour, and they had all been

undone,
But for the maker, Mr. Mann, of London.

xxx

As day advanced the weather seem'd to
abate,

And then the leak they reckon 'd to reduce,

And keep the ship afloat, though three
feet yet

Kept two hand and one chain-pump still in
use.

The wind blew fresh again: as it grew late

A squall came on, and while some guns
broke loose,

A gust which all descriptive power trans-
cends

Laid with one blast the ship on her beam
ends.

XXXI

There she lay, motionless, and seem'd up-
set;

The water left the hold, and wash'd the
decks,

And made a scene men do not soon forget,

For they remember battles, fires, ana
wrecks,

NARRATIVE POETRY

107

Or any other thing that brings regret,
Or breaks their hopes, or hearts, or heads,

or necks:
Thus drownings are much talk'd of by the

divers,
And swimmers, who may chance to be

survivors.

XXXII

Immediately the masts were cut away,
Both main and mizen; first the mizen

went,
The main-mast follow'd: but the ship still

lay

Like a mere log, and baffled our intent.
Foremast and bowsprit were cut down, and

they
Eased her at last (although we never

meant
To part with all till every hope was

blighted),
And then with violence the old ship

righted.

xxxm

It may be easily supposed, while this
Was going on, some people were unquiet,
That passengers would find it much amiss
To lose their lives, as well as spoil their

diet;

That even the able seaman, deeming his
Days nearly o'er, might be disposed to

riot,

As upon such occasions tars will ask
For grog, and sometimes drink rum from

the cask.

xxxiv

There's nought, no doubt, so much the
spirit calms

As rum and true religion: thus it was,

Some plunder'd, some drank spirits, some
sung psalms,

The high wind made the treble, and as bass

The hoarse harsh waves kept time; fright
cured the qualms

Of all the luckless landsmen's sea-sick
maws:

Strange sounds of wailing, blasphemy, de-
votion,

Clamor'd in chorus to the roaring ocean.

xxxv

Perhaps more mischief had been done,

but for
Our Juan, who, with sense beyond his

years,

Got to the spirit-room, and stood before
It with a pair of pistols; and their fears,
As if Death were more dreadful by his

door

Of fire than water, spite of oaths and tears,
Kept still aloof the crew, who, ere they

sunk,
Thought it would be becoming to die

drunk.

xxxvi

"Give us more grog," they cried, "for it

will be
All one an hour hence." Juan answer 'd,

"No!
'T is true that death awaits both you and

me,

But let us die like men, not sink below
Like brutes:" and thus his dangerous

post kept he,

And none liked to anticipate the blow;
And even Pedrillo, his most reverend tutor,
Was for some rum a disappointed suitor.

XXXVII

The good old gentleman was quite aghast,
And made a loud and pious lamentation;
Repented all his sins, and made a last
Irrevocable vow of reformation;
Nothing should tempt him more (this

peril past)

To quit his academic occupation,
In cloisters of the classic Salamanca,
To follow Juan's wake, like Sancho Panca.

XXXVIII

But now there came a flash of hope once

more;
Day broke, and the wind lull'd: the masts

were gone,
The leak increased; shoals round her, but

no shore,
The vessel swam, yet still she held her own.

io8

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

They tried the pumps again, and though

before
Their desperate efforts seem'd all useless

grown,
A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to

bale
The stronger pump'd, the weaker

thrumm'd a sail.

xxxix

Under the vessel's keel the sail was past,
And for the moment it had some effect;
But with a leak, and not a stick of mast,
Nor rag of canvas, what could they ex-
pect?

But still 't is best to struggle to the last,
'T is never too late to be wholly wreck'd:
And though 't is true that man can only

die once,
'T is not so pleasant in the Gulf of Lyons.

There winds and waves had hurl'd them,
and from thence,

Without their will, they carried them
away;

For they were forced with steering to dis-
pense,

And never had as yet a quiet day

On which they might repose, or even
commence

A jurymast or rudder, or could say

The ship would swim an hour, which, by
good luck,

Still swam though not exactly like a
duck.

XLI

The wind, in fact, perhaps, was rather less,
But the ship labor'd so, they scarce could

hope

To weather out much longer; the distress
Was also great with which they had to cope
For want of water, and their solid mess
Was scant enough: in vain the telescope
Was used nor sail nor shore appear'd in

sight,
Nought but the heavy sea, and coming

night.

XLH

Again the weather threaten'd, again

blew

A gale, and in the fore and after hold
Water appear'd; yet, though the people

knew
All this, the most were patient, and some

bold,
Until the chains and leathers were worn

through
Of all our pumps: a wreck complete she

roll'd,

At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
Like human beings during civil war.

XLHI

Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears
In his rough eyes, and told the captain, he
Could do no more : he was a man in years,
And long had voyaged through many a

stormy sea,
And if he wept at length, they were not

fears

That made his eyelids as a woman's be,
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and chil-
dren,

Two things for dying people quite be-
wildering.

XLIV

The ship was evidently settling now
Fast by the head; and, all distinction gone,
Some went to prayers again, and made a

vow
Of candles to their saints but there were

none
To pay them with; and some look'd o'er

the bow;
Some hoisted out the boats; and there was

one

That begg'd Pedrillo for an absolution,
Who told him to be damn'd in his con-
fusion.

XLV

Some lash'd them in their hammocks; some

put on

Their best clothes, as if going to a fair;
Some cursed the day on which they saw

the sun.

NARRATIVE POETRY

109

And gnash'd their teeth, and, howling,

tore their hair;

And others went on as they had begun,
Getting the boats out, being well aware
That a tight boat will live in a rough sea,
Unless with breakers close beneath her lee.

XL VI

The worst of all was, that in their condi-
tion,

Having been several days in great dis-
tress,

'T was difficult to get out such provision

As now might render their long suffering
less:

Men, even when dying, dislike inanition;

Their stock was damaged by the weather's
stress:

Two casks of biscuit, and a keg of butter,

Were all that could be thrown into the
cutter.

XLVH

But in the long-boat they contrived to stow
Some pounds of bread, though injured by

the wet;

Water, a twenty-gallon cask or so;
Six flasks of wine; and they contrived to

get

A portion of their beef up from below,
And with a piece of pork, moreover, met,
But scarce enough to serve them for a

luncheon
Then there was rum, eight gallons in a

puncheon.

XLvm

The other boats, the yawl and pinnace,

had

Been stove in the beginning of the gale;
And the long-boat's condition was but bad,
As there were but two blankets for a sail,
And one oar for a mast, which a young

lad
Threw in by good luck over the ship's

rail;
And two boats could not hold, far less be

stored,
To save one half the people then on board.

XLIX

'T was twilight, and the sunless day went

down

Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose

the frown

Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was

shown,

And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days

had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was

here.

Some trial had been making at a raft,
With little hope in such a rolling sea,
A sort of thing at which one would have

laugh'd,

If any laughter at such times could be,
Unless with people who too much have

quaff'd,

And have a kind of wild and horrid glee,
Half epileptical, and half hysterical:
Their preservation would have been a

miracle.

At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hen-
coops, spars,
And all things, for a chance, had been cast

loose,
That still could keep afloat the struggling

tars,
For yet they strove, although of no great

use:
There was no light in heaven but a few

stars,
The boats put off o'ercrowded with their

crews;

She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
And, going down head foremost sunk,

in short.

LII

Then rose from sea to sky the wild fare-
well-
Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the
brave,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful

yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave;

And the sea yawn'd around her like a

hell,
And down she suck'd with her the whirling

wave,

Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.

And first one universal shriek there rush'd,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was

hush'd,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless

dash

Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

LIV

The boats, as stated, had got off before,
And in them crowded several of the

crew;
And yet their present hope was hardly

more
Than what it had been, for so strong it

blew
There was slight chance of reaching any

shore;
And then they were too many, though so

few

Nine in the cutter, thirty in the boat,
Were counted in them when they got

afloat.

All the rest perish'd; near two hundred

souls
Had left their bodies; and what's worse,

alas!

When over Catholics the ocean rolls,
They must wait several weeks before a

mass

Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals,
Because, till people know what's come to

pass,

They won't lay out their money on the

dead
It costs three francs for every mass that's

said.

LVI

Juan got into the long-boat, and there

Contrived to help Pedrillo to a place;

It seem'd as if they had exchanged their

care,

For Juan wore the magisterial face
Which courage gives, while poor Pedrillo's

pair

Of eyes were crying for their owner's case:
Battista, though, (a name call'd shortly

Tita)
Was lost by getting at some aqua-vita.

LVH

Pedro, his valet, too, he tried to save,
But the same cause, conducive to his loss,
Left him so drunk, he jump'd into the

wave

As o'er the cutter's edge he tried to cross,
And so he found a wine-and- watery grave;
They could not rescue him although so

close,

Because the sea ran higher every minute,
And for the boat the crew kept crowding

in it.

LVIII

A small old spaniel, which had been Don

Jose's,
His father's, whom he loved, as ye may

think,

For on such things the memory reposes
With tenderness stood howling on the

brink,
Knowing, (dogs have such intellectual

noses!)

No doubt, the vessel was about to sink;
And Juan caught him up, and ere he

stepp'd
Off, threw him in, then after him he leap'd.

LIX

He also stuff'd his money where he could
About his person, and Pedrillo's too,
Who let him do, in fact, whate'er he would,
Not knowing what himself to say, or do,

NARRATIVE POETRY

As every rising wave his dread renew'd;
But Juan, trusting they might still get

through,
And deeming there were remedies for any

ill,
Thus re-embark'd his tutor and his spaniel.

'T was a rough night, and blew so stiffly

yet,
That the sail was becalm'd between the

seas,
Though on the wave's high top too much

to set,
They dared not take it in for all the

breeze :
Each sea curl'd o'er the stern, and kept

them wet,
And made them bale without a moment's

ease,
So that themselves as well as hopes were

damp'd,
And the poor little cutter quickly swamp'd.

LXI

Nine souls more went in her: the long-boat

still

Kept above water, with an oar for mast,
Two blankets stitch'd together, answering

ill

Instead of sail, were to the oar made fast:
Though every wave roll'd menacing to fill,
And present peril all before surpass'd,
They grieved for those who perish' d with

the cutter,
And also for the biscuit-casks and butter.

LXH

The sun rose red and fiery, a sure sign
Of the continuance of the gale: to run
Before the sea until it should grow fine,
Was all that for the present could be done:
A few tea-spoonfuls of their rum and

wine

Were served out to the people, who begun
To fault, and damaged bread wet through

the bags,
And most of them had little clothe* but

rags.

Lxm

They counted thirty, crowded in a space
Which left scarce room for motion or

exertion ;

They did their best to modify their case,
One half sate up, though numb'd with the

immersion,
While t' other half were laid down in their

place,
At watch and watch; thus, shivering like

the tertian

Ague in its cold fit, they fill'd their boat,
With nothing but the sky for a great coat.

LXIV

'T is very certain the desire of life
Prolongs it: this is obvious to physicians,
When patients, neither plagued with

friends nor wife,

Survive through very desperate condi-
tions,
Because they still can hope, nor shines the

knife
Nor shears of Atropos before their vis

ions:

Despair of all recovery spoils longevity,
And makes men's miseries of alarming
brevity.

LXV

'T is said that persons living on annuities
Are longer lived than others, God knows

why,
Unless to plague the grantors, yet so

true it is,

That some, I really think, do never die;
Of any creditors the worst a Jew it is,
And that's their mode of furnishing supply:
In my young days they lent me cash that

way,
Which I found very troublesome to pay.

LXVI

'T is thus with people in an open boat,
They live upon the love of life, and bear
More than can be believed, or even thought,
And stand like rocks the tempest's wear
and tear;

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

And hardship still has been the sailor's lot,
Since Noah's ark went cruising here and

there;

She had a curious crew as well as cargo,
Like the first old Greek privateer, the

"Argo."

Lxvn

But man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a

day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon

suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have

prey;

Although his anatomical construction
Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way,
Your laboring people think beyond all

question,

Beaf, veal, and mutton, better for di-
gestion.

Lxvni

And thus it was with this our hapless crew;
For on the third day there came on a calm,
And though at first their strength it

might renew,

And lying on their weariness like balm,
Lull'd them like turtles sleeping on the

blue
Of ocean, when they woke they felt a

qualm,

And fell all ravenously on their provision,
Instead of hoarding it with due precision.

LXIX

The consequence was easily foreseen
They ate up all they had and drank their

wine,

In spite of all remonstrances, and then
On what, in fact, next day were they to

dine?
They hoped the wind would rise, these

foolish men!
And carry them to shore; these hopes were

fine,
But as they had but one oar, and that

brittle,
It would have been more wise to save their

victual.

LXX

The fourth day came, but not a breath of

air,
And Ocean slumber'd like an unwean'd

child:
The fifth day, and their boat lay floating

there,
The sea and sky were blue, and clear, and

mild
With their one oar (I wish they had had a

pair)
What could they do? and hunger's rage

grew wild:

So Juan's spaniel, spite of his entreating,
Was kill'd, and portion'd out for present

eating.

LXXI

On the sixth day they fed upon his hide,
And Juan, who had still refused, because
The creature was his father's dog that died.
Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws,
With some remorse received (though first

denied)

As a great favor one of the fore-paws,
Which he divided with Pedrillo, who
Devour'd it, longing for the other too.

LXXII

The seventh day, and no wind the burn-
ing sun

Blister'd and scorch'd, and, stagnant on
the sea,

They lay like carcasses; and hope was
none,

Save in the breeze that came not; savagely

They glared upon each other all was
done,

Water, and wine, and food, and you
might see

The longings of the cannibal arise

(Although they spoke not) in their wolfish
eyes.

Lxxin

At length one whisper'd his companion,

who
Whisper'd another, and thus it went

round,
And then into a hoarser murmur grew,

NARRATIVE POETRY

An ominous, and wild, and desperate

sound;
And when his comrade's thought each

sufferer knew,
'T was but his own, suppress'd till now, he

found:
And out they spoke of lots for flesh and

blood,
And who should die to be his fellow's food.

LXXIV

But ere they came to this, they that day
shared

Some leathern caps, and what remain'd
of shoes;

And then they look'd around them and
despair'd,

And none to be the sacrifice would choose;

At length the lots were torn up, and pre-
pared,

But of materials that much shock the
Muse

Having no paper, for the want of better,

They took by force from Juan Julia's
letter.

LXXV

The lots were made, and mark'd, and
mix'd, and handed,

In silent horror, and their distribution

Lull'd even the savage hunger which
demanded,

Like the Promethean vulture, this pollu-
tion;

None in particular had sought or plann'd
it,

'T was nature gnaw'd them to this reso-
lution,

By which none were permitted to be
neuter

And the lot fell on Juan's luckless tutor.

LXXVI

He but requested to be bled to death:
The surgeon had his instruments, and

bled

Pedrillo, and so gently ebb'd his breath,
You hardly could perceive when he was

dead.

He died as born, a Catholic in faith,

Like most in the belief in which they 're

bred,

And first a little crucifix he kiss'd,
And then held out his jugular and wrist.

LXXVHI

The sailors ate him, all save three or four,
Who were not quite so fond of animal food;
To these was added Juan, who, before
Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could
Feel now his appetite increased much

more;

'T was not to be expected that he should,
Even in extremity of their disaster,
Dine with them on his pastor and his

master.

LXXIX

'T was better that he did not; for, in fact,

The consequence was awful in the ex-
treme;

For they, who were most ravenous in the
act.

Went raging mad Lord! how they did
blaspheme!

And foam and roll, with strange convul-
sions rack'd,

Drinking salt-water like a mountain-
stream,

Tearing, and grinning, howling, screech-
ing, swearing,

And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.

LXXX

Their numbers were much thinn'd by this

infliction,
And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven

knows;

And some of them had lost their recollec-
tion,
Happier than they who still perceived

their woes;

But others ponder 'd on a new dissection,
As if not warn'd sufficiently by those
Who had already perish'd, suffering madly,
For having used their appetites so sadly.

114

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

LXXXH

Of poor Pedrillo something still remain'd,
But was used sparingly, some were

afraid,

And others still their appetites constraint,
Or but at times a little supper made;
All except Juan, who throughout ab-

stain'd,
Chewing a piece of bamboo, and some

lead:
At length they caught two boobies, and

a noddy,
And then they left off eating the dead

body.

LXXXIII

And if Pedrillo's fate should shocking be,
Remember Ugolino condescends
To eat the head of his arch-enemy
The moment after he politely ends
His tale : if foes be food in hell, at sea
'T is surely fair to dine upon our friends,
When shipwreck's short allowance grows

too scanty,
Without being much more horrible than

Dante.

LXXXIV

And the same night there fell a shower of

rain,
For which their mouths gaped, like the

cracks of earth
When dried to summer dust; till taught

by pain,
Men really know not what good water's

worth;

If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,
Or with a famish'd boat's-crew had your

berth,

Or in the desert heard the camel's bell,
You'd wish yourself where Truth is in a

well.

LXXXV

It pour'd down torrents, but they were not

richer

Until they found a ragged piece of sheet,
Which served them as a sort of spongy

pitcher,

And when they deem'd its moisture was

complete,
They wrung it out, and though a thirsty

ditcher
Might not have thought the scanty draught

so sweet

As a full pot of porter, to their thinking
They ne'er till now had known the joys

of drinking.

LXXXVI

And their baked lips, with many a bloody

crack,
Suck'd in the moisture, which like nectar

stream'd:
Their throats were ovens, their swoln

tongues were black,
As the rich man's in hell, who vainly

scream'd
To beg the beggar, who could not rain

back
A drop of dew, when every drop had

seem'd
To taste of heaven If this be true,

indeed,
Some Christians have a comfortable

creed.

LXXXVTI

There were two fathers in this ghastly

crew,
And with them their two sons, of whom

the one

Was more robust and hardy to the view,
But he died early; and when he was gone,
His nearest messmate told his sire, who

threw
One glance on him, and said, " Heaven's

will be done !

I can do nothing," and he saw him thrown
Into the deep without a tear or groan.

LXXXVIII

The other father had a weaklier child,
Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate;
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patient spirit held aloof his fate;
Little he said, and now and then he

smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight

NARRATIVE POETRY

He saw increasing on his father's heart,
With the deep deadly thought, that they
must part.

LXXXIX

And o'er him bent his sire, and never

raised
His eyes from off his face, but wiped the

foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him

gazed,
And when the wish'd-for shower at length

was come,
And the boy's eyes, which the dull film

half glazed,
Brighten'd, and for a moment seem'd to

roam,
He squeezed from out a rag some drops

of rain
Into his dying child's mouth but in vain.

The boy expired the father held the

clay,
And look'd upon it long, and when at

last
Death left no doubt, and the dead burthen

lay
Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were

past,

He watch'd it wistfully, until away
'T was borne by the rude wave wherein

't was cast;
Then he himself sunk down all dumb and

shivering,
And gave no sign of life, save his limbs

quivering.

xci

Now overhead a rainbow, bursting through
The scattering clouds, shone, spanning the

dark sea,
Resting its bright base on the quivering

blue;

And all within its arch appear'd to be
Clearer than that without, and its wide

hue
Wax'd broad and waving, like a banner

free,

Then changed like to a bow that's bent,

and then
Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwreck'd

men.

xcn

It changed, of course; a heavenly cameleon,
The airy child of vapor and the sun,
Brought forth in purple, cradled in ver-
milion,
Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in

dun,
Glittering like crescents o'er a Turk's

pavilion,

And blending every color into one,
Just like a black eye in a recent scuffle
(For sometimes we must box without the
muffle).

xcm

Our shipwreck'd seamen thought it a

good omen

It is as well to think so, now and then;
'T was an old custom of the Greek and

Roman,
And may become of great advantage

when
Folks are discouraged; and most surely no

men
Had greater need to nerve themselves

again
Than these, and so this rainbow look'd

like hope
Quite a celestial kaleidoscope.

xcrv

About this time a beautiful white bird,
Webfooted, not unlike a dove in size
And plumage (probably it might have

err'd
Upon its course), pass'd oft before their

eyes,
And tried to perch, although it saw and

heard
The men within the boat, and in this

guise
It came and went, and flutter'd round

them till
Night fell: this seem'd a better omen

still.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

xcv

But in this case I also must remark,

'T was well this bird of promise did not

perch,
Because the tackle of our shatter'd

bark

Was not so safe for roosting as a church;
And had it been the dove from Noah's

ark,
Returning there from her successful

search,
Which in their way that moment chanced

to fall,
They would have eat her, olive-branch

and all.

xcvi

With twilight it again came on to

blow,
But not with violence; the stars shone

out,
The boat made way; yet now they were

so low,
They knew not where nor what they were

about;
Some fancied they saw land, and some

said "No!"
The frequent fog-banks gave them cause

to doubt
Some swore that they heard breakers,

others guns,
And all mistook about the latter once.

xcvn

As morning broke, the light wind died

away,
When he who had the watch sung out

and swore,
If 'twas not land that rose with the

sun's ray,
He wish'd that land he never might see

more;
And the rest rubb'd their eyes, and saw

a bay,
Or thought they saw, and shaped their

course for shore;

For shore it was, and gradually grew
Distinct, and high and palpable to view.

xcvni

And then of these some part burst into

tears,

And others, looking with a stupid stare,
Could not yet separate their hopes from

fears,
And seem'd as if they had no further

care;
While a few pray'd (the first time for

some years)
And at the bottom of the boat three

were
Asleep; they shooK. them by the hand

and head,
And tried to awaken them, but found them

dead.

xcrx

The day before, fast sleeping on the
water,

They found a turtle of the hawk's-bill
kind,

And by good fortune, gliding softly,
caught her,

Which yielded a day's life, and to their
mind

Proved even still a more nutritious mat-
ter,

Because it left encouragement behind:

They thought that in such perils, more
than chance

Had sent them this for their deliverance.

The land appear'd a high and rocky

coast,
And higher grew the mountains as they

drew,
Set by a current, toward it: they were

lost

In various conjectures, for none knew
To what part of the earth they had been

tost,
So changeable had been the winds that

blew;
Some thought it was Mount ^Etna, some

the highlands
Of Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, or other

islands.

NARRATIVE POETRY

117

Meantime the current, with a rising gale,
Still set them onwards to the welcome

shore,
Like Charon's bark of specters, dull and

pale:
Their living freight was now reduced to

four,
And three dead, whom their strength

could not avail

To heave into the deep with those before,
Though the two sharks still follow'd

them, and dash'd
The spray into their faces as they splash'd.

Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat

had done
Their work on them by turns, and thinn'd

them to
Such things a mother had not known her

son

Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew:
By night chill'd, by day scorch'd, thus

one by one

They perish'd, until wither'd to these few,
But chiefly by a species of self-slaughter,
In washing down Pedrillo with salt water.

CHI

As they drew nigh the land, which now

was seen

Unequal in its aspect here and there,
They felt the freshness of its growing green,
That waved in forest-tops, and smooth'd

the air,
And fell upon their glazed eyes like a

screen
From glistening waves, and skies so hot

and bare
Lovely seem'd any object that should

sweep
Away the vast, salt, dread, eternal deep.

civ

The shore look'd wild, without a trace of

man,

And girt by formidable waves; but they
Were mad for land, and thus their course

they ran.

Though right ahead the roaring breakers
lay:

A reef between them also now began

To show its boiling surf and bounding
spray,

But finding no place for their landing
better,

They ran the boat for shore, and over-
set her.

But hi his native stream, the Guadalquivir,

Juan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;

And having learnt to swim in that sweet
river,

Had often turn'd the art to some account:

A better swimmer you could scarce see
ever,

He could, perhaps, have pass'd the Helles-
pont,

As once (a feat on which ourselves we
prided)

Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.

cvi

So here, though faint, emaciated, and

stark,
He buoy'd his boyish limbs, and strove

to ply
With the quick wave, and gain, ere it was

dark,
The beach which lay before him, high

and dry:

The greatest danger here was from a shark,
That carried off his neighbor by the thigh ;
As for the other two, they could not swim,
So nobody arrived on shore but him.

cvn

Nor yet had he arrived but for the oar,
Which, providentially for him, was wash'd
Just as his feeble arms could strike no more
And the hard wave o'erwhelm'd him as

't was dash'd

Within his grasp; he clung to it, and sore
The waters beat while he thereto was

lash'd;

At last, with swimming, wading, scramb-
ling, he

Roll'd on the beach, half senseless, fror*
the sea:

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

CVIII

There, breathless, with his digging nails

he clung

Fast to the sand, lest the returning wave
From whose reluctant roar his life he

wrung,
Should suck him back to her insatiate

grave:
And there he lay, full length, where he

was flung,

Before the entrance of a cliffworn cave,
With just enough of life to feel its pain,
And deem that it was saved, perhaps in

vain.

(1819)

ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)

THE "REVENGE"
A BALLAD OF THE FLEET

AT FLORES in the Azores Sir Richard

Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came

flying from far away;
"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have

sighted fifty-three!"
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: " 'Fore

God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships

are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly,

but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight

with fifty-three?"

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I
know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment to fight with
them again.

But I 've ninety men and more that are
lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left
them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devil-
doms of Spaip."

So Lord Howard passed away with five

ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent

summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick

men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down

below:

For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they

were not left to Spain,
To the thumb-screw and the stake, for the

glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred seamen to work

the ship and to fight
And he sailed away from Flores till the

Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the

weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There '11 be little of us left by the time this

sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all

good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the

children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon Don or

devil yet."

Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we

roared a hurrah, and so
The little "Revenge" ran on sheer into the

heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and

her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half

to the left were seen,
And the little "Revenge" ran on through

the long sea-lane between.

NARRATIVE POETRY

Thousands of their soldiers looked down

from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at

the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delayed
By their mountain-like "San Philip" that,

of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her

yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we

stayed.

VII

And while now the great "San Philip"
hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon
the starboard lay,

And the battle-thunder broke from them
all.

VIII

But anon the great "San Philip," she be-
thought herself and went,

Having that within her womb that had
left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and
they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their
pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a
dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars

came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the

one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their

high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with

her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew

back with her dead and her shame.

For some were sunk and many were shat-
tered, and so could fight us no
more

God of battles, was ever a battle like this
in the world before?

For he said, "Fight on! fight on!"
Though his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short

summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be drest he had left

the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing

it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the

side and the head,
And he said, "Fight on! fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun

smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay

round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for

they feared that we still could sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the

desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were

most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and

the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying

over the side;

But Sir Richard cried hi his English pride:
"We have fought such a fight for a day

and a night

As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner sink

her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the

hands of Spain!"

I2O

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

XII

And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the

seamen made reply:
"We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we

yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike

another blow."
And the lion thete lay dying, and they

yielded to the foe.

xni

And the stately Spanish men to their flag-
ship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir
Richard caught at last,

And they praised him to his face with their
courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a
valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is
bound to do.

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Gren-
villedie!"

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

XIV

And they stared at the dead that had been

so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and glory of

Spam so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and

his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for

aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honor down

into the deep,
And" they manned the "Revenge" with a

swarthier alien crew,
And away she sailed with her loss and

longed for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had

ruined awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the

weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great

gale blew,
And a wave like the wave that is raised

by an earthquake grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails
and their masts and their flags,

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the
shot-shattered navy of Spain,

And the little "Revenge" herself went down
by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

(1878)

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)
HERVE RIEL

ON THE sea and at the Hogue. sixteen hun-
dred ninety-two,

Did the English fight the French, woe
to France!

And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter
through the blue,

Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a

shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to Saint
Malo on the Ranee,

With the English fleet in view.

'T was the squadron that escaped, with the

victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his

great ship, Damfreville;
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships in all;
And they signaled to the place
"Help the winners of a race!
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us

quick or, quicker still,
Here's the English can and will!"

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk

and leapt on board;
"Why, what hope or chance have ships

like these to pass?" laughed they:
"Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the

passage scarred and scored,
Shall the "Formidable" here with her

twelve and eighty guns
Think to make the river-mouth by the

single narrow way,
Trust to enter where 't is ticklish for a craft

of twenty tons,

NARRATIVE POETRY

121

And with flow at full beside?

Now, 't is slackest ebb of tide.
Reach the mooring? Rather say,
While rock stands or water runs,
Not a ship will leave the bay!"

Then was called a council straight.

Brief and bitter the debate:

"Here's the English at our heels; would

you have them take in tow
All that's left us of the fleet, linked to-
gether stern and bow,
For a prize to Plymouth Sound?
Better run the ships aground!"

(Ended Damfreville his speech).
"Not a minute more to wait!
Let the Captains all and each
Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the

vessels on the beach!
France must undergo her fate.

"Give the word!" But no such word
Was ever spoke or heard;
For up stood, for out stepped, for in

struck amid all these
A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate

first, second, third?
No such man of mark, and meet
With his betters to compete!
But a simple Breton sailor pressed by

Tourville for the fleet,
A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Riel the
Croisickese.

"What mockery or malice have we

here?" cried Herve Riel:
' ' Are you mad , you Malouins? Are you

cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who

took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow,

every swell

'Twixt the offing here and Greve where
the river disembogues?

Are you bought by English gold? Is it

love the lying's for?
Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot

of Solidor.
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That

were worse than fifty Hogues!
Sirs, they know I speak the truth!

Sirs, believe me there's a way!
Only let me lead the line,
Have the biggest ship to steer,
Get this 'Formidable' clear,
Make the others follow mine,
And I lead them, most and least, by a

passage I know well,
Right to Solidor past Greve,

And there lay them safe and sound;
And if one ship misbehave,

Keel so much as grate the ground,
Why, I've nothing but my life, here's my
head!" cries Herve Riel.

VII

Not a~minute more to wait.
"Steer us in, then, small and great!

Take the helm, lead the line, save the

squadron!" cried its chief.
Captains, give the sailor place!

He is Admiral, in brief.
Still the north- wind, by God's grace!
See the noble fellow's face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were
the wide sea's profound!

See, safe through shoal and rock,

How they follow in a flock,
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that
grates the ground,

Not a spar that comes to grief!
The peril, see, is past,
All are harbored to the last,
And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!"

sure as fate,
Up the English come too late!

VIII

So, the storm subsides to calm:
They see the green. trees wave
On the heights o'erlooking Greve.

Hearts that bled are stanched with balm

122

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"Just our rapture to enhance,

Let the English rake the bay,
Gnash their teeth and glare askance

As they cannonade away!
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding

on the Ranee!"

How hope succeeds despair on each Cap-
tain's countenance!
Out burst all with one accord,
"This is Paradise for Hell!
Let France, let France's King
Thank the man that did the thing!
What a shout, and all one word,

"Herve Riel!"

As he stepped in front once more,
Not a symptom of surprise
In the frank blue Breton eyes,
Just the same man as before.

Then said Damf reville, " My friend,
I must speak out at the end,

Though I find the speaking hard.
Praise is deeper than the lips:
You have saved the King his ships,

You must name your own reward.
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
Demand whate'er you will,
France remains your debtor still.
Ask to heart's content and have! or my
name's not Damfreville."

Then a beam of fun outbroke
On the bearded mouth that spoke,
As the honest heart laughed through
Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
"Since I needs must say my say,

Since on board the duty's done,

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point,

what is it but a run?
Since 't is ask and have, I may

Since the others go ashore
Come! A good whole holiday!

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call

the Belle Aurore!"

That he asked and that he got, nothing
mora

Name and deed alike are lost:
Not a pillar nor a post

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it

befell:

Not a head in white and black
On a single fishing-smack,
In memory of the man but for whom had

gone to wrack
All that France saved from the fight

whence England bore the bell.
Go to Paris: rank on rank

Search the heroes flung pell-mell
On the Louvre, face and flank!

You shall look long enough ere you come

to Herve Riel.
So, for better and for worse,
Herve Riel, accept my verse!
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once

Save the squadron, honor France, love thy
wife the Belle Aurore!

(1871)

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM
AN EPISODE

AND the first gray of morning filled the

east,

And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream.
But all the Tartar camp along the stream
Was hushed, and still the men were

plunged in sleep;

Sohrab alone, he slept not: all night long
He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed;
But when the gray dawn stole into his

tent,
He rose, and clad himself, and girt his

sword,
And took his horseman's cloak, and left

his tent,

And went abroad into the cold wet fog,
Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa's

tent
Through the black Tartar tents he

passed, which stood
Clustering like bee-hives on the low flat

strand

NARRATIVE POETRY

123

Of Oxus, where the summer floods o'er-

flow
When the sun melts the snows in high

Pamere:
Through the black tents he passed, o'er

that low strand,

And to a hillock came, a little back
From the stream's brink, the spot where

first a boat,
Crossing the stream in summer, scrapes the

land.
The men of former times had crowned the

top
With a clay fort: but that was falTn; and

now

The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent,
A dome of laths, and o'er it felts were

spread.
And Sohrab came there, and went in, and

stood

Upon the thick-piled carpets in the tent,
And found the old man sleeping on his bed
Of rugs and felts, and near him lay his

arms.
And Peran-Wisa heard him. though the

step
Was dulled; for he slept light, an old

man's sleep;

And he rose quickly on one arm, and said:
"Who art thou? for it is not yet clear

dawn.

Speak! is there news, or any night alarm? "
But Sohrab came to the bedside, and

said:

"Thou knowest me, Peran-Wisa: it is I.
The sun is not yet risen, and the foe
Sleep; but I sleep not; all night long I lie
Tossing and wakeful, and I come to thee.
For so did King Afrasiab bid me seek
Thy counsel, and to heed thee as thy son,
In Samarcand, before the army marched;
And I will tell thee what my heart desires.
Thou know'st if, since from Ader-baijan,

first

I came among the Tartars, and bore arms,
I have still served Afrasiab well, and

shown,

At my boy's years, the courage of a man.
This too thou know'st, that, while I still

bear on
The conquering Tartar ensigns through

the world,

And beat the Persians back on every field,
I see one man, one man, and one alone
Rustum, my father; who, I hoped, should

greet,

Should one day greet, upon some well-
fought field,

His not unworthy, not inglorious son.
So I long hoped, but him I never find.
Come then, hear now, and grant me what

I ask.

Let the two armies rest to-day: but I
Will challenge forth the bravest Persian

lords

To meet me, man to man; if I prevail,
Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall
Old man, the dead need no one, claim no

kin.

Dim is the rumor of a common fight,
Where host meets host, and many names

are sunk:
But of a single combat Fame speaks

clear."
He spoke: and Peran-Wisa took the

hand
Of the young man in his, and sighed, and

said:

"0 Sohrab, an unquiet heart is thine!
Canst thou not rest among the Tartar

chiefs,
And share the battle's common chance

with us
Who love thee, but must press forever

first,

In single fight incurring single risk,
To find a father thou hast never seen?
That were far best, my son, to stay with us
Unmurmuring; in our tents, while it is

war,
And when 't is truce, then in Afrasiab's

towns.

But, if this one desire indeed rules all,
To seek out Rustum seek him not

through fight:

Seek him in peace, and carry to his arms,
O Sohrab, carry an unwounded son !
But far hence seek him, for he is not here,
For now it is not as when I was young,
When Rustum was in front of every fray:
But now he keeps apart, and sits at home,
In Seistan, with Zal, his father old.
Whether that his own mighty strength at

last

124

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Feels the abhorred approaches of old age;

Or in some quarrel with the Persian King.

There go! Thou wilt not? Yet my

heart forebodes

Danger of death awaits thee on this field.
Fain would I know thee safe and well,

though lost
To us: fain therefore send thee hence, in

peace

To seek thy father, not seek single fights
In vain: but who can keep the lion's cub
From ravening? and who govern Rustum's

son?

Go! I will grant thee what thy heart de-
sires."
So said he, and dropped Sohrab's hand,

and left
His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he

lay,

And o'er his chilly limbs his woolen coat
He passed, and tied his sandals on his feet,
And threw a white cloak round him, and he

took

In his right hand a ruler's staff, no sword;
And on his head he set his sheep-skin cap,
Black, glossy, curled, the fleece of Kara-

Kul;
And raised the curtain of his tent, and

called

His herald to his side, and went abroad.
The sun, by this, had risen, and cleared

the fog
From the broad Oxus and the glittering

sands:
And from their tents the Tartar horsemen

filed

Into the open plain; so Haman bade;
Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled
The host, and still was hi his lusty prune.
From their black tents, long files of horse,

they streamed:
As when, some gray November morn, the

files,
In marching order spread, of long-necked

cranes,
Stream over Casbin, and the southern

slopes

Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,
Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, south-
ward bound
For the warm Persian sea-board: so they

streamed.

The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard,
First, with black sheep-skin caps and with

long spears;

Large men, large steeds; who from Bok-
hara come
And Khiva, and ferment the milk of

mares.
Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of

the south,

The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
And those from Attruck and the Caspian

sands;
Light men, and on light steeds, who only

drink

The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who

came
From far, and a more doubtful service

owned;

The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards
And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder

hordes
Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern

waste,
Kalmuks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes

who stray
Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kir-

ghizzes,

Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere.
These all filed out from camp into the

plain.
And on the other side the Persians

formed:
First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they

seemed,

The Ilyats of Khorassan: and behind,
The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot,
Marshaled battalions bright in burnished

steel.

But Peran-Wisa with his herald came
Threading the Tartar squadrons to the

front,
And with his staff kept back the foremost

ranks.
And when Ferood, who led the Persians,

saw

That Peran-Wisa kept the Tartars back,
He took his spear, and to the front he

came,
And checked his ranks, and fixed them

where they stood.

NARRATIVE POETRY

And the old Tartar came upon the sand
Betwixt the silent hosts, and spake, and

said:
"Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars,

hear!

Let there be truce between the hosts to-
day.
But choose a champion from the Persian

lords
To fight our champion Sohrab, man to

man."

As, in the country, on a morn in June,
When the dew glistens on the pearled

ears,
A shiver runs through the deep corn for

joy-
So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa

said,
A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons

ran
Of pride and hope for Sohrab, whom they

loved.

But as a troop of peddlers, from Cabool,
Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,
That vast sky-neighboring mountain of

milk snow;
Crossing so high, that, as they mount, they

pass
Long flocks of traveling birds dead on the

snow,
Choked by the air, and scarce can they

themselves
Slake their parched throats with sugared

mulberries
In single file they move, and stop their

breath,
For fear they should dislodge the o'er-

hanging snows
So the pale Persians held their breath with

fear.
And to Ferood his brother chiefs came

To counsel. Gudurz and Zoarrah came,
And Feraburz, who ruled the Persian host
Second, and was the uncle of the King:
These came and counseled; and then

Gudurz said:

" Ferood, shame bids us take their chal-
lenge up,
Yet champion have we none to match this

youth.
He has the wild stag's foot, the lion's heart.

But Rustum came last night; aloof he sits
And sullen, and has pitched his tents apart:
Him will I seek, and carry to his ear
The Tartar challenge, and this young

man's name.

Haply he will forget his wrath, and fight,
Stand forth the while, and take their chal-
lenge up."
So spake he; and Ferood stood forth and

cried:

"Old man, be it agreed as thou hast said.

Let Sohrab arm, and we will find a man."

He spake; and Peran-Wisa turned, and

strode
Back through the opening squadrons to his

tent.
But through the anxious Persians Gudurz

ran,
And crossed the camp which lay behind,

and reached,
Out on the sands beyond it, Rustum's

tents.
Of scarlet cloth they were, and glittering

gay,
Just pitched: the high pavilion in the

midst
Was Rustum's, and his men lay camped

around.
And Gudurz entered Rustum's tent, and

found
Rustum: his morning meal was done, but

still
The table stood before him, charged with

food

A side of roasted sheep, and cakes of bread,
And dark green melons; and there Rustum

sate

Listless, and held a falcon on his wrist,
And played with it; but Gudurz came and

stood
Before him; and he looked, and saw him

stand;
And with a cry sprang up, and dropped the

bird,
And greeted Gudurz with both hands, and

said:
"Welcome! these eyes could see no

better sight.
What news? but sit down first, and eat and

drink."
But Gudurz stood in the tent-door, and

said:

126

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"Not now: a time will come to eat and

drink,

But not to-day: to-day has other needs.
The armies are drawn out, and stand at

gaze:

For from the Tartars is a challenge brought
To pick a champion from the Persian lords
To fight their champion and thou know'st

his name

Sohrab men call him, but his birth is hid.
O Rustum, like thy might is this young

man's!

He has the wild stag's foot, the lion's heart.
And he is young, and Iran's chiefs are old,
Or else too weak; and all eyes turn to thee.
Come down and help us, Rustum, or we

lose."
He spoke: but Rustum answered with a

smile:

"Go to! if Iran's chiefs are old, then I
Am older: if the young are weak, the king
Errs strangely: for the king, for Kai-

Khosroo,

Himself is young, and honors younger men,
And lets the aged molder to their graves.
Rustum he loves no more, but loves the

young
The young may rise at Sohrab's vaunts,

not I.
For what care I, though all speak Sohrab's

fame?

For would that I myself had such a son,
And not that one slight helpless girl I have,
A son so famed, so brave, to send to war,
And I to tarry with the snow-haired Zal,
My father, whom the robber Afghans vex,
And clip his borders short, and drive his

herds,

And he has none to guard his weak old age.
There would I go, and hang my armor up,
And with my great name fence that weak

old man,
And spend the goodly treasures I have

got,
And rest my age, and hear of Sohrab's

fame,
And leave to death the hosts of thankless

kings,
And with these slaughterous hands draw

sword no more."
He spoke, and smiled; and Gudurz

made reply:

"What then, O Rustum, will men say to

this,
When Sohrab dares our bravest forth, and

seeks,
Thee most of all, and thou, whom most he

seeks,
Hidest thy face? Take heed, lest men

should say,
'Like some old miser, Rustum hoards his

fame,

And shuns to peril it with younger men.' "
And, greatly moved, then Rustum made

reply:
"O Gudurz, wherefore dost thou say such

words?
Thou knowest better words than this to

say.
What is one more, one less, obscure or

famed,

Valiant or craven, young or old, to me?
Are not they mortal, am not I myself?
But who for men of naught would do great

deeds?
Come, thou shall see how Rustum hoards

his fame.
But I will fight unknown, and in plain

arms;
Let not men say of Rustum, he was

matched

In single fight with any mortal man."
He spoke, and frowned; and Gudurz

turned, and ran
Back quickly through the camp in fear and

joy.

Fear at his wrath, but joy that Rustum

came.
But Rustum strode to his tent-door, and

called
His followers in, and bade them bring his

arms,
And clad himself in steel: the arms he

chose

Were plain, and on his shield was no de-
vice,

Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold,
And from the fluted spine atopj a plume
Of horsehair waved, a scarlet horsehair

plume.
So armed, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his

horse,
Followed him, like a faithful hound, at

heel,

NARRATIVE POETRY

127

Ruksh, whose renown was noised through

all the earth,

The horse, whom Rustum on a foray once
Did in Bokhara by the river find
A colt beneath its dam, and drove him

home,
And reared him; a bright bay, with lofty

crest,
Dight with a saddle-cloth of broidered

green
Crusted with gold, and on the ground

were worked
All beasts of chase, all beasts which hunters

know:
So followed, Rustum left his tents, and

crossed

The camp, and to the Persian host ap-
peared.
And all the Persians knew him, and with

shouts
Hailed; but the Tartars knew not who he

was.

And dear as the wet diver to the eyes
Of his pale wife who waits and weeps on

shore,

By sandy Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf,
Plunging all day hi the blue waves, at night,
Having made up his tale of precious pearls,
Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands
So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came.
And Rustum to the Persian front ad-
vanced,
And Sohrab armed in Haman's tent, and

came.

And as afield the reapers cut a swath
Down through the middle of a rich man's

corn,
And on each side* are squares of standing

corn,

And in the midst a stubble, short and bare;
So on each side were squares of men, with

spears

Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand.
And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast
His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw
Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he

came.

As some rich woman, on a winter's morn,
Eyes through her silken curtains the poor

drudge
Who with numb blackened fingers makes

her fire

At cock-crow on a starlit winter's morn,
When the frost flowers the whitened win-
dow-panes
And wonders how she lives, and what the

thoughts
Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum

eyed
The unknown adventurous youth, who

from afar

Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
All the most valiant chiefs : long he perused
His spirited air, and wondered who he was.
For very young he seemed, tenderly reared;
Like some young cypress, tall, and dark,

and straight,

Which hi a queen's secluded garden throws
Its slight dark shadow on the moonlit turf,
By midnight, to a bubbling fountain's

sound

So slender Sohrab seemed, so softly reared.
And a deep pity entered Rustum's soul
As he beheld him coming; and he stood,
And beckoned to him with his hand, and

said:
"O thou young man, the air of heaven

is soft,
And warm, and pleasant; but the grave is

cold.
Heaven's air is better than the cold dead

grave.

Behold me: I am vast, and clad in iron,
And tried; and I have stood on many a

field
Of blood, and I have fought with many a

foe:
Never was that field lost, or that foe

saved.
O Sohrab, wherefore wilt thou rush on

death?
Be governed: quit the Tartar host, and

come

To Iran, and be as my son to me,
And fight beneath my banner till I die.
There are no youths in Iran brave as thou."
So he spake, mildly: Sohrab heard his

voice,

The mighty voice of Rustum; and he saw
His giant figure planted on the sand,
Sole, like some single tower, which a

chief

Hath builded on the waste in former years,
Against the robbers; and he saw that head,

128

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Streaked with its first gray hairs: hope

filled his soul;
And he ran forward and embraced his

knees,
And clasped his hand within his own and

said:
"Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own

soul!
Art thou not Rustum? Speak! art thou

not he?"
But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling

youth,
And turned away, and spake to his own

soul:
"Ah me, I muse what this young fox

may mean.

False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys.
For if I now confess this thing he asks,
And hide it not, but say, 'Rustum is here,'
He will not yield indeed, nor quit our

foes,

But he will find some pretext not to fight,
And praise my fame, and proffer courteous

gifts,

A belt or sword perhaps, and go his way.
And on a feast-day, in Afrasiab's hall,
In Samarcand, he will arise and cry
'I challenged once, when the two armies

camped

Beside the Oxus, all the Persian lords
To cope with me in single fight; but they
Shrank; only Rustum dared: then he and I
Changed gifts, and went on equal terms

away.'

So will he speak, perhaps, while men ap-
plaud.
Then were the chiefs of Iran shamed

through me."
And then he turned, and sternly spake

aloud:

"Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly ques-
tion thus
Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast

called
By challenge forth: make good thy vaunt,

or yield.
Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst

fight?
Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and

flee.
For well I know, that did great Rustum

stand

Before thy face this day, and were re-
vealed,
There would be then no talk of fighting

more.

But being what I am, I tell thee this:
Do thou record it in thine inmost soul:
Either thou shalt renounce thy vaunt,

and yield;
Or else thy bones shall strew this sand, till

winds
Bleach them, or Oxus with his summer

floods,

Oxus in summer wash them all away."
He spoke: and Sohrab answered, on his

feet:
"Art thou so fierce? Thou wilt not fright

me so.

I am no girl, to be made pale by words.
Yet this thou hast said well, did Rustum

stand
Here on this field, there were no fighting

then.
But Rustum is far hence, and we stand

here.
Begin: thou art more vast, more dread

than I,
And thou art proved, I know, and I am

young
But yet success sways with the breath of

heaven.
And though thou thinkest that thou know-

est sure
Thy victory, yet thou canst not surely

know.

For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,
Poised on the top of a huge wave of Fate,
Which hangs uncertain, to which side to

fall.

And whether it will heave us up to land,
Or whether it will roll us out to sea,
Back out to sea, to the deep waves of

death,
We know not, and no search will make us

know:

Only the event will teach us in its hour."
He spoke; and Rustum answered not,

but hurled
His spear: down from the shoulder, down

it came

As on some partridge in the corn a hawk
That long has towered in the airy clouds
Drops like a plummet : Sohrab saw it come,

NARRATIVE POETRY

129

And sprang aside, quick as a flash: the

spear
Hissed, and went quivering down into the

sand,
Which it sent flying wide: then Sohrab

threw
In turn, and full struck Rustum's shield:

sharp rang,
The iron plates rang sharp, but turned the

spear.
And Rustum seized his club, which none

but he
Could wield: an unlopped trunk it was, and

huge,
Still rough; like those which men in treeless

plains
To build them boats fish from the flooded

rivers,

Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up
By their dark springs, the wind in winter-
time

Has made in Himalayan forest wrack,
And strewn the channels with torn boughs;

so huge
The club which Rustum lifted now, and

struck
One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang

aside
Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club

came

Thundering to earth, and leapt from Rus-
tum's hand.
And Rustum followed his own blow, and

fell
To his knees, and with his fingers clutched

the sand:
And now might Sohrab have unsheathed

his sword,
And pierced the mighty Rustum while he

lay
Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with

sand:
But he looked on, and smiled, nor bared

his sword,
But courteously drew back, and spoke, and

said:
"Thou strik'st too hard: that club of

thine will float
Upon the summer-floods, and not my

bones.
But rise, and be not wroth; not wroth

am I:

No, when I see thee, wrath forsakes my
soul.

Thou say'st thou art not Rustum: be it so.

Who art thou then, that canst so touch my
soul?

Boy as I am, I have seen battles too;

Have waded f oremost in their bloody waves,

And heard their hollow roar of dying men;

But never was my heart thus touched be-
fore.

Are they from heaven, these softenings of
the heart?

O thou old warrior, let us yield to heaven !

Come, plant we here hi earth our angry
spears,

And make a truce, and sit upon this sand,

And pledge each other in red wine, like
friends,

And thou shalt talk to me of Rustum's
deeds.

There are enough foes in the Persian host

Whom I may meet, and strike, and feel no
pang;

Champions enough Afrasiab has, whom
thou

Mayst fight; fight them, when they con-
front thy spear.

But oh, let there be peace 'twixt thee and
me!"

He ceased: but while he spake, Rustum
had risen,

And stood erect, trembling with rage: his
club

He left to lie, but had regained his spear,

Whose fiery point now in his mailed right-
hand

Blazed bright and baleful, like that au-
tumn star,

The baleful sign of fevers: dust had soiled

His stately crest, and dimmed his glittering
arms.

His breast heaved; his lips foamed; and
twice his voice

Was choked with rage: at last these words

broke way:

"Girl! nimble with thy feet, not with
thy hands!

Curled minion, dancer, coiner of sweet
words!

Fight; let me hear thy hateful voice no
more!

Thou art not in Afrasiab's gardens now

130

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

With Tartar girls, with whom thou art

wont to dance;

But on the Oxus sands, and in the dance
Of battle, and with me, who make no play
Of war: I fight it out, and hand to hand.
Speak not to me of truce, and pledge, and

wine!

Remember all thy valor; try thy feints
And cunning: all the pity I had is gone:
Because thou hast shamed me before both

the hosts
With thy light skipping tricks, and thy

girl's wiles."
He spoke: and Sohrab kindled at his

taunts,
And he too drew his sword: at once they

rushed

Together, as two eagles on one prey
Come rushing down together from the

clouds,
One from the east, one from the west:

their shields

Dashed with a clang together, and a din
Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcut-
ters

Make often in the forest's heart at morn,
Of hewing axes, crashing trees: such blows
Rustum and Sohrab on each other hailed.
And you would say that sun and stars took

part

In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud
Grew suddenly in heaven, and darked the

sun

Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose
Under their feet, and moaning swept the

plain,

And hi a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair.
In gloom they twain were wrapped, and

they alone;
For both the on-looking hosts on either

hand
Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was

pure,

And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream.
But in the gloom they fought, with blood-
shot eyes
And laboring breath; first Rustum struck

the shield

Which Sohrab held stiff out: the steel-
spiked spear
Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach

the skin,

And Rustum plucked it back with angry

groan.
Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rus-

tum's helm,
Nor clove its steel quite through; but all

the crest
He shore away, and that proud horsehair

plume,

Never till now defiled, sank to the dust;
And Rustum bowed his head; but then

the gloom

Grew blacker: thunder rumbled in the air,
And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh,

the horse,
Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful

cry:

No horse's cry was that, most like the roar
Of some pained desert lion, who all day
Hath trailed the hunter's javelin in his

side,

And comes at night to die upon the sand:
The two hosts heard that cry, and quaked

for fear,

And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream.
But Sohrab heard, and quailed not, but

rushed on,
And struck again; and again Rustum

bowed
His head; but this time all the blade, like

glass,

Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm,
And in his hand the hilt remained alone.
Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful

eyes
Glared, and he shook on high his menacing

spear,
And shouted, "Rustum!" Sohrab heard

that shout,
And shrank amazed: back he recoiled one

step,

And scanned with blinking eyes the ad-
vancing form:
And then he stood bewildered; and he

dropped
His covering shield, and the spear pierced

his side.
He reeled, and staggering back, sank to

the ground.
And then the gloom dispersed, and the

wind fell,
And the bright sun broke forth, and melted

all

NARRATIVE POETRY

The cloud; and the two armies saw the

pair;

Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet,
And Sohrab, wounded, on the bloody sand.
Then with a bitter smile, Rustum

began:
"Sohrab, thou thoughtest in thy mind to

kill

A Persian lord this day, and strip his corpse
And bear thy trophies to Afrasiab's tent.
Or else that the great Rustum would

come down
Himself to fight, and that thy wiles

would move

His heart to take a gift, and let thee go.
And then that all the Tartar host would

praise
Thy courage or thy craft, and spread thy

fame,

To glad thy father in his weak old age.
Fool! thou art slam, and by an unknown

man!

Dearer to the red jackals shalt thou be,
Than to thy friends, and to thy father

old."

And, with a fearless mien, Sohrab re-
plied:
' Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is

vain.
Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful

man!

No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart.
For were I matched with ten such men as

thee,

And I were he who till to-day I was,
They should be lying here, I standing

there

But that beloved name unnerved my arm
That name, and something, I confess, in

thee,
Which troubles all my heart, and made my

shield
Fall; and thy spear transfixed an unarmed

foe,
And now thou boastest, and insult'st my

fate.
But hear thou this, fierce man, tremble to

hear!
The mighty Rustum shall avenge my

death!
My father, whom I seek through all the

world,

He shall avenge my death, and punish

thee!"
As when some hunter in the spring hath

found

A breeding eagle sitting on her nest,
Upon the craggy isle of a hill-lake,
And pierced her with an arrow as she

rose,

And followed her to find her where she fell
Far off; anon her mate comes winging

back

From hunting, and a great way off descries
His huddling young left sole; at that, he

checks

His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps
Circles above his eyry, with loud screams
Chiding his mate back to her nest; but

she

Lies dying, with the arrow in her side,
In some far stony gorge out of his ken,
A heap of fluttering feathers: never more
Shall the lake glass her, flying over it;
Never the black and dripping precipices
Echo her stormy scream as she sails by:
As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his

loss
So Rustum knew not his own loss, but

stood

Over his dying son, and knew him not.
But with a cold, incredulous voice, he

said:

" What prate is this of fathers and revenge?
The mighty Rustum never had a son."

And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied:
"Ah, yes, he had! and that lost son am I.
Surely the news will one day reach his ear,
Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries

long,
Somewhere, I know not where, but far

from here;
And pierce him like a stab, and make him

leap

To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee.
Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only

son!

What will that grief, what will that ven-
geance be!

Oh, could I live, till I that grief had seen !
Yet him I pity not so much, but her,
My mother, who hi Ader-baijan dwells
With that old king, her father, who grows

gray

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

With age, and rules over the valiant

Koords.

Her most I pity, who no more will see
Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp,
With spoils and honor, when the war is

done.

But a dark rumor will be bruited up,
From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear;
And then will that defenceless woman learn
That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more;
But that in battle with a nameless foe,
By the far distant Oxus, he is slain."
He spoke; and as he ceased he wept

aloud,

Thinking of her he left, and his own death.
He spoke; but Rustum listened, plunged in

thought.

Nor did he yet believe it was his son
Who spoke, although he called back names

he knew;

For he had had sure tidings that the babe,
Which was in Ader-baijan born to him,
Had been a puny girl, no boy at all:
So that sad mother sent him word, for fear
Rustum should seek the boy, to train in

arms;

And so he deemed that either Sohrab took,
By a false boast, the style of Rustum's

son;

Or that men gave it him, to swell his fame.
So deemed he; yet he listened, plunged in

thought;

And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide
Of the bright rocking ocean sets to shore
At the full moon: tears gathered in his

eyes;

For he remembered his own early youth,
And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn,
The shepherd from his mountain-lodge

descries

A far, bright city, smitten by the sun,
Through many rolling clouds; so Rustum

saw
His youth; saw Sohrab's mother, in her

bloom;
And that old king, her father, who loved

well
His wandering guest, and gave him his

fair child

With joy; and all the pleasant life they led,
They three, in that long-distant summer-

tim"

The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt
And hound, and morn on those delightful'

hills

In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth,
Of age and looks to be his own dear son,
Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand,
Like some rich hyacinth, which by the

scythe

Of an unskilful gardener has been cut,
Mowing the garden grass-plots near its

bed,

And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom,
On the mown, dying grass; so Sohrab

lay,

Lovely in death, upon the common sand.
And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and

said:

"O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son
Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well

have loved!

Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men
Have told thee false; thou art not Rus-
tum's son.
For Rustum had no son: one child he

had
But one a girl: who with her mother

now
Plies some light female task, nor dreams

of us
Of us she dreams not, nor of wounds, nor

war."
But Sohrab answered him in wrath; for

now
The anguish of the deep-fixed spear grew

fierce,

And he desired to draw forth the steel,
And let the blood flow free, and so to die;
But first he would convince his stubborn

foe

And, rising sternly on one arm, he said:
"Man, who art thou who dost deny my

words?

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men,
And falsehood, while I lived, was far from

mine.

I tell thee, pricked upon this arm I bear
That seal which Rustum to my mother

gave,
That she might prick it on the babe she

bore."

He spoke: and all the blood left Rus-
tum's cheeks;

NARRATIVE POETRY

133

And his knees tottered, and he smote his

hand,

Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand,
That the hard iron corslet clanked aloud:
And on his heart he pressed the other hand,
And in a hollow voice he spake and said:
" Sohrab, that were a proof which could

not lie.
If thou show this, then art thou Rustum's

son."
Then, with weak hasty ringers, Sohrab

loosed
His belt, and near the shoulder bared his

arm,

And showed a sign in faint vermilion points
Pricked: as a cunning workman, in Pekin,
Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain

vase,

An emperor's gift at early morn he paints,
And aU day long, and, when night comes,

the lamp
Lights up his studious forehead and thin

hands :

So delicately pricked the sign appeared
On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's

seal.
It was that Griffin, which of old reared

Zal,
Rustum's great father, whom they left to

die,

A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks.
Him that kind creature found, and reared,

and loved

Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign.
And Sohrab bared that image on his arm,
And himself scanned it long with mournful

eyes,
And then he touched it with his hand and

said:
"How say'st thou? Is that sign the

proper sign

Of Rustum's son, or of some other man's? "
He spoke: but Rustum gazed, and gazed,

and stood
Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp

cry
"O boy thy father!" and his voice

choked there.
And then a dark cloud passed before his

eyes,
And his head swam, and he sank down to

earth.

But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and

cast

His arms about his neck, and kissed his lips,
And with fond faltering fingers stroked his

cheeks,

Trying to call him back to life: and life
Came back to Rustum, and he oped his

eyes,
And they stood wide with horror; and he

seized
In both his hands the dust which lay

around,
And threw it on his head, and smirched his

hair,

His hair, and face, and beard, and glitter-
ing arms:
And strong convulsive groanings shook his

breast,
And his sobs choked him; and he clutched

his sword,

To draw it, and forever let life out.
But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his

hands,
And with a soothing voice he spake, and

said:

"Father, forbear: for I but meet to-day
The doom that at my birth was written

down

In heaven, and thou art heaven's uncon-
scious hand.

Surely my heart cried out that it was thou,
When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke

too,
I know it: but Fate trod those promptings

down

Under its iron heel; Fate, Fate engaged
The strife, and hurled me on my father's

spear.

But let us speak no more of this: I find
My father; let me feel that I have found.
Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take
My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my

cheeks,
And wash them with thy tears, and say:

'My son!'
Quick! quick! for numbered are my sands

of life,
And swift; for like the lightning to this

field

I came, and like the wind I go away
Sudden, and swift, and like a passing

wind.

134

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

But it was writ in heaven that this should

be."
So said he: and his voice released the

heart
Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth; he

cast
His arms round his son's neck, and wept

aloud,
And kissed him. And awe fell on both the

hosts
When they saw Rustum's grief: and

Ruksh, the horse,
With his head bowing to the ground, and

mane
Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute

woe

First to the one, then to the other moved
His head, as if inquiring what their grief
Might mean; and from his dark, compas-
sionate eyes,
The big warm tears rolled down, and caked

the sand.
But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and

said:
"Ruksh, now thou grievest; but O

Ruksh, thy feet
Should first have rotted on their nimble

joints,
When first they bore thy master to this

field."
But Sohrab looked upon the horse and

said:
" Is this then Ruksh? How often, in past

days,
My mother told me of thee, thou brave

steed!
My terrible father's terrible horse; and

said,
That I should one day find thy lord and

thee.

Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane.
O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I;
For thou hast gone where I shall never go,
And snuffed the breezes of my father's

home.

And thou hast trod the sands of Seistan,
And seen the river of Helmund, and the

Lake

Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself
Has often stroked thy neck, and given

thee food,
Corn in a gclden platter soaked with wine,

And said 'O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!'

but I

Have never known my grandsire's fur-
rowed face,

Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan,
Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund

stream:
But lodged among my father's foes, and

seen

Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand,
Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste,
And the black Toorkmun tents, and only

drunk

The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend,
Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their

sheep,
The northern Sir; and this great Oxus

stream

The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die."
And, with a heavy groan, Rustum be-
wailed:

"Oh, that its waves were flowing over me!
Oh, that I saw its grains of yellow silt
Roll tumbling in the current o'er my

head!"

And, with a grave mild voice, Sohrab re-
plied:
"Desire not that, my father: thou must

live.
For some are bora to do great deeds, and

live,
As some are born to be obscured, and

die.

Do thou the deeds I die too young to do,
And reap a second glory in thine age.
Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine.
But come: thou seest this great host of

men
Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not

these:
Let me entreat for them: what have they

done?
They followed me, my hope, my fame, my

star.

Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
But me thou must bear hence, not send

with them,

But carry me with thee to Seistan,
And place me on a bed, and mourn for me,
Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy

friends .
And thou must lay me in that lovely earth.

NARRATIVE POETRY

And heap a stately mound above my bones,
And plant a far-seen pillar over all;
That so the passing horseman on the waste
May see my tomb a great way off, and

cry:
'Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies

there,
Whom his great father did in ignorance

kill'

And I be not forgotten in my grave. "
And, with a mournful voice, Rustum

replied:
"Fear not; as thou hast said, Sohrab, my

son,

So shall it be; for I will burn my tents
And quit the host, and bear thee hence

with me,

And carry thee away to Seistan.
And place thee on a bed, and mourn for

thee,
With the snow-headed Zal, and all my

friends,

And I will lay thee in that lovely earth,
And heap a stately mound above thy

bones,

And plant a far-seen pillar over all:
And men shall not forget thee in thy grave.
And I will spare thy host: yea, let them go:
Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
What should I do with slaying any more?
For would that all whom I have ever

slain
Might be once more alive; my bitterest

foes,
And they who were called champions in

their time,
And through whose death I won that fame

I have;

And I were nothing but a common man,
A poor, mean soldier, and without renown;
So thou mightest live too, my son, my

son!

Or rather would that I, even I myself,
Might now be lying on this bloody sand,
Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of

thine,
Not thou of mine; and I might die, not

thou;

And I, not thou, be borne to Se'istan;
And Zal might weep above my grave, not

thine;
And say 'O son, I weep thee not too sore,

For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine

end.'
But now in blood and battles was my

youth,

And full of blood and battles is my age;
And I shall never end this life of blood. "
Then, at the point of death, Sohrab re-
plied:

"A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man!
But thou shalt yet have peace; only not

now.
Not yet: but thou shalt have it on that

day,

When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship,
Thou and the other peers of Kai Khosroo,
Returning home over the salt blue sea,
From laying thy dear master in his grave."
And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and

said:
" Soon be that day, my son, and deep that

sea!

Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure."
He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him,

and took
The spear, and drew it from his side, and

eased
His wound's imperious anguish; but the

blood

Came welling from the open gash, and life
Flowed with the stream; all down his cold

white side
The crimson torrent ran, dim now and

soiled,

Like the soiled tissue of white violets
Left, freshly gathered, on their native

bank,
By children whom their nurses call with

haste
Indoors from the sun's eye; his head

drooped low,
His limbs grew slack: motionless, white,

he lay,
White, with eyes closed, only when heavy

gasps,
Deep heavy gasps, quivering through all

his frame,
Convulsed him back to life, he opened

them.

And fixed them feebly on his father's face;
Till now all strength was ebbed; and from

his limbs
Unwillingly the spirit fled away,

136

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Regretting the warm mansion which it

left,
And youth, and bloom, and this delightful

world,

So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead:
And the great Rustum drew his horseman's

cloak
Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead

son.

As those black granite pillars, once high-
reared,

By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear
His house, now 'mid their broken flights

of steps,
Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain

side:

So, in the sand, lay Rustum by his son.
And night came down over the solemn

waste,
And the two gazing hosts, and that sole

pair,
And darkened all; and a cold fog, with

night,

Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose,
As of a great assembly loosed, and fires
Began to twinkle through the fog; for now
Both armies moved to camp, and took

their meal:

The Persians took it on the open sands
Southward, the Tartars, by the river

marge:
And Rustum and his son were left alone.

But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low

land,

Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian

waste,

Under the solitary moon: he flowed
Right for the polar star, past Orgunje,
Brimming, and bright, and large; then

sands began
To hem his watery march, and dam his

streams,
And split his currents, that for many a

league

The shorn and parceled Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy

isles;

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had,
In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,
A foiled circuitous wanderer: till at last

Tne longed-for dash of waves is heard, and
wide

His luminous home of waters opens, bright

And tranquil, from whose floor the new-
bathed stars

Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

SIDNEY LANIER (1842-1881)

THE REVENGE OF HAMISH*

IT WAS three slim does and a ten-tined

buck in the bracken lay;
And ah 1 of a sudden the sinister smell of

a man,

Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hillside and sifted along through
the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a- tremble at nostril; she was

the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the

velvet fern

She reared, and rounded her ears in turn.
Then the buck leapt up, and his head as c.
king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if

Death had the form of a deer;
And the two slim does long lazily

stretching arose,
For their day-dream slowlier came to a

close,

Till they woke and were still, breath-
bound with waiting and wonder
and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the

hillock, the hounds shot by,
The does and the ten-tined buck made a

marvellous bound,
The hounds swept after with never a

sound,

But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that
the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean
of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed
wild,

*Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

NARRATIVE POETRY

137

And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared

off with the hounds
For to drive him the deer to the lower

glen-grounds:
" I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, " in

the sight of the wife and the child."

So gayly he paced with the wife and the

child to his chosen stand;
But he hurried tall Hamish the hench-
man ahead: "Go turn,"
Cried Maclean, "if the deer seek to

cross to the burn,

Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy
back be red as thy hand."

Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of
his breath with the height of the
hill,
Was white in the face when the ten-tined

buck and the does
Drew leaping to burn- ward; huskily

rose

His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and
his legs were o'er-weak for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and

bounded away to the burn.
But Maclean never bating his watch tar-
ried waiting below;
Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for

to go

All the space of an hour; then he went, and
his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and

shrunken the eye-balls shone,
As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it

were shame to see.
"Now, now, grim henchman, what is 't

with thee?"

Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as
a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made

out," spoke Hamish, full mild,
"And I ran for to turn, but my breath it

was blown, and they passed;
I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me

my fast."

Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck
in the si^ht of the wife and the child

"I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not

wrought me a snail's own wrong!"

Then he sounded, and down came kins*'

men and clansmen all:
"Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let

fall,

And reckon no stroke if the blood follow
not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his

strokes; at the last he smiled.
"Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean,

" for it still may be,
If a slimmer-paunched henchman will

hurry with me,

I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift
to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path

and that; and over the hill
Sped Maclean with an outward wrath

for an inward shame;
And that place of the lashing full quiet

became;

And the wife and the child stood sad; and
bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick

about and about turns he.
"There is none betwixt me and the crag-
top!" he screams under breath.
Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,
He snatches the child from the mother, and
clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb,

and her heart goes dead for a space,

Till the motherhood, mistress of death,

shrieks, shrieks through the glen,
And that place of the lashing is live with

men,

And Maclean, and the gillie that told him,
i dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-
glance reveals all the tale untold.
They follow mad Hamish afar up the

crag toward the sea,
And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for

a fee!

Yon castle and lands to the two first hands
that shall hook him and hold

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"Fast Hamish back from the brink !"-

and ever she flies up the steep,
And the clansmen pant, and they sweat,

and they jostle and strain.
But, mother, 't is vain; but, father, 't is

vain;

Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink,
and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men th'at run,

and they all stand still.
And the wife prays Hamish as if he were

God, on her knees,
Crying: "Hamish! Hamish! but please,

but please

For to spare him!" and Hamish still
dangles the child, with a wavering
will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk

scream, and a gibe, and a song,
Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in

sight of ye all,
Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall

fall,

And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow
not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to

his lip that his tooth was red,
Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay,

but it never shall be!
Let me hurl off the damnable hound in

the sea!"

But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the
child from the sea, if dead?

"Say yea! Let them lash me, Hamish?"
-"Nay!" "Husband, the lashing
will heal;
But, oh, who will heal me the bonny

sweet bairn in his grave?
Could ye cure me my heart with the

death of a knave?

Quick! Love! I will bare thee so
kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan
slowly to kneel

With never a word, till presently down-
ward he jerked to the earth.
Then the henchman he that smote
Hamish would tremble and lag;
"Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full

stern, from the crag;

Then he struck him, and "One!" sang
Hamish, and danced with the child
in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish; he
counted each stroke with a
song.
When the last stroke fell, then he moved

him a pace down the height,
And he held forth the child in the heart-
aching sight

Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave,
as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched

out with the thanksgiving prayer

And there as the mother crept up with a

fearful swift pace,
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's

face

In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and
lifted the child in the air

And sprang with the child in his arms from

the horrible height in the sea,
Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the

wind-rush; and pallid Maclean,
Age-feeble with anger and impotent

pain,

Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and
locked hold of dead roots of a
tree,

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood
from his back drip-dripped in the
brine,
And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton

fish as he flew,
And the mother stared white on the

waste of blue,

And the wind drove a cloud to seaward,
and the sun began to shine.

(1878)

THE BALLAD
THE POPULAR BALLAD

The ancient English and Scottish ballads have descended to us from oral tradition as an outgrowth
of what was probably the composition of simple songs with refrain by our ancestors as they sat around
a fire and sang or chanted to each other. Slowly these little narrative poems grew more complex until
they attained the form in which they have been preserved. The Robin Hood cycle of ballads is grouped
about the fortunes of the popular outlaw hero who robbed fat abbots, shot the king's deer, and assisted
the poor and needy with open hand. The swift dramatic power of all the genuine popular ballads should
be noted.

Some striking parallels to the original three hundred and five genuine British ballads which have
been recently discovered in the mountains of Virginia show how persistently the early cultural associa-
tions of England remained in their primitive purity in these mountainous regions of our own South.

Two modern imitations of the popular ballad are here printed for the sake of a comparison between
the method of primitive art and conscious art in handling similar themes.

EDWARD

"WHY dois your brand sae drap wi bluid,

Edward, Edward,
Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid,

And why sae sad gang yee 0?"
"O I hae killed my hauke sae guid,

Mither, mither,

O I hae killed my hauke sae guid,
And I had nae mair bot hee 0."

"Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,
Edward, Edward,
Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,

My deir son I teU thee O."
"01 hae killed my reid-roan steid,

Mither, mither,

O I hae killed my reid-roan steid,
That erst was sae fair and frie O."

" Your steid was auld, and ye hae got mair,

Edward, Edward,
Your steid was auld, and ye hae got mair,

Sum other dule ye drie 0."
"O I hae killed my fadir deir,

Mither, mither,
I hae killed my fadir deir,
Alas, and wae is mee O!"

"And whatten penance wul ye drie for
that,

Edward, Edward,

And whatten penance will ye drie for that?

My deir son, now tell me O."
"He set my feit in yonder boat,

Mither, mither,
He set my feit in yonder boat,

And He fare ovir the sea O."

"And what wul ye doe wi your towirs
and your ha,

Edward, Edward?
And what wul you doe wi your towirs and

your ha,

That were sae fair to see O?"
"He let thame stand tul they doun fa,

Mither, mither,

He let thame stand tul they doun fa,
For here nevir mair maun I bee 0."

"And what wul ye leive to your bairns
and your wife,

Edward, Edward?
And what wul ye leive to your bairns and

your wife,

Whan ye gang ovir the sea O? "
"The warldis room, late them beg thrae life,

Mither, mither,

The warldis room, late them beg thrae life,
For thame nevir mair wul I see O."

"And what wul ye leive to your ain
mither deir,

Edward, Edward?

139

140

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

And what wul ye leive to your ain mither

deir?

My deir son, now tell me 0."
"The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir,
Mither, mither,

The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me 0."

THE THREE RAVENS

THERE were three ravens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe,

There were three ravens sat on a tree,
With a downe,

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

They were as blacke as they might be.
With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie,
downe, downe.

The one of them said to his mate,
"Where shall we our breakfast take? "

"Downe in yonder greene field

There lies a knight slain under his shield.

"His hounds they lie down at his feete,
So well they can their master keepe.

"His haukes they flie so eagerly,
There's no fowle dare him come nie."

Downe there comes a fallow doe,
As great with young as she might goe.

She lif t up his bloudy hed,

And kist his wounds that were so red.

She got him up upon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake.

She buried him before the prime,

She was dead herselfe ere even-song time.

God send every gentleman
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a
leman.

THOMAS RYMER

TRUE Thomas lay oer yond grassy bank,

And he beheld a ladie gay,
A ladie that was brisk and bold,

Come riding oer the fernie brae.

Her skirt was of the grass-green silk,

Her mantle of the velvet fine,
At ilka tett of her horse's mane

Hung fifty silver bells and nine.

True Thomas he took off his hat
And bowed him low down till his knee:

"All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!
For your peer on earth I never did see."

"O no, O no, True Thomas," she says,
"That name does not belong to me;

I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
And I'm come here for to visit thee.

"Harp and carp, Thomas," she said,

"Harp and carp along wi me;
But if ye dare to kiss my lips,

Sure of your bodie I will be."

"Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunton me;"

Syne he has kissed her rosy lips
All underneath the Eildon Tree.

"But ye maun go wi me now, Thomas,
True Thomas, ye maun go wi me,

For ye maun serve me seven years,
Thro weel or wae as may chance to be."

She turned about her milk-white steed,
And took True Thomas up behind,

And aye when eer her bridle rang,
The steed flew swifter than the wind.

For forty days and forty nights
He wade thro red blude to the knee,

And he saw neither sun nor moon,
But heard the roaring of the sea.

O they rade on and further on,
Until they came to a garden green:

"Light down, light down, ye ladie free,
Some of that fruit let me pull to thee."

"O no, O no, True Thomas," she says,
"That fruit maun not betouched-bythee,

For a' the plagues that are in hell
Light on the fruit of this countrie.

"But I have a loaf here in my lap,
Likewise a bottle of claret wine,

THE BALLAD

141

And here ere we go farther on,

We'll rest a while, and ye may dine."

When he had eaten and drunk his fill,
"Lay down your head upon my knee,"

The lady sayd, "ere we climb yon hill,
And I will show you ferlies three.

"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi thorns and briers?

That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.

"And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across yon lillie leven?

That is the path of wickedness,

Tho some call it the road to heaven.

"And see ye not that bonny road,
Which winds about the femie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland,

Where you and I this night maun gae.

"But Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,
Whatever ye may hear or see,

For ginae word you should chance to speak,
You will neer get back to your ain
countrie."

He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair of shoes of velvet green,

And till seven years were past and gone
True Thomas on earth was never seen.

SIR PATRICK SPENS

THE king sits hi Dumferling toune,
Drinking the blude-reid wine:

"O whar will I get guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine? "

Up and spak an eldern knicht,

Sat at the kings richt kne:
"Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,

That sails upon the se."

The king has written a braid letter,

And signd it wi his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,

Was walking on the sand.

The first line that Sir Patrick red,
A loud lauch lauched he;

The next line that Sir Patrick red,
The teir blinded his ee.

"O wha is this has don this deid,

This ill deid don to me,
To send me out this time o' the yeir,

To sail upon the se!

" Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,,
Our guid schip sails the morne:"

"O say na sae, my master deir,
For I feu* a deadlie storme.

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi the auld moone in hir arme,

And I feir, I feu-, my deir master,
That we will cum to harme."

our Scots nobles wer richt laith
To weet then- cork-heild schoone;

Bot lang owre a' the play wer playd,
Thair hats they swam aboone.

O lang, lang may their ladies sit,
Wi thair fans into their hand,

Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spence
Cum sailing to the land.

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,
Wi thair gold kerns in their hair,

Waiting for thar ain deir lords,
For they'll see thame na mair.

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,

It 's fif tie fadom deip,
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,

Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

BONNY BARBARA ALLAN*

IT WAS in and about the Martinmas time,
When the green leaves were a falling,

That Sir John Graeme, in the West

Country,
Fell in love with Barbara Allan.

He sent his man down through the town,
To the place where she was dwelling:

This ballad is one of about seventy-six which have been
found surviving in the United States. _ An ^interesting version,
coming from Buchanan County, Virginia, in which the dying
lover defends himself against the reproach of having slighted
his sweetheart, is quoted in an article, Ballads Surviving in the
United States, in the January, 1916, Musical Quarterly, by Dr.
C. Alphonso Smith.

142

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"O haste and come to my master dear,
Gin ye be Barbara Allan."

O hooly, hooly rose she up,
To the place where he was lying,

And when she drew the curtain by,
"Young man, I think you 're dying."

"O it's I'm sick, and very, very sick,
And 't is a' for Barbara Allan:"

"0 the better for me ye 's never be,
Tho your heart's blood were a spilling.

"0 dinna ye mind, young man," said she,
"When ye was in the tavern a drinking,

That ye made the healths gae round and

round,
And slighted Barbara Allan?"

He turnd his face unto the wall,
And death was with him dealing:

"Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all,
And be kind to Barbara Allan."

And slowly, slowly raise she up,

And slowly, slowly left him,
And sighing said, she could not stay,

Since death of life had reft him.

She had not gane a mile but twa,
When she heard the dead-bell ringing,

And every jow that the dead-bell geid,
It cryd, Woe to Barbara Allan!

"O mother, mother, make my bed!

make it saft and narrow!
Since my love died for me to-day,

I'll die for him to-morrow."

JOHNIE ARMSTRONG

THERE dwelt a man in faire Westmerland,
Jonne Armestrong men did him call,

He had nither lands nor rents coming in,
Yet he kept eight score men in his hall.

He had horse and harness for them all,
Goodly steeds were all milke-white;

O the golden bands an about their necks,
And their weapons, they were all alike.

Newes then was brought unto the king
That there was sicke a won as hee,

That lived lyke a bold out-law,
And robbed all the north country.

The king he writt an a letter then,
A letter which was large and long;

He signed it with his owne hand,
And he promised to doe him no wrong.

When this letter came Jonne untill,
His heart was as blyth as birds on tht

tree:

"Never was I sent for before any king,
My father, my grandfather, nor now
but mee.

"And if wee goe the king before,
I would we went most orderly;

Every man of you shall have his scarlet

cloak,
Laced with silver laces three.

"Every won of you shall have his velvett
coat,

Laced with silver lace so white;
O the golden bands an about your necks,

Black hatts, white feathers, all alyke."

By the morrow morninge at ten of the clock,
Towards Edenburough gon was hee,

And with him all his eight score men;
Good lord, it was a goodly sight for to
see!

When Jonne came befower the king,

He fell downe on his knee;
"O pardon, my soveraine leige," he said,

"O pardon my eight score men and
mee."

"Thou shalt have no pardon, thou traytor

strong,

For thy eight score men nor thee;
For to-morrow morning by ten of the clock,
Both thou and them shall hang on the
gallow-tree."

But Jonne looked over his left shoulder,
Good Lord, what a grevious look looked
hee!

Saying, "Asking grace of a graceles face-
Why there is none for you nor me."

THE BALLAD

143

But Jonne had a bright sword by his side,
And it was made of the mettle so free,

That had not the king stept his foot aside,
He had smitten his head from his faire
bodde.

Saying, "Fight on, my merry men all,
And see that none of you be taine;

For rather than men shall say we were

hangd,
Let them report how we were slaine."

Then, God wott, faire Eddenburrough rose,
And so besett poore Jonne rounde,

That fower score and tenn of Jonnes best

men
Lay gasping all upon the ground.

Then like a mad man Jonne laide about,
And like a mad man then fought hee,

Untill a fake Scot came Jonne behinde,
And runn him through the faire boddee.

Saying, "Fight on, my merry men all,
I am a little hurt, but I am not slain;

I will lay me down for to bleed a while,
Then I 'le rise and fight with you again."

Newes then was brought to young Jonne

Armestrong,

As he stood by his nurses knee,
Who vowed if ere he lived for to be a man,
O the treacherous Scots revengd hee 'd
be.

THE DAEMON LOVER

"O WHERE have you been, my long, long
love,

This long seven years and mair?"
"O I'm come to seek my former vows

Ye granted me before."

"O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For they will breed sad strife; .

hold your tongue of your former vows,
For I am become a wife."

He turned him right and round about,

And the tear blinded his ee:
"I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground,

If it had not been for thee.

"I might hae had a king's daughter,

Far, far beyond the sea;
I might have had a king's daughter,

Had it not been for love o thee."

"If ye might have had a king's daughter,

Yersel ye had to blame;
Ye might have had taken the king's
daughter,

For ye kend that I was nane.

"If I was to leave my husband dear,
And my two babes also,

what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go? "

" I hae seven ships upon the sea
The eighth brought me to land

With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand."

She has taken up her two little babes,
Kissd them baith cheek and chin:

"0 fair ye weel, my ain two babes,
For I'll never see you again."

She set her foot upon the ship,
No mariners could she behold;

But the sails were o the taffetie,
And the masts o the beaten gold.

She had not sailed a league, a league.

A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,

And drumlie grew his ee.

They had not sailed a league, a league,

A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,

And she wept right bitterlie.

"O hold your tongue of your weeping,"

says he,
"Of your weeping now let me be;

1 will shew you how the lilies grow

On the banks of Italy."

"O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills,
That the sun shines sweetly on?"

"O yon are the hills of heaven," he said,
"Where you will never win."

144

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"O whaten a mountain is yon," she said,
"All so dreary wi frost and snow?"

"O yon is the mountain of hell," he cried,
"Where you and I will go."

He strack the tap-mast wi his hand,

The fore-mast wi his knee,
And he brake that gallant ship in twain,

And sank her in the sea.

ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE

WHEN shawes beene sheene, and shradds
full fayre,

And leeves both large and longe,
It is merry, walking in the fayre fforrest,

To heare the small birds songe.

The woodweele sang, and wold not cease,

Amongst the leaves a lyne;
And it is by two wight yeomen,

By deare God, that I meane.

"Me thought they did mee beate and
binde,

And tooke my bo we mee froe;
If I bee Robin alive in this lande,

I 'le be wrocken on both them towe."

"Sweavens are swift, master," quoth
John,

"As the wind that blowes ore a hill;
Ffor if itt be never soe lowde this night,

To-morrow it may be still."

"Buske yee, bowne yee, my merry men
all,

Ffor John shall goe with mee;
For I 'le goe seeke yond wight yeomen

In greenwood where they bee."

They cast on their gowne of greene,

A shooting gone are they,
Until they came to the merry greenwood,

Where they had gladdest bee;
There were they ware of a wight yeoman,

His body leaned to a tree.

A sword and a dagger he wore by his side,
Had beene many a mans bane,

And he was cladd in his capull-hyde,
Topp, and tayle, and mayne.

"Stand you still, master," quoth Litle
John,

"Under this trusty tree,
And I will goe to yond wight yeoman,

To know his meaning trulye."

"A, John, by me thou setts noe store,

And that's a ffarley thinge;
How off t send I my men beffore,

And tarry my-selfe behinde?

"It is noe cunning a knave to ken;

And a man but heare him speake
And itt were not for bursting of my bowe,

John, I wold thy head breake."

But often words they breeden bale;

That parted Robin and John.
John is gone to Barnesdale,

The gates he knowes eche one.

And when hee came to Barnesdale,
Great heavinesse there hee hadd;

He ffound two of his fellowes
Were slaine both in a slade,

And Scarlett a-ffoote flyinge was,

Over stockes and stone,
For the sheriffe with seven score men

Fast after him is gone.

" Yett one shoote I 'le shoote," sayes Litle
John,

"With Crist his might and mayne;
I 'le make yond fellow that flyes soe fast

To be both glad and ffaine."

John bent up a good veiwe bow,

And ffetteled him to shoote;
The bow was made of a tender boughe,

And fell downe to his foote.

"Woe worth thee, wicked wood," sayd
Litle John,

"That ere thou grew on a tree!
Ffor this day thou art my bale,

My boote when thou shold bee!"

This shoote it was but looselye shott,

The arrowe flew in vaine,
And it mett one of the sheriff es men;

Good William a Trent was slaine.

THE BALLAD

It had beene better for William a Trent

To hange upon a gallowe
Then for to lye in the greenwoode,

There slaine with an arrowe.

And it is sayd, when men be mett,

Six can doe more than three:
And they have tane Litle John,

And bound him ffast to a tree.

"Thou shalt be drawen by dale and
downe," quoth the sheriffe,

"And hanged hye on a hill:"
" But thou may ffayle," quoth Litle John,

"If itt be Christs owne will."

Let us leave talking of Litle John,
For hee is bound fast to a tree,

And talke of Guy and Robin Hood
In the green woode where they bee.

How these two yeomen together they mett,

Under the leaves of lyne,
To see what marchandise they made

Even at that same time.

"Good morrow, good fellow," quoth Sir

Guy;
"Good morrow, good ffellow," quoth

hee;
"Methinkes by this bow thou beares in

thy hand,
A good archer thou seems to bee."

"I am wilfull of my way," quoth Sir

Guye,

"And of my morning tyde:"
"Tie lead the'e through the wood," quoth

Robin,
"Good ffellow, I 'le be thy guide."

"I seeke an outlaw," quoth Sir Guye,

"Men call him Robin Hood;
I had rather meet with him upon a day

Than forty pound of golde."

"If you tow mett, itt wold be scene
whether were better

Afore yee did part awaye;
Let us some other pastime find,

Good ffellow, I thee prav.

"Let us some other masteryes make,
And wee will walke in the woods even;

Wee may chance meet with Robin Hoode
Att some unsett steven."

They cutt them downe the summer
shroggs

Which grew both under a bryar,
And sett them three score rood in twinn,

To shoote the prickes full neare.

"Leade on, good ffellow," sayd Sir Guye,

"Lead on, I doe bidd thee:"
"Nay, by my faith," quoth Robin Hood,

"The leader thou shalt bee."

The first good shoot that Robin ledd,
Did not shoote an inch the pricke ffroe;

Guy was an archer good enoughe,
But he cold neere shoote soe.

The second shoote, Sir Guy shott,
He shott within the garlande;

But Robin Hoode shott it better than

hee,
For he clove the good pricke-wande.

" Gods blessing on thy heart! " sayes Guye,
"Goode ffellow, thy shooting is goode;

For an thy hart be as good as thy hands,
Thou were better then Robin Hood.

"Tell me thy name, good ffellow," quoth
Guy,

"Under the leaves of lyne:"
"Nay, by my faith," quoth good Robin,

"Till thou have told me thine."

"I dwell by dale and downe," quoth
Guye,

"And I have done many a curst turne;
And he that calles me by my right name,

Calles me Guye of good Gysborne."

"My dwelling is in the wood," sayes
Robin ;

"By thee I set right nought;
My name is Robin Hood of Barnesdale,

A ffellow thou has long sought."

He that had neither beene a kithe nor kin
Might have scene a full fayre sight,

I 4 6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

To see how together these yeomen went,
With blades both browne and bright;

To have seene how these yeomen together
fought

Two howers of a summers day;
Itt was neither Guy nor Robin Hood

That ffettled them to flye away.

Robin was reacheles on a roote,

And stumbled at that tyde,
And Guy was quicke and nimble withall,

And hitt him ore the left side.

"Ah, deere Lady!" sayd Robin Hoode,
"Thou art both mother and may!

I thinke it was never mans destinye
To dye before his day."

Robin thought on Our Lady deere,

And soone leapt up againe,
And thus he came with an awkwarde
stroke;

Good Sir Guy hee has slayne.

He tooke Sir Guys head by the hayre,
And sticked itt on his bowes end:

"Thou hast beene traytor all thy liffe,
Which thing must have an ende."

Robin pulled forth an Irish kniffe,
And nicked Sir Guy in the fface,

That hee was never on a woman borne
Cold tell who Sir Guye was.

Saies, "Lye there, lye there, good Sir

Guye,

And with me be not wrothe;
If thou have had the worse stroakes at

my hand,
Thou shalt have the better cloathe."

Robin did off his gowne of greene,

Sir Guye hee did it throwe;
And hee put on that capull-hyde

That cladd him topp to toe.

"The bowe, the arrows, and litle home,

And with me now I 'le beare;
Ffor now I will goe to Barnesdale

To see how my men doe ffare."

Robin sett Guyes home to his mouth,
A lowd blast in it he did blow;

That beheard the sheriffe of Nottingham,
As he leaned under a lowe.

"Hearken! hearken!" sayd the sheriffe,
"I heard noe ty dings but good;

For yonder I heare Sir Guyes home

blowe,
For he hath slaine Robin Hoode.

"For yonder I heare Sir Guyes home
blow,

Itt blowes soe well in tyde,
For yonder comes that wighty yeoman,

Cladd in his capull-hyde.

" Come hither, thou good Sir Guy,

Aske of mee.what thou wilt have:"
"I'le none of thy gold," sayes Robin

Hood,
"Nor I 'le none of itt have.

"But now I have slaine the master," he
sayd,

"Let me goe strike the knave;
This is all the reward I aske,

Nor noe other will I have."

"Thou art a madman," said the shiriffe,
"Thou sholdest have had a knights
ffee;

Seeing thy asking hath beene soe badd,
Well granted it shall be."

But Litle John heard his master speake,
Well he knew that was his Steven ;

"Now shall I be loset," quoth Litle

John,
"With Christs might in heaven."

But Robin hee hyed him towards Litle
John,

Hee thought hee wold loose him belive;
The sheriffe and all his companye

Fast after him did drive.

"Stand abacke! stand abacke!" sayd
Robin;

"Why draw you mee soe neere?
Itt was never the use in our countrye

Ones shrift another shold heere."

THE BALLAD

147

But Robin pulled forth an Irysh kniffe,
And losed John hand and ffoote,

And gave him Sir Guyes bow in his hand,
And bade it be his boote.

Hut John tooke Guyes bow in his hand
His arrowes were rawstye by the roote;

The sherriffe saw Litle John draw a bow
And iTettlc him to shoote.

Towards his house in Nottingam

He ffled full fast away,
And soe did all his companyc,

Not one behind did stay.

But he cold neither soe fast goe,

Nor away soe fast runn,
But Litle John, with an arrow broade,

Did cleve his heart in twinn.

MODERN IMITATIONS OF THE BALLAD

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms!

Alone and palely loitering!
The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

1 see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
K;is( willicreth too.

i met a (ady in the meads,

Full beautiful a faery's child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

Lmade a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long.

For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said-
" 1 love thee true."

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dreamed Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed

On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake

And no birds sing. (1820)

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

(1828-1882)

SISTER HELEN

"WHY did you melt your waxen man,

Sister Helen?

To-day is the third since you began."
"The time was long, yet the time ran,

Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Three days to-day, between Hell and
Heaven /)

148

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"But if you have done your work aright,

Sister Helen,

You '11 let me play, for you said I might."
"Be very still in your play to-night,

Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Third night, to-night, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,

Sister Helen;

If now it be molten, all is well."
"Even so, nay, peace! you cannot tell,

Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
what is this, between Hell and Heaven ?)

"Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,

Sister Helen;

How like dead folk he has dropped away ! "
"Nay now, of the dead what can you
say,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven ?}

"See, see, the sunken pile of wood,

Sister Helen,
Shines through the thinned wax red as

blood!"

"Nay now, when looked you yet on
blood,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven !}

"Now close your eyes, for they're sick
and sore,

Sister Helen,

And I '11 play without the gallery door."
"Aye, let me rest, I'll lie on the floor,

Little brother."
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
What rest to-night, between Hell and
Heaven ?)

"Here high up in the balcony,

Sister Helen,

The moon flies face to face with me."
"Aye, look and say whatever you see,

Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,

What sight to-night, between Hell ana
Heaven ?}

" Outside it 's merry in the wind's wake,

Sister Helen;
In the shaken trees the chill stars

shake."

"Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you
spake,

Litt'e brother?"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
What sound to-night, between Hell and
Heaven ?}

"I hear a horse-tread, and I see,

Sister Helen,

Three horsemen that ride terribly."
"Little brother, whence come the three,

Little brother? "
(O Mother, Mary Mother.
Whence should they come, between Hell
and Heaven ?}

"They come by the hill- verge from Boyne
Bar,

Sister Helen,

And one draws nigh, but two are afar."
"Look, look, do you know them who
they are,

Little brother?"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Who should they be, between Hell and
Heaven ?}

"Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,

Sister Helen,

For I know the white mane on the blast."
"The hour has come, has come at last,

Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven /)

"He has made a sign and called Halloo!

Sister Helen,
And he says that he wouM speak with

you."

"Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Why laughs she thus, between Hell and
Heaven /)

THE BALLAD

149

"The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,

Sister Helen,

That Keith of Ewern's like to die."
"And he and thou, and thou and I,
Little brother."
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
And they and we, between Hell and Heaven I)

"Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,

Sister Helen,

He sickened, and lies since then forlorn."
"For bridegroom's side is the bride a
thorn,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Cold brtdal cheer, between Hell and
Heaven !)

"Three days and nights he has lam abed,

Sister Helen,

And he prays in torment to be dead."
"The thing may chance, if he have
prayed,

Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)

"But he has not ceased to cry to-day,

Sister Helen,

That you should take your curse away."
"My prayer was heard, he need but
pray,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Shall God not hear between Hell and
Heaven ?)

"But he says, till you take back your
ban,

Sister Helen

His soul would pass, yet never can."
"Nay then, shall I slay a living man,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
A living sold, between Hell and Heaven!)

"But he calls for ever on your name,
Sister Helen,

And says that he melts before a flame."
" My heart for his pleasure fared the same,

Little brother."
Mother, Mary Mother,

Fire at the heart, between Hell and
Heaven !)

"Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,

Sister Helen

For I know the white plume on the blast."
"The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,

Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven ?)

"He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,

Sister Helen;
But his words are drowned in the wind's

course."

"Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear
perforce,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
What word now heard, between Hett and
Heaven ?)

"Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,

Sister Helen,

Is ever to see you ere he die."
" In all that his soul sees, there am I,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
The scnd's one sight, between Hell and
Heaven!)

"He sends a ring and a broken coin,

Sister Helen,

And bids you mind the banks of Boyne."
"What else he broke will he ever join,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
No, never joined, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"He yields you these and craves full fain,

Sister Helen,

You pardon him in his mortal pain."
" What else he took will he give again,

Little brother?"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven !)

" He calls your name in an agony,
Sister Helen,
That even dead Love must weep to see."

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

"Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Love turned to hate, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides
fast,

Sister Helen,

For I know the white hair on the blast."
"The short, short hour will soon be past,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Will soon be past, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"He looks at me and he tries to speak,

Sister Helen,

But oh! his voice is sad and weak! "
"What here should the mighty Baron
seek,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven ?}

"Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,

Sister Helen,

The body dies, but the soul shall live."
"Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven /)

"Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,

Sister Helen,

To save his dear son's soul alive."
"Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven /)

"He cries to you, kneeling in the road,

Sister Helen,

To go with him for the love of God ! "
"The way is long to his son's abode,
Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
The way is long, between Hell and Heaven /)

"A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,

Sister Helen,
So darkly clad, I saw her not."

"See her now or never see aught,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
What more to see, between Hell and Heaven ?}

"Her hood falls back, and the moon
shines fair,

Sister Helen,

On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair."
"Blest hour of my power and her despair,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did
glow,

Sister Helen,

'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago."
"One morn for pride and three days for
woe,

Little brother!"
(O Mother Mary Mother,
Three days, three nights, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"Her clasped hands stretch from her bend-
ing head,

Sister Helen;
With the loud wind's wail her sobs are

wed."

"What wedding-strains hath her bridal-
bed,

Little brother? '
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
What strain but death's, between Hell and
Heaven ?}

"She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,

Sister Helen,

She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon."
"Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe
tune,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and
Heaven /)

;

"They've caught her to Westholm's
saddle-bow,

Sister Helen,

THE BALLAD

And her moonlit hair gleams white in

its flow."
"Let it turn whiter than winter snow,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Woe-withered gold, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,

Sister Helen!

More loud than the vesper-chime it fell."
"No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
His dying knell, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
Sister Helen;

Is it in the sky or in the ground? "
"Say, have they turned their horses
round,

Little brother?"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
What would she more, between Hell and
Heaven ?}

"They have raised the old man from his
knee.

Sister Helen,

And they ride in silence hastily."
"More fast the naked soul doth flee,
Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,

The

naked soul,
Heaven /)

between Hell and

"Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,

Sister Helen,

But the lady's dark steed goes alone."
"And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath
flown,

Little brother."
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven /)

"Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
Sister Helen,

And weary sad they look by the hill."
"But he and I are sadder still,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Most sad of all, between Hell and
Heaven /)

"See, see, the wax has dropped from its
place,

Sister Helen,

And the flames are whining up apace!"
"Yet here they burn but for a space,

Little brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven /)

"Ah! what white thing at the door has
cross'd,

Sister Helen?

Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
" A soul that's lost as mine is lost,

Little Brother!"
(0 Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and

Heaven /)

(1870)

IV
LYRIC POETRY

JOLLY GOOD ALE AND OLD

BACK and side go bare, go bare;

Both foot and hand, go cold:
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,

Whether it be new or old!

I can not eat but little meat,

My stomach is not good;
But, sure, I think that I can drink

With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,

I am nothing a-cold,
I stuff my skin so full within

Of jolly good ale and old.

Back and side, go bare, go bare, etc.

(Chorus)

I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast

And a crab laid in the fire;
A little bread shall do me stead,

Much bread I not desire.
No frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,

Can hurt me if I wold,
I am so wrapt and throwly lapt

Of jolly good ale and old. (Chorus)

And Tyb, my wife, that as her life

Loveth well good ale to seek,
Full oft drinks she till ye may see

The tears run down her cheek;
Then doth she trowl to me the bowl,

Even as a malt-worm should,
And saith, "Sweet heart, I took my part

Of this jolly good ale and old." (Chorus)

Now let them drink till they nod and wink,

Even as good fellows should do;
They shall not miss to have the bliss

Good ale doth bring men to.
And all poor souls that have scoured bowls

Or have them lustily trolled,
God save the lives of them and their wives,

Whether they be young or old ! (Chorus)

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586)

SONNET xxxi

WITH how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st

the skies!

How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly

place

That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted

eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's

case,

I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace,
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of

wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they

be?

Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth

possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

GEORGE PEELE (i558?-i$97?)

SONG FROM THE ARRAIGNMENT OF PARIS

(ENONE. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,

As fak as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

PARIS. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,

As fair as any may be;
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

(EN. My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in
May,

LYRIC POETRY

And of my love my roundelay,

My merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse,
" They that do change old love for

new,
Pray gods they change for worse!"

AMBO SIMUL. They that do change, etc.

iEN. Fair and fair, etc.

PAR. Fair and fair, etc.

Thy love is fair, etc.

QEN. My love can pipe, my love can sing,
My love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring
My merry, merry roundelays,

Amen to Cupid's curse,
"They that do change," etc.

PAR. They that do change, etc.

AMBO. Fair and fair, etc.

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631)

BALLAD OF AGINCOURT

FAIR stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance;
Nor now to prove our chance

Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train

Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort,
Furnished in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt

In happy hour;
Skirmishing, day by day,
With those that stopped his way,
Where the French general lay

With all his power.

Which, in his height of pride,
King Henry to deride,
His ransom to provide,

To the King sending;
Which he neglects the while,
As from a nation vile,
Yet, with an angry smile,

Their fall portending.

And turning to his men,
Quoth our brave Henry then:
"Though they to one be ten

Be not amazed!
Yet have we well begun:
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun

By Fame been raised!

"And for myself," quoth he,
"This my full rest shall be:
England ne'er mourn for me,

Nor more esteem me!
Victor I will remain,
Or on this earth lie slain;
Never shall she sustain

Loss to redeem me!

"Poitiers and Cressy tell,
When most their pride did swell.
Under our swords they felL

No less our skill is,
Than when our Grandsire great,
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat

Lopped the French lilies."

The Duke of York so dread
The eager vanward led;
With the main, Henry sped

Amongst his henchmen;
Exeter had the rear,
A braver man not there!
O Lord, how hot they were

On the false Frenchmen!

They now to fight are gone;
Armor on armor shone;
Drum now to drum did groan:

To hear, was wonder;
That, with the cries they make*
The very earth did shake;
Trumpet to trumpet spake;

Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which didst the signal aim

To our hid forces!
When, from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly,
The English archery

Stuck the French horses.

154

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

With Spanish yew so strong;
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,

Piercing the weather.
None from his fellow starts;
But, playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,

Stuck close together.

When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilboes drew,
And on the French they flew:

Not one was tardy.
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went:

Our men were hardy.

This while our noble King,
His broad sword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,

As to o'erwhehn it.
And many a deep wound lent;
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent

Bruised his helmet.

Gloucester, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood

With his brave brother.
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden Lnight,
Yet in that furious fight

Scarce such another!

Warwick in blood did wade;
Oxford, the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made,

Still as they ran up.
Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily;

Ferrers, and Fanhope.

Upon Saint Crispin's Day
Fought was this noble fray;
Which Fame did not delay

To England to carry.
O, when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen?
Or England breed again

Such a King Harry?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

(1564-1616)

SONGS FROM THE PLAYS

FROM "LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST"

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
"Tu-whit, tu-who!" a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw.
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
"Tu-whit, tu-who!" a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

FROM "As You LIKE IT"

UNDER the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither! come hither! come hither I
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither! come hither! come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

LYRIC POETRY

Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green

hoUy:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving

mere folly:

Then, heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky!
That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot;
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! etc.

FROM "TWELFTH NIGHT"

MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love 's coming,

That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 't is not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;

What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth 's a stuff will not endure.

FROM "MEASURE FOR MEASURE"

TAKE, 0, take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again,

Bring again;
Seals of love, but sealed in vain,

Sealed hi vain!

SONNETS

XXIX

WHEN in disgrace with fortune and men's
eyes,

1 all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless
cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends

possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's

scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost de-
spising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's

gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth

brings

That then I scorn to change my state with
kings.

xxxni

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign

eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows

green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all- triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from

me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit dis-

daineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's

sun staineth.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;
But you shall shine more bright in these

contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with slut-
tish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire
shall burn

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still

find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending

doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

Like as the waves make towards the peb-
bled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes

before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being

crowned,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift

confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on

youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to

mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall

stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

LXVI

Tired with all these, for restful death I

cry

As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would

I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

LXXIII

That tune of year thou mayst in me

behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do

hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the

cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet

birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take

away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in

rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nour-
ished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love

more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave

ere long.

xcvn

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days

seen!

What old December's bareness every-
where!
And yet this time removed was summer's

time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich in-
crease,

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their lord's de-
cease:

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter 's

near.

XCVIII

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dressed in all his
trim

LYRIC POETRY

157

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped

with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet

smell

Of different flowers in odor and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where

they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of de-
light,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play.

xcix

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy

sweet that smells,
If not from my love's breath? The purple

pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion

dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly

dyed.

The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair.
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of

both

And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or color it had stol'n from thee.

civ

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three win-
ters cold

Have from the forests shook three sum-
mers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn

turned

in process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes
burned

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are
green.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure and no pace perceived ;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still
doth stand,

Hath motion and mine eye may be de-
ceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age un-
bred:

Ere you were born was beauty's summer
dead.

cvi

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's

best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have ex-
pressed

Even such a beauty as you master now-
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our tune, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining

eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to

sing:
For we, which now behold these present

days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to
praise.

cxvi

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
0, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never

shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his

height be taken.
Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips

and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and

weeks,

158

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SIR HENRY WOTTON (1568-1639)

CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE

How happy is he born and taught
That serve th not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame, or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise
Nor vice; Who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good:

Who hath his life from rumors freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend;

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.

THOMAS DEKKER (is7o?-i638?)

THE HAPPY HEART

ART thou poor, yet hast thou golden slum-
bers?

O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd?

O punishment!

Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex'd
To add to golden numbers, golden num-
bers?

O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!

Work apace, apace, apace, apace;

Honest labor bears a lovely face;
Then hey nonny nonny , hey nonny nonny !

Canst drink the waters of the crisped
spring?

O sweet content!

Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in
thine own tears?

O punishment!
Then he that patiently want's burden

bears

No burden bears, but is a king, a king!
O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labor bears a lovely face;
Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny!

BEN JONSON (iS73?-i637)
SONG TO CELIA

DRINK to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I '11 not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope, that there

It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear

Not of itself, but thee.

HYMN TO DIANA

QUEEN and Huntress, chaste and

Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair

State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellentlv bright.

fair

,YRIC POETRY

159

Earth, let not thy envious shade

Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made

Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart

And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright!

JOHN FLETCHER (1579-1625)

MELANCHOLY

HENCE, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly!
There 's naught in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,

But only melancholy;

O sweetest melancholy!

Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that 's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound!
Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon.
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy

valley;

Nothing 's so dainty sweet as lovely melan-
choly.

GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667)

THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION

SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die, because a woman 's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,

Or the flowery meads hi May!
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Should my heart be grieved or pined,

'Cause I see a woman kind?

Or a well disposed nature

Joined with a lovely feature?

Be she meeker, kinder than

Turtle dove, or pelican!
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well deserving known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her, name of best!
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?

'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool, and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think "What, with them, they would do
That, without them, dare to woo!"
And unless that mind I see,
What care I though great she be?

Great, or good, or kind, or fair,

I will ne'er the more despair!

If she love me (this believe!)

I will die, ere she shall grieve!

If she slight me, when I woo,

I can scorn, and let her go!
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?

ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674)

UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

The liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration, each way free,
O, how that glittering taketh me!

I6o

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

To THE VIRGINS TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he 's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;

For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

To DAFFODILS

FAIR Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;
As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained his noon.

Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.

We die
As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON

AH, BEN!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,

Made at the Sun,

The Dog, the Triple Tun;

Where we such clusters had,

As made us nobly wild, not mad?

And yet each verse of thine

Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock, the store
Of such a wit the world should have no
more.

JAMES SHIRLEY ^1596-1666)

THE GLORIES OF OUR BLOOD AND STATE

THE glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they

kill:

But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow;

Then boast no more your mighty

deeds;
Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor- victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

LYRIC POETRY

161

EDMUND WALLER (1606-1687)

Go LOVELY ROSE!

Go, LOVELY Rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that 's young,

And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung

In deserts, where no men abide,

Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired;

Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee;

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

JOHN MELTON (1608-1674)

SONNET (ON His BLINDNESS)

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and

wide,
And that one talent which is death to

hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul

more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning

chide,

Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?
I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies; God doth not

need
Either man's work, or his own gifts: who

best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best:

His state

Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without

rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING (1609-1642)
THE CONSTANT LOVER

OUT upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!

And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings

Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again

Such a constant lover.

But the spite on 't is, no praise

Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,

Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,

And that very face,
There had been at least ere this

A dozen dozen in her place.

WHY So PALE AND WAN?

WHY so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,

Saying nothing do 't?

Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame ! This will not move;

This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her:

The devil take her!

102

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

RICHARD LOVELACE (1618-1658)

To LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS

TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe hi the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

To ALTHEA, FROM PRISON

WHEN Love with unconfined wings

Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled hi her hair

And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air

Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round

With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,

Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief hi wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple hi the deep

Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I

With shriller throat will sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,

And glories of my king;
When I shall voice aloud how good

He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,

Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love

And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

HENRY VAUGHAN (1622-1695)

THE WORLD

I SAW Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Tune, in hours,

days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved; hi which the

world

And all her train were hurled.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain

Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,

Wit's four delights,
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of

pleasure,

Yet his dear treasure,
All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flower.

The darksome statesman, hung with

weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, moved there so

slow,

He did not stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses,

scowl

Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without

Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digged the mole, and lest his ways be

found,

Worked under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see

That policy;
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries

Were gnats and flies;

It rained about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.

The fearful miser on a heap of rust

Sat pining all his life there, did scarce

trust
His own hands with the dust,

LYTIC POETRY

163

Yet would not place one piece above, but
lives

In fear of thieves.
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,

And hugged each one his pelf;
The downright epicure placed heaven in
sense,

And scorned pretence;
While others, slipt into a wide excess,

Said little less;

The weaker sort, slight, trivial wares en-
slave,

Who think them brave;
And poor, despised Truth sat counting by

Their victory.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and

sing,
And sing and weep, soared up into the

ring;

But most would use no whig.
O fools, said I, thus to prefer dark night

Before true light!
To live in grots and caves, and hate the

day

Because it shows the way,
The way, which from this dead and dark

abode

Leads up to God;
A way there you might tread the sun,

and be

More bright then he!
But, as I did their madness so discuss,

One whispered thus
"This ring the Bridegroom did for none

provide,
But for his bride."

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

ALEXANDER'S FEAST
OR THE POWER OF Music

A SONG IN HONOR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY
I

T WAS at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;

His valiant peers were placed around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles

bound

(So should desert in arms be crowned).
The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride,
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy, pair'
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

CHORUS: Happy, happy, happy pair, etc,

Timotheus, placed on high
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,

And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above
(Such is the power of mighty love).
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spires he rode,
When he to fair Olympia pressed:
And while he sought her snowy breast,
Then round her slender waist he curled,
And stamped an image of himself, a

sovereign of the world.
The listening crowd admire the lofty

sound,

A present deity, they shout around;
A present deity the vaulted roofs re-
bound:

With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.

CHORUS: With ravished ears, etc.

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet

musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young.

Ib4

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums;
Flushed with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes,

he comes.
Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

CHORUS: Bacchus' blessings are a treas-
ure, etc.

Soothed with the sound the king grew vain;

Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice

he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise,
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And while he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand, and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,
Soft pity to infuse;
He sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,

Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed!
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor

sate,
Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

CHORUS: Revolving in his altered soul,
etc.

The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree;

'T was but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying:

If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many rend the skies with loud ap-
plause;
So love was crowned, but Music won the

cause.

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and

looked,

Sighed and looked, and sighed again;
At length, with love and wine at once

oppressed,

The vanquished victor sunk upon her
breast.

CHORUS: The prince, unable to conceal
his pain, etc.

Now strike the golden lyre again;
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of

thunder.

Hark, hark, the horrid sound
Has raised up his head;
As awaked from the dead,
And amazed, he stares around.
Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,
See the Furies arise;
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their

eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle
were slain,
And unburied remain

LYRIC POETRY

165

Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods.
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal

to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fired another
Troy.

CHORUS: And the king seized a flambeau
with zeal to destroy, etc.

Thus long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute,
Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft

desire.

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred

store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts un-
known before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.

GRAND CHORUS:
came, etc.

At last divine Cecilia
(1697)

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)

ELEGY
WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary

way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to
me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on

the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning

flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant
folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon com-
plain
Of such, as wandering near her secret

bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's

shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mould-
ering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet
sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing

Morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-
built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing

horn,

No more shall rouse them from their
lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall

burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to
share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has

broke;
How jocund did they drive their team

afield!

How bowed the woods beneath their
sturdy stroke !

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

i66

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth
e'er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the

fault,
If Memory o'er their Tomb no Trophies

raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and

fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of
praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting

breath?

Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery sooth the dull cold ear of
Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial

fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have

swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample

page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er

unroll;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean

bear;

Full many a flower is bom to blush un-
seen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert
air.

Some village-Hampden, that with daunt-
less breast

The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may

rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's
blood.

The applause of listening senates to com-
mand,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes

confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a

throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on man-
kind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to

hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous

shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's
flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble

strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to

stray;

Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their
way.

Yet even these bones from insult to pro-
tect,

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculp-
ture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the un-
lettered muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful

day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look be-
hind?

LYRIC POETRY

167

On some fond breast the parting soul re-
lies,

Some pious drops the closing eye re-
quires ;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature

cries,

Ev'n hi our Ashes live their wonted
Fires.

For thee, who mindful of the unhonored

Dead

Dost in these lines their artless tale re-
late,

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred Spirit shall inquire thy
fate,

Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of
dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding

beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so

high,
His listless length at noontide would he

stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles
by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in

scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would

rove,

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one for-
lorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hope-
less love.

"One morn I missed him on the customed

hill,
Along the heath and near his favorite

tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was
he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we

saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou can'st read)

the lay,

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged
thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame un-
known.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble

birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('t was all he
wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread
abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

HIGHLAND MARY

YE BANKS, and braes, and streams around

The castle o' Montgomery,
Green be your woods and fair your flowers,

Your waters never drumlie!
There simmer first unfauld her robes,

And there the langest tarry;
For there I took the last fareweel,

O' my sweet Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk,

How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade

I clasp'd her to my bosom!
The golden hours, on angel wings,

Flew o'er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life,

Was my sweet Highland Mary.

i68

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Wi' monie a vow and lock'd embrace

Our parting was fu' tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,

We tore oursels asunder;
But O! fell death's untimely frost,

That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green 's the sod, and cauld 's the clay,

That wraps my Highland Mary!

O, pale, pale now, those rosy lips,

I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly!
And closed for aye the sparkling glance,

That dwelt on me sae kindly!
And mould'ring now in silent dust,

That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core

Shall live my Highland Mary.

(i799)

BONIE BOON

YE FLOWERY banks o' bonie Doon,

How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou '11 break my heart, thou bonie bird,

That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o' the happy days,

When my fause luve was true.

Thou '11 break my heart, thou bonie bird,

That sings beside thy mate:
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,

And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon

To see the wood-bine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,

And sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose

Frae aff its thorny tree;
And my fause luver staw my rose

But left the thorn wi' me.

(1808)

SCOTS WHA HAE

SCOTS, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!

Now 's the day, and now 's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;
See approach proud Edward's power
Chains and slavery!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or Freeman fa',

Let him follow me !

By oppression's woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains !
We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do or die!

(i794)

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT

Is THERE, for honest poverty,

That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,

Our toils obscure, an' a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp ;
The man 's the gowd for a' that.

What tho' on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hodden-gray, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man 's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He 's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

His riband, star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

LYRIC POETRY

169

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man 's aboon his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

It 's coming yet, for a' that,

That man to man, the warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

(1800)

FROM "LINES TO JOHN LAPRAIK"

1 AM nae Poet, in a sense,

But just a Rhymer like by chance,

An' hae to learning nae pretence;

Yet what the matter?
Whene'er my Muse does on me glance,

I jingle at her.

Your critic-folk may cock their nose,
And say, "How can you e'er propose,
You wha ken hardly verse frae prose,

To mak a sang?"
But, by your leave, my learned foes

Ye 're maybe wrang.

What 's a' your jargon o' your schools,
Your Latin names for horns an' stools?
If honest nature made you fools,

What sairs your grammars?
Ye 'd better taen up spades and shools,

Or knappin-hammers.

A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirks and come out asses,

Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus

By dint o' Greek!

Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
That 's a' the learnin I desire;

Then, tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire

At pleugh or cart,

My Muse, though hamely in attire,
May touch the heart.

(1786)

To A MOUSE

ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE
PLOUGH, NOVEMBER, 1785

WEE, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
Oh, what a panic 's in thy breastie !
Thou need na start awa sae hasty

Wi' bickerin brattle!
1 wad be laith to rin an' chase thee

Wi' murd'rin pattle!

I 'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-bora companion,

An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve:
What then, poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave

'S a sma' request;
I '11 get a blessin wi' the lave,

An' never miss 't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,

0' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin

Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here beneath the blast

Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou 's turn'd out for a' thy trouble,

But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble

An' cranreuch cauldl

170

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain

For promis'd joy.

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, och! I backward cast my ee

On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,

I guess an' fear!

(1786)

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

(1770-1850)

THE PRELUDE
FROM BOOK I

WISDOM and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought,
That givest to forms and images a

breath

And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first

dawn

Of childhood didst thou' intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human

soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of

man,
But with high objects, with enduring

things

With life and nature purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November

days,

When vapors rolling down the valley made
A lonely scene more lonesome, among

woods,
At noon and 'mid the calm of summer

nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling lake,

Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
Mine was it in the fields both day and

night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through twi-
light gloom,

I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six, I wheeled

about,

Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod

with steel,

We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, the resounding

horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted

hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we

flew,

And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the

stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the

west

The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous

throng,

To cut across the reflex of a star
That fled, and, flying still before me,

gleamed

Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the

wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spin-
ning still

The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs

LYRIC POETRY

171

Wheeled by me even as if the earth had

rolled

With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and

watched

Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

(1850)

LINES

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN

ABBEY ON REVISITING THE BANKS OP

THE WYE DURING A TOUR

JULY 13, 1798

FIVE years have past; five summers, with
the length

Of five long winters ! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-
springs

With a soft inland murmur Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and con-
nect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose

Here under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these or-
chard-tufts,

Which at this season, with their unripe
fruits,

Are clad in one green hue, and lose them-
selves

'Mid groves and copses. Once again I
see

These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little
lines

Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral
farms,

Green to the very door; and wreaths of
smoke

Sent up in silence, from among the trees!

With some uncertain notice, as might
seem,

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some hermit's cave, where by his
fire

The hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: feelings, too,
Of unremembered pleasure: such perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's

_ life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed

mood,

In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: that serene and blessed

mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the

power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through

the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extin-
guished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing

thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food

172

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

For future years. And so I dare to hope.
Though changed, no doubt, from what I

was when first

I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads,

than one

Who sought the thing he loved. For na-
ture then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all

gone by)

To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy

wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to

An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is

past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other

gifts

Have followed; for such loss, I would be-
lieve,
Abundant recompense. For I have

learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-
times

The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample

power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting

suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of

man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all
thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore

am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we be-
hold
From this green earth; of all the mighty

world
Of eye, and ear, both what they half

create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recog-
nize

In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts the

nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and

soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the

Suffer my genial spirits to decay :
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest

Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I

catch

The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I

make

Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege
Through all the years of this our life,

lead

From joy to joy : for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil

tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfis

men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor

all

The dreary intercourse of daily We,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we

hold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the

moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

LYRIC POETRY

173

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be ma-

tured

Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh!

then,

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing

thoughts

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, per-

chance

If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes

these gleams

Of past existence wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful

stream

We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love oh! with far deeper

zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty

cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to

me
More dear, both for themselves and for

thy sake!

THE SOLITARY REAPER

BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain,
listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

(1807)

ODE TO DUTY

STERN Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail
humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye

Be on them; who, in love and truth,

Where no misgiving is, rely

Upon the genial sense of youth;

Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;

Who do thy work, and know it not:

O! if through confidence misplaced they

fail..
Thy saving arms, dread Power! around

them cast.

Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,

174

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to
their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust:
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray;
But thee I now would serve more strictly,
if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,

Or strong compunction in me wrought,

I supplicate for thy control;

But in the quietness of thought:

Me this unchartered freedom tires;

I feel the weight of chance-desires:

My hopes no more must change their

name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through
Thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy Bondman let
me live!

(1807)

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

WHO is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous Spirit, who, when

brought

Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish

thought:

Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always

bright:

Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent

to learn;

Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train !
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest

dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes,

bereaves

Of their bad influence, and their good re-
ceives;
By objects, which might force the soul to

abate

Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skillful in self-knowledge, even more

pure,

As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also more alive to tenderness.
'T is he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted

still

To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labors good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows;
Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stam
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to th

same

Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in

wait

For wealth, or honors or for worldly state
Whom they must follow; on whose heac

must fall,

Like showers of manna, if they come at all
Whose powers shed round him in the com

mon strife,

LYRIC POETRY

175

Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace ;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has

joined

Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man in-
spired;
And, through the heat of conflict keeps the

law

In calmness made, and sees what he fore-
saw;

Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
He who though thus endued as with a

sense

And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this that he hath much to

love:

'T is, finally, the Man, who. lifted high
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be

won:

Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand

fast,

Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the

earth

For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name,
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering,

draws

His breath in confidence of Heaven's ap-
plause:

This is the happy Warrior; this is He
Whom every Man in arms should wish to be.

(1807)

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
SEPT. 3, 1802

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass

A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples

lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless

air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

(1807)

IT is A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND
FREE

IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free.
The holy time is quiet as a Nun,
Breathless with adoration: the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the

sea;

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with

me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn

thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the

year,
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner

shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

(1807)

THE WORLD is TOO MUCH WITH Us

THE world is too much with us: late and

soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our

powers;

176

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid

boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the

moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping

flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less

forlorn ;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

(1807)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

(1772-1834)

KUBLA KHAN

IN XANADU did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.
i So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous

rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing

tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which
slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was
haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless tur-
moil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were
breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced;

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding
hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and

ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river

ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to

man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of
ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dreaa,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

(1816)

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

I HAVE had playmates, I have had com-
panions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful
school-days;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

LYRIC POETRY

177

1 have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom

cronies;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see

her
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my
childhood,

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to trav-
erse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a

brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's

dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces

How some they have died, and some they

have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are

departed;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

(1798)

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

(1775-1864)

ROSE AYLMER

AH, WHAT avails the sceptered race,

Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes

May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs

I consecrate to thee. (1806)

ON His SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

I STROVE with none, for none was worth
my strife,

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

THOMAS CAMPBELL

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND
A NAVAL ODE

YE MARINERS of England

That guard our native seas,

Whose flag has braved a thousand years

The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again

To match another foe,

And sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow;

While the battle rages loud and long,

And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave !
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave;
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwark,

No towers along the steep;

Her march is o'er the mountain waves,

Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak

She quells the floods below

As they roar on the shore,

When the stormy winds do blow;

When the battle rages loud and long,

And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn,

Till danger's troubled night depart

And the star of peace return.

Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!

Our song and feast shall flow

To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow;

When the fiery fight is heard no more,

And the storm has ceased to blow.

(1801)

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC

OF NELSON and the North

Sing the glorious day's renown,

When to battle fierce came forth

All the might of Denmark's crown,

And her arms along the deep proudly

shone:

By each gun the lighted brand
In a bold determined hand,
And the Prince of all the land
Led them on.

Like leviathans afloat

Lay their bulwarks on the brine,

While the sign of battle flew

On the lofty British line;

It was ten of April morn by the chime;

As they drifted on their path,

There was silence deep as death,

And the boldest held his breath

For a time.

But the might of England flushed

To anticipate the scene;

And her van the fleeter rushed

O'er the deadly space between.

"Hearts of oak!''" our captain cried; when

each gun

From its adamantine lips
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse
Of the sun.

Again! again! again!

And the havoc did not slack,

Till a feeble cheer the Dane

To our cheering sent us back;

Their shots along the deep slowly boom:

Then ceased and all is wail,

As they strike the shattered sail,

Or, in conflagration pale,

Light the gloom.

Out spoke the victor then,

As he hailed them o'er the wave;

"Ye are brothers! ye are men!

And we conquer but to save;

So peace instead of death let us bring:

But yield, proud foe, thy fleet

With the crews at England's feet,

And make submission meet

To our King."

Then Denmark blest our chief,

That he gave her wounds repose;

And the sounds of joy and grief

From her people wildly rose,

As death withdrewhis shades from the day ;

While the sun looked smiling bright

O'er a wide and woeful sight,

Where the fires of funeral light

Died away.

Now joy, old England, raise
For the tidings of thy might,
By the festal cities' blaze,
While the wine cup shines in light;
And yet amid that joy and uproar,
Let us think of them that sleep,
Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore!

Brave hearts: to Britain's pride

Once so faithful and so true,

On the deck of fame that died,

With the gallant good Riou,

Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their

grave !

While the billow mournful rolls,
And the mermaid's song condoles,
Singing glory to the souls
Of the brave! (1803)

HOHENLINDEN

ON LINDEN, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow;
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
And furious every charger neighed
To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills, with thunder riven;
Then rushed the steed, to battle driven;
And, louder than the bolts of Heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.

LYRIC POETRY

179

But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden's hills of crimsoned snow,
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

'T is morn ; but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun

Shout in their sulphurous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave,

And charge with all thy chivalry!

Few, few shall part, where many meet;
The snow shall be their winding-sheet;
And every turf beneath their feet

Shall be a soldier's sepulcher.

(1803)

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM (1784-1842)

A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA

A WET sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast
And fills the white and rustling sail

And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,

While like the eagle free
Away the good ship flies, and leaves

Old England on the lee.

O for a soft and gentle wind !

I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze

And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my lads,

The good ship tight and free
The world of waters is our home,

And merry men are we.

There 's tempest in yon horned moon

And lightning in yon cloud;
But hark the music, mariners!

The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,

The lightning flashes free
While the hollow oak our palace is,

Our heritage the sea.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
("BARRY CORNWALL" 1787-1874)

THE SEA

THE sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;

It plays with the clouds; it mocks the

skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be;

With the blue above, and the blue below,

And silence wheresoe'er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the

deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, Oh, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou'west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's

nest;

And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise

rolled,

And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean-child!

I Ve lived since then, in calm and strife,

Full fifty summers, a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend, and a power to

range,
But never have sought nor sighed for

change;

And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

i8o

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-
place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

(1815)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(1792-1822)

To A SKYLARK

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring
ever singest.

In the golden light'ning

Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just
begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven

In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill
delight,

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven
is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of
melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it
heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows
her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen
it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives
Makes fault with too much sweet the
heavy-winged thieves.

LYRIC POETRY

181

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music
doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;
I have never heard

Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so
divine :

Chorus Hymenseal,

Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hid-
den want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what igno-
rance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:
Thou lovest but ne'er knew love's sad
satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a
crystal stream?

We look before and after

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of
saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should
come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound
Better than all treasures

That in books are found
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the
ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then as I am
listening now.

(1820)

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Au-
tumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the
leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter
fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic

red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O, thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and

low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and

fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in

air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, near!

182

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's

commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves

are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven

and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are

spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim

verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm.

Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing

night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst:
O, hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer

dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline

streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faults picturing them!

Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far

below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which

wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with

fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O,

hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and
share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over

heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have

striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore

need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and

bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and

proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal

tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit

fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new

birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among man-
kind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

LYRIC POETRY

183

The trumpet of a prophecy! wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far be-
hind?

(1820)

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream
The Champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;
As I must on thine,
O! beloved as thou art!

lift me from the grass!

1 die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

(1822)

OZYMANDIAS

I MET a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs

of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the

sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose

frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold com-
mand,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions

read
Which yet survive (stamped on these

lifeless things),
The hand that mocked them and the heart

that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and de-
spair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the de-
cay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(1819)

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

THOU still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow

time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our

rhyme:
What leaf -fringed legend haunts about thy

shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Teinpe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What

maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to es-
cape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild
ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those un-
heard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,

play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more en-
deared,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst

not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be

bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou

kiss
Though winning near the goal yet, do

not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not

thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be
fair!

1 84

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring

adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love !
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and

cloyed,

A burning forehead, and a parching
tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious

priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands

dressed?

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious

morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens over

wrought,
With forest branches and the trodden

weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of

thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation

waste,
Thou shalt remain, hi midst of other

woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou

say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that

is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to
know. (1820)

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

MY HEART aches, and a drowsy numbness

pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had

sunk:

'T is not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happi-
ness.

That thou, light winged Dryad of the
trees,

In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows number-
less,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved

earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-
burnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippo-

crene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the
brim,

And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world

unseen,

And with thee fade away into the
forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never

known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other

groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray

hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and specter-
thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of
sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous

eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-
morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards.

LYRIC POETRY

18$

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and re-
tards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her

throne,

Clustered around by all her starry
Fays;

But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the

breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and wind-
ing mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the

boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each

sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month en-
dows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree

wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglan-
tine;

Fast fading violets covered up in
leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy

wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on sum-
mer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful

Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused

rime,

To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no

pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul
abroad

In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears

in vain
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal

Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down :

The voice I hear this passing night was

heard

In ancient, days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a

path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when,

sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn:
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on

the foam
Of perilous seas, hi faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole

self!

Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf,
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still

stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 't is buried
deep

In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: Do I wake or
sleep?

(1819)

To AUTUMN

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun :
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the

thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-
trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the

core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the

hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never

cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may
find

i86

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing

wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while

thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its

twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost

keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours
by hou^s.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where

are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music

too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying

day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy

hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats

mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or

dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly

bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing: and now with

treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-
croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the
skies.

(1820)

HYMN TO PAN

O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth

hang

From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life,

death

Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels

darken;

And through whole solemn hours dost

sit, and hearken

The dreary melody of bedded reeds
In desolate places, where dank moisture

breeds

The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx do thou

now,

By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!

O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet,
turtles

Passion their voices cooingly 'mong
.myrtles,

What time thou wanderest at eventide

Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the
side

Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to
whom

Broad leaved fig trees even now fore-doom

Then* ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees

Their golden honeycombs; our village
leas

Their fairest-blossom'd beans and pop-
pied corn;

The chuckling linnet its five young un-
born,

To sing for thee; low creeping straw
berries

Their summer coolness; pent up butter-
flies

Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh bud-
ding year

All its completions be quickly near,

By every wind that nods the mountain
pine,

O forester divine!

Thou, to whom every faun and satyr

flies

For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping

fit;

Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's

maw;

Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again ;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main t

LYRIC POETRY

187

And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-
peeping;

Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the

crown
With silvery oak apples, and fir cones

brown

By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O satyr king!

O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the

horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender

corn
Anger our huntsman: Breather round our

farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather

harms:

Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge see,
Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their

vows
With leaves about their brows!

Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the

leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded

earth

Gives it a touch ethereal a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknown but no more: we humbly

screen

foreheads, lowly

With

our

uplift hands

bending,
And giving out a

rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble

Paean,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!

shout most heaven-

(1818)

MUCH have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms

seen;

Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his de-
mesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and

bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild sur-
mise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

(1816)

THOMAS HOOD (1798-1845)

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS

ONE more Unfortunate,

Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,

Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly.

Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,

Loving, not loathing.

Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,

Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her

Now is pure womanly.

i88

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny

Rash and undutiful:
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her

Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve's family

Wipe those poor lips of hers
Oozing so clammily.

Loop up her tresses

Escaped from the comb,
Her fair auburn tresses;
Whilst wonderment guesses

Where was her home?

Who was her father?

Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?

Had she a brother?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one

Yet, than all other?

Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity

Under the sun!
O, it was pitiful!
Near a whole city full,

Home she had none.

Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly

Feelings had changed:
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence;
Even God's providence

Seeming estranged.

Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,

With many a light
From window to casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood with amazement,

Houseless by night.

The bleak wind of March

Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,

Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery,

Swift to be hurled
Anywhere, anywhere

Out of the world!

In she plunged boldly
No matter how coldly

The rough river ran
Over the brink of it,
Picture it think of it,

Dissolute Man!
Lave in it, drink of it,

Then, if you can!

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen too rigidly,

Decently, kindly,
Smooth and compose them;
And her eyes, close them,

Staring so blindly!

Dreadfully staring

Through muddy impurity,
As when with the daring
Last look of despairing

Fixed on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,

Into her rest
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,

Over her breast!

Owning her weakness,

Her evil behavior,
And leaving with meekness,

Her sins to her Saviour!

LYRIC POETRY

189

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

(1803-1882)

DAYS*

DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and faggots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds

them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the

pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

d857)

HENRY WADSWORTH
LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)

SONNETS*
PREFACED TO HIS TRANSLATION OF DANTE

OFT have I seen at some cathedral door
A. laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent

feet

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.

So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to

pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

How strange the sculptures that adorn

these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded

sleeves

Reprinted by permission of the Houghton MIfflin Co.

Birds build their nests; while canopied

with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised

bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of

flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled

eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living

thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!

Ah! From what agonies of heart and

brain,

What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hatr

of wrong,

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediaeval miracle of song!

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom

Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!

And strive to make my steps keep pace
with thine.

The air is rilled with some unknown per-
fume;

The congregation of the dead make room

For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;

Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves
of pine,

The hovering echoes fly from tomb to
tomb.

From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below.
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your

sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the

snow.

star of morning and of liberty!

O bringer of the light, whose splendor

shines

Above the darkness of the Apennines,
Forerunner of the day that is to be!

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The voices of the city and the sea,
The voices of the mountains and the pines,
Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!

Thy fame is blown abroad from all the

heights,
Through all the nations; and a sound is

heard,

As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
In their own language hear thy wondrous

word,
And many are amazed and many doubt.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
To HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicaean barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! hi yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land! (1831)

ISRAFEL

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a
lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's
creatures. Koran.

IN HEAVEN a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell),

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon

Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)

That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings,

The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,

Where Love 's a grown-up God,

Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest:
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit :
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute:

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky. (1831)

THE CITY IN THE SEA

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone

LYRIC POETRY

191

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst

and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lif ting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-tune of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently,
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free:
Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls,
Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls,
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers,
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye,
Not the gayly-jewelled dead,
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas,
Along that wilderness of glass;
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea;
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene!

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide;
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven!
The waves have now a redder glow,
The hours are breathing faint and low;

And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

(1831-1845)

THE RAVEN

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I

pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of

forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly

there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at

my chamber door.
" T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping

at my chamber door:

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the
bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought
its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I
had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow sor-
row for the lost Lenore,

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the
angels name Lenore:

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of
each purple curtain

Thrilled me filled me with fantastic ter-
rors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my
heart, I stood repeating

" 'T is some visitor entreating entrance at
my chamber door,

Some late visitor entreating entrance at
my chamber door:

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitat-
ing then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your
forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently
you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping
at my chamber door.

IQ2

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

That I scarce was sure I heard you"
here I opened wide the door:

Darkness there and nothing
more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I

stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal

ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the

stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the

whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured

back the word, "Lenore:"

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my

soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat

louder than before.
" Surely," said I, "surely that is something

at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this

mystery explore;
Let my heart be still a moment and this

mystery explore:

'T is the wind and nothing
more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with

many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the

saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a

minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched

above my chamber door,
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above

my chamber door:

Perched, and sat, and nothing
more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad
fancy into smiling

By the grave and stern decorum of the
countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven,
thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wander-
ing from the Nightly shore:

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the
Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Never-
more."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to

hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning little

relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living

human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird

above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust

above his chamber door,

With such name as "Never-
more."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid

bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one

word he did outpour,
Nothing further then he uttered, not a

feather then he fluttered,
Till I scarcely more than muttered,

"Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my

Hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Never-
more."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply

so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its

only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom

unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his

songs one burden bore:
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy

burden bore

Of 'Never nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy

into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in

front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook

myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this

ominous bird of yore,

LYRIC POETRY

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt,
and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Never-
more."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no

syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned

into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my

head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the

lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the

lamplight gloating o'er

She shall press, ah, nevermore !

Then, methought, the air grew denser,

perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled

on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent

thee by these angels he hath sent

thee
Respite respite and nepenthe from thy

memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and

forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Never-
more."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet
still, if bird or devil!

Whether Tempter sent, or whether temp-
est tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert
land enchanted

On this home by Horror haunted tell me
truly, I implore:

Is there is there balm in Gilead? tell
me tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Never-
more."

" Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil prophet

still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us, by

that God we both adore,
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within

the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the

angels name Lenore:

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom
the angels name Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Never-
more."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird

or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting:
"Get thee back into the tempest and the

Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that

lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the

bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and

take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Never-
more."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sit-
ting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my
chamber door;

And his eyes have ah 1 the seeming of a
demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming
throws his shadow on the floor:

And my soul from out that shadow that
Hes floating on the floor

Shall be lifted nevermore!
(1845)

THE HAUNTED PALACE

IN THE greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted,
Once a fab: and stately palace

Radiant palace reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,

It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow,
(This all this was in the olden

Tune long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

194

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,

Porphyrogene,
In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing,
flowing,

And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory

That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now within that valley

Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh but smile no more. (1839)

ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)
THE LOTOS-EATERS

"COURAGE!" he said, and pointed toward
the land,

"This mounting wave will roll us shore-
ward soon."

In the afternoon they came unto a land

In which it seemed always afternoon.

All round the coast the languid air did

swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary

dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the

moon;
And, like a downward smoke, the slender

stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall

did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward
smoke,

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did
go;

And some thro' wavering lights and shad-
ows broke,

Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.

They saw the gleaming river seaward flow

From the inner land; far off, three moun-
tain-tops,

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,

Stood sunset-flush'd; and, dew'd with
showery drops,

Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the
woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West; thro' mountain clefts

the dale

Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding

vale

And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd

the same!

And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters

came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted

stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they

gave

To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the

wave

LYRIC POETRY

Far far away did seem to mourn and

rave

On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the

grave;

And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart
did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,

Between the sun and moon upon the shore;

And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,

Of child, and wife, and slave; but ever-
more

Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the
oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren
foam.

Then some one said, "We will return no
more;"

\nd all at once they sang, "Our island
home

Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer
roam."

CHORIC SONG

There is sweet music here that softer

falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between

walls

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from

the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers

weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy

hangs in sleep.

Why are we weigh'd upon with heavi-
ness,

And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weari-
ness?

All things have rest: why should we toil

alone,

We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy

balm;

Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm!"
Why should we only toil, the roof and

crown of things?

Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no

care,

Sun-steep'd at noon, and hi the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no

toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the

grave

In silence ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or

dreamful ease.

196

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

How sweet it were, hearing the downward
stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half -dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber
light,

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on
the height;

To hear each other's whisper'd speech;

Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melan-
choly;

To muse and brood and live again in
memory,

With those old faces of our infancy

Heap'd over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an
urn of brass!

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer 'd

change;
For surely now our household hearths are

cold,

Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble

joy.

Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel

sings

Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten

things.

Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
'T is hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the

pilot-stars.

But, propped on beds of amaranth and

moly,
How sweet while warm airs lull us,

blowing lowly
With half-dropped eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing

slowly

His waters from the purple hill
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined

vine

To watch the emerald-color'd water fall-
ing
Thro' many a woven acanthus-wreath

divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling

brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out

beneath the pine.

vra

The Lotos blooms below the barren

peak,

The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mel-
lower tone;

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the

yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of

motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard,

when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted

his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an

equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie

reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless

of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the

bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the

clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with

the gleaming world-

LYRIC POETRY

197

Where they smile in secret, looking over

wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earth-
quake, roaring deeps and fiery

sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and

sinking snips, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centered

in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an an-
cient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words

are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that

cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with

enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and

wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer some,

't is whisper'd down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian

valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of

asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet

than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind

and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not

wander more.

(1833)

ULYSSES

IT LITTLE profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren

crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and

dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and

know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have en-

joy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with

those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and

when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dun sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known, cities of

men

And manners, climates, councils, govern-
ments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them

all

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro"
Gleams that untravell'd world whose

margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled

on lif e

Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something

more,

A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard

myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human

thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make

mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I

mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her

sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My

mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and

thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

198

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Free hearts, free foreheads, you and I

are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the

end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be

done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with

Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the

rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs;

the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come,

my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose

holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us

down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and

tho'
We are not now that strength which in

old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we

are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by tune and fate, but strong

in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to

yield.

(1842)

LYRICS FROM "THE PRINCESS"

TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they

mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine de-
spair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on

a sail,

That brings our friends up from the
underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the

verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no

more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer

dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering

square;
So sad, so strange, the days that axe no

more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy

feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all re-
gret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no
more! (1847-1850)

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes

flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens reply-
ing,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes

flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dy-
ing, dying.

(1850)

LYRIC POETRY

199

LYRICS FROM "IN MEMORIAM"
vn

DARK house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains,

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead

Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

/Ill night no ruder ah* perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro' early light

3hall glimmer on the dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above;

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;

Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,

More than my brothers are to me.

I hear the noise about thy keel;

I hear the bell struck in the night;

I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,
And travell'd men from foreign lands:
And letters unto trembling hands;

And thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.

So bring him; we have idle dreams;
This look of quiet natters thus
Our home-bred fancies. 0, to us,

The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God;

Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine,
And hands so often clasp'd in mine,

Should toss with tangle and with shells.

Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief.
And only thro' the faded leaf

The chestnut pattering to the ground;

Calm and deep peace on this high wold.

And on these dews that drench the
furze,

And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold;

Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening
towers,

To mingle with the bounding mam;

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall,
And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast

Which heaves but with the heaving deep

200

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

LIV

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?

An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.

The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single hie,

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

LVl

" So careful of the type? " but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone;

I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

(1850)

ODE ON THE DEATH or THE DUKE OF
WELLINGTON

BURY the Great Duke

With an empire's lamentation;
Let us bury the Great Duke

To the noise of the mourning of a

mighty nation;

Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

LYRIC POETRY

2OI

Where shall we lay the man whom we

deplore?

Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,

As fits an universal woe,

Let the long, long procession go,

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,

And let the mournful martial music blow;

The last great Englishman is low.

Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
Remembering all his greatness in the past,
No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer hi the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute!
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his tune,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
O good gray head which all men knew,
O voice from which their omens all men

drew,

O iron nerve to true occasion true,
O fallen at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds

that blew!

Such was he whom we deplore.
The long self-sacrifice of hie is o'er.
The great World-victor's victor will be

seen no more.

All is over and done,
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son.
Let the bell be toll'd.
Render thanks to the Giver,

And render him to the mould.

Under the cross of gold

That shines over city and river,

There he shall rest for ever

Among the wise and the bold.

Let the bell be toll'd,

And a reverent people behold

The towering car, the sable steeds.

Bright let it be with its blazon'd deeds,

Dark in its funeral fold.

Let the bell be toll'd,

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd;

And the sound of the sorrowing anthem

roll'd

Thro' the dome of the golden cross;
And the volleying cannon thunder his

loss;

He knew their voices of old.
For many a time in many a clime
His captain's-ear has heard them boom
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom.
When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame,
With those deep voices our dead captain

taught

The tyrant, and asserts his claim
In that dread sound to the great name
Which he has worn so pure of blame,
In praise and in dispraise the same,
A man of well-attemper'd frame.
O civic muse, to such a name,
To such a name for ages long,
To such a name,

Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-echoing avenues of song!

"Who is he that cometh, like an honor'd

guest,
With banner and with music, with soldier

and with priest,
With a nation weeping, and breaking on

my rest?"-

Mighty Seaman, this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea.
Thine island loves thee well, thou famous

man,

The greatest sailor since our world began.
Now, to the roll of muffled drums,
To thee the greatest soldier comes;
For this is he

202

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Was great by land as thou by sea.

His foes were thine; he kept us free;

O, give him welcome, this is he

Worthy of our gorgeous rites,

And worthy to be laid by thee;

For this is England's greatest son,

He that gain'd a hundred fights,

Nor ever lost an English gun;

This is he that far away

Against the myriads of Assaye

Clash'd with his fiery few and won

And underneath another sun,

Warring on a later day,

Round affrighted Lisbon drew

The treble works, the vast designs

Of his labor'd rampart-lines,

Where he greatly stood at bay,

Whence he issued forth anew,

And ever great and greater grew,

Beating from the wasted vines

Back to France her banded swarms,

Back to France with countless blows,

Till o'er the hills her eagles flew

Beyond the Pyrenean pines,

Follow'd up in valley and glen

With blare of bugle, clamor of men,

Roll of cannon and clash of arms,

And England pouring on her foes,

Such a war had such a close.

Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing

wings,

And barking for the thrones of kings;
Till one that sought but Duty's iron

crown
On that loud Sabbath shook the spoiler

down;

A day of onsets of despair!
Dash'd on every rocky square,
Their surging charges foam'd themselves

away;

Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Thro' the long-tormented air
Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray,
And down we swept and charged and

overthrew.

So great a soldier taught us there
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world-earthquake, Waterloo!
Mighty Seaman, tender and true,
And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
savior of the silver-coasted isle,

O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,
If love of country move thee there at all.
Be glad, because his bones are laid by

thine!

And thro' the centuries let a people's voice
In full acclaim,
A people's voice,

The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people's voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commander's claim
With honor, honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.

VII

A people's voice! we are a people yet.
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams for-
get,
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless

Powers,
Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly

set
His Briton in blown seas and storming

showers,
We have a voice with which to pay the

debt

Of boundless love and reverence and re-
gret
To those great men who fought, and kept

it ours.
And kept it ours, God, from brute

control!
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye,

the soul

Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of freedom

sown

Betwixt a people and their ancient throne,
That sober freedom out of which there

springs

Our loyal passion for our temperate kings!
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march of

mind,
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns

be just.

But wink no more in slothful overtrust.
Remember him who led your hosts;

LYRIC POETRY

203

He bade you guard the sacred coasts.
Your cannons moulder on the seaward

wall;

His voice is silent in your council-hall
For ever; and whatever tempests lour
For ever silent; even if they broke
In thunder, silent; yet remember all
He spoke among you, and the Man who

spoke;

Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power;
Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow
Thro' either babbling world of high and

low;

Whose life was work, whose language rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life;
Who never spoke against a foe;
Whose eighty winters freeze with one

rebuke
All great self-seekers trampling on the

right.
Truth-teller was our England's Alfred

named ;

Truth-lover was our English Duke!
Whatever record leap to light
He never shall be shamed.

Lo ! the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Follow'd by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honor shower'd all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her

horn.

Yea, let aU good things await
Him who cares not to be great
But as he saves or serves the state.
Not once or twice in our rough island-
story

The path of duty was the way to glory.
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which out-redden
All voluptuous garden-roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,

Thro' the long gorge to the far light has

won

His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty

scaled

Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and

sun.

Such was he: his work is done.
But while the races of mankind endure
Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman

pure;

Pill in all lands and thro' all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory.
And let the land whose hearths he saved

from shame

For many and many an age proclaim
At civic revel and pomp and game,
And when the long-illumined cities flame,
Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,
With honor, honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.

Peace, his triumph will be sung

By some yet unmoulded tongue

Far on in summers that we shall not see.

Peace, it is a day of pain

For one about whose patriarchal knee

Late the little children clung.

peace, it is a day of pain

For one upon whose hand and heart and

brain

Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.
Ours the pain, be his the gain!
More than is of man's degree
Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere;
We revere, and we refrain
From talk of battles loud and vain,
And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility
As befits a solemn fane:
We revere, and while we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward eternity,
Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
Until we doubt not that for one so true

204

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.
For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will,
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads

roll

Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?
On God and Godlike men we build our

trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the

people's ears;
The dark crowd moves, and there are

sobs and tears;

The black earth yawns; the mortal dis-
appears;

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
He is gone who seem'd so great.
Gone, but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in State,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave

him.

Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him!

(1852)

LYRIC FROM "MAUD'

PART I

A VOICE by the cedar tree

In the meadow under the Hall!

She is singing an air that is known to me,

A passionate ballad gallant and gay,

A martial song like a trumpet's call!

Singing alone in the morning of life,

In the happy morning of life and of May,

Singing of men that in battle array,

Ready hi heart and ready in hand,

March with banner and bugle and fife

To the death, for their native land.

Maud with her exquisite face,

And wild voice pealing up to the sunny
sky,

And feet like sunny gems on an English
green,

Maud in the light of her youth and her
grace,

Singing of Death, and of Honor that can-
not die,

Till I well could weep for a time so sordid
and mean,

And myself so languid and base.

Silence, beautiful voice!

Be still, for you only trouble the mind

With a joy in which I cannot rejoice,

A glory I shall not find.

Still! I will hear you no more,

For your sweetness hardly leaves me a

choice

But to move to the meadow and fall before
Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore,
Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind,
Not her, not her, but a voice.

(1855)

CROSSING THE BAR*

SUNSET and evening star,

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the
boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Tune and

Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

(1889)

*"A few days before his death he said to me: 'Mind you
put Crossing the Bar at the end of all editions of my poems.' "
(Life of Tennyson, II., 367.)

LYRIC POETRY

205

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)
MY LAST DUCHESS

FEKRARA

THAT 's my last Duchess painted on the

wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's

hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I

said

"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured coun-
tenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they

durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the

first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was

not
Her husband's presence only, called that

spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle

laps

Over my lady's wrist too much," or " Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such

stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause

enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart how shall I say? too soon made

glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went every-
where.

Sir , ' t was all one ! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke hi the orchard for her, the white

mule
She rode with round the terrace all and

each
Would draw from her alike the approving

speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men,

good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she

ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to

blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech (which I have not) to make

your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just

this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made

excuse,
E'en then would be some stooping; and

I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no

doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed

without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave

commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There

she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise?

We'll meet

The company below then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known muni-
ficence

Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I

avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune,

though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze

for me!

(1842)

MEETING AT NIGHT

THE gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half -moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

ao6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys

and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each !

(1845)

PARTING AT MORNING

ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's

rim:

And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

(1845)

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA

NOBLY, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the

Northwest died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking

into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face

Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned

Gibraltar, grand and gray;
"Here and here did England help me: how

can I help England?" say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to

God to praise and pray,
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent

over Africa.

(1845)

THE BISHOP ORDERS His TOMB AT
SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH

ROME, 15

VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping

back?
Nephews sons mine . . . ah God, I

know not? Well
She, men would have to be your mother

once,

Old Gandolf envied me, so fan- she was!
What 's done is done, and she is dead

beside,

Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves.

And thence ye may perceive the world 's

a dream.

Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night,

I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace

seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for

peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I

fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche,

ye know:
Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my

care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the

corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse

the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but

thence

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent

seats,

And up into the very dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam 's sure to lurk.
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two

and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm

stands:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh poured red wine of a mighty

pulse.

Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-
stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True

peach,

Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my

church
What then? So much was saved if

aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death?

Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oil-
press stood,

Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find ... Ah God, I knovt

not, I! ...

LYRIC POETRY

207

Bedded In store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's

breast . . .
Sons, all have I bequeathed you. villas,

all,

The brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my

knees,
Like God the Father's globe on both his

hands

Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and

burst!

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons?

Black
'T was ever antique-black I meant! How

else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come

beneath?

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and

perchance

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last gar-
ment off,
And Moses with the tables . . . but I

know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper

thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye

hope

To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldly tra-
vertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles

at!
Nay, boys, ye love me all of jasper,

then!
'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I

grieve
My bath must needs be left behind,

alas!

One block, pure green as a pistachio nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the

world

And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manu-
scripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly

limbs?

That 's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's

every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second

line
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his

need!

And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-
smoke!

For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as

stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth,

drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-

work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange

thoughts

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals and

priests,

Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking

eyes,

And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, dis-
creet,

Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my

soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished

frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my

vase
With grapes, and add a visor and a Term,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus
. down,

, To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave

me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death ye wish it God, ye wish it!

Stone
Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares

which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing

through

And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church

for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers
Old Gandolf at me, from his onion-

stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!*

ANDREA DEL SARTO
CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"

Bur do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your

heart?
Ill work then for your friend's friend,

never fear,

Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too, his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? ten-

derly?
Oh, I'll content him, but to-morrow,

Love!

*"I know no other piece of modem English, prose or
poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the
Renaissance spirit, its worldliness, inconsistency, pride,
hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of
good Latin. It is nearly all that I said of the central Renais-
sance in thirty pages of the Stones of Vtniee, pat into as many
lines. Browning's being also the antecedent work. The worst
of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much
solution before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that
people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as in-
ohjble; though, truly, it ought to be to the current of common
'.bought like Saladin's talisman, dipped in clear water, not
toluble altogether, but making the element medicinal."

UMfc)

I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it

seems
As if forgive now should you let me

sit
Here by the window with your hand in

mine

And look a half -hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for

this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
And mine the man's bared breast she curls

inside.
Don't count the time lost, neither; you

must serve

For each of the five pictures we require:
It saves a model. So! keep looking so
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds !
How could you ever prick those perfect

ears,

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet
My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
Which everybody looks on and calls his.
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks no one's: very dear, no

less.
You smile? why, there's my picture ready

made,

There 's what we painters call our harmony !
A common grayness silvers everything,
All in a twilight, you and I alike
You, at the point of your first pride in

me
(That 's gone you know), but I, at every

point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all

toned down

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
There 's the bell clinking from the chapel-
top;

That length of convent-wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days de-
crease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,

LYRIC POETRY

209

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's

hand.
How strange now looks the life he makes

us lead;

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he kid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example turn your

head

All that's behind us! You don't under-
stand

Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people

speak:

And that cartoon, the second from the door
It is the thing, Love! so such thing

should be

Behold Madonna! I am bold to say.
I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep
Do easily, too when I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate's talk last

week,
And just as much they used to say in

France.

At any rate, 't is easy, all of it!
No sketches first, no studies, that 's long

past:

I do what many dream of all their lives,
Dream? strive to do, and agonize to

do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty

such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this

town,
Who strive you don't know how the

others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone

says,
(I know his name, no matter) so much

less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and

stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to

prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's

hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but them-
selves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that 's shut
to me,

Enter and take their place there sure
enough,

Though they come back and cannot tell
the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit
here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a
word

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it
boils too.

I, painting from myself, and to myself,

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's
blame

Or their praise either. Somebody re-
marks

Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of
that?

Speak as they please, what does the moun-
tain care?

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his
grasp,

Or what 's a heaven for? All is silver-gray

Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

I know both what I want and what might
gain,

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh

"Had I been two, another and myself,

Our head wouldhave o'erlookedthe world !"
No doubt.

Yonder 's a work now, of that famous
youth

The Urbinate who died five years ago.

('T is copied, George Vasari sent it me.)

Well, I can fancy how he did it all,

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to
see,

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish
him,

Above and through his art for it gives
way;

That arm is wrongly put and there
again

A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,

Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,

He means right that, a child may under-
stand.

210

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
But all the play, the insight and the

stretch

Out of me, out of me ! And wherefore out?
Had you enjoined them on me, given me

soul,

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you !
Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I

think-
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
But had you oh, with the same perfect

brow,
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect

mouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a

bird
The fowler's pipe, and follows to the

snare
Had you, with these the same, but brought

a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there

urged

" God and the glory! never care for gain.
The present by the future, what is that?
Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God overrules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul's

self;

The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
In this world, who can do a thing, will not ;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will 's somewhat somewhat, too,

the power
And thus we half-men struggle. At the

end,

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
'T is safer for me, if the award be strict,
That I am something underrated here,
Poor this long while, despised, to speak the

truth.
I dared not, do you know, leave home all

day,

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
The best is when they pass and look aside;
But they speak sometimes; I must bear it

all.
Well may they speak! That Francis, that

first tune,
And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!

I surely then could sometimes leave the

ground,

Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,
In that humane great monarch's golden

look,

One finger in his beard or twisted curl
Over his mouth's good mark that made the

smile,
One arm about my shoulder, round my

neck,

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
I painting proudly with his breath on me,
All his court round him, seeing with his

eyes,
Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of

souls
Profuse, my hand kept plying by those

hearts,

And, best of all, this, this, this face be-
yond,
This in the background, waiting on my

work,

To crown the issue with a last reward!
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless . . .

but I know

'T is done and past: 't was right, my in-
stinct said:
Too live the life grew, golden and not

gray,
And I 'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should

tempt
Out of his grange whose four walls make

his world.

How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your

heart.
The triumph was to reach and stay there;

since

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
Let my hands frame your face in your

hair's gold,

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
"Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
The Roman's is the better when you pray,
But still the other's Virgin was his wife"-
Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer

grows

My better fortune, I resolve to think.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,

LYRIC POETRY

211

To Rafael ... I have known it all

these years . . .
(When the young man was flaming out his

thoughts

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
" Friend, there 's a certain sorry little scrub
Goes up and down our Florence, none cares

how,

Who, were he set to plan and execute
As you are, pricked on by your popes and

kings,
Would bring the sweat into that brow of

yours

yet, only you to

To Rafael's! And indeed the arm is

wrong.
I hardly dare . .

see,
Give the chalk here quick, thus the line

should go !

Ay, but the soul! he 's Rafael! rub it out!
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
Do you forget already words like those?),
If really there was such a chance, so lost,
Is, whether you 're not grateful but

more pleased.

Well, let me think so. And you smile in-
deed!
This hour has been an hour! Another

smile?

If you would sit tnus by me every night
I should work better, do you comprehend?
I mean that I should earn more, give you

more.

See, it is settled dusk now; there 's a star;
Morello 's gone, the watch-lights show the

wall,
The cue-owls speak the name we call them

by.
Come from the window, Love, come in,

at last,

Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me; oft at

nights,
When I look up from painting, eyes tired

out,
The walls become illumined, brick from

brick
Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright

gold,

That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
That Cousin here again? he waits outside?
Must see you you, and not with me?

Those loans?
More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for

that?
Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to

spend?
While hand and eye and something of a

heart
Are left me, work 's my ware, and what 's

it worth?

I '11 pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The gray remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in

France,
One picture, just one more the Virgin's

face,
Not yours this time! I want you at my

side

To hear them that is, Michel Agnolo
Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,
Finish the portrait out of hand there,

there,

And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove

enough

To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Be-
side,

What 's better and what 's all I care about,
Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!
Love, does that please you? Ah, but what

does he,
The Cousin! what does he to please you

more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter

it?

The very wrong to Francis! it is true
I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is

said.

My father and my mother died of want.
Well, had I riches of my own? you see
How one gets rich! Let each one bear his

lot.

212

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor

they died:

And I have labored somewhat hi my time
And not been paid profusely. Some good

son
Paint my two hundred pictures let him

try!
No doubt, there's something strikes a

balance. Yes,

You loved me quite enough, it seems to-
night.
This must suffice me here. What would

one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more

chance

Four great walls in the new Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me
To cover the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So still they over-
come
Because there 's still Lucrezia, as I choose.

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

(i8S5)

RABBI BEN EZRA

GROW old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was

made:

Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all,

nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall? "
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends,
transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a
spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find a feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men:
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt
the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied
To that which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take,
I must believe.

Then, welcome each rebuff

That turns earth's smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but

go!

Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never

grudge the throe!

For thence, a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not
sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute

Whose flesh has soul to suit,

Whose spirit works lest arms and legs

want play?

To man, propose this test
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its

lone way?

Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once
good to live and learn?"

Not once beat "Praise be thine!
I see the whole design,

LYRIC POETRY

213

I, who saw power, see now Love perfect

too:

Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete, I trust what

thou shalt do!"

For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for

rest:

Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute, gain most, as we

did best!

Let us not always say,

" Spite of this flesh to-day

I strove, made head, gained ground upon

the whole!"

As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now,

than flesh helps soul!"

Therefore I summon age

To grant youth's heritage,

Life's struggle having so far reached its

term:

Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though

in the germ.

And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere I be gone

Once more on my adventure brave and

new:

Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to

indue.

Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know,
being c^d

For note, when evening shuts,

A certain moment cuts

The deed off, calls the glory from the
gray:

A whisper from the west

Shoots "Add this to the rest,

Take it and try its worth: here dies an-
other day."

So, still within this life,

Though lifted o'er its strife,

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at

last,

"This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved

the Past."

For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the
tool's true play.

As it was better, youth

Should strive, through acts uncouth,

Toward making, than repose on aught

found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death

nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right

And Good and Infinite

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand

thine own,

With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let

thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give
us peace at last !

214

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall
my scul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass

Called "work," must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had

the price;

O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could

value hi a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main ac-
count;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled
the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and

escaped;

All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel

the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,

That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our

clay

Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past

gone, seize to-day!"

Fool! All that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;

Earth changes, but thy soul and God

stand sure:

What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter

and clay endure.

He fixed thee 'mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain

arrest:

Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently

impressed.

What though the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and

press?

What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner

stress?

Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash and trum-
pet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The master's lips aglow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what
needst thou with earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men;

And since, not even while the whirl was

worst,

Did I to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily mistake my end, to slake

thy thirst:

So, take and use thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings

past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death

complete the same!

(1864)

PROSPICE

FEAR death? to feel the fog in my

throat,
The mist in my face,

LYRIC POETRY

215

When the snows begin, and the blasts

denote

I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the

storm,

The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a

visible form,

Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit

attained,

And the barriers fall,
Though a battle 's to fight ere the guerdon

be gained,

The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so one fight more,

The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my

eyes, and forbore
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare

like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad

life's arrears

Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to

the brave,

The black minute 's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices

that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace

out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,
thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp

thee again,
And with God be the rest!

(1864)

ASOLANDO
EPILOGUE

Ax THE midnight in the silence of the sleep-
time,

When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where by death, fools

think, imprisoned

Low he lies who once so loved you, whom
you loved so,
Pity me?

Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mis-
taken !

What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the

unmanly?

Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I
drivel

Being who?

One who never turned his back but

marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were

worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight
better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's

work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as

either should be,

"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, fight
on, fare ever

There as here!"

(1890)

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip

is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the

prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the

people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the

vessel grim and daring;
But heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain hes ;
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up aiid hear

the bells;
Rise up for you the flag is flung for you

the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths

for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their

eager faces turning:

2l6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You 've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are

pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no

pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its

voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in

with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead. (1865)

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

DOVER BEACH

THE sea is calm to-night,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast

the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England

stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil

bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-
air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd

land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back,

and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the ^Egaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round
earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furFd .

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges

drear

And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which

seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor

light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for

pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle

and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

(1867)

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
(1837-1909)

CHORUSES FROM "ATALANTA IN CALYDON"
CHORUS

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's

traces,
The mother of months in meadow or

plain
Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign

faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying

of quivers,

Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamor of waters, and with

might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west

shivers,

Round the feet of the day and the feet of
the night.

LYRIC POETRY

217

fyhere shall we find her, how shall we sing

to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and

cling?
that man's heart were as fire and could

spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that

spring!

For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen ding

to her,

And the southwest-wind, and the west-
wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,

The tight that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year

flushes

From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight

The Maenad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;

The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;

The wild vine slips with the weight of its
leaves,

But the berried ivy catches and cleaves

To the limbs that glitter, the feet that

scare

The wolf that follows, the fawn that
flies.

CHORUS

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years
And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,

And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after

And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a

span
With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought

For the veils of the soul therein,
A tune for labor and thought,

A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

2l8

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

He weaves, and is clothed with derision;

Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.

CHORUS

We have seen thee, O Love, thou art fair;

thou art goodly, O Love;
Thy wings make light in the air as the

wings of a dove.
Thy feet are as winds that divide the

stream of the sea;
Earth is thy covering to hide thee, the

garment of thee.
Thou art swift and subtle and blind as a

flame of fire;
Before thee the laughter, behind thee the

tears of desire;
And twain go forth beside thee, a man with

a maid;

Her eyes are the eyes of a bride whom de-
light makes afraid;
As the breath in the buds that stir is her

bridal breath:
But Fate is the name of her; and his name

is Death. (1865)

IN THE WATER

THE sea is awake, and the sound of the

song of the joy of her waking is

rolled
From afar to the star that recedes, from

anear to the wastes of the wild wide

shore.

Her call is a trumpet compelling us home-
ward: if dawn in her east be acold,
From the sea shall we crave not her grace

to rekindle the life that it kindled

before,
Her breath to requicken, her bosom to

rock us, her kisses to bless as of

yore?
For the wind, with his wings half open, at

pause in the sky, neither fettered

nor free,
Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to

laughter: and fain would the twain

of us be
Where lightly the waves yearn forward

from under the curve of the deep

dawn's dome.

And, full of the morning and fired with

the pride of the glory thereof and

the glee,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in

us bids and beseeches, athirst for

the foam.

Life holds not an hour that is better to

live in: the past is a tale that is told,
The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and

asleep, with a blessing in store.
As we give us again to the waters, the rap-
ture of limbs that the waters enfold
Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby,

though the burden it quits were

sore,
Our souls and the bodies they wield at

their will are absorbed in the life

they adore
In the life that endures no burden, and

bows not the forehead, and bends

not the knee
In the life everlasting of earth and of

heaven, in the laws that atone and

agree,
In the measureless music of things, in the

fervor of forces that rest or that

roam,
That cross and return and reissue, as I

after you and as you after me
Strike out from the shore as the heart in

us bids and beseeches, athirst for

the foam.

For, albeit he were less than the least of

them, haply the heart of a man may

be bold
To rejoice in the word of the sea as a

mother's that saith to the son she

bore,
Child, was not the life in thee mine, and

my spirit the breath in thy lips

from of old?
Have I let not thy weakness exult in my

strength, and thy foolishness learn

of my lore ?
Have I helped not or healed not thine

anguish, or made not the might

of thy gladness more?
And surely his heart should answer, The

light of the love of my life is La

thee.

LYRIC POETRY

219

She is fairer than earth, and the sun is
not fairer, the wind is not blither
than she:

From my youth hath she shown me the
joy of her bays that I crossed, of
her cliffs that I clomb,

Till now that the twain of us here, in de-
sire of the dawn and in thrust of
the sea,

Strike out from the shore as the heart in
us bids and beseeches, athirst for
the foam.

Friend, earth is a harbor of refuge for

winter, a covert whereunder to flee
When day is the vassal of night, and the

strength of the host of her mightier

than he;
But here is the presence adored of me,

here my desire is at rest and at

home.
There are cliffs to be climbed upon land,

there are ways to be trodden and

ridden: but we
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us

bids and beseeches, athirst for the

foam.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
(1849-1903)

INVICTUS

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the
scroll,

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

RUDYARD KIPLING (1865- )
RECESSIONAL

GOD of our fathers, known of old
Lord of our far-flung battle line

Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies
The Captains and the Kings depart

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away
On dune and headland sinks the fire

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in
awe

Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard

All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! AMEN.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN
McCRAE (1872-1918)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS*

IN FLANDERS fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

*From "In Flanders Fields and Other Poems" by Lieu-
tenant-Colonel John McCrae. Courtesy of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, Publishers.

22O

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from falling hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915)
THE SOLDIER*

IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there 's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped ; made

aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways

to roam;
A body of England's, breathing English

air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of

home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by

England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as

her day;

From "The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke." Pub-
lished and copyright, 1915, by the John Lane Company, New
York.

And laughter, learnt of friends, and

gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English

heaven.

ALAN SEEGER (1888-1916)
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH!

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling

shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and

fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my

breath

It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 't were better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I 've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

t Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

HERODOTUS (49o?- 42 6? B. C.)

Herodotus, the Father of History, has compiled a fascinating story of the invasion of Greece by the
Persians and their expulsion by the Greek states. Overweening pride challenges the envy of the
Gods and is smitten with the divine wrath. His greatness lies in an extraordinary story-telling gift
which led him to recount many tales as authentic that are now regarded as of mythological origin
The following extracts from his history telling of the heroic actions of Greece will speak for themselves!

The translation is by George Rawlinson.

BATTLE OF MARATHON

THE Persians, having thus brought
Eretria into subjection after waiting a
few days, made sail for Attica, greatly
straitening the Athenians as they ap-
proached, and thinking to deal with them
as they had dealt with the people of Ere-
tria. And, because there was no place in
all Attica so convenient for their horse as
Marathon, and it lay moreover quite close
to Eretria, therefore Hippias, the son of
Pisistratus, conducted them thither.

When intelligence of this reached the
Athenians, they likewise marched their
troops to Marathon, and there stood on
the defensive, having at their head ten
generals, of whom one was Miltiades.

Now this man's father, Cimon, the son
of Stesagoras, was banished from Athens
by Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates.
In his banishment it was his fortune to
win the four-horse chariot-race at Olym-
pia, whereby he gained the very same
honor which had before been carried off by
Miltiades, his half-brother on the mother's
side. At the next Olympiad he won the
orize again with the same mares; upon
which he caused Pisistratus to be pro-
claimed the winner, having made an agree-
ment with him that on yielding him this
honor he should be allowed to come back
to his country. Afterwards, still with the
same mares, he won the prize a third time ;
whereupon he was put to death by the
sons of Pisistratus, whose father was no
longer living. They set men to lie in wait

for him secretly; and these men slew him
near the government-house in the night-
time. He was buried outside the city,
beyond what is called the Valley Road;
and right opposite his tomb were buried
the mares which had won the three prizes.
The same success had likewise been
achieved once previously, to wit, by the
mares of Evagoras the Lacedaemonian,
but never except by them. At the time
of Cimon's death Stesagoras, the elder of
his two sons, was in the Chersonese, where
he lived with Miltiades his uncle; the
younger, who was called Miltiades after
the founder of the Chersonesite colony,
was with his father in Athens.

It was this Miltiades who now com-
manded the Athenians, after escaping from
the Chersonese, and twice nearly losing his
life. First he was chased as far as Imbrus
by the Phoenicians, who had a great desire
to take him and carry him up to the king;
and when he had avoided this danger, and,
having reached his own country, thought
himself to be altogether in safety, he found
his enemies waiting for him, and was cited
by them before a court and impeached for
his tyranny in the Chersonese. But he
came off victorious here likewise, and was
thereupon made general of the Athenians
by the free choice of the people.

And first, before they left the city, the
generals sent off to Sparta a herald, one
Pheidippides, who was by birth an Athen-
ian, and by profession and practice a
trained runner. This man, according to
the account which he gave to the Athe-

222

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

nians on his return, when he was near
Mount Parthenium, above Tegea, fell in
with the god Pan, who called him by his
name, and bade him ask the Athenians
"wherefore they neglected him so entirely,
when he was kindly disposed towards
them, and had often helped them in times
past, and would do so again in time to
come?" The Athenians, entirely believ-
ing in the truth of this report, as soon as
their affairs were once more in good order,
set up a temple to Pan under the Acro-
polis, and, in return for the message which
I have recorded, established in his honor
yearly sacrifices and a torch-race.

On the occasion of which we speak,
when Pheidippides was sent by the Athen-
ian generals, and, according to his own
account, saw Pan on his journey, he
reached Sparta on the very next day after
quitting the city of Athens. Upon his
arrival he went before the rulers, and said
to them

"Men of Lacedaemon, the Athenians
beseech you to hasten to their aid, and
not allow that state, which is the most
ancient in all Greece, to be enslaved by
the barbarians. Eretria, look you, is
already carried away captive; and Greece
weakened by the loss of no mean city."

Thus did Pheidippides deliver the mes-
sage committed to him. And the Spartans
wished to help the Athenians, but were
unable to give them any present succor,
as they did not like to break their estab-
lished law. It was then the ninth day
of the first decade; and they could not
march .out of Sparta on the ninth, when
the moon had not reached the full. So
they waited for the full of the moon.

The barbarians were conducted to
Marathon by Hippias, the son of Pisis-
tratus, who the night before had seen a
strange vision in his sleep. He dreamt of
lying in his mother's arms, and conjec-
tured the dream to mean that he would
be restored to Athens, recover the power
which he had lost, and afterwards live to a
good old age in his native country. Such
was the sense in which he interpreted the
vision. He now proceeded to act as
guide to the Persians; and, in the first

place, he landed the prisoners taken from
Eretria upon the island that is called
^Egileia, a tract belonging to the Styreans,
after which he brought the fleet to anchor
off Marathon, and marshalled the bands
of the barbarians as they disembarked.
As he was thus employed it chanced that
he sneezed and at the same time coughed
with more violence than was his wont.
Now, as he was a man advanced in years,
and the greater number of his teeth were
loose, it so happened that one of them was
driven out with the force of the cough,
and fell down into the sand. Hippias
took all the pains he could to find it; but
the tooth was nowhere to be seen: where-
upon he fetched a deep sigh, and said to
the bystanders

"After all, the land is not ours; and we
shall never be able to bring it under. All
my share in it is the portion of which my
tooth has possession."

So Hippias believed that in this way his
dream was out.

The Athenians were drawn up in order
of battle in a sacred close belonging to
Hercules, when they were joined by the
Plataeans, who came in full force to their
aid. Some time before, the Plataeans had
put themselves under the rule of the
Athenians; and these last had already
undertaken many labors on their behalf.
The occasion of the surrender was the
following. The Plataeans suffered griev-
ous things at the hands of the men of
Thebes; so, as it chanced that Cleomenes,
the son of Anaxandridas, and the Lacedae-
monians were in their neighborhood, they
first of all offered to surrender themselves
to them. But the Lacedaemonians re-
fused to receive them, and said

"We dwell too far off from you, and
ours would be but chill succor. Ye
might oftentimes be carried into slavery
before one of us heard of it. We counsel
you rather to give yourselves up to the
Athenians, who are your next neighbors,
and well able to shelter you."

This they said, not so much out of good
will towards the Plataeans as because they
wished to involve the Athenians in trouble
by engaging them in wars with the Bceo-

HISTORY

223

tians. The Plataeans, however, when the
Lacedaemonians gave them this counsel,
complied at once; and when the sacrifice
to the Twelve Gods was being offered at
Athens, they came and sat as suppliants
about the altar, and gave themselves up
to the Athenians. The Thebans no sooner
learnt what the Plataeans had done than
instantly they marched out against them,
while the Athenians sent troops to their
aid. As the two armies were about to
join battle, the Corinthians, who chanced
to be at hand, would not allow them to
engage ; both sides consented to take them
for arbitrators, whereupon they made up
the quarrel, and fixed the boundary-line
between the two states upon this condition:
to wit, that if any of the Boeotians wished
no longer to belong to Bceotia, the Thebans
should allow them to follow their own
inclinations. The Corinthians, when they
had thus decreed, forthwith departed to
their homes: the Athenians likewise set
off on their return; but the Boeotians fell
upon them during the march, and a battle
was fought wherein they were worsted by
the Athenians. Hereupon these last would
not be bound by the line which the
Corinthians had fixed, but advanced be-
yond those limits, and made the As6pus
the boundary-line between the country
of the Thebans and that of the Plataeans
and Hysians. Under such circumstances
did the Plataeans give themselves up to
Athens; and now they were come to Mara-
thon to bear the Athenians aid.

The Athenian generals were divided in
their opinions; and some advised not to
risk a battle, because they were too few
to engage such a host as that of the Medes,
while others were for fighting at once; and
among these last was Miltiades. He
therefore, seeing that opinions were thus
divided, and that the less worthy counsel
appeared likely to prevail, resolved to go
to the polemarch, and have a conference
with him. For the man on whom the lot
fell to be polemarch at Athens was en-
titled to give his vote with the ten gen-
erals, since anciently the Athenians al-
lowed him an equal right of voting with
them. The polemarch at this juncture

was Callimachus of Aphidnae; to him there-
fore Miltiades went, and said:

"With thee it rests, Callimachus, either
to bring Athens to slavery, or, by securing
her freedom, to leave behind thee to all
future generations a memory beyond even
Harmodius and Aristogeiton. For never
since the time that the Athenians became
a people were they in so great a danger
as now. If they bow their necks beneath
the yoke of the Medes, the woes which
they will have to suffer when given into
the power of Hippias are already deter-
mined on; if, on the other hand, they fight
and overcome, Athens may rise to be the
very first city in Greece. How it comes
to pass that these things are likely to
happen, and how the determining of them
in some sort rests with thee, I will now
proceed to make clear. We generals are
ten in number, and our votes are divided;
half of us wish to engage, half to avoid a
combat. Now, if we do not fight, I look
to see a great disturbance at Athens which
will shake men's resolutions, and then I
fear they will submit themselves ; but if we
fight the battle before any unsoundness
show itself among our citizens, let the
gods but give us fair play, and we are well
able to overcome the enemy. On thee
therefore we depend in this matter, which
lies wholly in thine own power. Thou
hast only to add thy vote to my side and
thy country will be free, and not free only,
but the first state in Greece. Or, if thou
preferrest to give thy vote to them who
would decline the combat, then the re-
verse will follow."

Miltiades by these words gained Calli-
machus; and the addition of the pole-
march's vote caused the decision to be in
favor of fighting. Hereupon all those
generals who had been desirous of hazard-
ing a battle, when their turn came to com-
mand the army, gave up their right to
Miltiades. He however, though he ac-
cepted their offers, nevertheless waited,
and would not fight, until his own day of
command arrived in due course.

Then at length, when his own turn was
come, the Athenian battle was set in ar-
ray, and this was the order of it. Calli-

224

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

machus the polemarch led the right wing;
for it was at that time a rule with the
Athenians to give the right wing to the
polemarch. After this followed the tribes,
iccording as they were numbered, in an
unbroken line; while last of all came the
Plateans, forming the left wing. And
ever since that day it has been a custom
with the Athenians, in the sacrifices and
assemblies held each fifth year at Athens,
for the Athenian herald to implore the
blessing of the gods on the Plataeans con-
jointly with the Athenians. Now, as they
marshalled the host upon the field of
Marathon, in order that the Athenian
front might be of equal length with the
Median, the ranks of the center were
diminished, and it became the weakest
part of the line, while the wings were both
made strong with a depth of many ranks.

So when the battle was set in array,
and the victims showed themselves favor-
able, instantly the Athenians, so soon as
they were let go, charged the barbarians
at a run. Now the distance between the
two armies was little short of eight fur-
longs. The Persians, therefore, when they
saw the Greeks coming on at speed, made
ready to receive them, although it seemed
to them that the Athenians were bereft of
their senses, and bent upon their own
destruction; for they saw a mere handful
of men coming on at a run without either
horsemen or archers. Such was the opin-
ion of the barbarians; but the Athenians
in close array fell upon them, and fought
in a manner worthy of being recorded.
They were the first of the Greeks, so far
as I know, who introduced the custom of
charging the enemy at a run, and they
were likewise the first who dared to look
upon the Median garb, and to face men
clad in that fashion. Until this time the
very name of the Medes had been a terror
to the Greeks to hear.

The two armies fought together on the
plain of Marathon for a length of time;
and in the mid battle, where the Persians
themselves and the Sacae had their place,
the barbarians were victorious, and broke
and pursued the Greeks into the inner
country; but on the two wings the Athe-

nians and the Platseans defeated the
enemy. Having so done, they suffered the
routed barbarians to fly at their ease,
and joining the two wings in one, fell
upon those who had broken their own
center, and fought and conquered them.
These likewise fled, and now the Athenians
hung upon the runaways and cut them
down, chasing them all the way to the
shore, on reaching which they laid hold
of the ships and called aloud for fire.

It was in the struggle here that Calli-
machus the polemarch, after greatly dis-
tinguishing himself, lost his life; Stesilavis
too, the son of Thrasilaiis, one of the gen-
erals, was slain; and Cynsegirus, the son of
Euphorion, having seized on a vessel of
the enemy's by the ornament at the stern,
had his hand cut off by the blow of an
axe, and so perished; as likewise did many
other Athenians of note and name.

Nevertheless the Athenians secured in
this way seven of the vessels; while with
the remainder the barbarians pushed off,
and taking aboard their Eretrian prisoners
from the island where they had left them
doubled Cape Sunium, hoping to reach
Athens before the return of the Athenians.
The Alcmseonidae were accused by their
countrymen of suggesting this course to
them; they had, it was said, an understand-
ing with the Persians, and made a signal
to them, by raising a shield, after they
were embarked in their ships.

The Persians accordingly sailed round
Sunium. But the Athenians with all
possible speed marched away to the de-
fence of their city, and succeeded in reach-
ing Athens before the appearance of the
barbarians: and as their camp at Marathon
had been pitched in a precinct of Hercules,
so now they encamped in another precinct
of the same god at Cynosarges. The bar-
barian fleet arrived, and lay to off Pha-
lerum, which was at that time the haven
of Athens; but after resting awhile upon
their oars, they departed and sailed away
to Asia.

There fell in this battle of Marathon,
on the side of the barbarians, about six
thousand and four hundred men; on that
of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-

HISTORY

225

two. Such was the number of the skin
on the one side and the other. A strange
prodigy likewise happened at this fight.
Epizelus, the son of Cuphagoras, an Athe-
nian, was in the thick of the fray, and
behaving himself as a brave man should,
when suddenly he was stricken with blind-
ness, without blow of sword or dart; and
this blindness continued thenceforth dur-
ing the whole of his after life. The follow-
ing is the account which he himself, as I
have heard, gave of the matter: he said
that a gigantic warrior, with a huge beard,
which shaded all his shield, stood over
against him; but the ghostly semblance
passed him by, and slew the man at his
side. Such, as I understand, was the
tale which Epizelus told.

THERMOPYLAE

KING XERXES pitched his camp in the
region of Malis called Trachinia, while
on their side the Greeks occupied the
straits. These straits the Greeks in gen-
eral call Thermopylae (the Hot Gates);
but the natives, and those who dwell in
the neighborhood, call them Pylae (the
Gates). Here then the two armies took
their stand; the one master of all the region
lying north of Trachis, the other of the
country extending southward of that place
to the verge of the continent.

The Greeks who at this spot awaited
the coming of Xerxes were the following:
From Sparta, three hundred men-at-arms:
from Arcadia, a thousand Tegeans and
Mantineans, five hundred of each people;
a hundred and twenty Orchomenians,
from the Arcadian Orchomenus; and a
thousand from other cities: from Corinth,
four hundred men: from Phlius, two hun-
dred: and from Mycenae eighty. Such
>was the number from the Peloponnese.
There were also present, from Boeotia,
seven hundred Thespians and four hundred
Thebans.

. Besides these troops, the Locrians of
Opus and the Phocians had obeyed the
call of their countrymen, and sent, the
former all the force they had, the latter a
thousand men. For envoys had gone

from the Greeks at Thermopylae among the
Locrians and Phocians, to call on them
for assistance, and to say "They were
themselves but the vanguard of the host,
sent to precede the main body, which
might every day be expected to follow
them. The sea was in good keeping,
watched by the Athenians, the Eginetans,
and the rest of the fleet. There was no
cause why they should fear; for after all
the invader was not a god but a man;
and there never had been, and never'
would be, a man who was not liable to]
misfortunes from the very day of his birth,
and those misfortunes greater in propor-
tion to his own greatness. The assailant
therefore, being only a mortal, must needs
fall from his glory." Thus urged, the
Locrians and the Phocians had come with
then- troops to Trachis.

The various nations had each captains
of their own under whom they served;
but the one to whom all especially looked
up, and who had the command of the
entire force, was the Lacedaemonian,
Leonidas. Now Leonidas was the son of
Anaxandridas, who was the son of Leo,
who was the son of Eurycratidas, who was
the son of Anaxander, who was the son
of Eurycrates, who was the son of Poly-
ddrus, who was the son of Alcamenes,
who was the son of Telecles, who was the
son of Archelaiis, who was the son of
Agesilaiis, who was the son of Doryssus,
who was the son of Labotas, who was the
son of Echestratus, who was the son of
Agis, who was the son of Eurysthenes, who
was the son of Aristodmus, who was the
son of Aristomachus, who was the son of
Cleodasus, who was the son of Hyllus, who
was the son of Hercules.

Leonidas had come to be king of Sparta
quite unexpectedly.

Having two elder brothers, Cleomenes
and Dorieus, he had no thought of ever
mounting the throne. However, when
Cleomenes died without male offspring,
as Dorieus was likewise deceased, having
perished in Sicily, the crown fell to Leoni-
das, who was older than Cleombrotus,
the youngest of the sons of Anaxandridas,
and, moreover, was manied to the daugh-

226

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ter of Cleomcnes. He had now come to
Thermopylae, accompanied by the three
hundred men which the law assigned him,
whom he had himself chosen from among
the citizens, and who were all of them
fathers with sons living. On his way he
had taken the troops from Thebes, whose
number I have already mentioned, and
who were under the command of Leontia-
des the son of Eurymachus. The reason
why he made a point of taking troops
from Thebes, and Thebes only, was, that
the Thebans were strongly suspected of
being well inclined to the Medes. Leoni-
das therefore called on them to come with
him to the war, wishing to see whether
they would comply with his demand,
or openly refuse, and disclaim the Greek
alliance. They, however, though their
wishes leant the other way, nevertheless
sent the men.

The force with Leonidas was sent for-
ward by the Spartans in advance of their
main body, that the sight of them might
encourage the allies to fight, and hinder
them from going over to the Medes, as
it was likely they might have done had
they seen that Sparta was backward.
They intended presently, when they had
celebrated the Carneian festival, which
was what now kept them at home, to
leave a garrison in Sparta, and hasten in
full force to join the army. The rest of
the allies also intended to act similarly;
for it happened that the Olympic festival
fell exactly at this same period. None
of them looked to see the contest at Ther-
mopylae decided so speedily; wherefore
they were content to send forward a mere
advanced guard. Such accordingly were
the intentions of the allies.

The Greek forces at Thermopylae, when
the Persian army drew near to the en-
trance of the pass, were seized with fear;
and a council was held to consider about
a retreat. It was the wish of the Pelo-
ponnesians generally that the army should
fall back upon the Peloponnese, and there
guard the Isthmus. But Leonidas, who
saw with what indignation the Phocians
and Locrians heard of this plan, gave his
voice for remaining where they were, while

they sent envoys to the several cities to
ask for help, since they were too few to
make a stand against an army like that
of the Medes.

While this debate was going on, Xerxes
sent a mounted spy to observe the Greeks,
and note how many they were, and see
what they were doing. He had heard,
before he came out of Thessaly, that a few
men were assembled at this place, and
that at their head were certain Lacedae-
monians, under Leonidas, a descendant
of Hercules. The horseman rode up to
the camp, and looked about him, but did
not see the whole army; for such as were
on the further side of the wall (which had'
been rebuilt and was now carefully
guarded) it was not possible for him to
behold; but he observed those on the out-
side, who were encamped in front of the
rampart. It chanced that at this time
the Lacedaemonians held the outer guard,
and were seen by the spy, some of them
engaged in gymnastic exercises, others
combing their long hair. At this the spy
greatly marvelled, but he counted their
number, and when he had taken accurate
note of everything, he rode back quietly;
for no one pursued after him, nor paid
any heed to his visit. So he returned,
and told Xerxes all that he had seen.

Upon this, Xerxes, who had no means
of surmising the truth namely, that the
Spartans were preparing to do or die
manfully but thought it laughable tha f
they should be engaged in such employ -
ments, sent and called to his presence
Demaratus the son of Ariston, who still
remained with the army. When he ap-
peared, Xerxes told him all that he had
heard, and questioned him concerning
the news, since he was anxious to under-
stand the meaning of such behavior on
the part of the Spartans. Then Demara-
tus said

"I spake to thee, O king! concerning
these men long since, when we had but
just begun our march upon Greece; thou,
however, didst only laugh at my words,
when I told thee of all this, which I saw
would come to pass. Earnestly ao I strug-
gle at all times to speak truth to thee,

HISTORY

227

sire; and now listen to it once more.
These men have come to dispute the pass
with us; and it is for this that they are
now making ready. 'Tis their custom,
when they are about to hazard their lives,
to adorn their heads with care. Be as-
sured, however, that if thou canst subdue
the men who are here and the Lacedae-
monians who remain in Sparta, there is no
other nation in all the world which will
venture to lift a hand in their defence.
Thou hast now to deal with the first
kingdom and town in Greece, and with
the bravest men."

Then Xerxes, to whom what Demaratus
said seemed altogether to surpass belief,
asked further, "How it was possible for so
small an army to contend with his? "

"O king!" Demaratus answered, "let
me be treated as a liar, if matters fall not
out as I say."

But Xerxes was not persuaded any the
more. Four whole days he suffered to
go by, expecting that the Greeks would
run away. When, however, he found
on the fifth that they were not gone,
thinking that their firm stand was mere
impudence and recklessness, he grew
wroth, and sent against them the Medes
and Cissians, with orders to take them
alive and bring them into his presence.
Then the Medes rushed forward and
charged the Greeks, but fell in vast num-
bers: others however took the places of
the slain, and would not be beaten off,
though they suffered terrible losses. In
this way it became clear to all, and es-
pecially to the king, that though he had
plenty of combatants, he had but very few
warriors. The struggle, however, con-
tinued during the whole day.

Then the Medes, having met so rough
a reception, withdrew from the fight;
and their place was taken by the band of
Persians under Hydarnes, whom the king
called his "Immortals:" they, it was
thought, would soon finish the business.
But when they joined battle with the
Greeks, 't was with no better success than
the Median detachment things went
much as before the two armies fighting
in a narrow space, and the barbarians

using shorter spears than the Greeks, and
having no advantage from their numbers.
The Lacedaemonians fought in a way
worthy of note and showed themselves
far more skilful in fight than their adver-
saries, often turning their backs, and mak-
ing as though they were all flying away,
on which the barbarians would rush after
them with much noise and shouting,
when the Spartans at their approach would
wheel round and face their pursuers, in
this way destroying vast numbers of the
enemy. Some Spartans likewise fell in
these encounters, but only a very few.
At last the Persians, rinding that all their
efforts to gam the pass availed nothing,
and that, whether they attacked by divi-
sions or in any other way, it was to no
purpose, withdrew to their own quarters.

During these assaults, it is said that
Xerxes, who was watching the battle,
thrice leaped from the throne on which he
sate, in terror for his army.

Next day the combat was renewed, but
with no better success on the part of the
barbarians. The Greeks were so few that
the barbarians hoped to find them dis-
abled, by reason of their wounds, from
offering any further resistance; and so
they once more attacked them. But the
Greeks were drawn up in detachments
according to their cities, and bore the
brunt of the battle in turns, all except
the Phocians, who had been stationed on
the mountain to guard the pathway.
So, when the Persians found no difference
between that day and the preceding, they
again retired to their quarters.

Now, as the king was in a great strait,
and knew not how he should deal with
the emergency, Ephialtes, the son of
Eurydemus, a man of Malis, came to him
and was admitted to a conference. Stirred
by the hope of receiving a rich reward at
the king's hands, he had come to tell
him of the pathway which led across the
mountain to Thermopylae; by which dis-
closure he brought destruction on the
band of Greeks who had there withstood
the barbarians. This Ephialtes after-
wards, from fear of the Lacedaemonians,
fled into Thessaly; and during his exile, in

228

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

an assembly of the Amphictyons held at
Pylae, a price was set upon his head by
the Pylagorae. When some time had gone
by, he returned from exile, and went to
Anticyra, where he was slain by Athena-
des, a native of Trachis. Athfinades did
not slay him for his treachery, but for
another reason, which I shall mention in
a latter part of my history: yet still the
Lacedaemonians honored him none the less.
Thus then did Ephialtes perish a long time
afterwards.

Besides this there is another story told,
which I do not at all believe to wit,
that OnStas the son of Phanagoras, a
native of Carystus, and Corydallus, a
man of Anticyra, were the persons who
spoke on this matter to the king, and took
the Persians across the mountain. One
may guess which story is true, from the
fact that the deputies of the Greeks, the
Pylagorae, who must have had the best
means of ascertaining the truth, did not
offer the reward for the heads of OnStas
and Corydallus, but for that of Ephialtes
of Trachis; and again from the flight of
Ephialtes, which we know to have been
on this account. Ongtas, I allow, although
he was not a Malian, might have been
acquainted with the path, if he had lived
much in that part of the country; but as
Ephialtes was the person who actually
led the Persians round the mountain by
the pathway, I leave his name on record
as that of the man who did the deed.

Great was the joy of Xerxes on this
occasion; and as he approved highly of
the enterprise which Ephialtes undertook
to accomplish, he forthwith sent upon the
errand Hydarnes, and the Persians under
him. The troops left the camp about the
time of the lighting of the lamps. The
pathway along which they went was first
discovered by the Malians of these parts,
who soon afterwards led the Thessalians
by it to attack the Phocians, at the tune
when the Phocians fortified the pass with
a wall, and so put themselves under covert
from danger. And ever since, the path
has always been put to an ill use by the
Malians.

The course which it takes is the follow-

ing: Beginning at the Asopus, where
that stream flows through the cleft in the
hills, it runs along the ridge of the moun-
tain (which is called, like the pathway
over it, Anopaea), and ends at the city of
Alpnus the first Locrian town as you
come from Malis by the stone called
Melampygus and the seats of the Cerco-
pians. Here it is as narrow as at any
other point.

The Persians took this path, and, cross-
ing the Asopus, continued their march
through the whole of the night, having
the mountains of (Eta on their right hand,
and on their left those of Trachis. At
dawn of day they found themselves close
to the summit. Now the hill was guarded,
as I have already said, by a thousand
Phocian men-at-arms, who were placed
there to defend the pathway, and at the
same tune to secure their own country.
They had been given the guard of the
mountain path, while the other Greeks
defended the pass below, because they had
volunteered for the service, and had
pledged themselves to Leonidas to main-
tain the post.

The ascent of the Persians became
known to the Phocians in the following
manner: During all the time that they
were making their way up, the Greeks
remained unconscious of it, inasmuch
as the whole mountain was covered with
groves of oak; but it happened that the
air was very still, and the leaves which
the Persians stirred with their feet made,
as it was likely they would, a loud rustling,
whereupon the Phocians jumped up and
flew to seize their arms. In a moment the
barbarians came in sight, and, perceiving
men arming themselves, were greatly
amazed; for they had fallen in with an
enemy when they expected no opposition.
Hydarnes, alarmed at the sight, and fear-
ing lest the Phocians might be Lacedae-
monians, inquired of Ephialtes to what
nation these troops belonged. Ephialtes
told him the exact truth, whereupon he
arrayed his Persians for battle. The
Phocians, galled by the showers of arrows
to which they were exposed, and imagining
themselves the special object of the Per-

HISTORY

229

sian attack, fled hastily to the crest of
the mountain, and there made ready to
meet death; but while their mistake con-
tinued, the Persians, with Ephialtes and
Hydarnes, not thinking it worth their
while to delay on account of Phocians,
passed on and descended the mountain
with all possible speed.

The Greeks at Thermopylae received
the first warning of the destruction which
the dawn would bring on them from the
seer Megistias, who read their fate in the
victims as he was sacrificing. After this
deserters came in, and brought the news
that the Persians were marching round
by the hills: it was still night when
these men arrived. Last of all, the scouts
came running down from the heights,
and brought in the same accounts, when
the day was just beginning to break.
Then the Greeks held a council to con-
sider what they should do, and here opin-
ions were divided: some were strong
against quitting their post, while others
contended to the contrary. So when the
council had broken up, part of the troops
departed and went their ways homeward
to their several states; part however re-
solved to remain, and to stand by Leonidas
to the last.

It is said that Leonidas himself sent
away the troops who departed, because
ie tendered their safety, but thought it
unseemly that either he or his Spartans
should quit the post which they had been
especially sent to guard. For my own
part, I incline to think that Leonidas gave
the order, because he perceived the allies
to be out of heart and unwilling to encoun-
ter the danger to which his own mind was
made up. He therefore commanded them
to retreat, but said that he himself could
not draw back with honor; knowing that,
if he stayed, glory awaited him, and that
Sparta in that case would not lose her
prosperity. For when the Spartans, at
the very beginning of the war, sent to
consult the oracle concerning it, the answer
which they received from the Pythoness
was, "that either Sparta must be over-
thrown by the barbarians, or one of her
kings must perish." The prophecy was

delivered in hexameter verse, and ran
thus:

"O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad

Lacedaemon!
Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the

children of Perseus,
Or, in exchange, must all through the whole

Laconian country
Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great

Heracles.
He cannot be withstood by the courage of bulls

nor of lions,
Strive as they may; he is mighty as Jove- there

is nought that shall stay him,
Till he have got for his prey your king, or your

glorious city."

The remembrance of this answer, I think,
and the wish to secure the whole glory for
the Spartans, caused Leonidas to send the
allies away. This is more likely than that
they quarrelled with him, and took their
departure in such unruly fashion.

To me it seems no small argument hi
favor of this view, that the seer also who
accompanied the army, Megistias, the
Acarnanian, said to have been of the
blood of Melampus, and the same who
was led by the appearance of the victims
to warn the Greeks of the danger which
threatened them, received orders to re-
tire (as it is certain he did) from Leonidas,
that he might escape the coming destruc-
tion. Megistias, however, though bidden
to depart, refused, and stayed with the
army; but he had an only son present
with the expedition, whom he now sent
away.

So the allies, when Leonidas ordered
them to retire, obeyed him and forthwith
departed. Only the Thespians and the
Thebans remained with the Spartans;
and of these the Thebans were kept
back by Leonidas as hostages, very much
against their will. The Thespians, on the
contrary, stayed entirely of their own ac-
cord, refusing to retreat, and declaring
that they would not forsake Leonidas and
his followers. So they abode v/ith the
Spartans, and died with them. Their
leader was Demophilus, the son of Dia-
dromes.

At sunrise Xerxes made libations, after
which he waited until the time when the

230

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

forum is wont to fill, and then began his
advance. Ephialtes had instructed him
thus, as the descent of the mountain is
much quicker, and the distance much
shorter, than tie way round the hills, and
the ascent. So the barbarians under
Xerxes began to draw nigh; and the Greeks
under Leonidas, as they now went forth
determined to die, advanced much further
than on previous days, until they reached
the more open portion of the pass. Hither-
to they had held their station within the
wall, and from this had gone forth to fight
at the point where the pass was the nar-
rowest. Now they joined battle beyond
the defile, and carried slaughter among the
barbarians, who fell hi heaps. Behind
them the captains of the squadrons,
armed with whips, urged their men for-
ward with continual blows. Many were
thrust into the sea, and there perished; a
still greater number were trampled to
death by their own soldiers; no one heeded
the dying. For the Greeks, reckless of
their own safety and desperate, since they
knew that, as the mountain had been
crossed, their destruction was nigh at
hand, exerted themselves with the most
furious valor against the barbarians.

By this time the spears of the greater
number were all shivered, and with their
swords they hewed down the ranks of
the Persians; and here, as they strove,
Leonidas fell fighting bravely, together
with many other famous Spartans, whose
names I have taken care to learn on ac-
count of their great worthiness, as indeed
I have those of all the three hundred.
There fell too at the same time very many
famous Persians: among them, two sons
of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes,
his children by Phratagune, the daughter
of Artanes. Artanes was brother of
King Darius, being a son of Hystaspes,
the son of Arsames; and when he gave his
daughter to the king, he made him heir
likewise of all his substance; for she was
his only child.

Thus two brothers of Xerxes here fought
and fell. And now there arose a fierce
struggle between the Persians and the
Lacedaemonians over the body of Leonidas,

in which the Greeks four times drove back
the enemy, and at last by their great brav-
ery succeeded in bearing off the body.
This combat was scarcely ended when the
Persians with Ephialtes approached; and
the Greeks, informed that they drew nigh,
made a change in the manner of their
fighting. Drawing back into the narrow-
est part of the pass, and retreating even
behind the cross wall, they posted them-
selves upon a hillock, where they stood all
drawn up together in one close body,
except only the Thebans. The hillock
whereof I speak is at the entrance of the
straits, where the stone lion stands which
was set up in honor of Leonidas. Here
they defended themselves to the last, such
as still had swords using them, and the
others resisting with their hands and teeth;
till the barbarians, who in part had pulled
down the wall and attacked them hi front,
in part had gone round and now encircled
them upon every side, overwhelmed and
buried the remnant which was left beneath
showers of missile weapons.

Thus nobly did the whole body of Lace-
daemonians and Thespians behave; but
nevertheless one man is said to have dis-
tinguished himself above all the rest, to
wit, Dineces the Spartan. A speech
which he made before the Greeks engaged
the Medes, remains on record. One of
the Trachinians told him, "Such was the
number of the barbarians, that when they
shot forth their arrows the sun would be
darkened by their multitude." Dineces,
not at all frightened at these words, but
making light of the Median numbers, an-
swered, "Our Trachinian friend brings us
excellent tidings. If the Medes darken
the sun, we shall have our fight in the
shade. ' ' Other sayings too of a like nature
are reported to have been left on record by
this same person.

BATTLE OF SALAMIS

WHEN the captains from these various
nations were come together at Salamis, &
council of war was summoned; and Eury-
biades proposed that any one who liked
to advise, should say which place seemed

HISTORY

231

to him the fittest, among those still in
the possession of the Greeks, to be the
scene of a naval combat. Attica, he said,
was not to be thought of now; but he
desired their counsel as to the remainder.
The speakers mostly advised that the
fleet should sail away to the Isthmus, and
there give battle in defence of the Pelopon-
nese; and they urged as a reason for this,
that if they were worsted in a sea-fight
at Salamis, they would be shut up in an
island where they could get no help; but
if they were beaten near the Isthmus,
they could escape to their homes.

As the captains from the Peloponnese
were thus advising, there came an Athe-
nian to the camp, who brought word that
the barbarians had entered Attica, and
were ravaging and burning everything.
For the division of the army under Xerxes
was just arrived at Athens from its march
through Bceotia, where it had burnt
Thespiae and Platsea both which cities
were forsaken by their inhabitants, who
had fled to the Peloponnese and now it
was laying waste all the possessions of
the Athenians. Thespiae and Plataea had
been burnt by the Persians, because they
knew from the Thebans that neither of
those cities had espoused their side.

Since the passage of the Hellespont
and the commencement of the march
upon Greece, a space of four months had
gone by; one, while the army made the
crossing, and delayed about the region of
the Hellespont; and three while they pro-
ceeded thence to Attica, which they en-
tered in the archonship of Calliades.
They found the city forsaken; a few people
only remained in the temple, either keepers
of the treasures, or men of the poorer sort.
These persons having fortified the citadel
with planks and boards, held out against
the enemy. It was in some measure their
poverty which had prevented them from
seeking shelter in Salamis; but there was
likewise another reason which in part
induced them to remain. They imagined
themselves to have discovered the true
meaning of the oracle uttered by the
Pythoness, which promised that "the
wooden wall" should never be taken

the wooden wall, they thought, did not
mean the ships, but the place where they
had taken refuge.

The Persians encamped upon the hill
over against the citadel, which is called
Mars' hill by the Athenians, and began
the siege of the place, attacking the Greeks
with arrows whereto pieces of lighted tow
were attached, which they shot at the
barricade. And now those who were
within the citadel found themselves in a
most woeful case; for their wooden ram-
part betrayed them; still, however, they
continued to resist. It was in vain that
the Pisistratidae came to them and offered
terms of surrender they stoutly refused
all parley, and among their other modes of
defence, rolled down huge masses of stone
upon the barbarians as they were mount-
ing up to the gates: so that Xerxes was
for a long time very greatly perplexed, and
could not contrive any way to take them.

At last, however, in the midst of these
many difficulties, the barbarians made
discovery of an access. For verily the
oracle had spoken truth; and it was fated
that the whole mainland of Attica shpuld
fall beneath the sway of the Persians.
Right in front of the citadel, but behind
the gates and the common ascent where
no watch was kept, and no one would
have thought it possible that any foot of
man could climb a few soldiers mounted
from the sanctuary of Aglaurus, Cecrops'
daughter, notwithstanding the steepness
of the precipice. As soon as the Athenians
saw them upon the summit, some threw
themselves headlong from the wall, and
so perished; while others fled for refuge
to the inner part of the temple. The Per-
sians rushed to the gates and opened them,
after which they massacred the suppliants.
When all were slain, they plundered the
temple, and fired every part of the citadel.

Xerxes, thus completely master of
Athens, despatched a horseman to Susa,
with a message to Artabanus, informing
him of his success hitherto. The day
after, he collected together all the Athenian
exiles who had come into Greece in his
train, and bade them go up into the citadel,
and there offer sacrifice after their own

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

fashion. I know not whether he had had
a dream which made him give this order,
or whether he felt some remorse on account
of having set the temple on fire. However
this may have been, the exiles were not
slow to obey the command given them.

I will now explain why I have made
mention of this circumstance: there is a
temple of Erechtheus the Earth-born,
as he is called, in this citadel, containing
within it an olive-tree and a sea. The
tale goes among the Athenians, that they
were placed there as witnesses by Neptune
and Minerva, when they had their con-
tention about the country. Now this
olive-tree had been burnt with the rest of
the temple when the barbarians took the
place. But when the Athenians, whom
1 the king had commanded to offer sacrifice,
I went up into the temple for the purpose,
they found a fresh shoot, as much as a
cubit hi length, thrown out from the old
trunk. Such at least was the account
which these persons gave.

Meanwhile, at Salamis, the Greeks no
sooner heard what had befallen the Athe-
nian citadel, than they fell into such alarm
that some of the captains did not even wait
for the council to come to a vote, but em-
barked hastily on board their vessels, and
hoisted sail as though they would take to
flight immediately. The rest, who stayed
at the council board, came to a vote that
the fleet should give battle at the Isthmus.
Night now drew on; and the captains,
dispersing from the meeting, proceeded
on board their respective ships.

Themistocles, as he entered his own
vessel, was met by Mnesiphilus, an Athe-
nian, who asked him what the council had
resolved to do. On learning that the re-
solve was to stand away for the Isthmus,
and there give battle on behalf of the
Peloponnese, Mnesiphilus exclaimed

"If these men sail away from Salamis,
thou wilt have no fight at all for the one
fatherland; for they will all scatter them-
selves to their own homes; and neither
Eurybiades nor any one else will be able
to hinder them, nor to stop the breaking
up of the armament. Thus will Greece
be brought to ruin through evil counsels.

But haste thee now; and, if there be any
possible way, seek to unsettle these re-
solves mayhap thou mightest persuade
Eurybiades to change his mind, and con-
tinue here."

The suggestion greatly pleased Themis-
tocles; and without answering a word, he
went straight to the vessel of Eurybiades.
Arrived there, he let him know that he
wanted to speak with him on a matter
touching the public service. So Eurybia-
des bade him come on board, and say
whatever he wished. Then Themistocles,
seating himself at his side, went over all
the arguments which he had heard from
Mnesiphilus, pretending as if they were
his own, and added to them many new
ones besides; until at last he persuaded
Eurybiades, by his importunity, to quit
his ship and again collect the captains to
council.

As soon as they were come, and before
Eurybiades had opened to them his pur-
pose in assembling them together, Themis-
tocles, as men are wont to do when they
are very anxious, spoke much to divers of
them; whereupon the Corinthian cap tarn,
Adeimantus, the son of Ocytus, observed
"Themistocles, at the games they who
start too soon are scourged." "True,"
rejoined the other in his excuse, "but they
who wait too late are not crowned."

Thus he gave the Corinthian at this
time a mild answer; and towards Eury-
biades himself he did not now use any of
those arguments which he had urged be-
fore, or say aught of the allies betaking
themselves to flight if once they broke up
from Salamis; it would have been ungrace-
ful for him, when the confederates were
present, to make accusation against any:
but he had recourse to quite a new sort of
reasoning, and addressed him as follows:

"With thee it rests, O Eurybiades! to
save Greece, if thou wilt only hearken
unto me, and give the enemy battle here,
rather than yield to the advice of those
among us, who would have the fleet with-
drawn to the Isthmus. Hear now, I
beseech thee, and judge between the two
courses. At the Isthmus thou wilt fight
in an open sea, which is greatly to our

HISTORY

233

disadvantage, since our ships are heavier
and fewer in number than the enemy's;
and further, thou wilt in any case lose
Salamis, Megara, and Egina, even if all
the rest goes well with us. The land and
sea force of the Persians will advance
together; and thy retreat will but draw
them towards the Peloponnese, and so
bring all Greece into peril. If, on the
other hand, thou doest as I advise, these
are the advantages which thou wilt so
secure: in the first place, as we shall fight
in a narrow sea with few ships against
many, if the war follows the common
course, we shall gain a great victory; for
to fight in a narrow space is favorable to
us in an open sea, to them. Again,
Salamis will in this case be preserved,
where we have placed our wives and chil-
dren. Nay, that very point by which ye
set most store, is secured as much by this
course as by the other; for whether we
fight here or at the Isthmus, we shall
equally give battle in defence of the
Peloponnese. Assuredly ye will not do
wisely to draw the Persians upon that
region. For if things turn out as I anti-
cipate, and we beat them by sea, then we
shall have kept your Isthmus free from
the barbarians, and they will have ad-
vanced no further than Attica, but from
thence have fled back in disorder; and we
shall, moreover, have saved Megara,
Egina, and Salamis itself, where an oracle
has said that we are to overcome our
enemies. When men counsel reasonably,
reasonable success ensues; but when in
their counsels they reject reason, God does
not choose to follow the wanderings of
human fancies."

When Themistocles had thus spoken,
Adeimantus the Corinthian again attacked
him, and bade him be silent, since he
was a man without a city; at the same
tune he called on Eurybiades not to put
the question at the instance of one who
had no country, and urged that Themis-
tocles should show of what state he was
envoy, before he gave his voice with the
rest. This reproach he made, because
the city of Athens had been taken, and
was in the hands of the barbarians.

Hereupon Themistocles spake many bitter
things against Adeimantus and the Corin-
thians generally; and for proof that he had
a country, reminded the captains, that
with two hundred ships at his command,
all fully manned for battle, he had both
city and territory as good as theirs; since
there was no Grecian state which could re-
sist his men if they were to make a descent.

After this declaration, he turned to
Eurybiades, and addressing him with still
greater warmth and earnestness "If thou
wilt stay here," he said, "and behave like
a brave man, all will be well if not, thou
wilt bring Greece to ruin. For the whole
fortune of the war depends on our ships.
Be thou persuaded by my words. If not,
we will take our families on board, and go,
just as we are, to Siris, hi Italy, which is
ours from of old, and which the prophecies
declare we are to colonize some day or
other. You then, when you have lost
allies like us, will hereafter call to mind
what I have now said."

At these words of Themistocles, Eury-
biades changed his determination; princi-
pally, as I believe, because he feared that
if he withdrew the fleet to the Isthmus,
the Athenians would sail away, and knew
that without the Athenians, the rest of
their ships could be no match for the fleet
of the enemy. He therefore decided to
remain, and give battle at Salamis.

And now, the different chiefs, notwith-
standing their skirmish of words, on learn-
ing the decision of Eurybiades, at once
made ready for the fight. Morning broke ;
and, just as the sun rose, the shock of an
earthquake was felt both on shore and
at sea: whereupon the Greeks resolved to
approach the gods with prayer, and like-
wise to send and invite the ^Eacids to their
aid. And this they did, with as much
speed as they had resolved on it. Prayers
were offered to all the gods; and Telamon
and Ajax were invoked at once from Sala-
mis, while a ship was sent to Egina to
fetch ^Eacus himself, and the other ^acids.

The following is a tale which was told
by Dioeus, the son of Theocydes, an
Athenian, who was at this time an exile,
and had gained a good report among the

234

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Medes. He declared that after the army
of Xerxes had, in the absence of the Athe-
nians, wasted Attica, he chanced to be
with Demaratus the Lacedaemonian in the
Thriasian plain, and that while there, he
saw a cloud of dust advancing from Eleu-
sis, such as a host of thirty thousand men
might raise. As he and his companion
were wondering who the men, from whom
the dust arose, could possibly be, a sound
of voices reached his ear, and he thought
that he recognized the mystic hymn to
Bacchus. Now Demaratus was unac-
quainted with the rites of Eleusis, and so
he inquired of Dicaeus what the voices
were saying. Dicaeus made answer
"O Demaratus! beyond a doubt some
mighty calamity is about to befall the
king's army! For it is manifest, inasmuch
as Attica is deserted by its inhabitants,
that the sound which we have heard is
an unearthly one, and is now upon its
way from Eleusis to aid the Athenians
and their confederates. If it descends
upon the Peloponnese, danger will threaten
the king himself and his land army if it
moves towards the ships at Salamis, 't will
go hard but the king's fleet there suffers
destruction. Every year the Athenians
celebrate this feast to the Mother and the
Daughter; and all who wish, whether they
be Athenians or any other Greeks, are
initiated. The sound thou hearest is the
Bacchic song, which is wont to be sung at
that festival." "Hush now," rejoined the
other; "and see thou tell no man of this
matter. For if thy words be brought to
the king's ear, thou wilt assuredly lose
thy head because of them; neither I nor
any man living can then save thee. Hold
thy peace therefore. The gods will see
to the king's army." Thus Demaratus
counselled him; and they looked, and saw
the dust, from which the sound arose,
become a cloud, and the cloud rise up into
the air and sail away to Salamis, making
for the station of the Grecian fleet. Then
they knew that it was the fleet of Xerxes
which would suffer destruction. Such was
the tale told by Dicaeus the son of Theo-
cydes; and he appealed for its truth to
Demaratus and other eye-witnesses.

The men belonging to the fleet of Xerxes,
after they had seen the Spartan dead at
Thermopylae, and crossed the channel from
Trachis to Histiaea, waited there by the
space of three days, and then sailing down
through the Euripus, in three more came
to Phalgrum. In my judgment, the Per-
sian forces both by land and sea when they
invaded Attica were not less numerous
than they had been on their arrival at
Sepias and Thermopylae. For against the
Persian loss in the storm and at Thermo-
pylae, and again in the sea-fights off
Artemisium, I set the various nations
which had since joined the king as the
Malians, the Dorians, the Locrians, and
the Boeotians each serving in full force
in his army except the last, who did not
number in their ranks either the Thes-
pians or the Plataeans; and together with
these, the Carystians, the Andrians, the
Tenians, and the other people of the is-
lands, who all fought on this side except
the five states already mentioned. For as
the Persians penetrated further into
Greece, they were joined continually by
fresh nations.

Reinforced by the contingents of all
these various states, except Paros, the
barbarians reached Athens. As for the
Parians, they tarried at Cythnus, waiting
to see how the war would go. The rest
of the sea forces came safe to Phalerum;
where they were visited by Xerxes, who
had conceived a desire to go aboard and
learn the wishes of the fleet. So he came
and sate in a seat of honor; and the sov-
ereigns of the nations, and the captains
of the ships, were sent for, to appear before
hmi, and as they arrived took their seats
according to the rank assigned them by
the king. In the first seat sate the king
of Sidon; after him, the king of Tyre; then
the rest in their order. When the whole
had taken their places, one after another,
and were set down in orderly array,
Xerxes, to try them, sent Mardonius and
questioned each, whether a sea-fight should
be risked or no.

Mardonius accordingly went round the
entire assemblage, beginning with the
Sidonian monarch, ai ad asked this ques-

HISTORY

235

tion; to which all gave the same answer,
advising to engage the Greeks, except only
Artemisia, who spake as follows:

" Say to the king, Mardonius, that these
are my words to him: I was not the least
brave of those who fought at Euboea,
nor were my achievements there among
the meanest; it is my right, therefore, O
my lord, to tell thee plainly what I think
to be most for thy advantage now. This
then is my advice. Spare thy ships, and
do not risk a battle; for these people are
as much superior to thy people in seaman-
ship, as men to women. Y.liat so great
need is there for thee to incur hazard
at sea? Art thou not master of Athens,
for which thou didst undertake thy ex-
pedition? Is not Greece subject to thee?
Not a soul now resists thy advance. They
who once resisted, were handled even as
they deserved. Now learn how I ex-
pect that affairs will go with thy ad-
versaries. If thou art not over-hasty to
engage with them by sea, but wilt keep
thy fleet near the land, then whether thou
abidest as thou art, or marchest forward
towards the Peloponnese, thou wilt easily
accomplish all for which thou art come
hither. The Greeks cannot hold out
against thee very long; thou wilt soon part
them asunder, and scatter them to their
several homes. In the island where they
lie, I hear they have no food in store; nor
is it likely, if thy land force begins its
march towards the Peloponnese, that they
will remain quietly where they are at
least such as come from that region.
Of a surety they will not greatly trouble
themselves to give battle on behalf of the
Athenians. On the other hand, if thou
art hasty to fight, I tremble lest the de-
feat of thy sea force bring harm like-
wise to thy land army. This, too,
thou shouldst remember, O king; good
masters are apt to have bad servants,
and bad masters good ones. Now, as
thou art the best of men, thy servants
must needs be a sorry set. These Egyp-
tians, Cyprians, Cilicians, and Pamphy-
lians, who are counted in the number of
thy subject-allies, of how little service are
they to thee!"

As Artemisia spake, they who wished
her well were greatly troubled concerning
her words, thinking that she would suffer
some hurt at the king's hands, because
she exhorted him not to risk a battle;
they, on the other hand, who disliked and
envied her, favored as she was by the king
above all the rest of the allies, rejoiced at
her declaration, expecting that her life
would be the forfeit. But Xerxes, when
the words of the several speakers were re-
ported to him, was pleased beyond all
others with the reply of Artemisia; and
whereas, even before this, he had always
esteemed her much, he now praised her
more than ever. Nevertheless, he gave
orders that the advice of the greater num-
ber should be followed; for he thought that
at Eubcea the fleet had not done its best,
because he himself was not there to see
whereas this tune he resolved that he
would be an eye-witness of the combat.

Orders were now given to stand out to
sea; and the ships proceeded towards
Salamis, and took up the stations to which
they were directed, without let or hin-
drance from the enemy. The day, how-
ever, was too far spent for them to begin
the battle, since night already approached:
so they prepared to engage upon the
morrow. The Greeks, meanwhile, were
in great distress and alarm, more espe-
cially those of the Peloponnese, who were
troubled that they had been kept at
Salamis to fight on behalf of the Athenian
territory, and feared that, if they should
suffer defeat, they would be pent up and
besieged in an island, while their own coun-
try was left unprotected.

The same night the land army of the
barbarians began its march towards the
Peloponnese, where, however, all that
was possible had been done to prevent
the enemy from forcing an entrance by
land. As soon as ever news reached the
Peloponnese of the death of Leonidas and
his companions at Thermopylae, the in-
habitants flocked together from the various
cities, and encamped at the Isthmus v under
the command of Cleombrotus, son of
Anaxandridas, and brother of Leonidas.
Here their first care was to block up the

236

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Scironian Way; after which it was deter-
mined in council to build a wall across
the Isthmus. As the number assembled
amounted to many tens of thousands, and
there was not one who did not give himself
to the work, it was soon finished. Stones,
bricks, timber, baskets filled full of sand,
were used in the building; and not a
moment was lost by those who gave their
aid; for they labored without ceasing
either by night or day.

Now the nations who gave their aid,
and who had flocked in full force to the
Isthmus, were the following: the Lacedae-
monians, all the tribes of the Arcadians,
the Eleans, the Corinthians, the Sicyon-
ians, the Epidaurians, the Phliasians,
the Troezenians, and the Hermionians.
These all gave their aid, being greatly
alarmed at the danger which threatened
Greece. But the other inhabitants of the
Peloponnese took no part in the matter;
though the Olympic and Carneian festivals
were now over.

Seven nations inhabit the Peloponnese.
Two of them are aboriginal, and still con-
tinue in the regions where they dwelt
at the first to wit, the Arcadians and the
Cynurians. A third, that of the Achaeans,
has never left the Peloponnese, but has
been dislodged from its own proper coun-
try, and inhabits a district which once
belonged to others. The remaining na-
tions, four out of the seven, are all immi-
grants namely, the Dorians, the ^Eto-
Uans, the Dryopians, and the Lemnians.
To the Dorians belong several very famous
cities; to the ^Etolians one only, that is,
Elis; to the Dryopians, Hermione and that
Asine which lies over against Cardamyle
in Laconia; to the Lemnians, all the towns
of the Paroreats. The aboriginal Cynu-
rians alone seem to be lonians; even they,
however, have, in course of time, grown
to be Dorians, under the government of the
Argives, whose Orneats and vassals they
were. All the cities of these seven nations,
except those mentioned above, stood aloof
from the war; and by so doing, if I may
speak freely, they in fact took part with
the Medes.

So the Greeks at the Isthmus toiled

unceasingly, as though in the greatest
peril; since they never imagined that any
great success would be gained by the fleet.
The Greeks at Salamis, on the other hand,
when they heard what the rest were about,
felt greatly alarmed; but their fear was
not so much for themselves as for the
Peloponnese. At first they conversed
together in low tones, each man with his
fellow, secretly, and marvelled at the folly
shown by Eurybiades; but presently the
smothered feeling broke out, and another
assembly was held; whereat the old sub-
jects provoked much talk from the
speakers, one side maintaining that it was
best to sail to the Peloponnese and risk
battle for that, instead of abiding at
Salamis and fighting for a land already
taken by the enemy; while the other,
which consisted of the Athenians, Egine-
tans, and Megarians, was urgent to remain
and have the battle fought where they
were.

Then Themistocles, when he saw that
the Peloponnesians would carry the vote
against him, went out secretly from the
council, and, instructing a certain man
what he should say, sent him on board a
merchant ship to the fleet of the Medes.
The man's name was Sicinnus; he was one
of Themistocles' household slaves, and
acted as tutor to his sons; in after times,
when the Thespians were admitting per-
sons to citizenship, Themistocles made
him a Thespian, and a rich man to boot.
The ship brought Sicinnus to the Persian
fleet, and there he delivered his message
to the leaders in these words:

"The Athenian commander has sent
me to you privily, without the knowledge
of the other Greeks. He is a well-wisher
to the king's cause, and would rather suc-
cess should attend on you than on his
countrymen; wherefore he bids me tell
you that fear has seized the Greeks and
they are meditating a hasty flight. Now
then it is open to you to achieve the best
work that ever ye wrought, if only ye
will hinder their escaping. They no longer
agree among themselves, so that they will
not now make any resistance nay, 't is
likely ye may see a fight already begun

HISTORY

237

between such as favor and such as oppose
your cause." The messenger, when he
had thus expressed himself, departed and
was seen no more.

Then the captains, believing all that
the messenger had said, proceeded to land
a large body of Persian troops on the
islet of Psyttaleia, which lies between
Salamis and the mainland; after which,
about the hour of midnight, they advanced
their western wing towards Salamis, so as
to inclose the Greeks. At the same time
the force stationed about Ceos and Cyno-
sura moved forward, and filled the whole
strait as far as Munychia with their ships.
This advance was made to prevent the
Greeks from escaping by flight, and to
block them up in Salamis, where it was
thought that vengeance might be taken
upon them for the battles fought near
Artemisium. The Persian troops were
landed on the islet of Psyttaleia, because,
as soon as the battle began, the men and
wrecks were likely to be drifted thither,
as the isle lay in the very path of the com-
ing fight, and they would thus be able
to save their own men and destroy those
of the enemy. All these movements were
made in silence, that the Greeks might
have no knowledge of them; and they
occupied the whole night, so that the men
had no time to get their sleep.

I cannot say that there is no truth in
prophecies, or feel inclined to call in ques-
tion those which speak with clearness,
when I think of the following:

"When they shall bridge with their ships to the
sacred strand of Diana

Girt with the golden falchion, and eke to marine
Cynosura,

Mad hope swelling their hearts at the downfall
of beautiful Athens

Then shall godlike Right extinguish haughty
Presumption,

Insult's furious offspring, who thinketh to over-
throw all things.

Brass with brass shall mingle, and Mars with
blood shall empurple

Ocean's waves. Then then shall the day of
Grecia's freedom

Come from Victory fair, and Saturn's son all-
seeing."

When I look to this, and perceive how
clearly Bacis spoke, I neither venture

myself to say anything against prophecies
nor do I approve of others impugning
them.

Meanwhile, among the captains at
Salamis, the strife of words grew fierce.
As yet they did not know that they were
encompassed, but imagined that the bar-
barians remained in the same places where
they had seen them the day before.

In the midst of their contention, Aris-
tides, the son of Lysimachus, who had
crossed from Egina, arrived in Salamis.
He was an Athenian, and had been ostra-
cized by the commonalty; yet I believe,
from what I have heard concerning his
character, that there was not in all Athens
a man so worthy or so just as he. He
now came to the council, and, standing
outside, called for Themistocles. Now
Themistocles was not his friend, but his
most determined enemy. However, under
the pressure of the great dangers impend-
ing, Aristides forgot their feud, and called
Themistocles out of the council, since he
wished to confer with him. He had heard
before his arrival of the impatience of the
Peloponnesians to withdraw the fleet tc
the Isthmus. As soon therefore as The-
mistocles came forth, Aristides addressed
him in these words:

"Our rivalry at all times, and especially
at the present season, ought to be a strug-
gle, which of us shall most advantage
our country. Let me then say to thee,
that so far as regards the departure of the
Peloponnesians from this place, much talk
and little will be found precisely alike.
I have seen with my own eyes that which
I now report: that, however much the
Corinthians or Eurybiades himself may
wish it, they cannot now retreat; for we
are enclosed on every side by the enemy.
Go hi to them, and make this known."

"Thy advice is excellent," answered the
other; "and thy tidings are also good.
That which I earnestly desired to happen,
thine eyes have beheld accomplished.
Know that what the Medes have now done
was at my instance; for it was necessary,
as our men would not fight here of their
own free will, to make them fight whether
they would or no. But come now, as thou

338

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

hast brought the good news, go in and
tell it. For if I speak to them, they will
think it a feigned tale, and will not believe
that the barbarians have inclosed us
around. Therefore do thou go to them,
and inform them how matters stand. If
they believe thee, 't will be for the best;
but if otherwise, it will not harm. For it
is impossible that they should now flee
away, if we are indeed shut in on all sides,
as thou sayest."

Then Aristides entered the assembly,
and spoke to the captains: he had come,
he told them, from Egina, and had but
barely escaped the blockading vessels
the Greek fleet was entirely inclosed by
the ships of Xerxes and he advised them
to get themselves in readiness to resist the
foe. Having said so much, he withdrew.
And now another contest arose; for the
greater part of the captains would not be-
lieve the tidings.

But while they still doubted, a Tenian
trireme, commanded by Panaetius the son
of Sosimenes, deserted from the Persians
and joined the Greeks, bringing full in-
telligence. For this reason the Tenians
were inscribed upon the tripod at Delphi
among those who overthrew the barba-
rians. With this ship, which deserted
to their side at Salamis, and the Lemnian
vessel which came over before at Arte-
misium, the Greek fleet was brought to
the full number of 380 ships; otherwise it
fell short by two of that amount.

The Greeks now, not doubting what the
Tenians told them, made ready for the
coming fight. At the dawn of day, all
the men-at-arms were assembled together,
and speeches were made to them, of which
the best was that of Themistocles; who
throughout contrasted what was noble
with what was base, and bade them, in all
that came within the range of man's
nature and constitution, always to make
choice of the nobler part. Having thus
wound up his discourse, he told them to go
at once on board their ships, which they
accordingly did; and about this time the
trireme, that had been sent to Egina for
the jEacidae, returned; whereupon the
Greeks put to sea with all their fleet.

The fleet had scarce left the land when
they were attacked by the barbarians. At
once most of the Greeks began to back
water, and were about touching the shore,
when Ameinias of Pallene, one of the Athe-
nian captains, darted forth in front of
the line, and charged a ship of the enemy.
The two vessels became entangled, and
could not separate, whereupon the rest
of the fleet came up to help Ameinias, and
engaged with the Persians. Such is the
account which the Athenians give of the
way in which the battle began; but the
Eginetans maintain that the vessel which
had been to Egina for the /Eacidae, was
the one that brought on the fight. It is
also reported, that a phantom in the form
of a woman appeared to the Greeks, and,
in a voice that was heard from end to
end of the fleet, cheered them on to the
fight; first, however, rebuking them, and
saying "Strange men, how long are ye
going to back water? "

Against the Athenians, who held the
western extremity of the line towards
Eleusis, were placed the Phoenicians;
against the Lacedaemonians, whose station
was eastward towards the Piraeus, the
lonians. Of these last a few only followed
the advice of Themistocles, to fight back-
wardly; the greater number did far
otherwise. I could mention here the
names of many trierarchs who took vessels
from the Greeks, but I shall pass over all
excepting Theome'stor, the son of Andro-
damas, and Phylacus, the son of Histiaeus,
both Samians. I show this preference
to them, inasmuch as for this service
Theomestor was made tyrant of Samos
by the Persians, while Phylacus was
enrolled among the king's benefactors,
and presented with a large estate in land.
In the Persian tongue the king's benefac-
tors are called Orosangs.

Far the greater number of the Persian
ships engaged in this battle were disabled,
either by the Athenians or by the Egine-
tans. For as the Greeks fought in order
and kept their line, while the barbarians
were in confusion and had no plan hi
anything that they did, the issue of the
battle could scarce bs other than it was.

HISTORY

239

Yet the Persians fought far more bravely
here than at Euboea, and indeed surpassed
themselves; each did his utmost through
fear of Xerxes, for each thought that the
king's eye was upon himself.

What part the several nations, whether
Greek or barbarian, took in the combat,
I am not able to say for certain; Artemisia,
however, I know, distinguished herself
in such a way as raised her even higher
than she stood before in the esteem of
the king. For after confusion had spread
throughout the whole of the king's fleet,
and her ship was closely pursued by an
Athenian trireme, she, having no way to
fly, since in front of her were a number of
friendly vessels, and she was nearest of all
the Persians to the enemy, resolved on a
measure which in fact proved her safety.
Pressed by the Athenian pursuer, she bore
straight against one of the ships of her
own party, a Calyndian, which had Da-
masithymus, the Calyndian king, himself
on board. I cannot say whether she had
had any quarrel with the man while the
fleet was at the Hellespont, or no neither
can I decide whether she of set purpose
attacked his vessel, or whether it merely
chanced that the Calyndian ship came in
her way but certain it is that she bore
down upon his vessel and sank it, and that
thereby she had the good fortune to pro-
cure herself a double advantage. For the
commander of the Athenian trireme, when
he saw her bear down on one of the enemy's
fleet, thought immediately that her vessel
was a Greek, or else had deserted from
the Persians, and was now fighting on the
Greek side; he therefore gave up the chase,
and turned away to attack others.

Thus in the first place she saved her
life by the action, and was enabled to get
clear off from the battle; while further,
it fell out that in the very act of doing
the king an hi jury she raised herself to a
greater height than ever in his esteem.
For as Xerxes beheld the fight, he re-
marked (it is said) the destruction of the
vessel, whereupon the bystanders observed
to him "Seest thou, master, how well
Artemisia fights, and how she has just sunk
a ship of the enemy?" Then Xerxes

asked if it were really Artemisia's doing;
and they answered, "Certainly; for they
knew her ensign:" while all made sure
that the sunken vessel belonged to the
opposite side. Everything, it is said,
conspired to prosper the queen it was
especially fortunate for her that not one
of those on board the Calyndian ship sur-
vived to become her accuser. Xerxes,
they say, in reply to the remarks made to
him, observed "My men have behaved
like women, my women like men!"

There fell in this combat Ariabignes,
one of the chief commanders of the fleet,
who was son of Darius and brother of
Xerxes; and with him perished a vast
number of men of high repute, Persians,
Medes, and allies. Of the Greeks there
died only a few; for, as they were able to
swim, all those that were not slain outright
by the enemy escaped from the sinking
vessels and swam across to Salamis. But
on the side of the barbarians more perished
by drowning than in any other way, since
they did not know how to swim. The
great destruction took place when the
ships which had been first engaged began
to fly; for they who were stationed in the
rear, anxious to display their valor before
the eyes of the king, made every effort
to force their way to the front, and thus
became entangled with such of their own
vessels as were retreating.

In this confusion the following event
occurred: Certain Phoenicians belonging
to the ships which had thus perished made
their appearance before the king, and laid
the blame of their loss on the lonians, de-
claring that they were traitors, and had
wilfully destroyed the vessels. But the
upshot of this complaint was, that the
Ionian captains escaped the death which
threatened them, while their Phoenician
accusers received death as their reward.
For it happened that, exactly as they
spoke, a Samothracian vessel bore down
on an Athenian and sank it, but was at-
tacked and crippled immediately by one of
the Eginetan squadron. Now the Samo-
thracians were expert with the javelin, and
aimed their weapons so well, that they
cleared the deck of the vessel which had

240

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

disabled their own, after which they sprang
on board, and took it. This saved the
lonians. Xerxes, when he saw the ex-
ploit, turned fiercely on the Phoenicians
(he was ready, in his extreme vexation,
to find fault with any one) and ordered
their heads to be cut off, to prevent them,
he said, from casting the blame of their
own misconduct upon braver men. Dur-
ing the whole time of the battle Xerxes
sate at the base of the hill called ^Egaleds,
over against Salamis; and whenever he
saw any of his own captains perform any
worthy exploit he inquired concerning
him ; and the man's name was taken down
by his scribes together with the names
of his father and his city. Ariaramnes too,
a Persian, who was a friend of the lonians,
and present at the time whereof I speak,
had a share in bringing about the punish-
ment of the Phoenicians.

When the rout of the barbarians began,
and they sought to make their escape to
Phalerum, the Eginetans, awaiting them
in the channel, performed exploits worthy
to be recorded. Through the whole of
the confused struggle the Athenians em-
ployed themselves in destroying such ships
as either made resistance or fled to shore,
while the Eginetans dealt with those which
endeavored to escape down the strait; so
that the Persian vessels were no sooner
clear of the Athenians than forthwith
they fell into the hands of the Eginetan
squadron.

It chanced here that there was a meeting
between the ship of Themistocles, which
was hasting in pursuit of the enemy,
and that of Polycritus, son of Crius the
Eginetan, which had just charged a
Sidonian trireme. The Sidonian vessel
was the same that captured the Eginetan
guard-ship off Sciathus, which had Py-
theas, the son of Ischenoiis, on board
that Pytheas, I mean, who fell covered
with wounds, and whom the Sidonians
kept on board their ship, from admiration
of his gallantry. This man afterwards
returned in safety to Egina; for when the
Sidonian vessel with its Persian crew fell
into the hands of the Greeks, he was still
-found on board, Polycritus no sooner saw

the Athenian trireme than, knowing at
once whose vessel it was, as he observed
that it bore the ensign of the admiral, he
shouted to Themistocles jeeringly, and
asked him, in a tone of reproach, if the
Eginetans did not show themselves rare
friends to the Medes. At the same time,
while he thus reproached Themistocles,
Polycritus bore straight down on the
Sidonian. Such of the barbarian vessels as
escaped from the battle fled to Phalerum,
and there sheltered themselves under the
protection of the land army.

The Greeks who gained the greatest
glory of all in the sea-fight off Salamis
were the Eginetans, and after them the
Athenians. The individuals of most dis-
tinction were Polycritus the Eginetan, and
two Athenians, Eumenes of Anagyrus, and
Ameinias of Pallene; the latter of whom
had pressed Artemisia so hard. And as-
suredly, if he had known that the vessel
carried Artemisia on board, he would never
have given over the chase till he had either
succeeded in taking her, or else been taken
himself. For the Athenian captains had
received special orders touching the queen;
and moreover a reward of ten thousand
drachmas had been proclaimed for any
one who should make her prisoner; since
there was great indignation felt that a
woman should appear in arms against
Athens. However, as I said before, she
escaped; and so did some others whose ships
survived the engagement; and these were all
now assembled at the port of Phalerum.
The Athenians say that Adeimantus,
the Corinthian commander, at the mo-
ment when the two fleets joined battle, was
seized with fear, and being beyond measure
alarmed, spread his sails, and hasted to
fly away; on which the other Corinthians,
seeing their leader's ship in full flight,
sailed off likewise. They had reached in
their flight that part of the coast of Salamis
where stands the temple of Minerva Sciras,
when they met a light bark, a very strange
apparition: it was never discovered that
any one had sent it to them; and till it
appeared they were altogether ignorant
how the battle was going. That there was
something beyond nature in the matter

HISTORY

241

they judged from this that when the
men in the bark drew near to their ships
they addressed them, saying "Adeiman-
tus, while them playest the traitor's part,
by withdrawing all these ships, and flying
away from the fight, the Greeks whom thou
hast deserted are defeating their foes as
completely as they ever wished hi their
prayers." Adeimantus, however, would
not believe what the men said; whereupon
they told him, "he might take them with
him as hostages, and put them to death
if he did not find the Greeks whining."
Then Adeimantus put about, both he
and those who were with him; and they
re-joined the fleet when the victory was
already gained. Such is the tale which the
Athenians tell concerning them of Corinth;
these latter however do not allow its truth.
On the contrary, they declare that they
were among those who distinguished them-
selves most in the fight. And the rest of
Greece bears witness hi their favor.

In the midst of the confusion Aristides,
the son of Lysimachus, the Athenian, of
whom I lately spoke as a man of the great-
est excellence, performed the following
service. He took a number of the Athe-
nian heavy-armed troops, who had pre-

viously been stationed along the shore of
Salamis, and, landing with them on the
islet of Psyttaleia, slew all the Persians
by whom it was occupied.

As soon as the sea-fight was ended, the
Greeks drew together to Salamis all the
wrecks that were to be found in that
quarter, and prepared themselves for
another engagement, supposing that the
king would renew the fight with the vessels
which still remained to him. Many of
the wrecks had been carried away by a
westerly wind to the coast of Attica, where
they were thrown upon the strip of shore
called Colias. Thus not only were the
prophecies of Bacis and Musaeus concern-
ing this battle fulfilled completely, but
likewise, by the place to which the wrecks
were drifted, the prediction of Lysistratus,
an Athenian soothsayer, uttered many
years before these events, and quite for-
gotten at the time by all the Greeks, was
fully accomplished. The words were

"Then shall the sight of the oars fill Colian dames
with amazement."

Now this must have happened as soon as
the king was departed.

THUCYDIDES (47i?-4oo? B. C.)

Very different is the great historian of the fatal struggle between the two imperialistic cities, Athens
and Sparta. An active participant in the struggle, he was the first and still remains one of the greatest
of critical investigators into the causes of historical events and of the motives of the men who took part
in them. A skeptic and a philosopher, he has revealed in this tragic drama the beginning of the long
decay of the glorious civilization that was Greece, caused by the underlying selfishness of men in their
relations to each other. The first of the selections describes in the lofty language of Pericles the Athenian
ideal of individual perfection; the second is an illuminating commentary on the revolutionary character
wherever it may be found.

Translation by Richard Crawley.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES

IN THE same winter the Athenians gave
a funeral at the public cost to those who
had first fallen in this war. It was a
custom of their ancestors, and the manner
of it is as follows. Three days before the
ceremony, the bones of the dead are laid
out in a tent which has been erected; and
their friends bring to their relatives such

offerings as they please. In the funeral
procession cypress coffins are borne in
cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the
deceased being placed in the coffin of their
tribe. Among these is carried one empty
bier decked for the missing, that is, for
those whose bodies could not be recovered.
Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins
in the procession: and the female relatives
are there to wail at the burial. The dead
are laid hi the public sepulcher in the

242

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

beautiful suburb of the city, in which those
who fall in war are always buried; with
the exception of those slain at Marathon,
who for their singular and extraordinary
valor were interred on the spot where they
fell. After the bodies have been laid in
the earth, a man chosen by the state, of
approved wisdom and eminent reputation,
pronounces over them an appropriate
panegyric; after which all retire. Such is
the manner of the burying; and through-
out the whole of the war, whenever the
occasion arose, the established custom was
observed. Meanwhile these were the
first that had fallen, and Pericles, son of
Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their
eulogium. When the proper time arrived,
he advanced from the sepulcher to an ele-
vated platform in order to be heard by as
many of the crowd as possible, and spoke
as follows:

"Most of my predecessors in this place
have commended him who made this
speech part of the law, telling us that it is
well that it should be delivered at the
burial of those who fall in battle. For
myself, I should have thought that the
worth which had displayed itself in deeds,
would be sufficiently rewarded by honors
also shown by deeds; such as you now see
in this funeral prepared at the people's
cost. And I could have wished that the
reputations of many brave men were not
to be imperilled in the mouth of a single
individual, to stand or fall according as he
spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak
properly upon a subject where it is even
difficult to convince your hearers that you
are speaking the truth. On the one hand,
the friend who is familiar with every fact
of the story, may think that some point
has not been set forth with that fulness
which he wishes and knows it to deserve;
on the other, he who is a stranger to the
matter may be led by envy to suspect ex-
aggeration if he hears anything above
his own nature. For men can endure to
hear others praised only so long as they
can severally persuade themselves of their
own ability to equal the actions recounted:
when this point is passed, envy comes in
and with it incredulity. However, since

our ancestors have stamped this custom
with their approval, it becomes my duty to
obey the law and to try to satisfy your
several wishes and opinions as best I may.

"I shall begin with our ancestors: it is
both just and proper that they should
have the honor of the first mention on an
occasion like the present. They dwelt in
the country without break in the succession
from generation to generation, and handed
it down free to the present time by their
valor. And if our more remote ancestors
deserve praise, much more do our own
fathers, who added to their inheritance
the empire which we now possess, and
spared no pains to be able to leave their
acquisitions to us of the present generation.
Lastly, there are few parts of our do-
minions that have not been augmented by
those of us here, who are still more or less
in the vigor of life; while the mother
country has been furnished by us with
everything that can enable her to depend
on her own resources whether for war or
for peace. That part of our history which
tells of the military achievements which
gave us our several possessions, or of the
ready valor with which either we or our
fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or
foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar
to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I
shall therefore pass it by. But what was
the road by which we reached our position,
what the form of government under which
our greatness grew, what the national
habits out of which it sprang; these are
questions which I may try to solve before
I proceed to my panegyric upon these
men; since I think this to be a subject
upon which on the present occasion a
speaker may properly dwell, and to which
the whole assemblage, whether citizens
or foreigners, may listen with advantage.

"Our constitution does not copy the
laws of neighboring states; we are rather a
pattern to others than imitators ourselves.
Its administration favors the many in-
stead of the few; this is why it is called a
democracy. If we look to the laws, they
afford equal justice to all in their private
differences; if to social standing, advance-
ment in public life falls to reputation for

HISTORY

243

capacity, class considerations not being
allowed to interfere with merit; nor again
does poverty bar the way, if a man is able
to serve the state, he is not hindered by
the obscurity of his condition. The free-
dom which we enjoy in our government
extends also to our ordinary life. There,
far from exercising a jealous surveillance
over each other, we do not feel called
upon to be angry with our neighbor for
doing what he likes, or even to indulge in
those injurious looks which cannot fail
to be offensive, although they inflict no
positive penalty. But all this ease in our
private relations does not make us lawless
as citizens. Against this fear is our chief
safeguard, teaching us to obey the magis-
trates and the laws, particularly such as
regard the protection of the injured,
whether they are actually on the statute
book, or belong to that code which, al-
though unwritten, yet cannot be broken
without acknowledged disgrace.

"Further, we provide plenty of means
for the mind to refresh itself from business.
We celebrate games and sacrifices all the
year round, and the elegance of our
private establishments forms a daily source
of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen;
while the magnitude of our city draws the
produce of the world into our harbor, so
that to the Athenian the fruits of other
countries are as familiar a luxury as those
of his own.

"If we turn to our military policy,
there also we differ from our antagonists.
We throw open our city to the world,
and never by alien acts exclude foreigners
from any opportunity of learning or ob-
serving, although the eyes of an enemy
may occasionally profit by our liberality;
trusting less in system and policy than to
the native spirit of our citizens; while in
education, where our rivals from their
very cradles by a painful discipline seek
after manliness, at Athens we live exactly
as we please, and yet are just as ready to
encounter every legitimate danger. In
proof of this it may be noticed that the
Lacedemonians do not invade our country
alone, but bring with them all their con-
federates; while we Athenians advance

unsupported into the territory of a neigh-
bor, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually
vanquish with ease men who are defending
their homes. Our united force was never
yet encountered by any enemy, because
we have at once to attend to our marine
and to despatch our citizens by land upon
a hundred different services; so that,
wherever they engage with some such
fraction of our strength, a success against
a detachment is magnified into a victory
over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse
suffered at the hands of our entire people.
And yet if with habits not of labor but of
ease, and courage not of art but of nature,
we are still willing to encounter danger,
we have the double advantage of escaping
the experience of hardships in anticipation
and of facing them in the hour of need as
fearlessly as those who are never free from
them.

"Nor are these the only points in which
our city is worthy of admiration. We cul-
tivate refinement without extravagance
and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth
we employ more for use than for show, and
place the real disgrace of poverty not in
owning to the fact but hi declining the
struggle against it. Our public men have,
besides politics, their private affairs to
attend to, and our ordinary citizens,
though occupied with the pursuits of in-
dustry, are still fair judges of public mat-
ters; for, unlike any other nation, re-
garding him who takes no part in these
duties not as unambitious but as useless,
we Athenians are able to judge at all events
if we cannot originate, and instead of look-
ing on discussion as a stumbling-block
in the way of action, we think it an indis-
pensable preliminary to any wise action
at all. Again, in our enterprises we
present the singular spectacle of daring
and deliberation, each carried to its high-
est point, and both united in the same
persons; although usually decision is
the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflec-
tion. But the palm of courage will surely
be adjudged most justly to those who
best know the difference between hardship
and pleasure and yet are never tempted to
shrink from danger. In generosity we are

844

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

equally singular, acquiring our friends by
conferring not by receiving favors. Yet,
of course, the doer of the favor is the
firmer friend of the two, in order by con-
tinued kindness to keep the recipient in
his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly
from the rery consciousness that the re-
turn he makes will be a payment, not a
free gift. And it is only the Athenians
who, fearless of consequences, confer their
benefits not from calculations of expe-
diency, but in the confidence of liberality.

"In short, I say that as a city we are
the school of Hellas; while I doubt if the
world can produce a man, who where he
has only himself to depend upon, is equal
to so many emergencies, and graced by
so happy a versatility as the Athenian.
And that this is no mere boast thrown
out for the occasion, but plain matter of
fact, the power of the state acquired by
these habits proves. For Athens alone
of her contemporaries is found when
tested to be greater than her reputation,
and alone gives no occasion to her assail-
ants to blush at the antagonist by whom
they have been worsted, or to her sub-
jects to question her title by merit to rule.
Rather, the admiration of the present
and succeeding ages will be ours, since
we have not left our power without wit-
ness, but have shown it by mighty proofs;
and far from needing a Homer for our
panegyrist, or other of his craft whose
verses might charm for the moment
only for the impression which they gave
to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced
every sea and land to be the highway of
our daring, and everywhere, whether for
evil or for good, have left imperishable
monuments behind us. Such is the Athens
for which these men, in the assertion of
their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought
and died; and well may every one of their
survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.

"Indeed if I have dwelt at some length
upon the character of our country, it has
been to show that our stake in the struggle
is not the same as theirs who have no such
blessings to lose, and also that the panegy-
ric of the men over whom I am now speak-
ing might be by definite proofs established.

That panegyric is now in a great measure
complete; for the Athens that I have
celebrated is only what the heroism of
these and their like have made her, men
whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes,
will be found to be only commensurate
with their deserts. And if a test of worth
be wanted, it is to be found in their closing
scene, and this not only in the cases in
which it set the final seal upon their merit,
but also in those in which it gave the first
intimation of their having any. For there
is justice in the claim that steadfastness in
his country's battles should be as a cloak
to cover a man's other imperfections; since
the good action has blotted out the bad,
and his merit as a citizen more than out-
weighed his demerits as an individual.
But none of these allowed either wealth
with its prospect of future enjoyment to
unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its
hope of a day of freedom and riches to
tempt him to shrink from danger. No,
holding that vengeance upon their enemies
was more to be desired than any personal
blessings, and reckoning this to be the
most glorious of hazards, they joyfully
determined to accept the risk, to make sure
of their vengeance and to let their wishes
wait; and while committing to hope the
uncertainty of final success, in the business
before them they thought fit to act boldly
and trust in themselves. Thus choosing
to die resisting, rather than to live sub-
mitting, they fled only from dishonor, but
met danger face to face, and after one
brief moment, while at the summit of
their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, .
but from their glory.

"So died these men as became Athe-
nians. You, their survivors, must deter-
mine to have as unfaltering a resolution
in the field, though you may pray that it
may have a happier issue. And not con-
tented with ideas derived only from words
of the advantages which are bound up
with the defence of your country, though
these would furnish a valuable text to a
speaker even before an audience so alive
to them as the present, you must your-
selves realize the power of Athens, and
feed your eyes upon her from day to day,

HISTORY

245

till love of her fills your hearts; and then
when all her greatness shall break upon
you, you must reflect that it was by cour-
age, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of
honor in action that men were enabled to
win all this, and that no personal failure
in an enterprise could make them consent
to deprive their country of their valor,
but they laid it at her feet as the most
glorious contribution that they could offer.
For this offering of their lives made in
common by them all they each of them
individually received that renown which
never grows old, and for a sepulcher, not
so much that in which then: bones have
been deposited, but that noblest of shrines
wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally
remembered upon every occasion on which
deed or story shall call for its commemora-
tion. For heroes have the whole earth
for their tomb ; and in lands far from their
own, where the column with its epitaph
declares it, there is enshrined in every
breast a record unwritten with no tablet
to preserve it, except that of the heart.
These take as your model, and judging
happiness to be the fruit of freedom and
freedom of valor, never decline the dangers
of war. For it is not the miserable that
would most justly be unsparing of their
lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is
rather they to whom continued life may
bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom
a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous
in its consequences. And surely, to a
man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice
must be immeasurably more grievous than
the unfelt death which strikes him in
the midst of his strength and patriotism!

"Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is
what I have to offer to the parents of the
dead who may be here. Numberless are
the chances to which, as they know, the
life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed
are they who draw for their lot a death
so glorious as that which has caused your
mourning, and to whom life has been so
exactly measured as to terminate in the
happiness in which it has been passed.
Still I know that this is a hard saying,
especially when those are in question of
Whom you will constantly be reminded by

seeing in the homes of others blessings of
which once you also boasted: for grief is
felt not so much for the want of what we
have never known, as for the loss of that
to which we have been long accustomed.
Yet you who are still of an age to beget
children must bear up in the hope of hav-
ing others in their stead; not only will they
help you to forget those whom you have
lost, but will be to the state at once a
reinforcement and a security; for never
can a fair or just policy be expected of the
citizen who does not, like his fellows,
bring to the decision the interests and
apprehensions of a father. While those
of you who have passed your prime must
congratulate yourselves with the thought
that the best part of your life was fortu-
nate, and that the brief span that remains
will be cheered by the fame of the de-
parted. For it is only the love of honor
that never grows old; and honor it is, not
gain, as some would have it, that rejoices
the heart of age and helplessness.

"Turning to the sons or brothers of the
dead, I see an arduous struggle before you.
When a man is gone, all are wont to praise
him, and should your merit be ever so
transcendent, you will still find it difficult
not merely to overtake, but even to ap-
proach their renown. The living have
envy to contend with, while those who
are no longer in our path are honored with
a goodwill into which rivalry does not
enter. On the other hand, if I must say
anything on the subject of female excel-
lence to those of you who will now be in
widowhood, it will be all comprised hi this
brief exhortation. Great will be your
glory in not falling short of your natural
character; and greatest will be hers who is
least talked of among the men whether
for good or for bad.

" My task is now finished. I have per-
formed it to the best of my ability, and
in word, at least, the requirements of the
law are now satisfied. If deeds be in
question, those who are here interred
have received part of their honors already,
and for the rest, their children will be
brought up till manhood at the public
expense: the state thus offers a valuable

246

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

prize, as the garland of victory in this race
of valor, for the reward both of those who
have fallen and their survivors. And
where the rewards for merit are greatest,
there are found the best citizens.

"And now that you have brought to a
close your lamentations for your relatives,
you may depart."

THE CORCYR^EAN REVOLUTION

THE Peloponnesians accordingly at once
set off in haste by night for home, coasting
along shore; and hauling their ships across
the Isthmus of Leucas, in order not to be
seen doubling it, so departed. The Cor-
cyraeans, made aware of the approach of
the Athenian fleet and of the departure of
the enemy, brought the Messenians from
outside the walls into the town, and ordered
the fleet which they had manned to sail
round into the Hyllaic harbor; and while
it was so doing, slew such of their enemies
as they laid hands on, dispatching after-
wards as they landed them, those whom
they had persuaded to go on board the
ships. Next they went to the sanctuary
of Hera and persuaded about fifty men
to take their trial, and condemned them
all to death. The mass of the suppliants
who had refused to do so, on seeing what
was taking place, slew each other there in
the consecrated ground; while some hanged
themselves upon the trees, and others
destroyed themselves as they were sever-
ally able. During seven days that Eury-
medon stayed with his sixty ships, the
Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering
those of their fellow-citizens whom they
regarded as their enemies: and although
the crime imputed was that of attempting
to put down the democracy, some were
slain also for private hatred, others by
their debtors because of the monies owed
to them. Death thus raged in every
shape; and, as usually happens at such
times, there was no length to which vio-
lence did not go; sons were killed by their
fathers, and suppliants dragged from the
altar or slain upon it; while some were
even walled up in the temple of Dionysus
and died there.

So bloody was the march of the revolu-
tion, and the impression which it made was
the greater as it was one of the first to
occur. Later on, one may say, the whole
Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles
being everywhere made by the popular
chiefs to bring in the Athenians, and by
the oligarchs to introduce the Lacedae
monians. In peace there would have beer,
neither the pretext nor the wish to make
such an invitation; but in war, with ail
alliance always at the command of eithe:
faction for the hurt of their adversaries an 1
their own corresponding advantage, op
portunities for bringing in the foreigner
were never wanting to the revolutionary
parties. The sufferings which revolutior
entailed upon the cities were many and
terrible, such as have occurred and always
will occur, as long as the nature of mankind
remains the same; though in a severer
or milder form, and varying in their symp-
toms, according to the variety of the
particular cases. In peace and pros-
perity states and individuals have better
sentiments, because they do not find them-
selves suddenly confronted with imperious
necessities; but war takes away the easy
supply of daily wants, and so proves a
rough master, that brings most men's
characters to a level with their fortunes.
Revolution thus ran its course from city
to city, and the places which it arrived
at last, from having heard what had been
done before, carried to a still greater excess
the refinement of their inventions, as mani-
fested in the cunning of their enterprises
and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words
had to change their ordinary meaning and
to take that which was now given them.
Reckless audacity came to be considered
the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesita-
tion, specious cowardice; moderation was
held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability
to see all sides of a question, inaptness to
act on any. Frantic violence became the
attribute of manliness; cautious plotting,
a justifiable means of self-defence. The
advocate of extreme measures was always
trustworthy; his opponent a man to be
suspected. To succeed in a plot was to
have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still

HISTORY

shrewder; but to try to provide against
having to do either was to break up your
party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
In fine, to forestall an intending criminal,
or to suggest the idea of a crime where it
was wanting, was equally commended,
until even blood became a weaker tie
than party, from the superior readiness of
those united by the latter to dare every-
thing without reserve; for such associations
had not in view the blessings derivable
from established institutions but were
formed by ambition for their overthrow;
and the confidence of their members in
each other rested less on any religious
sanction than upon complicity hi crime.
The fair proposals of an adversary were
met with jealous precautions by the
stronger of the two, and not with a gener-
ous confidence. Revenge also was held
of more account than self-preservation.
Oaths of reconciliation, being only prof-
fered on either side to meet an immediate
difficulty, only held good so long as no
other weapon was at hand; but when
opportunity offered, he who first ventured
to seize it and to take his enemy off his
guard, thought this perfidious vengeance
sweeter than an open one, since, considera-
' tions of safety apart, success by treachery
won him the palm of superior intelligence.
Indeed it is generally the case that men
are readier to call rogues clever than sim-
pletons honest, and are as ashamed of
being the second as they are proud of being
the first. The cause of all these evils
was the lust for power arising from greed
and ambition; and from these passions
proceeded the violence of parties once
engaged in contention. The leaders in the
cities, each provided with the fairest pro-
fessions, on the one side witi the cry of
political equality of the people, on the
other of a moderate aristocracy, sought
prizes for themselves in those public
interests which they pretended to cherish,
and, recoiling from no means in their
struggles for ascendancy, engaged in the
direst excesses; hi their acts of vengeance
they went to even greater lengths, not
stopping at what justice or the good of
\ he state demanded, but making the party

caprice of the moment their only standard,
and invoking with equal readiness the
condemnation of an unjust verdict or the
authority of the strong arm to glut the
animosities of the hour. Thus religion
was in honor with neither party; but the
use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends
was hi high reputation. Meanwhile the
moderate part of the citizens perished be-
tween the two, either for not joining hi
the quarrel, or because envy would not
suffer them to escape.

Thus every form of iniquity took root in
the Hellenic countries by reason of the
troubles. The ancient simplicity into
which honor so largely entered was laughed
down and disappeared; and society be-
came divided into camps hi which no man
trusted his fellow. To put an end to
this, there was neither promise to be de-
pended upon, nor oath that could com-
mand respect; but all parties dwelling
rather in their calculation upon the hope-
lessness of a permanent state of things,
were more intent upon self-defence than
capable of confidence. In this contest
the blunter wits were most successful.
Apprehensive of their own deficiencies and
of the cleverness of their antagonists, they
feared to be worsted in debate and to be
surprised by the combinations of their
more versatile opponents, and so at once
boldly had recourse to action: while their
adversaries, arrogantly thinking that they
should know in tune, and that it was un-
necessary to secure by action what policy
afforded, often fell victims to their want
of precaution.

Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first ex-
ample of most of the crimes alluded to; of
the reprisals exacted by the governed who
had never experienced equitable treatment
or indeed aught but insolence from their
rulers wher their hour came; of the ini-
quitous resolves of those who desired to get
rid of their accustomed poverty, and
ardently coveted their neighbors' goods;
and lastly, of the savage and pitiless ex-
cesses into which men who had begun
the struggle not in a class but hi a party
spirit, were hurried by their ungovernable
passions. In the confusion into which life

248

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

was now thrown in the cities, human na-
ture, always rebelling against the law and
now its master, gladly showed itself un-
governed in passion, above respect for
justice, and the enemy of all superiority;
since revenge would not have been set
above religion, and gain above justice,
had it not been for the fatal power of envy.

Indeed men too often take upon themselves
in the prosecution of their revenge to set
the example of doing away with those
general laws to which all alike can look
for salvation in adversity, instead of
allowing them to subsist against the
day of danger when their aid may be
required.

TACITUS (ss?-ioo? A. D.)

Tacitus was the chief historian of the Roman Empire and one of the most important of all interpre-
ters of history. The Annals, from which this selection is taken, embraces a history of the period from
the accession of Tiberius to the death of Nero (14-68 A. D.), comprising a series of masterly sketches of
great figures, pictures somber and powerful, of the corruption and demoralization of a great empire.
His style for vividness, condensation, and power of phrase, is unrivalled in Latin literature.

Translation by Arthur Murphy.

THE ANNALS
FROM THE "REIGN OF NERO"

IN THE consulship of Caius Laecanius and
Marcus Licinius [A. D. 64], Nero's pas-
sion for theatrical fame broke out with a
degree of vehemence not to be resisted.
He had hitherto performed in private only,
during the sports of the Roman youth,
called the JUVENALIA; but, upon those
occasions, he was confined to his own
palace or his gardens; a sphere too limited
for such bright ambition, and so fine a
voice. He glowed with impatience to
present himself before the public eye, but
had not yet the courage to make his first
appearance at Rome. Naples was deemed
a Greek city, and, for that reason, a proper
place to begin his career of glory. With
the laurels which he was there to acquire,
he might pass over into Greece, and after
gaining, by victory in song, the glorious
crown which antiquity considered as a
sacred prize, he might return to Rome,
with his honors blooming round him, and
by his celebrity inflame the curiosity of
the populace. With this idea he pursued
his plan. The theater at Naples was
crowded with spectators. Not only the
inhabitants of the city, but a prodigious
multitude from all the municipal towns
and colonies in the neighborhood, flocked
together, attracted by the novelty of a
spectacle so very extraordinary. All who
followed the prince, to pay their court, or

as persons belonging to his train, attended
on the occasion. The menial servants, and
even the common soldiers, were admitted
to enjoy the pleasures of the day.

The theater, of course, was crowded.
An accident happened, which men in
general considered as an evil omen; with
the emperor it passed for a certain sign of
the favor and protection of the gods. As
soon as the audience dispersed, the theater
tumbled to pieces. No other mischief
followed. Nero seized the opportunity to
compose hymns of gratitude. He sung
them himself, celebrating with melodious
airs his happy escape from the ruin. Be-
ing now determined to cross the Adriatic,
he stopped at Beneventum. At that
place Vatinius entertained him with a show
of gladiators. Of all the detestable char-
acters that disgraced the court of Nero,
this man was the most pernicious. He
was bred up in a shoemaker's stall. De-
formed in his person, he possessed a vein
of ribaldry and vulgar humor, which
qualified him to succeed as buffoon. In
the character of a jester he recommended
himself to notice, but soon forsook his
scurrility for the trade of an informer;
and having by the ruin of the worthiest
citizens arrived at eminence in guilt, he
rose to wealth and power, the most dan-
gerous miscreant of that evil period!

Nero was a constant spectator of the
sports exhibited at Beneventum; but eveii
amidst his diversions his heart knew no

HISTORY

249

pause from cruelty. He compelled Tor-
quatus Silanus to put an end to his life,
for no other reason, than because he united
to the splendor of the Junian family the
honor of being great-grandson to Augustus.
The prosecutors, suborned for the busi-
ness, alleged against him, that, having
prodigally wasted his fortune in gifts and
largesses, he had no resource left but war
and civil commotion. With that design
he retained about his person men of rank
and distinction, employed in various
offices: he had his secretaries, his treas-
urers, and paymasters, all hi the style of
imperial dignity, even then anticipating
what his ambition aimed at. This charge
being made in form, such of his freedmen
as were known to be in the confidence of
their master were seized, and loaded with
fetters. Silanus saw that his doom was
impending, and, to prevent the sentence
of condemnation, opened the veins of both
his arms. Nero, according to his custom,
expressed himself in terms of lenity.
"The guilt of Silanus," he said, " was mani-
fest: and though, by an act of despair, he
showed that his crimes admitted no de-
fence, his life would have been spared,
had he thought proper to trust to the
clemency of his judge."

In a short time after, Nero, for reasons
not sufficiently explained, resolved to
defer his expedition into Greece. He
returned to Rome, cherishing in imagina-
tion a new design to visit the eastern na-
tions, and Egypt in particular. This
project had been for some time settled hi
his mind. He announced it by a procla-
mation, in which he assured the people,
that his absence would be of short dura-
tion, and, in the interval, the peace and
good order of the commonwealth would
be in no kind of danger. For the success
of his voyage, he went to offer up prayers
in the capitol. He proceeded thence to
the temple of Vesta. Being there seized
with a sudden tremor in every joint, aris-
ing either from a superstitious fear of the
goddess, or from a troubled conscience,
which never ceased to goad and persecute
him, he renounced his enterprise alto-
gether, artfully pretending that the love

of his country, which he felt warm at his
heart, was dearer to him than all other
considerations. "I have seen," he said,
"the dejected looks of the people; I
have heard the murmurs of complaint:
the idea of so long a voyage afflicts the
citizens; and, indeed, how should it be
otherwise, when the shortest excursion
I could make was always sure to depress
their spirits? The sight of their prince
has, at all tunes, been their comfort and
their best support. In private families the
pledges of natural affection can soften
the resolutions of a father, and mould him
to their purpose: the people of Rome have
the same ascendant over the mind of their
sovereign. I feel their influence: I yield
to their wishes." With these and such
like expressions he amused the multitude.
Their love of public spectacles made them
eager for his presence, and, above all, they
dreaded, if he left the capital, a dearth
of provisions. The senate and the leading
men looked on with indifference, unable
to decide which was most to be dreaded,
his presence in the city, or his tyranny at
a distance. They agreed at length (as
in alarming cases fear is always in haste to
conclude), that what happened was the
worst evil that could befall them.

A dreadful calamity followed in a shor*
time after, by some ascribed to chance
and by others to the execrable wickedness
of Nero. The authority of historians
is on both sides, and which preponderates
it is not easy to determine. It is, however,
certain, that of all the disasters that ever
befell the city of Rome from the rage of
fire, this was the worst, the most violent,
and destructive. The flame broke out
in that part of the circus which adjoins,
on one side, to Mount Palatine, and, on
the other, to Mount Caelius. It caught
a number of shops stored with combustible
goods, and, gathering force from the winds,
spread with rapidity from one end of the
circus to the other. Neither the thick
walls of houses, nor the enclosure of tem-
ples, nor any other building, could check
the rapid progress of the flames. A
dreadful conflagration followed. The level
parts of the city were destroyed. The

250

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

fire communicated to the higher buildings,
and, again laying hold of inferior places,
spread with a degree of velocity that noth-
ing could resist. The form of the streets,
long and narrow, with frequent windings,
and no regular opening, according to the
plan of ancient Rome, contributed to
increase the mischief. The shrieks and
lamentations of women, the infirmities of
age, and the weakness of the young and
tender, added misery to the dreadful
scene. Some endeavored to provide for
themselves, others to save their friends,
in one part dragging along the lame and
impotent, in another waiting to receive
the tardy, or expecting relief themselves;
they hurried, they lingered, they ob-
structed one another; they looked behind,
and the fire broke out in front; they es-
caped from the flames, and in their place of
refuge found no safety; the fire raged in
every quarter; all were involved hi one
general conflagration.

The unhappy wretches fled to places
remote, and thought themselves secure,
but soon perceived the flames raging
round them. Which way to turn, what
to avoid or what to seek, no one could tell.
They crowded the streets; they fell pros-
trate on the ground; they lay stretched in
the fields, in consternation and dismay,
resigned to their fate. Numbers lost their
whole substance, even the tools and imple-
ments by which they gained their liveli-
hood, and, hi that distress, did not wish
to survive. Others, wild with affliction
for their friends and relations whom they
could not save, embraced a voluntary
death, and perished in the flames. During
the whole of this dismal scene, no man
dared to attempt anything that might
check the violence of the dreadful calamity.
A crew of incendiaries stood near at hand
denouncing vengeance on all who offered
to interfere. Some were so abandoned as
to heap fuel on the flames. They threw
hi firebrands and flaming torches, pro-
claiming aloud, that they had authority
for what they did. Whether, in fact, they
had received such horrible orders, or, under
that device, meant to plunder with greater
licentiousness, cannot now be known.

During the whole of this terrible con-
flagration, Nero remained at Antium,
without a thought of returning to the city,
till the fire approached the building by
which he had communicated the gardens
of Maecenas with the imperial palace.
All help, however, was too late. The
palace, the contiguous edifices, and every
house adjoining, were laid in ruins. To
relieve the unhappy people, wandering in
distress without a place of shelter, he
opened the Field of Mars, as also the
magnificent buildings raised by Agrippa,
and even his own imperial gardens. He
ordered a number of sheds to be throwr
up with all possible despatch, for the use
of the populace. Household utensils and
all kinds of necessary implements were
brought from Ostia, and other cities in the
neighborhood. The price of grain was
reduced to three sesterces. For acts like
these, munificent and well-timed, Nero
might hops for a return of popular favor;
but his expectations were in vain; no man
was touched with gratitude. A report
prevailed that, while the city was in a
blaze, Nero went to his own theater, and
there, mounting the stage, sung the de-
struction of Troy, as a happy allusion to
the present misfortune.

On the sixth day the fire was subdued
at the foot of Mount Esquiline. This
was effected by demolishing a number of
buildings, and thereby leaving a void
space, where for want of materials the
flame expired. The minds of men had
scarce begun to recover from their conster-
nation, when the fire broke out a second
time with no less fury than before. This
happened, however, in a more open quar-
ter, where fewer lives were lost; but the
temples of the gods, the porticoes and
buildings raised for the decoration of the
city, were levelled to the ground. The
popular odium was now more inflamed
than ever, as this second alarm began in
the house of Tigellinus, formerly the man-
sion of ^Emilius. A suspicion prevailed,
that to build a new city, and give it his
own name, was the ambition of Nero. Of
the fourteen quarters, into which Rome
was divided, four only were left entire,

HISTORY

251

three were reduced to ashes, and the
remaining seven presented nothing better
than a heap of shattered houses, half in
ruins.

The number of houses, temples, and
insulated mansions, destroyed by the fire
cannot be ascertained. But the most
venerable monuments of antiquity, which
the worship of ages had rendered sacred,
were laid in ruins: amongst these were the
temple dedicated to the moon by Servius
TulUus; the fane and the great altar con-
secrated by Evander, the Arcadian, to
Hercules, his visitor and his guest; the
chapel of Jupiter Stater, built by Romu-
lus; the palace of Numa, and the temple of
Vesta, with the tutelar gods of Rome.
With these were consumed the trophies of
so many victories, the inimitable works of
the Grecian artists, with the precious
monuments of literature and ancient
genius, all at present remembered by men
advanced in years, but irrecoverably lost.
Not even the splendor, with which the
new city rose out of the ruins of the old,
could compensate for that lamented dis-
aster. It did not escape observation,
that the fire broke out on the fourteenth
before the calends of July, a day remark-
able for the conflagration kindled by the
Senones, when those Barbarians took the
city of Rome by storm, and burnt it to
the ground. Men of reflection, who re-
fined on everything with minute curiosity,
calculated the number of years, months,
and days, from the foundation of Rome to
the firing of it by the Gauls; and from that
calamity to the present they found the
interval of time precisely the same.

Nero did not blush to convert to his own
use the public ruins of his country. He
built a magnificent palace, in which the
objects that excited admiration were
neither gold nor precious stones. Those
decorations, long since introduced by
luxury, were grown stale, and hackneyed to
the eye. A different species of magnifi-
cence was now consulted: expansive lakes
and fields of vast extent were intermixed
with pleasing variety; woods and forests
stretched to an immeasurable length,
presenting gloom and solitude amidst

scenes of open space, where the eye wan-
dered with surprise over an unbounded
prospect. This prodigious plan was car-
ried on under the direction of two sur-
veyors, whose names were Severus and
Celer. Bold and original in their pro-
jects, these men undertook to conquer
nature, and to perform wonders even
beyond the imagination and the riches
of the prince. They promised to form a
navigable canal from the Lake Avernus
to the mouth of the Tiber. The experi-
ment, like the genius of the men, was bold
and grand; but it was to be carried over a
long tract of barren land, and, in some
places, through opposing mountains. The
country round was parched and dry, with-
out one humid spot, except the Pomptinian
marsh, from which water could be ex-
pected. A scheme so vast could not be
accomplished without immoderate labor,
and, if practicable, the end was in no
proportion to the expense and labor.
But the prodigious and almost impossible
had charms for the enterprising spirit
of Nero. He began to hew a passage
through the hills that surround the Lake
Avernus, and some traces of his deluded
hopes are visible at this day.

The ground, which, after marking out
his own domain, Nero left to the public,
was not laid out for the new city in a hurry
and without judgment, as was the case
after the irruption of the Gauls. A regu-
lar plan was formed; the streets were made
wide and long; the elevation of the houses
was defined, with an open area before the
doors, and porticoes to secure and adorn
the front. The expense of the porticoes
Nero undertook to defray out of his own
revenue. He promised, besides, as soon
as the work was finished, to clear the
ground, and leave a clear space to every
house, without any charge to the occupier.
In order to excite a spirit of industry and
emulation, he held forth rewards pro-
portioned to the rank of each individual,
provided the buildings were finished in a
limited time. The rubbish, by his order,
was removed to the marshes of Ostia,
and the ships that brought corn up the
river were to return loaded with the refuse

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

of the workmen. Add to all this, the
several houses, built on a new principle,
were to be raised to a certain elevation,
without beams or wood-work, on arches of
stone from the quarries of Alba or Gabii;
those materials being impervious, and of
a nature to resist the force of fire. The
springs of water, which had been before
that time intercepted by individuals for
their separate use, were no longer suffered
to be diverted from their channel, but
left to the care of commissioners, that the
public might be properly supplied, and, in
case of fire, have a reservoir at hand to
stop the progress of the mischief.

It was also settled, that the houses
should no longer be contiguous, with
slight party-walls to divide them; but
every house was to stand detached, sur-
rounded and insulated by its own enclos-
ure. These regulations, it must be ad-
mitted, were of public utility, and added
much to the embellishment of the new
city. But still the old plan of Rome was
not without its advocates. It was thought
more conducive to the health of the in-
habitants. The narrowness of the streets
and the elevation of the buildings served
to exclude the rays of the sun; whereas
the more open space, having neither shade
nor shelter, left men exposed to the in-
tense heat of the day.

These several regulations were, no
doubt, the best that human wisdom could
suggest. The next care was to propitiate
the gods. The Sibylline books were con-
sulted, and the consequence was, that
supplications were decreed to Vulcan,
to Ceres, and Proserpine. A band of
matrons offered their prayers and sacrifices
to Juno, first in the capitol, and next on
the nearest margin of the sea, where they
supplied themselves with water, to sprinkle
the temple and the statue of the goddess.
A select number of women, who had hus-
bands actually living, laid the deities on
their sacred beds, and kept midnight vigils
with the usual solemnity. But neither
these religious ceremonies, nor the liberal
donations of the prince could efface from
the minds of men the prevailing opinion,
that Rome was set on fire by his own or-

ders. The infamy of that horrible trans-
action still adhered to him. In order, if
possible, to remove the imputation, he
determined to transfer the guilt to others.
For this purpose he punished, with exquis-
ite torture, a race of men detested for their
evil practices, by vulgar appellation com-
monly called Christians.

The name was derived from Christ,
who in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judaea.
By that event the sect, of which he was
the founder, received a blow, which, for a
time, checked the growth of a dangerous
superstition; but it revived soon after, and
spread with recruited vigor, not only hi
Judaea, the soil that gave it birth, but even
in the city of Rome, the common sink
into which everything infamous and
abominable flows like a torrent from all
quarters of the world. Nero proceeded
with his usual artifice. He found a set
of profligate and abandoned wretches,
who were induced to confess themselves
guilty, and, on the evidence of such men,
a number of Christians were convicted,
not indeed, upon clear evidence of their
having set the city on fire, but rather on
account of their sullen hatred of the whole
human race. They were put to death
with exquisite cruelty, and to their suffer-
ings Nero added mockery and derision.
Some were covered with the skins of wild
beasts, and left to be devoured by dogs;
others were nailed to the cross; numbers
were burnt alive; and many, covered over
with inflammable matter, were lighted
up, when the day declined, to serve as
torches during the night.

For the convenience of seeing this tragic
spectacle, the emperor lent his own gar-
dens. He added the sports of the circus,
and assisted in person, sometimes driving
a curricle, and occasionally mixing with
the rabble in his coachman's dress. At
length the cruelty of these proceedings
filled every breast with compassion. Hu-
manity relented in favor of the Christians.
The manners of that people were, no
doubt, of a pernicious tendency, and their
crimes called for the hand of justice: but
it was evident, that they fell a sacrifice,

HISTORY

253

not for the public good, but to glut the rage
and cruelty of one man only.

Meanwhile, to supply the unbounded
prodigality of the prince, all Italy was
ravaged; the provinces were plundered;
and the allies of Rome, with the several
places that enjoyed the title of free cities,
were put under contribution. The very
gods were taxed. Their temples in the
city were rifled of their treasures, and heaps
of massy gold, which, through a series of
ages, the virtue of the Roman people,
either returning thanks for victories, or
performing their vows made in the hour
of distress, had dedicated to religious uses,
were now produced to answer the de-
mands of riot and extravagance. In
Greece and Asia rapacity was not content
with seizing the votive offerings that
adorned the temples, but even the very
statues of the gods were deemed lawful
prey. To carry this impious robbery
into execution, Acratus and Secundus
Carinas were sent with a special com-
mission: the former, one of Nero's f reed-
men, of a genius ready for any black de-
sign: the latter, a man of literature, with
the Greek philosophy fluent hi his mouth,
and not one virtue at his heart. It was
a report current at the time, that Seneca,
wishing to throw from himself all respon-
sibility for these impious acts, desired
leave to retire to some part of Italy. Not
being able to succeed in his request, he
feigned a nervous disorder, and never
stirred out of his room. If credit be due
to some writers, a dose of poison was pre-
pared for him by Cleonicus, one of his
freedmen, by the instigation of Nero.
The philosopher, however, warned by the
same servant, whose courage failed him,
or, perhaps, shielded from danger by his
own wary disposition, escaped the snare.
He lived at that very time on the most
simple diet; wild apples, that grew in
the woods, were his food; and water from
the clear purling stream served to quench
his thirst.

About the same time a body of gladia-
tors detained in custody at Praeneste,
made an attempt to recover their liberty.

The military guard was called out, and the
tumult died away. The incident, not-
withstanding, revived the memory of
Spartacus. The calamities, that followed
the daring enterprise of that adventurer,
became the general topic, and filled
the minds of all with dreadful apprehen-
sions. Such is the genius of the populace,
ever prone to sudden innovations, yet
terrified at the approach of danger. In a
few days after, advice was received, that
the fleet had suffered by a violent storm.
This was not an event of war, for there
never was a period of such profound tran-
quillity; but Nero had ordered the ships,
on a stated day, to assemble on the coast
of Campania. The dangers of the sea
never entered into his consideration. His
orders were peremptory. The pilots, to
mark their zeal, set sail, in tempestuous
weather from the port of Formiae. While
they were endeavoring to double the cape
of Misenum, a squall of wind from the
south threw them on the coast of Cuma,
where a number of the larger galleys, and
almost all the smaller vessels, were dashed
to pieces.

Towards the close of the year omens and
prodigies filled the minds of the people
with apprehensions of impending mischief.
Such dreadful peals of thunder were never
known. A comet appeared, and that
phenomenon was a certain prelude to
some bloody act to be committed by Nero.
Monstrous births, such as men and beasts
with double heads, were seen in the streets
and public ways; and in the midst of
sacrifices, which required victims big with
young, the like conceptions fell from the
entrails of animals slain at the altar. In
the territory of Placentia, a calf was
dropped with its head growing at the ex-
treme part of the leg. The construction
of the soothsayers was, that another head
was preparing for the government of the
world, but would prove weak, insufficient,
and be soon detected, like the monstrous
productions, which did not rest concealed
in the womb, but came before their time,
and lay exposed to public view near the
high road.

=54

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794)

"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776), from which this selection was taken, has
V>een pronounced the only eighteenth century history that has withstood nineteenth century criticism,
and it still remains the classic example of a monumental history that is at the same time a work
of literary art. The following selection is characteristic of the author's power of painting a great

scene.

CHAPTER LXVHI

THE SIEGE, ASSAULT, AND FINAL CON-
QUEST or CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE
TURKS IN 1453

THE Greeks and the Turks passed an
anxious and sleepless winter: the former
were kept awake by their fears, the latter
by their hopes; both by the preparations
of defence and attack; and the two em-
perors, who had the most to lose or to
gain, were the most deeply affected by the
national sentiment. In Mahomet, that
sentiment was inflamed by the ardor
of his youth and temper: he amused his
leisure with building at Adrianople the
lofty palace of Jehan Numa (the watch-
tower of the world); but his serious
thoughts were irrevocably bent on the
conquest of the city of Caesar. At the
dead of night, about the second watch,
he started from his bed, and commanded
the instant attendance of his prune vizier.
The message, the hour, the prince, and his
own situation, alarmed the guilty con-
science of Calil Basha; who had possessed
the confidence, and advised the restora-
tion, of Amurath. On the accession of the
son, the vizier was confirmed in his office
and the appearances of favor; but the
veteran statesman was not insensible
that he trod on a thin and slippery ice,
which might break under his footsteps,
and plunge him in the abyss. His friend-
ship for the Christians, which might be
innocent under the late reign, had stigma-
tized him with the name of Gabour-
Ortachi, or foster-brother of the infidels;
and his avarice entertained a venal and
treasonable correspondence, which was
detected and punished after the conclusion
of the war. On receiving the royal man-
date, he embraced, perhaps for the last

tune, his wife and children; filled a cup
with pieces of gold, hastened to the palace,
adored the sultan, and offered, according
to the Oriental custom, the slight tribute
of his duty and gratitude. "It is not my
wish," .said Mahomet, "to resume my
gifts, but rather to heap and multiply
them on thy head. In my turn I ask a
present far more valuable and important;
Constantinople." As soon as the vizier
had recovered from his surprise, "The
same God," said he, "who has already
given thee so large a portion of the Roman
empire, will not deny the remnant, and
the capital. His providence, and thy
power, assure thy success; and myself, with
the rest of thy faithful slaves, will sacrifice
our lives and fortunes." "Lala," (or
preceptor) continued the sultan, "do you
see this pillow? All the night, in my agi-
tation, I have pulled it on one side and
the other; I have risen from my bed, again
have I lain down; yet sleep has not visited
these weary eyes. Beware of the gold
and silver of the Romans: in arms we are
superior; and with the aid of God, and
the prayers of the prophet, we shall speed-
ily become masters of Constantinople."
To sound the disposition of his soldiers,
he often wandered through the streets
alone, and in disguise; and it was fatal
to discover the sultan, when he wished to
escape from the vulgar eye. His hours
were spent in delineating the plan of the
hostile city; in debating with his generals
and engineers, on what spot he should erect
his batteries; on which side he should as-
sault the walls; where he should spring
his mines; to what place he should apply
his scaling-ladders: and the exercises of the
day repeated and proved the lucubrations
of the night.

Among the implements of destruction/

HISTORY

255

he studied with peculiar care the recent
and tremendous discovery of the Lathis;
and his artillery surpassed whatever had
yet appeared in the world. A founder of
cannon, a Dane [Dacian] or Hungarian,
who had been almost starved in the Greek
service, deserted to the Moslems, and was
liberally entertained by the Turkish sultan.
Mahomet was satisfied with the answer to
his first question, which he eagerly pressed
on the artist. "Am I able to cast a cannon
capable of throwing a ball or stone of
sufficient size to batter the walls of Con-
stantinople? I am not ignorant of their
strength; but were they more solid than
those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine
of superior power: the position and man-
agement of that engine must be left to
your engineers." On this assurance, a
foundry was established at Adrianople:
the metal was prepared; and at the
3nd of three months, Urban produced a
piece of brass ordnance of stupendous,
and almost incredible magnitude; a meas-
ure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore;
and the stone bullet weighed above six
hundred pounds. A vacant place before
the new palace was chosen for che first
experiment; but to prevent the sudden
and mischievous effects of astonishment
and fear, a proclamation was issued, that
the cannon would be discharged the en-
suing day. The explosion was felt or
heard hi a circuit of a hundred furlongs:
the ball, by the force of gunpowder, was
driven above a mile ; and on the spot where
it fell, it buried itself a fathom deep in the
ground. For the conveyance of this
destructive engine, a frame or carriage of
thirty wagons was linked together and
drawn along by a team of sixty oxen: two
hundred men on both sides were stationed,
to poise and support the rolling weight;
two hundred and fifty workmen marched
before to smooth the way and repair the
bridges; and near two months were em-
ployed in a laborious journey of one hun-
dred and fifty miles. A lively philosopher
derides on this occasion the credulity of
the Greeks, and observes, with much rea-
son, that we should always distrust the
exaggerations of a vanquished people.

He calculates, that a ball, even of two
hundred pounds, would require a charge
of one hundred and fifty pounds of powder;
and that the stroke would be feeble and
impotent, since not a fifteenth part of the
mass could be inflamed at the same mo-
ment. A stranger as I am to the art of
destruction, I can discern that the modern
improvements of artillery prefer the num-
ber of pieces to the weight of metal; the
quickness of the fire to the sound, or even
the consequence, of a single explosion.
Yet I dare not reject the positive and unani-
mous evidence of contemporary writers;
nor can it seem improbable, that the first
artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts,
should have transgressed the standard
of moderation. A Turkish cannon, more
enormous than that of Mahomet, still
guards the entrance of the Dardanelles;
and if the use be inconvenient, it has been
found on a late trial that the effect was far
from contemptible. A stone bullet of
eleven hundred pounds' weight was once
discharged with three hundred and thirty
pounds of powder: at the distance of six
hundred yards it shivered into three rocky
fragments; traversed the strait; and, leav-
ing the waters in a foam, again rose and
bounded against the opposite hill.

While Mahomet threatened the capital
of the East, the Greek emperor implored
with fervent prayers the assistance of
earth and heaven. But the invisible
powers were deaf to his supplications; and
Christendom beheld with indifference the
fall of Constantinople, while she derived
at least some promise of supply from the
jealous and temporal policy of the sultan
of Egypt. Some states were too weak,
and others too remote; by some the danger
was considered as imaginary, by others
as inevitable: the Western princes were
involved in their endless and domestic
quarrels; and the Roman pontiff was exas-
perated by the falsehood or obstinacy of
the Greeks. Instead of employing in their
favor the arms and treasures of Italy,
Nicholas the Fifth had foretold their
approaching ruin; and his honor was
engaged hi the accomplishment of his
prophecy. Perhaps he was softened by

256

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the last extremity of their distress; but his
compassion was tardy; his efforts were
fahit and unavailing; and Constantinople
had fallen before the squadrons of Genoa
and Venice could sail from their harbors.
Even the princes of the Morea and of the
Greek islands affected a cold neutrality:
the Genoese colony of Galata negotiated
a private treaty; and the sultan indulged
them in the delusive hope that by his
clemency they might survive the ruin of
the empire. A plebeian crowd, and some
Byzantine nobles, basely withdrew from
the danger of their country; and the avarice
of the rich denied the emperor, and
reserved for the Turks, the secret treasures
which might have raised hi their defence
whole armies of mercenaries. The in-
digent and solitary prince prepared, how-
ever, to sustain his formidable adversary;
but if his courage were equal to the peril,
his strength was inadequate to the contest.
In the beginning of the spring, the Turkish
vanguard swept the towns and villages
as far as the gates of Constantinople: sub-
mission was spared and protected; what-
ever presumed to resist was exterminated
with fire and sword. The Greek places
on the Black Sea, Mesembria, Acheloum,
and Bizon, surrendered on the first sum-
mons; Selybria alone deserved the honors
of a siege or blockade; and the bold in-
habitants, while they were invested by
land, launched their boats, pillaged the
opposite coast of Cyzicus, and sold their
captives in the public market. But on
the approach of Mahomet himself all was
silent and prostrate: he first halted at
the distance of five miles; and from thence
advancing in battle array, planted before
the gate of St. Romanus the Imperial
standard; and on the sixth day of April
formed the memorable siege of Con-
stantinople.

The troops of Asia and Europe extended
on the right and left from the Propontis
to the harbor; the Janizaries hi the front
were stationed before the sultan's tent; the
Ottoman line was covered by a deep in-
trenchment; and a subordinate army en-
closed the suburb of Galata, and watched
the doubtful faith of the Genoese. The

inquisitive Philelphus, who resided in
Greece about thirty years before the siege,
is confident that all the Turkish forces
of any name or value could not exceed
the number of sixty thousand horse and
twenty thousand foot; and he upbraids
the pusillanimity of the nations, who had
tamely yielded to a handful of Barbarians.
Such indeed might be the regular establish-
ment of the Capiculi, the troops of the
Porte who marched with the prince, and
were paid from his royal treasury. But
the bashaws, in their respective govern-
ments, maintained or levied a provincial
militia; many lands were held by a military
tenure; many volunteers were attracted
by the hope of spoil; and the sound of the
holy trumpet invited a swarm of hungry
and fearless fanatics, who might contribute
at least to multiply the terrors, and in a
first attack to blunt the swords, of the
Christians. The whole mass of the Turk-
ish powers is magnified by Ducas, Chal-
condyles, and Leonard of Chios, to the
amount of three or four hundred thousand
men; but Phranza was a less remote ana
more accurate judge; and his precise
definition of two hundred and fifty-eight
thousand does not exceed the measure of
experience and probability. The navy
of the besiegers was less formidable: the
Propontis was overspread with three hun-
dred and twenty sail; but of these no more
than eighteen could be rated as galleys of
war; and the far greater part must be
degraded to the condition of store-ships
and transports, which poured into the
camp fresh supplies of men, ammunition,
and provisions. In her last decay, Con-
stantinople was still peopled with more
than a hundred thousand inhabitants; but
these numbers are found in the accounts,
not of war, but of captivity; and they
mostly consisted of mechanics, of priests,
of women, and of men devoid of that spirit
which even women have sometimes ex-
erted for the common safety. I can sup-
pose, I could almost excuse, the reluctance
of subjects to serve on a distant frontier,
at the will of a tyrant; but the man who
dares not expose his life in the defence of
his children and his property, has lost in

HISTORY

257

society the first and most active energies
of nature. By the emperor's command,
a particular inquiry had been made
through the streets and houses, how many
of the citizens, or even of the monks, were
able and willing to bear arms for their
country. The lists were intrusted to
Phranza ; and, after a diligent addition, he
informed his master, with grief and sur-
prise, that the national defence was re-
duced to four thousand nine hundred and
seventy Romans. Between Constantine
and his faithful minister this comfortless
secret was preserved; and a sufficient
proportion of shields, cross-bows, and
muskets, was distributed from the arsenal
to the city bands. They derived some
accession from a body of two thousand
strangers, under the command of John
Justiniani, a noble Genoese; a liberal
donative was advanced to these auxiliaries;
and a princely recompense, the Isle of
^Lemnos, was promised to the valor and
victory of their chief. A strong chain was
drawn across the mouth of the harbor: it
was supported by some Greek and Italian
vessels of war and merchandise; and the
ships of every Christian nation, that suc-
cessively arrived from Candia and the
Black Sea, were detained for the public
service. Against the powers of the Otto-
man empire, a city of the extent of thir-
teen, perhaps of sixteen, miles was de-
fended by a scanty garrison of seven or
eight thousand soldiers. Europe and
Asia were open to the besiegers; but the
strength and provisions of the Greeks
must sustain a daily decrease; nor could
they indulge the expectation of any foreign
succor or supply.

The primitive Romans would have
drawn their swords in the resolution of
death or conquest. The primitive Chris-
tians might have embraced each other,
and awaited in patience and charity the
stroke of martyrdom. But the Greeks of
Constantinople were animated only by
the spirit of religion, and that spirit was
productive only of animosity and discord.
Before his death, the emperor John Pa-
laeologus had renounced the unpopular
measure of a union with the Latins;

nor was the idea revived, till the distress
of his brother Constantine imposed a last
trial of flattery and dissimulation. With
the demand of temporal aid, his ambassa-
dors were instructed to mingle the assur-
ance of spiritual obedience: his neglect
of the church was excused by the urgent
cares of the state; and his orthodox wishes
solicited the presence of a Roman legate.
The Vatican had been too often deluded;
yet the signs of repentance could not de-
cently be overlooked; a legate was more
easily granted than an army; and about
six months before the final destruction,
the cardinal Isidore of Russia appeared
in that character with a retinue of priests
and soldiers. The emperor saluted him
as a friend and father; respectfully listened
to his public and private sermons; and
with the most obsequious of the clergy and
laymen subscribed the act of union, as it
had been ratified in the council of Florence.
On the twelfth of December, the two na-
tions, in the church of St. Sophia, joined
in the communion of sacrifice and prayer;
and the names of the two pontiffs were
solemnly commemorated; the names of
Nicholas the Fifth, the vicar of Christ,
and of the patriarch Gregory, who had
been driven into exile by a rebellious
people.

But the dress and language of the Latin
priest who officiated at the altar were an
object of scandal; and it was observed
with horror, that he consecrated a cake
or wafer of unleavened bread, and poured
cold water into the cup of the sacrament.
A national historian acknowledges with a
blush, that none of his countrymen, not
the emperor himself, were sincere in this
occasional conformity. Their hasty and
unconditional submission was palliated
by a promise of future revisal; but the
best, or the worst, of their excuses was the
confession of their own perjury. When
they were pressed by the reproaches of
their honest brethren, "Have patience,"
they whispered, "have patience till God
shall have delivered the city from the
great dragon who seeks to devour us. You
shall then perceive whether we are truly
reconciled with the Azymites." But pa-

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tience is not the attribute of zeal; nor can
the arts of a court be adapted to the
freedom and violence of popular enthu-
siasm. From the dome of St. Sophia the
inhabitants of either sex, and of every
degree, rushed in crowds to the cell of the
monk Gennadius, to consult the oracle of
the church. The holy man was invisible;
entranced, as it should seem, in deep
meditation, or divine rapture: but he had
exposed on the door of his cell a speaking
tablet; and they successively withdrew,
after reading these tremendous words:
"O miserable Romans, why will ye aban-
don the truth? and why, instead of con-
fiding in God, will ye put your trust in
the Italians? In losing your faith you
will lose your city. Have mercy on me,

Lord! I protest in thy presence that

1 am innocent of the crime. O miserable
Romans, consider, pause, and repent. At
the same moment that you renounce the
religion of your fathers, by embracing
impiety, you submit to a foreign servi-
tude." According to the advice of Genna-
dius, the religious virgins, as pure as an-
gels, and as proud as daemons, rejected
the act of union, and abjured all com-
munion with the present and future
associates of the Latins; and their example
was applauded and imitated by the great-
est part of the clergy and people. From
the monastery, the devout Greeks dis-
persed themselves in the taverns; drank
confusion to the slaves of the pope; emptied
their glasses in honor of the image of the
holy Virgin; and besought her to defend
against Mahomet the city which she had
formerly saved from Chosroes and the
Chagan. In the double intoxication of
zeal and wine, they valiantly exclaimed,
"What occasion have we for succor, or
union, or Latins? Far from us be the
worship of the Azymites!" During the
winter that preceded the Turkish con-
quest, the nation was distracted by this
epidemical frenzy; and the season of Lent,
the approach of Easter, instead of breath-
ing charity and love, served only to fortify
the obstinacy and influence of the zealots.
The confessors scrutinized and alarmed
the conscience of their votaries, and a

rigorous penance was imposed on those who
had received the communion from a priest
who had given an express or tacit consent
to the union. His service at the altar
propagated the infection to the mute and
simple spectators of the ceremony: they
forfeited, by the impure spectacle, the
virtue of the sacerdotal character; nor
was it lawful, even in danger of sudden
death, to invoke the assistance of their
prayers or absolution. No sooner had the
church of St. Sophia been polluted by the
Latin sacrifice, than it was deserted as a
Jewish synagogue, or a heathen temple,
by the clergy and people; and a vast and
gloomy silence prevailed in that venerable
dome, which had so often smoked with a
cloud of incense, blazed with innumerable
lights, and resounded with the voice of
prayer and thanksgiving. The Latins
were the most odious of heretics and infi-
dels; and the first minister of the empire,
the great duke, was heard to declare, that
he had rather behold in Constantinople
the turban of Mahomet, than the pope's
tiara or a cardinal's hat. A sentiment so
unworthy of Christians and patriots was
familiar and fatal to the Greeks: the em-
peror was deprived of the affection and
support of his subjects; and their native
cowardice was sanctified by resignation
to the divine decree, or the visionary hope
of a miraculous deliverance.

Of the triangle which composes the fig-
ure of Constantinople, the two sides along
the sea were made inaccessible to an
enemy; the Propontis by nature, and the
harbor by art. Between the two waters,
the basis of the triangle, the land side was
protected by a double wall, and a deep
ditch of the depth of one hundred feet.
Against this line of fortification, which
Phranza, an eye-witness, prolongs to the
measure of six miles, the Ottomans di-
rected their principal attack; and the
emperor, after distributing the service
and command of the most perilous
stations, undertook the defence of the
external wall. In the first days of the
siege the Greek soldiers descended into
the ditch, or sallied into the field; but they
soon discovered, that, in the proportion

HISTORY

259

of their numbers, one Christian was of
more value than twenty Turks: and,
after these bold preludes, they were pru-
dently content to maintain the rampart
with their missile weapons. Nor should
this prudence be accused of pusillanimity.
The nation was indeed pusillanimous and
base; but the last Constantine deserves
the name of a hero: his noble band of
volunteers was inspired with Roman vir-
tue; and the foreign auxiliaries supported
the honor of the Western chivalry. The
incessant volleys of lances and arrows were
accompanied with the smoke, the sound,
and the fire, of their musketry and cannon.
Their small arms discharged at the same
time either five, or even ten, balls of lead,
of the size of a walnut; and, according to
the closeness of the ranks and the force
of the powder, several breastplates and
bodies were transpierced by the same
shot. But the Turkish approaches were
soon sunk in trenches, or covered with
ruins. Each day added to the science of
the Christians; but their inadequate stock
of gunpowder was wasted in the operations
of each day. Their ordnance was not
powerful, either in size or number; and if
they possessed some heavy cannon, they
feared to plant them on the walls, lest the
aged structure should be shaken and
overthrown by the explosion. The same
destructive secret had been revealed to
the Moslems; by whom it was employed
with the superior energy of ^eal, riches, and
despotism. The great cannon of Ma-
homet has been separately noticed; an im-
portant and visible object in the history
of the times: but that enormous engine
was flanked by two fellows almost of
equal magnitude. The long order of the
Turkish artillery was pointed against the
walls; fourteen batteries thundered at
once on the most accessible places; and
of one of these it is ambiguously expressed,
that it was mounted with one hundred
and thirty guns, or that it discharged one
hundred and thirty bullets. Yet in the
power and activity of the sultan, we may
discern the infancy of the new science.
Under a master who counted the moments
the great cannon could be loaded and

fired no more than seven times in one day.
The heated metal unfortunately burst;
several workmen were destroyed; and
the skill of an artist was admired who
bethought himself of preventing the dan-
ger and the accident, by pouring oil, after
each explosion, into the mouth of the
cannon.

The first random shots were productive
of more sound than effect; and it was by
th\. a^dce of a Christian, that the engi-
neers were taught to level their aim against
the two opposite sides of the salient angles
of a bastion. However imperfect, the
weight and repetition of the fire made
some impression on the walls; and the
Turks, pushing their approaches to the
edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the
enormous chasm, and to build a road to
the assault. Innumerable fascines, and
hogsheads, and trunks of trees, were
heaped on each other; and such was the
impetuosity of the throng, that the fore-
most and the weakest were pushed head-
long down the precipice, and instantly
buried under the accumulated mass. To
fill the ditch was the toil of the besiegers;
to clear away the rubbish was the safety
of the besieged; and after a long and
bloody conflict, the web that had been
woven in the day was still unravelled in
the night. The next resource of Mahomet
was the practice of mines; but the soil
was rocky; in every attempt he was
stopped and undermined by the Christian
engineers; nor had the art been yet in-
vented of replenishing those subterraneous
passages with gunpowder, and blowing
whole towers and cities into the air. A
circumstance that distinguishes the siege
of Constantinople is the reunion of the
ancient and modern artillery. The can-
non were intermingled with the mechanical
engines for casting stones and darts; the
bullet and the battering-ram were directed
against the same walls: nor had the dis-
covery of gunpowder superseded the use
of the liquid and unextinguishable fire.
A wooden turret of the largest size was
advanced on rollers: this portable magazine
of ammunition and fascines was pro-
tected by a threefold covering of bulls'

260

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

hides: incessant volleys were securely
discharged from the loopholes; in the
front, three doors were contrived for the
alternate sally and retreat of the soldiers
and workmen. They ascended by a stair-
case to the upper platform, and, as high
as the level of that platform, a scaling-
ladder could be raised by pulleys to form
a bridge, and grapple with the adverse
rampart. By these various arts of annoy-
ance, some as new as they were pernicious
to the Greeks, the tower of St. Romanus
was at length overturned: after a severe
struggle, the Turks were repulsed from
the breach, and interrupted by darkness;
but they trusted that with the return of
light they should renew the attack with
fresh vigor and decisive success. Of this
pause of action, this interval of hope,
each moment was improved, by the ac-
tivity of the emperor and Justiniani, who
passed the night on the spot, and urged
the labors which involved the safety of
the church and city. At the dawn of
day, the impatient sultan perceived, with
astonishment and grief, that his wooden
turret had been reduced to ashes: the
ditch was cleared and restored; and the
tower of St. Romanus was again strong
and entire. He deplored the failure of
his design; and uttered a profane exclama-
tion, that the word of the thirty-seven
thousand prophets should not have com-
pelled him to believe that such a work, hi
so short a tune, could have been accom-
plished by the infidels.

The generosity of the Christian princes
was cold and tardy; but hi the first appre-
hension of a siege, Constantine had ne-
gotiated, in the isles of the Archipelago,
the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispen-
sable supplies. As early as the beginning
of April, five great ships, equipped for
merchandise and war, would have sailed
from the harbor of Chios, had not the wind
blown obstinately from the north. One
of these ships bore the Imperial flag; the
remaining four belonged to the Genoese;
and they were laden with wheat and
barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables,
and, above all, with soldiers and mariners,
for the service of the capital. After a

tedious delay, a gentle breeze, and, on the
second day, a strong gale from the south,
carried them through the Hellespont and
the Propontis: but the city was already
hi vested by sea and land; and the Turkish
fleet, at the entrance of the Bosphorus,
was stretched from shore to shore, in the
form of a crescent, to intercept, or at least
to repel, these bold auxiliaries. The reader
who has present to his mind the geographi-
cal picture of Constantinople, will conceive
and admire the greatness of the spectacle.
The five Christian ships continued to
advance with joyful shouts, and a full
press both of sails and oars, against a
hostile fleet of three hundred vessels; and
the rampart, the camp, the coasts of
Europe and Asia, were lined with innu-
merable spectators, who anxiously awaited
the event of this momentous succor. At
the first view that event could not appear
doubtful; the superiority of the Moslems
was beyond all measure or account; and,
in a calm, their numbers and valor must
inevitably have prevailed. But their
hasty and imperfect navy had been
created, not by the genius of the people,
but by the will of the sultan: in the height
of their prosperity, the Turks have ac-
knowledged, that if God had given them
the earth, he had left the sea to the infidels;
and a series of defeats, a rapid progress of
decay, has established the truth of their
modest confession. Except eighteen gal-
leys of some force, the rest of their fleet
consisted of open boats rudely constructed
and awkwardly managed, crowded with
troops, and destitute of cannon ; and since
courage arises in a great measure from the
consciousness of strength, the bravest of
the Janizaries might tremble on a new
element. In the Christian squadron, five
stout and lofty ships were guided by skilf ul
pilots, and manned with the veterans of
Italy and Greece, long practised in the
arts and perils of the sea. Their weight
was directed to sink or scatter the weak
obstacles that impeded their passage: their
artillery swept the waters: their liquid
fire was poured on the heads of the adver-
saries, who, with the design of boarding,
presumed to approach them; and the

HISTORY

261

winds and waves are always on the side
of the ablest navigators. In this conflict,
the Imperial vessel, which had been almost
overpowered, was rescued by the Genoese;
but the Turks, in a distant and a closer
attack, were twice repulsed with consider-
able loss. Mahomet himself sat on horse-
back on the beach, to encourage their valor
by his voice and presence, by the promise
of reward, and by fear more potent than
the fear of the enemy. The passions of
his soul, and even the gestures of his body,
seemed to imitate the actions of the com-
batants; and, as if he had been the lord
of nature, he spurred his horse with a fear-
less and impotent effort into the sea. His
loud reproaches, and the clamors of the
camp, urged the Ottomans to a third
attack, more fatal and bloody than the
two former; and I must repeat, though
I cannot credit, the evidence of Phranza,
who affirms, from their own mouth, that
they lost above twelve thousand men in
the slaughter of the day. They fled in
disorder to the shores of Europe and Asia,
while the Christian squadron, triumphant
and unhurt, steered along the Bosphorus,
and securely anchored within the chain
of the harbor. In the confidence of vic-
tory, they boasted that the whole Turkish
power must have yielded to their arms;
but the admiral, or captain bashaw, found
some consolation for a painful wound in
his eye, by representing that accident as
the cause of his defeat. Balthi Ogli was
a renegade of the race of the Bulgarian
princes: his military character was tainted
with the unpopular vice of avarice; and
under the despotism of the prince or
people, misfortune is a sufficient evidence
of guilt. His rank and services were
annihilated by the displeasure of Ma-
homet. In the royal presence, the captain
bashaw was extended on the ground by
four slaves, and received one hundred
strokes with a golden rod; his death
had been pronounced; and he adored the
clemency of the sultan, who was satisfied
with the milder punishment of confiscation
and exile. The introduction of this supply
revived the hopes of the Greeks, and ac-
cused the supineness of their Western

allies. Amidst the deserts of Anatolia and
the rocks of Palestine, the millions of the
crusades had buried themselves in a volun-
tary and inevitable grave; but the situa-
tion of the Imperial city was strong against
her enemies, and accessible to her friends;
and a rational and moderate armament
of the maritime states might have saved
the relics of the Roman name, and main-
tained a Christian fortress in the heart
of the Ottoman empire. Yet this was
the sole and feeble attempt for the de-
liverance of Constantinople: the more
distant powers were insensible of its dan-
ger; and the ambassador of Hungary, or
at least of Huniades, resided hi the
Turkish camp, to remove the fears, and
to direct the operations, of the sultan.

It was difficult for the Greeks to pene-
trate the secret of the divan; yet the
Greeks are persuaded that a resistance
so obstinate and surprising had fatigued
the perseverance of Mahomet. He began
to meditate a retreat; and the siege would
have been speedily raised, if the ambition
and jealousy of the second vizier had not
opposed the perfidious advice of Calil
Bashaw, who still maintained a secret
correspondence with the Byzantine court.
The reduction of the city appeared to be
hopeless, unless a double attack could be
made from the harbor as well as from the
land; but the harbor was inaccessible: an
impenetrable chain was now defended by
eight large ships, more than twenty of a
smaller size, with several galleys and
sloops; and, instead of forcing this barrier,
the Turks might apprehend a naval sally,
and a second encounter in the open sea.
In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet
conceived and executed a plan of a bold
and marvellous cast, of transporting by
land his lighter vessels and military stores
from the Bosphorus into the higher part
of the harbor. The distance is about
ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was
overspread with thickets; and, as the
road must be opened behind the suburb
of Galata, their free passage or total de-
struction must depend on the option of
the Genoese. But these selfish merchants
were ambitious of the favor of being the

762

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

last devoured; and the deficiency of art
was supplied by the strength of obedient
myriads. A level way was covered with
a broad platform of strong and solid
planks; and to render them more slippery
and smooth, they were anointed with the
fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light
galleys and brigantines, of fifty and thirty
oars, were disembarked on the Bosphorus
shore; arranged successively on rollers; and
drawn forwards by the power of men and
pulleys. Two guides or pilots were sta-
tioned at the helm, and the prow, of each
vessel: the sails were unfurled to the
winds; and the labor was cheered by song
and acclamation. In the course of a
single night, this Turkish fleet painfully
climbed the hill, steered over the plain,
and was launched from the declivity into
the shallow waters of the harbor, far above
the molestation of the deeper vessels of
the Greeks. The real importance of this
operation was magnified by the consterna-
tion and confidence which it inspired;
but the notorious, unquestionable fact
was displayed before the eyes, and is
recorded by the pens, of the two nations.
A similar stratagem had been repeatedly
practised by the ancients; the Ottoman
galleys (I must again repeat) should be
considered as large boats; and, if we com-
pare the magnitude and the distance, the
obstacles and the means, the boasted
miracle has perhaps been equalled by the
industry of our own times. As soon as
Mahomet had occupied the upper harbor
with a fleet and army, he constructed, in
the narrowest part, a bridge, or rather
mole, of fifty cubits in breadth, and one
hundred in length: it was formed of casks
and hogsheads; joined with rafters, linked
with iron, and covered with a solid floor.
On this floating battery he planted one
of his largest cannon, while the fourscore
galleys, with troops and scaling-ladders,
approached the most accessible side,
which had formerly been stormed by the
Lathi conquerors. The indolence of the
Christians has been accused for not de-
stroying these unfinished works; but their
fire, by a superior fire, was controlled
and silenced; nor were they wanting in a

nocturnal attempt to burn the vessels as
well as the bridge of the sultan. His
vigilance prevented their approach; their
foremost galiots were sunk or taken; forty
youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece,
were inhumanly massacred at his com-
mand; nor could the emperor's grief b^
assuaged by the just though cruel retalia-
tion, of exposing from the walls the heath
of two hundred and sixty Mussulman
captives. After a siege of forty days, th :
fate of Constantinople could no longer
be averted. The diminutive garrison
was exhausted by a double attack: the
fortifications, which had stood for ages
against hostile violence, were dismantled
on all sides by the Ottoman cannon:
many breaches were opened: and near the
gate of St. Romanus, four towers had
been levelled with the ground. For the
payment of his feeble and mutinous troops,
Constantine was compelled to despoil
the churches with the promise of a fourfold
restitution; and his sacrilege offered a new
reproach to the enemies of the union.
A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of
the Christian strength; the Genoese and
Venetian auxiliaries asserted the preemi-
nence of their respective service; and
Justiniani and the great duke, whose am-
bition was not extinguished by the common
danger, accused each other of treachery
and cowardice.

During the siepc of Constantinople,
the words of peace and capitulation had
been sometimes pronounced; and several
embassies had passed between the camp
and the city. The Greek emperor was
humbled by adversity; and would have
yielded to any terms compatible with
religion and royalty. The Turkish sultan
was desirous of sparing the blood of his
soldiers; still more desirous of securing
for his own use the Byzantine treasures;
and he accomplished a sacred duty in
presenting to the Gabours the choice of
circumcision, of tribute, or of death.
The avarice of Mahomet might have
been satisfied with an annual sum of one
hundred thousand ducats; but his ambi-
tion grasped the capital of the East: to
the prince he offered a rich equivalent,

HISTORY

263

to the people a free toleration, or a safe
departure: but after some fruitless treaty,
he declared his resolution of finding either
a throne, or a grave, under the walls of
Constantinople. A sense of honor and
the fear of universal reproach, forbade
Palaeologus to resign the city into the hands
of the Ottomans; and he determined to
abide the last extremities of war. Several
days were employed by the sultan in the
preparations of the assault; and a respite
was granted by his favorite science for
astrology, which had fixed on the twenty-
ninth of May, as the fortunate and fatal
hour. On the evening of the twenty-
seventh, he issued his final orders; assem-
bled in his presence the military chiefs,
and dispersed his heralds through the
camp to proclaim the duty, and the mo-
tives, of the perilous enterprise. Fear is
the first principle of a despotic govern-
ment; and his menaces were expressed in
the Oriental style, that the fugitives and
deserters, had they the wings of a bird,
should not escape from his inexorable
justice. The greatest part of his bashaws
and Janizaries were the offspring of Chris-
tian parents: but the glories of the Turkish
name were perpetuated by successive
adoption; and in the gradual change of
individuals, the spirit of a legion, a regi-
ment, or an oda, is kept alive by imitation
and discipline. In this holy warfare,
the Moslems were exhorted to purify their
minds with prayer, their bodies with seven
ablutions; and to abstain from food
till the close of the ensuing day. A crowd
of dervises visited the tents, to instil the
desire of martyrdom, and the assurance
of spending an immortal youth amidst the
rivers and gardens of paradise, and in
the embraces of the black-eyed virgins.
Yet Mahomet principally trusted to the
efficacy of temporal and visible rewards.
A double pay was promised to the vic-
torious troops: "The city and the build-
ings," said Mahomet, "are mine; but I
resign to your valor the captives and the
spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty;
be rich and be happy. Many are the
provinces of my empire; the intrepid sol-
dier who first ascends the walls of Con-

stantinople shall be rewarded with the
government of the fairest and most
wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumu-
late his honors and fortunes above the
measure of his own hopes." Such various
and potent motives diffused among the
Turks a general ardor, regardless of life
and impatient for action: the camp
reechoed with the 'Moslem shouts of
"God is God: there is but one God, and
Mahomet is the apostle of God;" and the
sea and land, from Galata to the seven
towers, were illuminated by the blaze of
their nocturnal fires.

Far different was the state of the
Christians; who, with loud and impotent
complaints, deplored the guilt, or the
punishment, of their sins. The celestial
image of the Virgin had been exposed
in solemn procession; but their divine
patroness was deaf to their entreaties:
they accused the obstinacy of the emperor
for refusing a timely surrender; anticipated
the horrors of their fate; and sighed for
the repose and security of Turkish servi-
tude. The noblest of the Greeks, and the
bravest of the allies, were summoned to
the palace, to prepare them on the evening
of the twenty-eighth, for the duties and
dangers of the general assault. The last
speech of Palaeologus was the funeral
oration of the Roman empire: he promised,
he conjured, and he vainly attempted to
infuse the hope which was extinguished
in his own mind. In this world all was
comfortless and gloomy; and neither the
gospel nor the church have proposed any
conspicuous recompense to the heroes
who fall in the service of their country.
But the example of their prince, and the
confinement of a siege, had armed these
warriors with the courage of despair,
and the pathetic scene is described by the
feelings of the historian Phranza, who was
himself present at this mournful assembly.
They wept, they embraced; regardless of
their families and fortunes, they devoted
their lives; and each commander, depart-
ing to his station, maintained all night a
vigilant and anxious watch on the ram-
part. The emperor, and some faith-
ful companions, entered the dome of

264

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

St. Sophia, which in a few hours was to be
converted into a mosque; and devoutly
received, with tears and prayers, the
sacrament of the holy communion. He
reposed some moments in the palace,
which resounded with cries and lamenta-
tions; solicited the pardon of all whom
he might have injured; and mounted on
horseback to visit the guards, and explore
the motions of the enemy. The distress
and fall of the last Constantine are more
glorious than the long prosperity of the
Byzantine Caesars.

In the confusion of darkness, an assail-
ant may sometimes succeed; but in this
great and general attack, the military
judgment and astrological knowledge of
Mahomet advised him to expect the
morning, the memorable twenty-ninth of
May, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-
third year of the Christian era. The
preceding night had been strenuously em-
ployed: the troops, the cannons, and the
fascines, were advanced to the edge of the
ditch, which in many parts presented a
smooth and level passage to the breach;
and his fourscore galleys almost touched,
with the prows and their scaling ladders,
the less defensible walls of the harbor.
Under pain of death, silence was enjoined:
but the physical laws of motion and sound
are not obedient to discipline or fear;
each individual might suppress his voice
and measure his footsteps; but the march
and labor of thousands must inevitably
produce a strange confusion of dissonant
clamors, which reached the ears of the
watchmen of the towers. At daybreak,
without the customary signal of the morn-
ing gun, the Turks assaulted the city by
sea and land; and the similitude of a twined
or twisted thread has been applied to the
closeness and continuity of their line of
attack. The foremost ranks consisted of
the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd
who fought without orckr or command;
of the feebleness of age *>r childhood, of
peasants and vagrants, and of all who
had joined the camp in the blind hope of
plunder and martyrdom. The common
impulse drove them onwards to the wall;
the most audacious to climb were instantly

precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet,
of the Christians, was idly wasted on
the accumulated throng. But their
strength and ammunition were exhausted
in this laborious defence: the ditch was
filled with the bodies of the slain: they
supported the footsteps of their com-
panions; and of this devoted vanguard the
death was more serviceable than the life.
Under their respective bashaws and san-
jaks, the troops of Anatolia and Romania
were successively led to the charge: their
progress was various and doubtful; but,
after a conflict of two hours, the Greeks
still maintained, and improved their ad-
vantage; and the voice of the emperor
was heard, encouraging his soldiers to
achieve, by a last effort, the deliverance
of their country. In that fatal moment,
the Janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and
invincible. The sultan himself on horse-
back with an iron mace in his hand, was
the spectator and judge of their valor: he
was surrounded by ten thousand of his
domestic troops, whom he reserved for
the decisive occasion, and the tide of battle
was directed and impelled by his voice
and eye. His numerous ministers of jus-
tice were posted behind the line, to urge,
to restrain, and to punish; and if danger
was in the front, shame and inevitable
death were in the rear, of the fugitives.
The cries of fear and of pain were drowned
in the martial music of drums, trumpets,
and attaballs; and experience has proved,
that the mechanical operation of sounds,
by quickening the circulation of the blood
and spirits, will act on the human machine
more forcibly than the eloquence of reason
and honor. From the lines, the galleys,
and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery
thundered on all sides; and the camp and
city, the Greeks and the Turks, were in-
volved in a cloud of smoke which could
only be dispelled by the final deliverance
or destruction of the Roman empire.
The single combats of the heroes of history
or fable amuse our fancy and engage our
affections: the skilful evolutions of war
may inform the mind, and improve a
necessary, though pernicious, science. But
in the uniform and odious pictures of a

HISTORY

265

general assault, all is blood, and horror,
and confusion; nor shall I strive, at the
distance of three centuries, and a thousand
miles, to delineate a scene of which there
could be no spectators, and of which the
actors themselves were incapable of form-
ing any just or adequate idea.

The immediate loss of Constantinople
may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow,
which pierced the gauntlet of John Jus-
tiniani. The sight of his blood, and the
exquisite pain, appalled the courage of
the chief, whose arms and counsels were
the firmest rampart of the city. As he
withdrew from his station in quest of a
surgeon, his flight was perceived and
stopped by the indefatigable emperor.
"Your wound," exclaimed Palaeologus,
"is slight; the danger is pressing: your
presence is necessary; and whither will
you retire?" "I will retire," said the
trembling Genoese, "by the same road
which God has opened to the Turks;" and
at these words he hastily passed through
one of the breaches of the inner wall.
By this pusillanimous act he stained the
honors of a military lif e ; and the few days
which he survived in Galata, or the Isle
of Chios, were imbittered by his own and
the public reproach. His example was
imitated by the greatest part of the Latin
auxiliaries, and the defence began to
slacken when the attack was pressed with
redoubled vigor. The number of the
Ottomans was fifty, perhaps a hundred,
times superior to that of the Christians;
the double walls were reduced by the
cannon to a heap of ruins; in a circuit of
several miles, some places must be found
more easy of access, or more feebly
guarded; and if the besiegers could pene-
trate in a single point, the whole city was
irrecoverably lost. The first who de-
served the sultan's reward was Hassan
the Janizary, of gigantic stature and
strength. With his cimeter in one hand
and his buckler in the other, he ascended
the outward fortification: of the thirty
Janizaries, who were emulous of his valor,
eighteen perished hi the bold adventure.
Hassan and his twelve companions had
reached the summit: the giant was precipi-

tated from the rampart: he rose on one
knee, and was again oppressed by a shower
of darts and stones. But his success had
proved that the achievement was possible:
the walls and towers were instantly cov-
ered with a swarm of Turks; and the
Greeks, now driven from the vantage
ground, were overwhelmed by increasing
multitudes. Amidst these multitudes,
the emperor, who accomplished all the
duties of a general and a soldier, was long
seen and finally lost. The nobles, who
fought round his person, sustained, till
their last breath, the honorable names of
Palaeologus and Cantacuzene: his mourn-
ful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there
be found a Christian to cut off my head?"
and his last fear was that of falling alive
into the hands of the infidels. The pru-
dent despair of Constantine cast away the
purple: amidst the tumult he fell by an
unknown hand, and his body was buried
under a mountain of the slain. After
his death, resistance and order were no
more: the Greeks fled towards the city;
and many were pressed and stifled in the
narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus.
The victorious Turks rushed through the
breaches of the inner wall; and as they
advanced into the streets, they were soon
joined by their brethren, who had forced
the gate Phenar on the side of the harbor.
In the first heat of the pursuit, about two
thousand Christians were put to the
sword; but avarice soon prevailed over
cruelty; and the victors acknowledged,
that they should immediately have given
quarter if the valor of the emperor and
his chosen bands had not prepared them
for a similar opposition in every part of
the capital. It was thus, after a siege
of fifty-three days, that Constantinople,
which had defied the power of Chosroes,
the Chagan, and the caliphs, was irre-
trievably subdued by the arms of Ma-
homet the Second. Her empire only had
been subverted by the Latins: her religion
was trampled in the dust by the Moslem
conquerors.

The tidings of misfortune fly with a
rapid wing; yet such was the extent of
Constantinople, that the more distant

266

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

quarters might prolong, some moments,
the happy ignorance of their ruin. But
in the general consternation, in the feelings
of selfish or social anxiety, in the tumult
and thunder of the assault, a sleepless
night and morning must have elapsed;
nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies
were awakened by the Janizaries from a
sound and tranquil slumber. On the
assurance of the public calamity, the
houses and convents were instantly de-
serted; and the trembling inhabitants
flocked together in the streets, like a herd
of timid animals, as if accumulated weak-
ness could be productive of strength, or in
the vain hope, that amid the crowd each
individual might be safe and invisible.
From every part of the capital, they
flowed into the church of St. Sophia: in
the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the
choir, the nave, the upper and lower
galleries, were filled with the multitudes
of fathers and husbands, of women and
children, of priests, monks, and religious
virgins: the doors were barred on the in-
side, and they sought protection from the
sacred dome, which they had so lately
abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice.
Their confidence was founded on the
prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor;
that one day the Turks would enter Con-
stantinople, and pursue the Romans as far
as the column of Constantine in the square
before St. Sophia: but that this would be
the term of their calamities: that an angel
would descend from heaven, with a sword
in his hand, and would deliver the empire,
with that celestial weapon, to a poor man
seated at the foot of the column. "Take
this sword," would he say, "and avenge
the people of the Lord." At these animat-
ing words, the Turks would instantly fly,
and the victorious Romans would drive
them from the West, and from all Ana-
tolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia.
It is on this occasion that Ducas, with
some fancy and much truth, upbraids the
discord and obstinacy of the Greeks.
"Had that angel appeared," exclaims the
historian, "had he offered to exterminate
your foes if you would consent to the union
of the church, even then, hi that fatal

moment, you would have rejected youi
safety, or have deceived your God."

While they expected the descent of the
tardy angel, the doors were broken with
axes; and as the Turks encountered n<?
resistance, their bloodless hands were
employed in selecting and securing the
multitude of their prisoners. Youth,
beauty, and the appearance of wealth,
attracted their choice; and the right of
property was decided among themselves
by a prior seizure, by personal strength,
and by the authority of command. In
the space of an hour, the male captives
were bound with cords, the females with
their veils and girdles. The senators were
linked with their slaves; the prelates, with
the porters of the church; and young men
of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose
faces had been invisible to the sun and
their nearest kindred. In this common
captivity, the ranks of society were con-
founded; the ties of nature were cut asun-
der; and the inexorable soldier was careless
of the father's groans, the tears of the
mother, and the lamentations of the chil-
dren. The loudest in their wailings were
the nuns, who were torn from the altar
with naked bosoms, outstretched hands,
and dishevelled hair; and we should
piously believe that few could be tempted
to prefer the vigils of the harem to those
of the monastery. Of these unfortunate
Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole
strings were rudely driven through the
streets; and as the conquerors were eager
to return for more prey, their trembling
pace was quickened with menaces and
blows. * * * * The chain and en-
trance of the outward harbor was still
occupied by the Italian ships of merchan-
dise and war. They had signalized their
valor in the siege; they embraced the mo-
ment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners
were dissipated in the pillage of the city.
When they hoisted sail, the beach was
covered with a suppliant and lamentable
crowd; but the means of transportation
were scanty: the Venetians and Genoese
selected their countrymen; and, notwith-
standing the fairest promises of the sultan,
the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their

HISTORY

267

houses, and embarked with their most
precious effects.

In the fall and the sack of great cities,
an historian is condemned to repeat the
tale of uniform calamity: the same effects
must be produced by the same passions;
and when those passions may be indulged
without control, small, alas! is the differ-
ence between civilized and savage man.
Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry
and hatred, the Turks are not accused of
a wanton or immoderate effusion of Chris-
tian blood: but according to their maxims,
(the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the
vanquished were forfeited; and the legiti-
mate reward of the conqueror was de-
rived from the service, the sale, or the
ransom, of his captives of both sexes.
The wealth of Constantinople had been
granted by the sultan to his victorious
troops; and the rapine of an hour is more
productive than the industry of years.
But as no regular division was attempted
of the spoil, the respective shares were
not determined by merit; and the rewards
of valor were stolen away by the followers
of the camp, who had declined the toil and
danger of the battle. The narrative of
their depredations could not afford either
amusement or instruction: the total
amount, in the last poverty of the empire,
has been valued at four millions of ducats;
and of this sum a small part was the
property of the Venetians, the Genoese,
the Florentines, and the merchants of
Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock
was improved in quick and perpetual
circulation: but the riches of the Greeks
were displayed in the idle ostentation of
palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried
in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest
it should be demanded at their hands for
the defence of their country. The pro-
fanation and plunder of the monasteries
and churches excited the most tragic
complaints. The dome of St. Sophia
itself, the earthly heaven, the second
firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim,
the throne of the glory of God, was
despoiled of the oblations of ages; and
the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels,
the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were

most wickedly converted to the service of
mankind. After the divine images had
been stripped of all that could be valuable
to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood,
was torn, or broken, or burnt, or trod
under foot, or applied, in the stables or
the kitchen, to the vilest uses. The ex-
ample of sacrilege was imitated, however,
from the Latin conquerors of Constanti-
nople; and the treatment which Christ,
the Virgin, and the saints, had sustained
from the guilty Catholic, might be inflicted
by the zealous Mussulman on the monu-
ments of idolatry. Perhaps, instead of
joining the public clamor, a philosopher will
observe, that in the decline of the arts
the workmanship could not be more
valuable than the work, and that a fresh
supply of visions and miracles would
speedily be renewed by the craft of the
priest and the credulity of the people.
He will more seriously deplore the loss
of the Byzantine libraries, which were
destroyed or scattered in the general
confusion: one hundred and twenty thou-
sand manuscripts are said to have disap-
peared; ten volumes might be purchased
for a single ducat; and the same igno-
minious price, too high perhaps for a shelf
of theology, included the whole works of
Aristotle and Homer, the noblest produc-
tions of the science and literature of an-
cient Greece. We may reflect with pleas-
ure, that an inestimable portion of our
classic treasures was safely deposited in
Italy; and that the mechanics of a German
town had invented an art which derides
the havoc of time and barbarism.

From the first hour of the memorable
twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine
prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth
hour of the same day; when the sultan
himself passed in triumph through the
gate of St. Romanus. He was attended
by his viziers, bashaws, and guards, each
of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was
robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo,
and equal in battle to any ten of the race
of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed
with satisfaction and wonder on the
strange, though splendid, appearance of
the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from

268

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the style of Oriental architecture. In the
hippodrome, or atmeidan, his eye was at-
tracted by the twisted column of the three
serpents; and, as a trial of his strength,
he shattered with his iron mace or battle-
axe the under jaw of one of these monsters,
which in the eyes of the Turks were the
idols or talismans of the city. At the
principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted
from his horse, and entered the dome;
and such was his jealous regard for that
monument of his glory, that on observing a
zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking
the marble pavement, he admonished him
with his cimeter, that, if the spoil and
captives were granted to the soldiers, the
public and private buildings had been re-
served for the prince. By his command
the metropolis of the Eastern church was
transformed into a mosque: the rich and
portable instruments of superstition had
been removed; the crosses were thrown
down; and the walls, which were covered
with images and mosaics, were washed
and purified, and restored to a state of
naked simplicity. On the same day, or
on the ensuing Friday, the muezin, or crier,
ascended the most lofty turret, and pro-
claimed the ezan, or public invitation in
the name of God and his prophet; the
imam preached; and Mahomet the Second
performed the namaz of prayer and thanks-
giving on the great altar, where the Chris-
tian mysteries had so lately been celebrated
before the last of the Caesars. From St.
Sophia he proceeded to the august, but
desolate, mansion of a hundred successors
of the great Constantine, but which in
a few hours had been stripped of the pomp
of royalty. A melancholy reflection on
the vicissitudes of human greatness forced
itself on his mind; and he repeated an
elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The
spider has wove his web in the Imperial
palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-
song on the towers of Afrasiab."

Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor did
the victory seem complete, till he was
informed of the fate of Constantine;
whether he had escaped, or been made
prisoner, or had fallen in the battle.
Two Janizaries claimed the honor and

reward of his death: the body, under a
heap of slain, was discovered by the golden
eagles embroidered on his shoes: the
Greeks acknowledged, with tears, the
head of their late emperor; and, after
exposing the bloody trophy, Mahomet
bestowed on his rival the honors of a
decent funeral. . . .

The importance of Constantinople was
felt and magnified in its loss: the pontifi-
cate of Nicholas the Fifth, however peace-
ful and prosperous, was dishonored by the
fall of the Eastern empire; and the grief
and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed
to revive, the old enthusiasm of the cru-
sades. In one of the most distant coun-
tries of the West, Philip duke of Burgundy
entertained, at Lisle in Flanders, an assem-
bly of his nobles; and the pompous pa-
geants of the feast were skilfully adapted
to their fancy and feelings. In the midst
of the banquet a gigantic Saracen entered
the hall, leading a fictitious elephant with
a castle on his back: a matron in a mourn-
ing robe, the symbol of religion, was seen
to issue from the castle: she deplored her
oppression, and accused the slowness of
her champions: the principal herald of the
golden fleece advanced, bearing on his
fist a live pheasant, which, according to
the rites of chivalry, he presented to the
duke. At this extraordinary summons,
Philip, a wise and aged prince, engaged
his person and powers in the holy war
against the Turks: his example was imi-
tated by the barons and knights of the
assembly: they swore to God, the Virgin,
the ladies and the pheasant; and their
particular vows were not less extravagant
than the general sanction of their oath.
But the performance was made to depend
on some future and foreign contingency;
and during twelve years, till the last hour
of his life, the duke of Burgundy might be
scrupulously, and perhaps sincerely, on
the eve of his departure. Had every
breast glowed with the same ardor; had
the union of the Christians corresponded
with their bravery; had every country,
from Sweden to Naples, supplied a just
proportion of cavalry and infantry, of
men and money, it is indeed probable that

HISTORY

269

Constantinople would have been delivered,
and that the Turks might have been chased
beyond the Hellespont or the Euphrates.
But the secretary of the emperor, who
composed every epistle, and attended
every meeting, ^Eneas Sylvius, a statesman
and orator, describes from his own ex-
perience the repugnant state and spirit of
Christendom. "It is a body," says he,
"without a head; a republic without laws
or magistrates. The pope and the em-
peror may shine as lofty titles, as splendid
images; but they are unable to command,
and none are willing to obey: every state
has a separate prince, and every prince
has a separate interest. What eloquence
could unite so many discordant and hostile
powers under the same standard? Could
they be assembled in arms, who would
dare to assume the office of general?
What order could be maintained? what
military discipline? Who would under-
take to feed such an enormous multitude?
Who would understand their various lan-
guages, or direct their stranger and in-
compatible manners? What mortal could
reconcile the English with the French,
Genoa with Arragon, the Germans with
the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If
a small number enlisted in the holy war,
they must be overthrown by the infidels;
if many, by their own weight and confu-
sion." Yet the same ^Eneas, when he was
raised to the papal throne, under the name

of Pius the Second, devoted his life to the
prosecution of the Turkish war. In the
council of Mantua he excited some sparks
of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when
the pontiff appeared at Ancona, to embark
in person with the troops, engagements
vanished in excuses; a precise day was
adjourned to an indefinite term; and his
effective army consisted of some German
pilgrims, whom he was obliged to disband
with indulgences and arms. Regardless
of futurity, his successors and the powers
of Italy were involved in the schemes of
present and domestic ambition; and the
distance or proximity of each object
determined in their eyes its apparent
magnitude. A more enlarged view of their
interest would have taught them to main-
tain a defensive and naval war against the
common enemy; and the support of Scan-
derbeg and his brave Albanians might
have prevented the subsequent invasion
of the kingdom of Naples. The siege
and sack of Otranto by the Turks diffused
a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus
was preparing to fly beyond the Alps,
when the storm was instantly dispelled
by the death of Mahomet the Second,
in the fifty-first year of his age. His
lofty genius aspired to the conquest of
Italy; he was possessed of a strong city
and a capacious harbor; and the same
reign might have been decorated with the
trophies of the NEW and theANCiENT ROME.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

Carlyle was one of the most powerful moralists of his generation, tearing the mask of hypocrisy
and self-esteem from the face of respectable society. "Sartor Resartus" represents his soul -experience; a
strange, powerful book which every young man or young woman should absorb. As historian, he had
not been trained in the modern school of accurate scholarship, seeing history rather by lightning-flashes
as the working out of destiny in the lives of men. Some of his pen-portraits and descriptions of great
episodes are unsurpassed for vividness and power.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
BOOK V

CHAPTER V
LIKE A THUNDER-CLOUD

BUT the grand, and indeed substantially
primary and generic aspect of the Con-

summation of Terror remains still to be
looked at; nay blinkard History has for
most part all but overlooked this aspect,
the soul of the whole; that which makes
it terrible to the Enemies of France.
Let Despotism and Cimmerian Coalitions
consider. All French men and French
things are in a State of Requisition; Four-
teen Armies are got on foot; Patriotism,

270

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

with all that it has of faculty in heart or
in head, in soul or body or breeches-
pocket, is rushing to the Frontiers, to pre-
vail or die! Busy sits Carnot, in Salut
Public; busy, for his share, in "organizing
victory." Not swifter pulses that Guillo-
tine, in dread systole-diastole hi the
Place de la Revolution, than smites the
Sword of Patriotism, smiting Cimmeria
back to its own borders, from the sacred
soil.

In fact, the Government is what we can
call Revolutionary; and some men are
"a la hauteur," on a level with circum-
stances; and others are not a la hauteur,
so much the worse for them. But the
Anarchy, we may say, has organized itself:
Society is literally overset; its old forces
working with mad activity, but in the
inverse order; destructive and self -de-
structive.

Curious to see how all still refers itself
to some head and fountain; not even an
Anarchy but must have a center to revolve
round. It is now some six months since
the Committee of Salut Public came into
existence; some three months since Danton
proposed that all power should be given
it, and "a sum of fifty millions," and the
" Government be declared Revolutionary."
He himself, since that day, would take no
hand in it, though again and again
solicited; but sits private in his place on
the Mountain. Since that day, the Nine,
or if they should even rise to Twelve,
have become permanent, always re-elected
when their term runs out; Salut Public,
Surete Generate have assumed their ul-
terior form and mode of operating.

Committee of Public Salvation, as su-
preme; of General Surety, as subaltern:
these, like a Lesser and Greater Council,
most harmonious hitherto, have become
the center of all things. They ride this
Whirlwind; they, raised by force of cir-
cumstances, insensibly, very strangely,
thither to that dread height; and guide
it, and seem to guide it. Stranger set of
Cloud-Compellers the Earth never saw.
A Robespierre, a Billaud, a Collot, Cou-
thon, Saint-Just; not to mention still
meaner Amars, Vadiers, hi Surett Generale:

these are your Cloud-Compellers. Small
intellectual talent is necessary: indeed
where among them, except in the head of
Carnot, busied organizing victory, would
you find any? The talent is one of in-
stinct rather. It is that of divining
aright what this great dumb Whirlwind
wishes and wills; that of willing, with more
frenzy than any one, what all the world
wills. To stand at no obstacles; to heed
no considerations, human or divine, to
know well that, of divine or human, there
is one thing needful, Triumph of the
Republic, Destruction of the enemies of
the Republic! With this one spiritual
endowment, and so few others, it is strange
to see how a dumb inarticulately storming
Whirlwind of things puts, as it were, its
reins into your hand, and invites and com-
pels you to be leader of it.

Hard by, sits a Municipality of Paris;
all in red nightcaps since the fourth of
November last: a set of men fully "on a
level with circumstances," or even beyond
it. Sleek Mayor Pache, studious to be
safe hi the middle; Chaumettes, Heberts,
Varlets, and Henriot their great Com-
mandant; not to speak of Vincent the
War-clerk, of Momoros, Dobsents and such
like: all intent to have Churches plundered,
to have Reason adored, Suspects cut
down, and the Revolution triumph. Per-
haps carrying the matter too far? Danton
was heard to grumble at the civic strophes;
and to recommend prose and decency.
Robespierre also grumbles that, in over-
turning Superstition, we did not mean
to make a religion of Atheism. In fact,
your Chaumette and Company constitute
a kind of Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid
"Faction des Enrages;" which has given
orthodox Patriotism some umbrage, of
late months. To "know a Suspect on the
streets;" what is this but bringing the
Law of the Suspect itself into Ul odor?
Men half-frantic, men zealous over-much,
they toil there, hi their red nightcaps,
restlessly, rapidly, accomplishing what of
Life is allotted them.

And the Forty-four Thousand other
Townships, each with Revolutionary Com-
mittee, based on Jacobin Daughter-

HISTORY

271

Society; enlightened by the spirit of
Jacobinism; quickened by the Forty Sous
a-day! The French Constitution spurned
always at anything like Two Chambers;
and yet behold, has it not verily got Two
Chambers? National Convention, elected,
for one; Mother of Patriotism, self -elected,
for another! Mother of Patriotism has
her Debates reported in the Moniteur, as
important state-procedures; which indis-
putably they are. A Second Chamber
of Legislature we call this Mother-Society;
if perhaps it were not rather comparable
to that old Scotch Body named Lords of the
Articles, without whose origination, and
signal given, the so-called Parliament
could introduce no bill, could do no work?
Robespierre himself, whose words are a
law, opens his incorruptible lips copiously
in the Jacobins Hall. Smaller Council
of Salut Public, Greater Council of Surete
Generate, all active Parties, come here to
plead; to shape beforehand what decision
they must arrive at, what destiny they
have to expect. Now if a question arose,
Which of those Two Chambers, Conven-
tion, or Lords of the Articles, was the
stronger ? Happily they as yet go hand
in hand.

As for the National Convention, truly
it has become a most composed Body.
Quenched now the old effervescence: the
Seventy-three locked in ward; once noisy
Friends of the Girondins sunk all into si-
lent men of the Plain, called even "Frogs
of the Marsh," Crapauds du Marais !
Addresses come, Revolutionary Church-
plunder comes; Deputations, with prose
or strophes: these the Convention receives.
But beyond this, the Convention has one
thing mainly to do; to listen what Salut
Public proposes, and say, Yea.

Bazire followed by Chabot, with some
impetuosity, declared, one morning, that
this was not the way of a Free Assembly.
"There ought to be an Opposition side,
a Cote Droit," cried Chabot: "if none else
will form it, I will. People say to me,
You will all get guillotined in your turn,
first you and Bazire, then Danton, then
Robespierre himself." So spake the Dis-
frocked, with a loud voice: next week,

Bazire and he lie in the Abbaye; wending,
one may fear, towards Tinville and the
Axe; and "people say to me" what seems
to be proving true! Bazire's blood was
all inflamed with Revolution Fever; with
coffee and spasmodic dreams. Chabot,
again, how happy with his rich Jew-
Austrian wife, late Fraulein Frey! But
he lies in Prison; and his two Jew- Austrian
Brothers-in-Law, the Bankers Frey, lie
with him; waiting the urn of doom. Let
a National Convention, therefore, take
warning, and know its function. Let the
Convention, all as one man, set its shoulder
to the work; not with bursts of Parliamen-
tary eloquence, but in quite other and
serviceabler ways!

Convention Commissioners, what we
ought to call Representatives, "Reprssen-
tans on mission," fly, like the Herald
Mercury, to all points of the Territory;
carrying your behests far and wide. In
their "round hat, plumed with tricolor
feathers, girt with flowing tricolor taffeta;
in close frock, tricolor sash, sword and
jack-boots," these men are powerfuller
than King or Kaiser. They say to whom-
so they meet, Do; and he must do it: all
men's goods are at their disposal; for
France is as one huge City in Siege. They
smite with Requisitions, and Forced-loan;
they have the power of life and death.
Saint- Just and Lebas order the rich classes
of Strasburg to "strip off their shoes," and
send them to the Armies, where as many
as "ten-thousand pairs" are needed.
Also, that within four-and-twenty hours,
"a thousand beds" be got ready; wrapt
in matting, and sent under way. For the
time presses! Like swift bolts, issuing
from the fuliginous Olympus of Salut
Public, rush these men, oftenest in pairs;
scatter your thunder-orders over France;
make France one enormous Revolutionary
thunder-cloud.

CHAPTER VI
DO THY DUTY

ACCORDINGLY, alongside of these bon-
fires of Church balustrades, and sounds of

272

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

fusillading and noyading, there rise quite
another sort of fires and sounds: Smithy-
fires and Proof-volleys for the manufacture
of arms.

Cut off from Sweden and the world, the
Republic must learn to make steel for it-
self; and, by aid of Chemists, she has
learnt it. Towns that knew only iron,
now know steel: from their new dungeons
at Chantilly, Aristocrats may hear the
rustle of our new steel furnace there.
Do not bells transmute themselves into
cannon; iron stancheons into the white-
weapon (arme blanche), by sword-cutlery?
The wheels of Langres scream, amid their
spluttering fire-halo; grinding mere swords.
The stithies of Charleville ring with gun-
making. What say we, Charleville? Two
hundred and fifty-eight Forges stand in
the open spaces of Paris itself; a hundred
and forty of them in the Esplanade of the
Invalides, fifty-four in the Luxembourg
Garden: so many Forges stand; grim
Smiths beating and forging at lock and
barrel there. The Clockrnakers have
come, requisitioned, to do the touch-holes,
the hard-solder and file-work. Five great
Barges swing at anchor on the Seine
Stream, loud with boring; the great
press-drills grating harsh thunder to the
'general ear and heart. And deft Stock-
makers do gouge and rasp; and all men
bestir themselves, according to their cun-
ning: in the language of hope, it is reck-
oned that "a thousand finished muskets
can be delivered daily." Chemists of the
Republic have taught us miracles of swift
tanning: the cordwainer bores and stitches;
not of "wood and pasteboard," or he
shall answer it to Tinville! The women
sew tents and coats, the children scrape
surgeons'-lint, the old men sit in the
market-places; able men are on march;
all men in requisition: from Town to
Town flutters, on the Heaven's winds,
this Banner, THE FRENCH PEOPLE RISEN
AGAINST TYEANTS.

All which is well. But now arises the
question: What is to be done for salt-
peter? Interrupted Commerce and the
English Navy shut us out from salt-
peter; and without saltpeter there is no

gun-powder. Republican Science again
sits meditative; discovers that saltpeter
exists here and there, though in attenuated
quantity; that old plaster of walls holds
a sprinkling of it; that the earth of the
Paris Cellars holds a sprinkling of it, dif-
fused through the common rubbish; that
were these dug up and washed, salt-
peter might be had. Whereupon, swiftly,
see! the Citoyens, with up-shoved bonnet
rouge, or with doffed bonnet, and hair
toil-wetted; digging fiercely, each in his
own cellar, for saltpeter. The Earth-
heap rises at every door; the Citoyennes
with hod and bucket carrying it up; the
Citoyens, pith in every muscle, shovelling
and digging: for life and saltpeter. Dig,
my braves; and right well speed ye ! What
of saltpeter is essential the Republic shall
not want.

Consummation of Sansculottism has
many aspects and tints: but the brightest
tint, really of a solar or stellar brightness
is this which the Armies give it. That
same fervor of Jacobinism, which intern-
ally fills France with hatreds, suspicions,
scaffolds and Reason-worship, does, on the
Frontiers, show itself as a glorious pro
patria mori. Ever since Dumouriez's
defection, three Convention Representa-
tives attend every General. Committee
of Salut has sent them; often with this
Laconic order only: "Do thy duty, Fais
ton devoir." It is strange, under what
impediments the fire of Jacobinism, like
other such fires, will burn. These soldiers
have shoes of wood and pasteboard, or go
booted in hay-ropes, in dead of winter;
they skewer a bast mat round their should-
ers, and are destitute of most things.
What then? It is for Rights of French-
hood, of Manhood, that they fight: the
unquenchable spirit, here as elsewhere,
works miracles. "With steel and bread,"
says the Convention Representative, "one
may get to China." The Generals go fast
to the guillotine; justly and unjustly.
From which what inference? This, among
others: That ill-success is death; that in
victory alone is life! To conquer or die
is no theatrical palabra, in these circum-
stances, but a practical truth and necessity.

HISTORY

273

All Girondism, Halfness, Compromise
if swept away. Forward, ye Soldiers
of the Republic, captain and man! Dash,
with your Gaelic impetuosity, on Austria,
England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, Pitt,
Cobourg, York, and the Devil and the
World! Behind us is but the Guillotine;
before us is Victory, Apotheosis and Mil-
lennium without end!

See, accordingly, on all Frontiers, how
the Sons of Night, astonished after short
triumph, do recoil; the Sons of the
Republic flying at them, with wild Qa-ira
or Marseillese Aux armes, with the temple
of cat-o'-mountain, or demon incarnate;
which no Son of Night can stand! Spain,
which came bursting through the Pyrenees,
rustling with Bourbon banners, and went
conquering here and there for a season,
^alters at such cat-o'-mountain welcome;
draws itself in again; too happy now were
the Pyrenees impassable. Not only does
Dugommier, conqueror of Toulon, drive
Spain back; he invades Spain. General
Dugommier invades it by the Eastern
Pyrenees; General Miiller shall invade it
by the Western. Shall, that is the word:
Committee of Salut Public has said it;
Representative Cavaignac, on mission
there, must see it done. Impossible! cries
Miiller. Infallible ! answers Cavaignac.
Difficulty, impossibility, is to no purpose.
"The Committee is deaf on that side of
its head," answers Cavaignac, "n'entend
pas de cette oreille Id. How many wantest
thou, of men, of horses, cannons? Thou
shalt have them. Conquerors, conquered
or hanged, forward we must." Which
things also, even as the Representatives
spake them, were done. The Spring of
the new Year sees Spain invaded: and re-
doubts are carried, and Passes and Heights
of the most scarped description; Spanish
Field-omcerism struck mute at such cat-
o'-mountain spirit, the cannon forgetting
to fire. Swept are the Pyrenees; Town
after Town flies open, burst by terror or
the petard. In the course of another
year, Spain will crave Peace; acknowledge
its sins and the Republic; nay, in Madrid,
there will be joy as for a victory, that
even Peace is got.

Few things, we repeat, can be notabler
than these Convention Representatives,
with their power more than kingly. Nay
at bottom are they not Kings, Able-men,
of a sort; chosen from the Seven-hundred
and Forty-nine French Kings; with this
order, Do thy duty? Representative Le-
vasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere
pacific Surgeon-Accoucheur, has mutinies
to quell; mad hosts (mad at the Doom of
Custine) bellowing far and wide; he alone
amid them, the one small Representative,
small, but as hard as flint, which also
carries^re in it ! So too, at Hondschooten,
far hi the afternoon, he declares that the
Battle is not lost; that it must be gained;
and fights, himself, with his own obstetric
hand; horse shot under him, or say on
foot, "up to the haunches in tide-water;"
cutting stocca.do and passado there, in
defiance of Water, Earth, Air and Fire,
the choleric little Representative that he
was! Whereby, as natural, Royal High-
ness of York had to withdraw, occasion-
ally at full gallop; like to be swallowed
by the tide: and his Siege of Dunkirk
became a dream, realizing only much loss
of beautiful siege-artillery and of brave
lives.

General Houchard, it would appear,
stood behind a hedge on this Hondschoo-
ten occasion; wherefore they have since
guillotined him. A new General Jourdan,
late Sergeant Jourdan, commands in his
stead: he, in long-winded Battles of
Watigny, "murderous artillery-fire ming-
ling itself with sound of Revolutionary
battle-hymns," forces Austria behind the
Sambre again; has hopes of purging the
soil of Liberty. With hard wrestling, with
artillerying and $a-ira-'mg, it shall be
done. In the course of a new Summer,
Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered;
Conde beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in
the hands of Austria beleaguered and
bombarded: nay, by Convention Decree,
we even summon them all "either to sur-
render in twenty-four hours, or else be
put to the sword;" a high saying, which,
though it remains unfulfilled, may show
what spirit one is of.

Representative Drouet, as an Old-

274

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

dragoon, could fight by a kind of second
nature: but he was unlucky. Him, in a
night-foray at Maubeuge, the Austrians
took alive, in October last. They stript
him almost naked, he says; making a show
of him, as King-taker of Varennes. They
flung him into carts; sent him far into the
interior of Cimmeria, to "a Fortress called
Spitzberg" on the Danube River; and left
him there, at an elevation of perhaps a
hundred and fifty feet, to his own bitter
reflections. Reflections; and also devices!
For the indomitable Old-dragoon con-
structs wing-machinery, of Paperkite;
saws window-bars; determines to fly down.
He will seize a boat, will follow the River's
course; land somewhere hi Crim Tartary,
in the Black-Sea or Constantinople region:
d la Sindbad! Authentic History, ac-
cordingly, looking far into Cimmeria,
discerns dimly a phenomenon. In the
dead night-watches, the Spitzberg sentry
is near fainting with terror: Is it a huge
vague Portent descending through the
night-air? It is a huge National Repre-
sentative Old-dragoon, descending by
Paperkite; too rapidly, alas! For Drouet
had taken with him "a small provision-
store, twenty pounds weight or thereby;"
which proved accelerative: so he fell,
fracturing his leg; and lay there, moaning,
till day dawned, till you could discern
clearly that he was not a Portent but a
Representative.

Or see Saint- Just, in the Lines of Weis-
sembourg, though physically of a timid
apprehensive nature, how he charges
with his "Alsatian Peasants armed hastily"
for the nonce; the solemn face of him
blazing into flame; his black hair and tri-
color hat-taffeta flowing in the breeze!
These our Lines of Weissembourg were
indeed forced, and Prussia and the Emi-
grants rolled through: but we re-force the
Lines of Weissembourg; and Prussia and
the Emigrants roll back again still faster,
hurled with bayonet-charges and fiery

Ci-devant Sergeant Pichegru, ci-devant
Sergeant Hoche, risen now to be Generals,
have done wonders here. Tall Pichegru
was meant for the Church; was Teacher

of Mathematics once, in Brienne School,
his remarkablest Pupil there was the Boy
Napoleon Buonaparte. He then, not in
the sweetest humor, enlisted, exchanging
ferula for musket, and had got the length
of the halberd, beyond which nothing
could be hoped; when the Bastille barrier
falling made passage for him, and he is
here. Hoche bore a hand at the literal
overturn of the Bastille; he was, as we saw,
a Sergeant of the Gardes Francises, spend-
ing his pay in rushlights and cheap edi-
tions of books. How the Mountains are
burst, and many an Enceladus is disem-
prisoned; and Captains founding on Four
parchments of Nobility are blown with
their parchments across the Rhine, into
Lunar Limbo!

What high feats of arms, therefore, were
done hi these Fourteen Armies; and how,
for love of Liberty and hope of Promotion,
lowborn valor cut its desperate way to
Generalship; and, from the central Carnot
in Salut Public to the outmost drummer
on the Frontiers, men strove for their
Republic, let Readers fancy. The snows
of Whiter, the flowers of Summer con-
tinue to be stained with warlike blood.
Gaelic impetuosity mounts ever higher
with victory; spirit of Jacobinism weds
itself to national vanity: the Soldiers of
the Republic are becoming, as we prophe-
sied, very Sons of Fire. Barefooted, bare-
backed: but with bread and iron you can
get to China! It is one Nation against
the whole world; but the Nation has that
within her which the whole world will not
conquer. Cimmeria, astonished, recoils
faster or slower; all round the Republic
there rises fiery, as it were, a magic ring
of musket- volleying and qa-ira-ing. Maj-
esty of Prussia, as Majesty of Spain, will
by and by acknowledge his sins and the
Republic; and make a Peace of Bale.

Foreign Commerce, Colonies, Factories
in the East and in the West, are fallen or
falling into the hands of sea-ruling Pitt,
enemy of human nature. Nevertheless
what sound is this that we hear, on the
first of June 1794; sound as of war- thunder
borne from the Ocean too, of tone most

HISTORY

275

piercing? War-thunders from off the
Brest waters: Villaret-Joyeuse and English
Howe, after long manoeuvring, have
ranked themselves there; and are belching
fire. The enemies of human nature are
on their own element, cannot be con-
quered; cannot be kept from conquering.
Twelve hours of raging cannonade; sun
now sinking westward through the battle-
smoke: six French Ships taken, the Battle
lost; what Ship soever can still sail, making
off! But how is it, then, with that Vengeur
Ship, she neither strikes nor makes off?
She is lamed, she cannot make off; strike
she will not. Fire rakes her fore and
aft from victorious enemies; the Vengeur
is sinking. Strong are ye, Tyrants of the
sea; yet we also, are we weak? Lo!
all flags, streamers, jacks, every rag of
tricolor that will yet run on rope, fly
rustling aloft: the whole crew crowds to
the upper deck; and with universal soul-
maddening yell, shouts Vive la Republique,
sinking, sinking. She staggers, she
lurches, her last drunk whirl; Ocean yawns
abysmal; down rushes the Vengeur, carry-
ing Vive la Republique along with her,
unconquerable, into Eternity. Let foreign
Despots think of that. There is an Un-
conquerable in man, when he stands on his
Rights of Man: let Despots and Slaves
and all people know this, and only them
that stand on the Wrongs of Man tremble
to know it. So has History written, noth-
ing doubting, of the sunk Vengeur.

Reader! Mendez Pinto, Mtin-

chausen, Cagliostro, Psalmanazar have
been great; but they are not the greatest.
O Barrere, Barrere, Anacreon of the Guillo-
tine! must inquisitive pictorial History,
in a new edition, ask again, "How is it
with the Vengeur" in this its glorious
suicidal sinking; and, with resentful brush,
dash a bend-sinister of contumelious lamp-
black through thee and it? Alas, alas!
The Vengeur, after fighting bravely, did
sink altogether as other ships do, her
captain and above two hundred of her
crew escaping gladly in British boats;
and this same enormous inspiring Feat,
and rumor "of sound most piercing,"
turns out to be an enormous inspiring

Non-entity, extant nowhere save, as
falsehood, in the brain of Barrere! Ac-
tually so. Founded, like the World itself,
on Nothing; proved by Convention Report,
by solemn Convention Decree and De-
crees, and wooden "Model of the Vengeur;"
believed, bewept, besung by the whole
French People to this hour, it may be
regarded as Barrere's masterpiece; the
largest, most inspiring piece of blague
manufactured, for some centuries, by
any man or nation. As such, and not
otherwise, be it henceforth memorable.

CHAPTER VII
FLAME-PICTURE

IN THIS manner, mad-blazing with flame
of all imaginable tints, from the red of
Tophet to the stellar-bright, blazes off
this Consummation of Sansculottism.

But the hundredth part of the things
that were done, and the thousandth part
of the things that were projected and
decreed to be done, would tire the tongue
of History. Statue of the Peuple Souve-
rain, high as Strasburg Steeple; which
shall fling its shadow from the Pont Neuf
over Jardin National and Convention
Hall; enormous, in Painter David's
Head! With other the like enormous
Statues not a few: realized in paper De-
cree. For, indeed, the Statue of Liberty
herself is still but Plaster, in the Place
de la Revolution. Then Equalization of
Weights and Measures, with decimal divi-
sion; Institutions, of Music and of much
else; Institute in general; School of Arts,
School of Mars, Eleves de la Patrie,
Normal Schools: amid such Gun-boring,
Altar-burning, Saltpeter-digging, and mi-
raculous improvements in Tannery!

What, for example, is this that Engineer
Chappe is doing, in the Park of Vincennes?
In the Park of Vincennes; and onwards,
they say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-
Fargeau the assassinated Deputy; and still
onwards to the Heights of Ecouen and
further, he has scaffolding set up, has
posts driven in; wooden arms with elbow-
joints are jerking and fugling in the air,

276

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

in the most rapid mysterious manner!
Citoyens ran up, suspicious. Yes, O
Citoyens, we are signalling: it is a device
this, worthy of the Republic; a thing for
what we will call Far-writing without the
aid of postbags; in Greek it shall be named
Telegraph. Telegraplie sacre I answers
Citoyenism: For writing to Traitors, to
Austria? and tears it down. Chappe had
to escape, and get a new Legislative De-
cree. Nevertheless he has accomplished
it, the indefatigable Chappe: this his
Far-writer, with its wooden arms and
elbow-joints, can intelligibly signal; and
lines of them are set up, to the North
Frontiers and elsewhither. On an Autumn
evening of the Year Two, Far-writer hav-
ing just written that Conde Town has
surrendered to us, we send from the
Tuileries Convention-Hall this response in
the shape of Decree: "The name of Conde
is changed to Nord-Libre, North-Free.
The Army of the North ceases not to merit
well of the country." To the admiration
of men! For lo, in some half hour, while
the Convention yet debates, there arrives
this new answer: "I inform thee, je
t'annonce, Citizen President, that the
Decree of Convention, ordering change of
the name Conde into North-Free; and the
other, declaring that the Army of the
North ceases not to merit well of the coun-
try; are transmitted and acknowledged
by Telegraph. I have instructed my
Officer at LUle to forward them to North-
Free by express. Signed, CHAPPE."

Or see, over Fleurus in the Netherlands,
where General Jourdan, having now swept
the soil of Liberty, and advanced thus far,
is just about to fight, and sweep or be
swept, hangs there not in the Heaven's
Vault, some Prodigy, seen by Austrian
eyes and spy-glasses: in the similitude of
an enormous Windbag, with netting and
enormous Saucer depending from it? A
Jove's Balance, O ye Austrian spy-
glasses? One saucer-scale of a Jove's
Balance; your poor Austrian scale having
kicked itself quite aloft, out of sight?
By Heaven, answer the spy-glasses, it is a
Montgolfier, a Balloon, and they are
making signals! Austrian cannon battery

barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog
at the Moon: the Montgolfier makes its
signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade
there may be, and descends at its ease.
What will not these devils incarnate con-
trive?

On the whole, is it not, Reader, one
of the strangest Flame-Pictures that ever
painted itself; flaming off there, on its
ground of Guillotine-black? And the
nightly Theaters are Twenty- three; and
the Salons de danse are Sixty; full of mere
Egalite, Fraternite" and Carmagnole. And
Section Committee-rooms are Forty-eight,
redolent of tobacco and brandy: vigorous
with twenty-pence a-day, coercing the
Suspect. And the Houses of Arrest are
Twelve, for Paris alone; crowded and even
crammed. And at all turns, you need
your "Certificate of Civism;" be it for
going out, or for coming in; nay without
it you cannot, for money, get your daily
ounces of bread. Dusky red-capped
Bakers'-queues; wagging themselves; nof
in silence ! For we still live by Maximum,
in all things; waited on by these two,
Scarcity and Confusion. The faces of
men are darkened with suspicion; with
suspecting, or being suspect. The streets
lie unswept; the ways unmended. Law
has shut her Books; speaks little, save
impromptu, through the throat of Tinville.
Crimes go unpunished; not crimes against
the Revolution. "The number of found-
ling children," as some compute, "is
doubled."

How silent now sits Royalism; sits all
Aristocratism; Respectability that kept
its Gig! The honor now, and the safety,
is to Poverty, not to Wealth. Your Citi-
zen, who would be fashionable, walks
abroad, with his Wife on his arm, in red
wool nightcap, black-shag spencer, and
carmagnole complete. Aristocratism

crouches low, in what shelter is still left;
submitting to all requisitions, vexations;
too happy to escape with life. Ghastly
chateaus stare on you by the wayside;
disroofed, dis windowed; which the Na-
tional Housebroker is peeling for the lead
and ashlar. The old tenants hover dis-
consolate, over the Rhine with Conde; a

HISTORY

277

spectacle to men. Ci-devant Seigneur,
sxquisite in palate, will become an ex-
quisite Restaurateur Cook in Hamburg;
Ci-devant Madame, exquisite in dress, &,
successful Marchande des Modes in London.
In Newgate-Street, you meet M. le Mar-
quis, with a rough deal on his shoulder,
adze and jack-plane under arm; he has
taken to the joiner trade; it being necessary
to live (jaut vivre). Higher than all
Frenchmen the domestic Stockjobber flour-
ishes, in a day of Paper-money. The
Farmer also flourishes: "Farmers' houses,"
says Mercier, "have become like Pawn-
brokers' shops;" all manner of furniture,
apparel, vessels of gold and silver accumu-
late themselves there: bread is precious.
The Farmer's rent is Paper-money, and he
alone of men has bread: Farmer is better
than Landlord, and will himself become
Landlord.

And daily, we say, like a black Specter,
silently through that Life-tumult, passes
the Revolution Cart; writing on the walls
its MENE, MENE, Thou art weighed, and
found wanting! A Specter with which
one has grown familiar. Men have ad-
justed themselves: complaint issues not
from that Death-tumbril. Weak women
and ci-devants, their plumage and finery
all tarnished, sit there ; with a silent gaze,
as if looking into the Infinite Black. The
once light lip wears a curl of irony, uttering
no word; and the Tumbril fares along.
They may be guilty before Heaven, or not;
they are guilty, we suppose, before the
Revolution. Then, does not the Republic
"coin money" of them, with its great axe?
Red nightcaps howl dire approval: the
rest of Paris looks on; if with a sigh, that
is much: Fellow-creatures whom sighing
cannot help; whom black Necessity and
Tinville have clutched.

One other thing, or rather two other
things, we will still mention; and no more:
The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at
Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques
blondes: O Reader, they are made from
the Heads of Guillotined women! The
locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come
to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer; her
blonde German Frankism his black Gaelic

poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn
affectionately, as relics; rendering one
Suspect? Citizens use them, not without
mockery , oi a rather cannibal sort.

Still deeper into one's heart goes that
Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned
among the other miracles of tanning ! "At
Meudon," says Montgaillard with con-
siderable calmness, "there was a Tannery
of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined
as seemed worth flaying: of which per-
fectly good wash-leather was made;" for
breeches, and other uses. The skin of the
men, he remarks, was superior in tough-
ness (consistance) and quality to shamoy;
that of the women was good for almost
nothing, being so soft in texture! History
looking back over Cannibalism, through
Purchases Pilgrims and all early and late
Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial
Cannibalism of a sort, on the whole, so
detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-
feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide !
Alas then, is man's civilization only a
wrappage, through which the savage na-
ture of him can still burst, infernal as
ever? Nature still makes him; and ha
an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

BOOK VI

CHAPTER II
DANTON, NO WEAKNESS

DANTON, meanwhile, has been pressingly
sent for from Arcis: he must return in-
stantly, cried Camille, cried Phelippeaux
and Friends, who scented danger in the
wind. Danger enough! A Dan ton, a
Robespierre, chief-products of a victorious
Revolution, are now arrived in immediate
front of one another; must ascertain how
they will live together, rule together.
One conceives easily the deep mutual
incompatibility that divided these twv
with what terror of feminine hatred thv.
poor sea-green Formula looked at the
monstrous colossal Reality, and grew
greener to behold him; the Reality,
again, struggling to think no ill of a chief-
product of the Revolution; yet feeling

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

at bottom that such chief-product was
little other than a chief windbag, blown
large by Popular air; not a man, with the
heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic
incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula
instead of heart; of Jesuit or Methodist-
Parson nature; full of sincere-cant, in-
corruptibility, of virulence, poltroonery;
barren as the eastwind! Two such chief-
products are too much for one Revolution.
Friends, trembling at the results of a
quarrel on their part, brought them to
meet. "It is right," said Danton, swal-
lowing much indignation, "to repress the
Royalists: but we should not strike except
where it is useful to the Republic; we
should not confound the innocent and the
guilty." "And who told you," replied
Robespierre with a poisonous look, "that
one innocent person had perished?"
"Quoi," said Danton, turning round to
Friend Paris self-named Fabricius, Jury-
man in the Revolutionary Tribunal:
"Quoi, not one innocent? What sayest
thou of it, Fabricius? " Friends, Wester-
mann, this Paris and others urged him to
show himself, to ascend the Tribune and
act. The man Danton was not prone to
show himself; to act, or uproar for his own
safety. A man of careless, large, hoping
nature; a large nature that could rest:
he would sit whole hours, they say, hearing
Camille talk, and liked nothing so well.
Friends urged him to fly; his Wife urged
him: "Whither fly?" answered he: "If
freed France cast me out, there are only
dungeons for me elsewhere. One carries
not his country with him at the sole of
his shoe!" The man Danton sat still.
Not even the arrestment of Friend
Herault, a member of Salut, yet arrested
by Salut, can rouse Danton. On the night
of the 3oth of March Juryman Paris came
rushing in; haste looking through his eyes:
A clerk of the Salut Committee had told
him Danton's warrant was made out, he
is to be arrested this very night! En-
treaties there are and trepidation, of
poor Wife, of Paris and Friends: Danton
sat silent for a while; then answered,
" Us n'oseraient, They dare not;" and
would take no measures. Murmuring

"They dare not," he goes to sleep as
usual.

And yet, on the morrow morning,
strange rumor spreads over Paris City:
Danton, Camille, Phelippeaux, Lacroix
have been arrested overnight! It is
verily so : the corridors of the Luxembourg
were all crowded, Prisoners crowding
forth to see this giant of the Revolution
enter among them. "Messieurs," said
Danton politely, "I hoped soon to have
got you all out of this: but here I am
myself; and one sees not where it will end."
Rumor may spread over Paris: the
Convention clusters itself into groups,
wide-eyed, whispering, "Danton ar-
rested!" Who then is safe? Legendre,
mounting the Tribune, utters, at his own
peril, a feeble word for him; moving that
he be heard at that Bar before indictment;
but Robespierre frowns him down: "Did
you hear Chabot, or Bazire? Would you
have two weights and measures?" Le-
gendre cowers low: Danton, like the others^
must take his doom.

Danton's Prison-thoughts were curious
to have, but are not given in any quantity:
indeed few such remarkable men have
been left so obscure to us as this Titan
of the Revolution. He was heard to
ejaculate: "This time twelvemonth, I was
moving the creation of that same Revolu-
tionary Tribunal. I crave pardon for it
of God and man. They are all Brothers
Cain; Brissot would have had me guillo-
tined as Robespierre now will. I leave
the whole business in a frightful welter
(gackis epouvantable): not one of them
understands anything of government.
Robespierre will follow me; I drag down
Robespierre. 0, it were better to be a
poor fisherman than to meddle with
governing of men." Camille's young
beautiful Wife, who had made him rich
not in money alone, hovers round the
Luxembourg, like a disembodied spirit,
day and night. Camille's stolen letters
to her still exist; stained with the mark of
his tears. " I carry my head like a Saint-
Sacrament?" so Saint- Just was heard to
mutter: "perhaps he will carry his like a
Saint-Dennis."

HISTORY

270

Unhappy Danton, thou still unhappier
light Camille, once light Procureur de la
Lanterne, ye also have arrived, then, at
the Bourne of Creation, where, like Ulysses
Polytlas at the limit and utmost Gades
of his voyage, gazing into that dim Waste
beyond Creation, a man does see the Shade
of his Mother, pale, ineffectual; and days
when his Mother nursed and wrapped him
are ail-too sternly contrasted with this
day! Danton, Camille, Herault, Wester-
mann, and the others, very strangely
massed up with Bazires, Swindler Cha-
bots, Fabre d'Eglantines, Banker Freys, a
most motley Batch, "Fournee" as such
things will be called, stand ranked at the
Bar of Tinville. It is the 26. of April
1794. Danton has had but three days to
lie in Prison; for the time presses.

What is your name? place of abode?
and the like, Fouquier asks; according to
formality. "My name is Danton," an-
swers he; "a name tolerably known in the
Revolution: my abode will soon be Anni-
hilation (dans le Ncant) ; but I shall live in
the Pantheon of History." A man will
endeavor to say something forcible, be it
by nature or not! Herault mentions epi-
grammatically that he "sat in this Hall,
and was detested of Parlementeers."
Camille makes answer, "My age is that of
the bon Sansculotte Jesus; an age fatal to
Revolutionists." O Camille, Camille!
And yet in that Divine Transaction, let
us say, there did lie, among other things,
the fatallest Reproof ever uttered here
below to Worldly Right-honorableness;
" the highest fact," so devout Novalis calls
it, "in the Rights of Man." Camille's
real age, it would seem, is thirty-four.
Danton is one year older.

Some five months ago, the Trial of the
Twenty-two Girondins was the greatest
that Fouquier had then done. But here
is a still greater to do; a thing which tasks
the whole faculty of Fouquier; which
makes the very heart of him waver. For
it is the voice of Danton that reverberates
now from these domes; in passionate
words, piercing with their wild sincerity,
winged with wrath. Your best Witnesses
he shivers into ruin at one stroke. He

demands that the Committee-men them-
selves come as Witnesses, as Accusers;
he "will cover them with ignominy."
He raises his huge stature, he shakes his
huge black head, fire flashes from the eyes
of him, piercing to all Republican hearts:
so that the very Galleries, though we
filled them by ticket, murmur sympathy;
and are like to burst down, and raise the
People, and deliver him! He complains
loudly that he is classed with Chabots,
with swindling Stock-jobbers; that his
Indictment is a list of platitudes and
horrors. "Danton hidden on the loth of
August?" reverberates he, with the roar
of a lion in the toils: "where are the men
that had to press Danton to show himself,
that day? Where are these high-gifted
souls of whom he borrowed energy?
Let them appear, these Accusers of mine:
I have all the clearness of my self-posses-
sion when I demand them. I will un-
mask the three shallow scoundrels,"
les trois plats coquins, Saint- Just, Couthon,
Lebas, "who fawn on Robespierre, and
lead him towards his destruction Let
them produce themselves here; I will
plunge them into Nothingness, out of
which they ought never to have risen."
The agitated President agitates his bell;
enjoins calmness, in a vehement manner:
"What is it to thee how I defend myself?"
cries the other: " the right of dooming me is
thine always. The voice of a man speak-
ing for his honor and his life may well
drown the jingling of thy bell!" Thus
Danton, higher and higher; till the lion
voice of him "dies away in his throat:"
speech will not utter what is in that man.
The Galleries murmur ominously; the
first day's Session is over.

O Tinville, President Herman, what
will ye do? They have two days more
of it, by strictest Revolutionary Law.
The Galleries already murmur. If this
Danton were to burst your mesh work!
Very curious indeed to consider. It turns
on a hair: and what a Hoitytoity were
there, Justice and Culprit changing places;
and the whole History of France running
changed! For in France there is this
Danton only that could still try to govern

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

France. He only, the wild amorphous
Titan; and perhaps that other olive-
complexioned individual, the Artillery-
Officer at Toulon, whom we left pushing
his fortune in the South?

On the evening of the second day,
matters looking not better but worse and
worse, Fouquier and Herman, distraction
in their aspect, rush over to Salut Public.
What is to be done? Salut Public rapidly
concocts a new Decree; whereby if men
"insult Justice," they may be "thrown
out of the Debates." For indeed, withal,
is there not "a Plot in the Luxembourg
Prison?" Ci-devant General Dillon, and
others of the Suspect, plotting with Ca-
mille's Wife to distribute assignats; to
force the Prisons, overset the Republic?
Citizen Laflotte, himself Suspect but de-
siring enfranchisement, has reported said
Plot for us: a report that may bear fruit!
Enough, on the morrow morning, an
obedient Convention passes this Decree.
Salut rushes off with it to the aid of Tin-
ville, reduced now almost to extremities.
And so, Hors de Debats, Out of the De-
bates, ye insolents! Policemen do your
duty! In such manner, with a dead-lift
effort, Salut, Tinville, Herman, Leroi
Dix-Aout, and all stanch jurymen setting
heart and shoulder to it, the Jury becomes
"sufficiently instructed;" Sentence is
passed, is sent by an Official, and torn and
trampled on: Death this day. It is the
5th of April 1794. Camille's poor Wife
may cease hovering about this Prison.
Nay, let her kiss her poor children;
and prepare to enter it, and to fol-
low!

Danton carried a high look in the Death-
cart. Not so Camille; it is but one week,
and all is so topsyturvied; angel Wife left
weeping; love, riches, Revolutionary fame,
left all at the Prison-gate; carnivorous
Rabble now howling round. Palpable,
and yet incredible; like a madman's
dream! Camille struggles and writhes;
his shoulders shuffle the loose coat off
them, which hangs knotted, the hands
tied: "Calm, my friend," said Danton;
"heed not that vile canaille (laissez la cette
vile canaille)." At the foot of the Scaf-
fold, Danton was heard to ejaculate: "O
my Wife, my well-beloved, I shall never
see thee more then!" but, interrupting
himself: "Danton, no weakness!" He
said to Herault-Sechelles stepping forward
to embrace him: "Our heads will meet
there" in the Headsman's sack. His last
words were to Samson the Headsman him-
self: "Thou wilt show my head to the
people; it is worth showing."

So passes, like a gigantic mass, of valor,
ostentation, fury, affection and wild revo-
lutionary force and manhood, this Dan-
ton, to his unknown home. He was of
Arcis-sur-Aube; born of "good farmer-
people" there. He had many sins; but
one worst sin he had not, that of Cant.
No hollow Formalist, deceptive and self-
deceptive, ghastly to the natural sense, was
this; but a very Man: with all his dross
he was a Man; fiery-real, from the great
fire-bosom of Nature herself. He saved
France from Brunswick; he walked straight
his own wild road, whither it led him.
He may live for some generations in the
memory of men.

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859)

The brilliant style of Macaulay makes his historical works as entertaining as fiction. But, though
popular interest in history may be less quickly aroused by more guarded and impartial writers, yet it
is well to remember that Macaulay is availing himself of the privileges of a journalist or novelist in pre-
senting vivid pictures, boldly and highly colored.

FREDERICK THE GREAT

THE TREACHERY OF FREDERICK

EARLY in the year 1740, Frederick
William met death with a firmness and
dignity worthy of a better and wiser man;

and Frederick, who had just completed
his twenty-eighth year, became King of
Prussia. His character was little under-
stood. That he had good abilities, indeed,
no person who had talked with him or
corresponded with him could doubt. But

HISTORY

281

the easy, Epicurean life which he had led,
his love of good cookery and good wine,
of music, of conversation, of light litera-
ture, led many to regard him as a sensual
and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of
canting about moderation, peace, liberty,
and the happiness which a good mind
derives from the happiness of others, had
imposed on some who should have known
better. Those who thought best of him
expected a Telemachus after Fenelon's
pattern. Others predicted the approach
of a Medicean age an age propitious to
learning and art, and not unpropitious
to pleasure. Nobody had the least sus-
picion that a tyrant of extraordinary mili-
tary and political talents, of industry more
extraordinary still, without fear, without
faith, and without mercy, had ascended
the throne.

The disappointment of Falstaff at his
old boon companion's coronation was not
more bitter than that which awaited some
of the inmates of Rheinsberg. They had
long looked forward to the accession of
their patron, as to the day from which their
own prosperity and greatness was to date.
They had at last reached the promised
land, the land which they had figured to
themselves as flowing with milk and honey,
and they found it a desert. "No more of
these fooleries," was the short, sharp ad-
monition given by Frederick to one of
them. It soon become plain that, in the
most important points, the new sovereign
bore a strong family likeness to his prede-
cessor. There was a wide difference be-
tween the father and the son as respected
extent and vigor of intellect, speculative
opinions, amusements, studies, outward
demeanor. But the groundwork of the
character was the same in both. To both
were common the love of order, the love
of business, the military taste, the par-
simony, the imperious spirit, the temper
irritable even to ferocity, the pleasure in
the pain and humiliation of others. But
these propensities had in Frederick William
partaken of the general unsoundness of
his mind, and wore a very different aspect
when found in company with the strong
and cultivated understanding of his suc-

cessor. Thus, for example, Frederick was
as anxious as any prince could be about the
efficacy of his army. But this anxiety
never degenerated into a monomania,
like that which led his father to pay fancy
prices for giants. Frederick was as thrifty
about money as any prince or any private
man ought to be. But he did not con-
ceive, like his father, that it was worth
while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the
sake of saving four or five rix dollars in the
year. Frederick was, we fear, as malevo-
lent as his father; but Frederick's wit
enabled him often to show his malevolence
in ways more decent than those to which
his father resorted, and to inflict misery
and degradation by a taunt instead of
blow. Frederick it is true by no means
relinquished his hereditary privilege of
kicking and cudgelling. His practice,
however, as to that matter differed in
some important respects from his father's.
To Frederick William, the mere circum-
stance that any persons whatever, men,
women, or children, Prussians or foreigners,
were within reach of his toes and of his
cane, appeared to be a sufficient reason
for proceeding to belabor them. Fred-
erick required provocation as well as
vicinity; nor was he ever known to in-
flict this paternal species of correction
on any but his born subjects; though
on one occasion M. Thiebault had reason
during a few seconds to anticipate the
high honor of being an exception to this
general rule.

The character of Frederick was still
very imperfectly understood either by
his subjects or by his neighbors, when
events occurred which exhibited it in a
strong light. A few months after his
accession died Charles VI., Emperor of
Germany, the last descendant hi the male
line of the house of Austria.

Charles left no son, and had long before
his death relinquished all hopes of male
issue. During the latter part of his life
his principal object had been to secure to
his descendants in the female line the
many crowns of the house of Hapsburg.
With this view, he had promulgated a new
law of succession widely celebrated

282

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

throughout Europe under the name of the
"Pragmatic Sanction." By virtue of this
decree, his daughter, the Archduchess
Maria Theresa, wife of Francis of Lor-
raine, succeeded to the dominions of her
ancestors.

No sovereign has ever taken possession
of a throne by a clearer title. All the
politics of the Austrian cabinet had during
twenty years been directed to one single
end the settlement of the succession.
From every person whose rights could be
considered as injuriously affected, re-
nunciations in the most solemn form had
been obtained. The new law had been
ratified by the Estates of all the kingdoms
and principalities which made up the great
Austrian monarchy. England, France,
Spam, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden,
Denmark, the Germanic body, had bound
themselves by treaty to maintain the
"Pragmatic Sanction." That instrument
was placed under the protection of the
public faith of the whole civilized world.

Even if no positive stipulations on this
subject had existed, the arrangement was
one which no good man would have been
willing to disturb. It was a peaceable
arrangement. It was an arrangement
acceptable to the great population whose
happiness was chiefly concerned. It was
an arrangement which made no change
in the distribution of power among the
states of Christendom. It was an ar-
rangement which could be set aside only
by means of a general war; and, if it were
set aside, the effect would be that the
equilibrium of Europe would be deranged,
that the loyal and patriotic feelings of
millions would be cruelly outraged, and
that great provinces which had been united
for centuries would be torn from each
other by main force.

The sovereigns of Europe were there-
fore bound by every obligation which
those who are intrusted with power over
their fellow-creatures ought to hold most
sacred, to respect and defend the right of
the Archduchess. Her situation and her
personal qualities were such as might be
expected to move the mind of any generous
man to pity, admiration, and chivalrous

tenderness. She was in her twenty-fourth
year. Her form was majestic, her features
beautiful, her countenance sweet and
animated, her voice musical, her deport-
ment gracious and dignified. In all do-
mestic relations she was without reproach.
She was married to a husband whom she
loved, and was on the point of giving
birth to a child when death deprived her
of her father. The loss of a parent and
the new cares of the empire were too much
for her in the delicate state of her health.
Her spirits were depressed and her cheek
lost its bloom.

Yet it seemed that she had little cause
for anxiety. It seemed that justice,
humanity, and the faith of treaties would
have their due weight, and that the settle-
ment so solemnly guaranteed would be
quietly carried into effect. England, Rus-
sia, Poland, and Holland declared in
form their intention to adhere to their
engagements. The French ministers made
a verbal declaration to the same effect.
But from no quarter did the young Queen
of Hungary receive stronger assurances
of friendship and support than from the
King of Prussia.

Yet the King of Prussia, the "Anti-
Machiavel," had already fully determined
to commit the great crime of violating
his plighted faith, of robbing the ally
whom he was bound to defend, and of
plunging all Europe into a long, bloody,
and desolating war, and all this for no
end whatever except that he might extend
his dominions and see his name in the
gazettes. He determined to assemble a
great army with speed and secrecy to
invade Silesia before Maria Theresa should
be apprised of his design, and to add that
rich province to his kingdom.

We will not condescend to refute at
length the pleas . . . [put forth by]
Doctor Preuss. They amount to this
that the house of Brandenburg had some
ancient pretensions to Silesia, and had
in the previous century been compelled,
by hard usage on the part of the court of
Vienna, to waive those pretensions. It is
certain that whoever might originally
have been in the right Prussia, had sul>

HISTORY

mitted. Prince after prince of the house
of Brandenburg had acquiesced in the
existing arrangement. Nay, the court of
Berlin had recently been allied with that
of Vienna, and had guaranteed the integ-
rity of the Austrian states. Is it not
perfectly clear that if antiquated claims
are to be set up against recent treaties
and long possession, the world can never
be at peace for a day? The laws of all
nations have wisely established a time of
limitation, after which titles, however
illegitimate in then- origin, cannot be ques-
tioned. It is felt by everybody that to
eject a person from his estate on the ground
of some injustice committed in the time
of the Tudors, would produce all the evils
which result from arbitrary confiscation,
and would make all property insecure.
It concerns the commonwealth so runs
the legal maxim that there be an end of
litigation. And surely this maxim is at
least equally applicable to the great
commonwealth of states, for in that com-
monwealth litigation means the devasta-
tion of provinces, the suspension of trade
and industry, sieges like those of Badajoz
and St. Sebastian, pitched fields like those
of Eylau and Borodino. We hold that the
transfer of Norway from Denmark to
Sweden was an unjustifiable proceeding;
but would the King of Denmark be there-
fore justified in landing without any new
provocation in Norway, and commencing
military operations there? The King of
Holland thinks, no doubt, that he was
unjustly deprived of the Belgian prov-
inces. Grant that it were so. Would
he, therefore, be justified in marching with
an army on Brussels? The case against
Frederick was still stronger, inasmuch as
the injustice of which he complained had
been committed more than a century be-
fore. Nor must it be forgotten that he
owed the highest personal obligations to
vhe house of Austria. It may be doubted
whether his life had not been preserved by
the intercession of the prince whose daugh-
ter he was about to plunder.

To do the king justice, he pretended to
no more virtue than he had. In manifes-
toes he might, for form's sake, insert some

idle stories about his antiquated claim on
Silesia; but in his conversations and
Memoirs he took a very different tone.
To quote his own words "Ambition,
interest, the desire of making people talk
about me, carried the day, and I decided
for war."

Having resolved on his course, he acted
with ability and vigor. It was impossible
wholly to conceal his preparations, for
throughout the Prussian territories regi-
ments, guns, and baggage were in motion.
The Austrian envoy at Berlin apprised
his court of these facts, and expressed a
suspicion of Frederick's designs; but the
ministers of Maria Theresa refused to give
credit to so black an imputation on a young
prince who was known chiefly by his high
professions of integrity and philanthropy.
"We will not," they wrote, "we cannot
believe it."

In the mean time the Prussian forces had
been assembled. Without any declaration
of war, without any demand for reparation,
in the very act of pouring forth compli-
ments and assurances of good-will, Fred-
erick commenced hostilities. Many thou-
sands of his troops were actually in Silesia
before the Queen of Hungary knew that
he had set up any claim to any part of her
territories. At length he sent her a me?
sage which could be regarded only as an
insult. If she would but let him have
Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her
against any power which should try to
deprive her of her other dominions: as if
he was not already bound to stand by
her, or as if his new promise could be of
more value than the old one!

It was the depth of winter. The cold
was severe, and the roads deep in mire.
But the Prussians passed on. Resistance
was impossible. The Austrian army was
then neither numerous nor efficient. The
small portion of that army which lay in
Silesia was unprepared for hostilities.
Glogau was blockaded; Breslau opened
its gates; Ohlau was evacuated. A few
scattered garrisons still held out; but the
whole open country was subjugated; no
enemy ventured to encounter the king in
the field: and before the end of January,

2 8 4

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

1741, he returned to receive the congratu-
lations of his subjects at Berlin.

Had the Silesian question been merely
a question between Frederick and Maria
Theresa, it would be impossible to acquit
the Prussian king of gross perfidy. But
when we consider the effects which his
policy produced, and could not fail to
produce, on the whole community of civ-
ilized nations, we are compelled to pro-
nounce a condemnation still more severe.
Till he began the war it seemed possible,
even probable, that the peace of the world
would be preserved. The plunder of the
great Austrian heritage was indeed a strong
temptation; and in more than one cabinet
ambitious schemes were already medi-
tated. But the treaties by which the
"Pragmatic Sanction" had been guaran-
teed were express and recent. To throw
all Europe into confusion for a purpose
clearly unjust was no light matter. Eng-
land was true to her engagements. The
voice of Fleury had always been for peace.
He had a conscience. He was now in
extreme old age, and was unwilling, after
a life which, when his situation was con-
sidered, must be pronounced singularly
pure, to carry the fresh stain of a great
crime before the tribunal of his God.
Even the vain and unprincipled Belle-
Isle, whose whole Me was one wild day-
dream of conquest and spoliation, felt that
France, bound as she was by solemn stipu-
lations, could not without disgrace make
a direct attack on the Austrian dominions.
Charles, Elector of Bavaria, pretended
that he had a right to a large part of the
inheritance which the "Pragmatic Sanc-
tion" gave to the Queen of Hungary,
but he was not sufficiently powerful to
move without support. It might, there-
fore, not unreasonably be expected that
after a short period of restlessness, all the
potentates of Christendom would ac-
quiesce in the arrangements made by the
late emperor. But the selfish rapacity of
the King of Prussia gave the signal to his
neighbors. His example quieted their
sense of shame. His success led them
to underrate the difficulty of dismembering
the Austrian monarchy. The whole world

sprang to arms. On the head of Frederick!
is all the blood which was shed in a war (
which raged during many years and in
every quarter of the globe the blood of
the column of Fontenoy, the blood of the
brave mountaineers who were slaughtered
at Culloden. The evils produced by this
wickedness were felt in lands where the
name of Prussia was unknown; and, in
order that he might rob a neighbor whom
he had promised to defend, black men
fought on the coast of Coromandel, and
red men scalped each other by the great
lakes of North America.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
TORRINGTON AND TOURVILLE
FROM CHAPTERS XV AND XVI

SCARCELY had William set out from Lon-
don when a great French fleet commanded
by the Count of Tourville left the port
of Brest and entered the British Channel.
Tourville was the ablest maritime com-
mander that his country then possessed.
He had studied every part of his profes-
sion. It was said of him that he was
competent to fill any place on shipboard
from that of carpenter up to that of ad-
miral. It was said of him, also, that to
the dauntless courage of a seaman he
united the suavity and urbanity of an
accomplished gentleman. He now stood
over to the English shore, and approached
it so near that his ships could be plainly
descried from the ramparts of Plymouth.
From Plymouth he proceeded slowly along
the coast of Devonshire a*nd Dorsetshire.
There was great reason to apprehend that
his movements had been concerted with
the English malcontents.

The Queen and her Council hastened to
take measures for the defence of the coun-
try against both foreign and domestic
enemies. Torrington took the command
of the English fleet which lay in the
Downs, and sailed to Saint Helen's. He
was there joined by a Dutch squadron under
the command of Evertsen. It seemed
that the cliffs of the Isle of Wight would
witness one of the greatest naval conflicts

HISTORY

recorded in history. A hundred and fifty
ships of the line could be counted at once
from the watchtower of Saint Catha-
rine's. On the east of the huge precipice
of Black Gang Chine, and in full view of
the richly wooded rocks of Saint Lawr-
ence and Ventnor, were mustered the
maritime forces of England and Holland.
On the west, stretching to that white cape
where the waves roar among the Needles,
lay the armament of France.

It was on the twenty-sixth of June, [1690]
less than a fortnight after William had
sailed for Ireland, that the hostile fleets took
up these positions. A few hours earlier,
there had been an important and anxious
sitting of the Privy Council at Whitehall.
The malcontents who were leagued
with France were alert and full of hope.
Mary had remarked, while taking her
airing, that Hyde Park was swarming
with them. The whole board was of
opinion that it was necessary to arrest
some persons of whose guilt the govern-
ment had proofs. When Clarendon was
named, something was said hi his behalf
by his friend and relation, Sir Henry
Capel. The other councillors stared, but
remained silent. It was no pleasant task
to accuse the Queen's kinsman in the
Queen's presence. Mary had scarcely
ever opened her lips at Council: but now,
being possessed of clear proofs of her un-
cle's treason in his own handwriting, and
knowing that respect for her prevented
her advisers from proposing what the
public safety required, she broke silence.
"Sir Henry," she said, "I know, and
everybody here knows as well as I, that
there is too much against my Lord Claren-
don to leave him out." The warrant was
drawn up; and Capel signed it with the
rest. "I am more sorry for Lord Claren-
don," Mary wrote to her husband, "than,
may be, will be believed." That evening
Clarendon and several other noted Ja-
cobites were lodged in the Tower.

When the Privy Council had risen, the
Queen and the interior Council of Nine
had to consider a question of the gravest
importance. What orders were to be sent
to Torrington? The safety of the State

might depend on his judgment and pres-
ence of mind; and some of Mary's advisers
apprehended that he would not be found
equal to the occasion. Their anxiety in-
creased when news came that he had aban-
doned the coast of the Isle of Wight to the
French, and was retreating before them
towards the Straits of Dover. The sa-
gacious Caermarthen and the enterprising
Monmouth agreed in blaming these cau
tious tactics. It was true that Torring*
ton had not so many vessels as Tourville:
but Caermarthen thought that, at such
a time, it was advisable to fight, although
against odds; and Monmouth was,
through life, for fighting at all times and
against all odds. Russell, who was indis-
putably one of the best seamen of the age,
held that the disparity of numbers was
not such as ought to cause any uneasiness
to an officer who commanded English and
Dutch sailors. He therefore proposed to
send to the Admiral a reprimand couched
in terms so severe that the Queen did not
like to sign it. The language was much
softened; but, in the main, Russell's
advice was followed. Torrington was
positively ordered to retreat no further,
and to give battle immediately. Devon-
shire, however, was still unsatisfied. "It
is my duty, Madam," he said, "to tell
Your Majesty exactly what I think on a
matter of this importance; and I think
that my Lord Torrington is not a man to
be trusted with the fate of three king-
doms." Devonshire was right: but his
colleagues were unanimously of opinion
that to supersede a commander in sight
of the enemy, and on the eve of a general
action, would be a course full of danger;
and it is difficult to say that they were
wrong. "You must either," said Russell,
"leave him where he is, or send for him
as a prisoner." Several expedients were
suggested. Caermarthen proposed that
Russell should be sent to assist Torring-
ton. Monmouth passionately implored
permission to join the fleet in any capacity,
as a captain, or as a volunteer. "Only
let me be once on board; and I pledge my
life that there shall be a battle." After
much discussion and hesitation, it was

286

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

resolved that both Russell and Mon-
mouth should go down to the coast. They
set out, but too late. The despatch which
ordered Torrington to fight had preceded
them. It reached him when he was off
Beachy Head. He read it, and was in a
great strait. Not to give battle was to
be guilty of direct disobedience. To
give battle was, in his judgment, to incur
serious risk of defeat. He probably sus-
pected for he was of a captious and jeal-
ous temper that the instructions which
placed him in so painful a dilemma had
been framed by enemies and rivals with
a design unfriendly to his fortune and his
fame. He was exasperated by the thought
that he was ordered about and overruled
by Russell, who, though his inferior hi
professional rank, exercised, as one of the
Council of Nine, a supreme control over
all the departments of the public service.
There seems to be no ground for charging
Torrington with disaffection. Still less
can it be suspected that an officer, whose
whole life had been passed in confront-
ing danger, and who had always borne
himself bravely, wanted the personal
courage which hundreds of sailors on
board of every ship under his command
possessed. But there is a higher courage
of which Torrington was wholly destitute.
He shrank from all responsibility, from
the responsibility of fighting, and from the
responsibility of not fighting; and he suc-
ceeded in finding out a middle way which
united all the inconveniences which he
wished to avoid. He would conform to
the letter of his instructions: yet he would
not put every thing to hazard. Some of
his ships should skirmish with the enemy:
but the great body of his fleet should not
be risked. It was evident that the vessels
which engaged the French would be placed
in a most dangerous situation, and would
suffer much loss; and there is but too good
reason to believe that Torrington was base
enough to lay his plans in such a manner
that the danger and loss might fall al-
most exclusively to the share of the Dutch.
He bore them no love; and in England
they were so unpopular that the destruc-
tion of their whole squadron was likely to

cause fewer murmurs than the capture of
one of our own frigates.

It was on the twenty-ninth of June
that the Admiral received the order to
fight. The next day, at four in the morning,
he bore down on the French fleet, and
formed his vessels in order of battle. He
had not sixty sail of the line, and the
French had at least eighty; but his ships
were more strongly manned than those of
the enemy. He placed the Dutch in the
van and gave them the signal to engage.
This signal was promptly obeyed. Evert-
sen and his countrymen fought with a
courage to which both their English allies
and then* French enemies, in spite of
national prejudices, did full justice. In
none of Van Tromp's or De Ruyter's
battles had the honor of the Batavian
flag been more gallantly upheld. During
many hours the van maintained the un-
equal contest with /ery little assistance
from any other part of the fleet. At
length the Dutch Admiral drew off, leav-
ing one shattered and dismasted hull to
the enemy. His second hi command and
several officers of high rank had fallen.
To keep the sea against the French after
this disastrous and ignominious action
was impossible. The Dutch ships which
had come out of the fight were in lament-
able condition. Torrington ordered some
of them to be destroyed: the rest he took
in tow: he then fled along the coast of
Kent, and sought a refuge in the Thames.
As soon as he was in the river, he ordered
all the buoys to be pulled up, and thus
made the navigation so dangerous, that
the pursuers could not venture to follow
him.

It was, however, thought by many,
and especially by the French ministers,
that, if Tourville had been more enterpris-
ing, the allied fleet might have been de-
stroyed. He seems to have borne, in one
respect, too much resemblance to his van-
quished opponent. Though a brave man,
he was a timid commander. His life he
exposed with careless gaiety; but it was
said that he was nervously anxious and
pusillanimously cautious when his pro-
fessional reputation wa<; in danger. He

HISTORY

287

was so much annoyed by these censures
that he soon became, unfortunately for
his country, bold even to temerity.

There has scarcely ever been so sad a
day in London as that on which the news
of the Battle of Beachy Head arrived.
The shame was insupportable: the peril
was imminent. What if the victorious
enemy should do what De Ruyter had
done? What if the dockyards of Chat-
ham should again be destroyed? What
if the Tower itself should be bombarded?
What if the vast wood of masts and yard-
arms below London Bridge should be in a
blaze?

Tourville had, since the battle of Beachy
Head, ranged the Channel unopposed.
On the twenty-first of July [1690] his masts
were seen from the rocks of Portland. On
the twenty-second he anchored in the har-
bor of Torbay, under the same heights
which had, not many months before,
sheltered the armament of William. The
French fleet, which now had a consider-
able number of troops on board, consisted
of a hundred and eleven sail. The gal-
leys, which formed a large part of this
force, resembled rather those ships with
which Alcibiades and Lysander disputed
the sovereignty of the ^Egean than those
which contended at the Nile and at Tra-
falgar. The galley was very long and
very narrow, the deck not more than
two feet from the water edge. Each
galley was propelled by fifty or sixty
huge oars, and each oar was tugged by
five or six slaves. The full complement of
slaves to a vessel was three hundred and
thirty-six; the full complement of officers
and soldiers a hundred and fifty. Of the
unhappy rowers some were criminals who
had been justly condemned to a life of
hardship and danger: a few had been
guilty only of adhering obstinately to the
Huguenot worship: the great majority
were purchased bondsmen, generally
Turks and Moors. They were of course
always forming plans for massacring their
tyrants and escaping from servitude, and
could be kept in order only by constant

stripes and by the frequent infliction of
death in horrible forms. An English-
man, who happened to fall hi with about
twelve hundred of these most miserable
and most desperate of human beings on
their road from Marseilles to join Tour-
ville's squadron, heard them vowing
that, if they came near a man of war
bearing the cross of Saint George, they
would never again see a French dockyard.

In the Mediterranean galleys were in
ordinary use: but none had ever before
been seen on the stormy ocean which
roars round our island. The flatterers
of Lewis said that the appearance of such
a squadron on the Atlantic was one of
those wonders which were reserved for his
reign; and a medal was struck at Paris to
commemorate this bold experiment in
maritime war. English sailors, with more
reason, predicted that the first gale would
send the whole of this fairweather arma-
ment to the bottom of the Channel. In-
deed the galley, like the ancient trireme,
generally kept close to the shore, and ven-
tured out of sight of land only when the
water was unruffled and the sky serene.
But the qualities which made this sort of
ship unfit to brave tempests arid billows
made it peculiarly fit for the purpose of
landing soldiers. Tourville determined
to try what effect would be produced by a
disembarkation. The English Jacobites
who had taken refuge in France were all
confident that the whole population of the
island was ready to rally round an invad-
ing army: and he probably gave them
credit for understanding the temper of their
countrymen.

Never was there a greater error. In-
deed the French admiral is said by tradi-
tion to have received, while he was still
out at sea, a lesson which might have
taught him not to rely on the assurances of
exiles. He picked up a fishing boat, and
interrogated the owner, a plain Sussex
man, about the sentiments of the nation.
"Are you," he said, "for King James?"
"I do not know much about such mat-
ters," answered the fisherman. "I have
nothing to say against King James.
He is a very worthy gentleman, I befieve.

*88

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

God bless him!" "A good fellow!"
said Tourville: "then I am sure you will
have no objection to take service with us."
"What!" cried the prisoner; "go with the
French to fight against the English!
Your honor must excuse me: I could not
do it to save my life." This poor fisher-
man, whether he was a real or an imagi-
nary person, spoke the sense of the nation.
The beacon on the ridge overlooking
Teignmouth was kindled: the High Tor
and Causland made answer; and soon all
the bill tops of the West were on fire.
Messengers were riding hard all night from
Deputy Lieutenant to Deputy Lieuten-
ant. Early the next morning, without
chief, without summons, five hundred
gentlemen and yeomen, armed and
mounted, had assembled on the summit
of Haldon Hill. In twenty-four hours all
Devonshire was up. Every road in the
county from sea to sea was covered by
multitudes of fighting men, all with their
faces set towards Torbay. The lords of a
hundred manors, proud of their long pedi-
grees and old coats of arms, took the field
at the head of their tenantry, Drakes,
Prideauxes and Rolles, Fowell of Fowels-
combe andFulfordof Fulford, Sir Bourchier
Wray of Tawstock Park and Sir William
Courtenay of Powderham Castle. Letters
written by several of the Deputy Lieu-
tenants who were most active during this
anxious week are still preserved. All these
letters agree in extolling the courage and
enthusiasm of the people. But all agree
also in expressing the most painful so-
licitude as to the result of an encounter
between a raw militia and veterans who
had served under Turenne and Luxem-
burg; and all call for the help of regular
troops, in 'iinguage very unlike that which,
when the pressure of danger was not felt,
country gentlemen were then in the habit
of using about standing armies.

Tourville, finding that the whole pop-
ulation was united as one man against
him, contented himself with sending his
galleys to ravage Teignmouth, now a gay
watering place consisting of twelve hun-
dred houses, then an obscure village of
about forty cottages. The inhabitants

had fled. Their dwellings were burned:
the venerable parish church was sacked,
the pulpit and the communion table de-
molished, the Bibles and Prayer Books
torn and scattered about the roads: the
cattle and pigs were slaughtered; and a
few small vessels which were employed in
fishing or in the coasting trade, were de-
stroyed. By this time sixteen or seven-
teen thousand Devonshire men had en-
camped close to the shore; and all the
neighboring counties had risen. The
tin mines of Cornwall had sent forth a
great multitude of rude and hardy men mor-
tally hostile to Popery. Ten thousand of
them had just signed an address to the
Queen, in which they had promised to
stand by her against every enemy; and
they now kept their word. In truth, the
whole nation was stirred. Two and
twenty troops of cavalry, furnished by
Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Buck-
inghamshire, were reviewed by Mary
at Hounslow, and were complimented by
Marlborough on their martial appearance.
The militia of Kent and Surrey encamped
on Blackheath. Van Citters informed the
States General that all England was up in
arms, on foot or on horseback, that the
disastrous event of the battle of Beachy
Head had not cowed, but exasperated the
people, and that every company of soldiers
which he passed on the road was shouting
with one voice, " God bless King William
and Queen Mary."

Charles Granville, Lord Lansdowne,
eldest son of the Earl of Bath, came with
some troops from the garrison of Plymouth
to take the command of the tumultuary
army which had assembled round the
basin of Torbay. Lansdowne was no
novice. He had served several hard
campaigns against the common enemy
of Christendom, and had been created a
Count of the Roman Empire in reward
of the valor which he had displayed on
that memorable day, sung by Filicaja and
by Waller, when the infidels retired from
the walls of Vienna. He made prepara-
tions for action; but the French did not
choose to attack him, and were indeed
impatient to depart. They found some

HISTORY

289

difficulty in getting away. One day the
wind was adverse to the sailing vessels.
Another day the water was too rough for
the galleys. At length the fleet stood
out to sea. As the line of ships turned
the lofty cape which overlooks Torquay,
an incident happened which, though slight
in itself, greatly interested the thousands
who lined the coast. Two wretched slaves
disengaged themselves from an oar, and
sprang overboard. One of them perished.
The other, after struggling more than an
hour in the water, came safe to English
ground, and was cordially welcomed by a
population to which the discipline of the
galleys was a thing strange and shocking.
He proved to be a Turk, and was humanely
sent back to his own country.

A pompous description of the expedi-
tion appeared in the Paris Gazette. But
in truth Tourville's exploits had been
inglorious, and yet less inglorious than
impolitic. The injury which he had done
bore no proportion to the resentment
which he had roused. Hitherto the
Jacobites had tried to persuade the nation
that the French would come as friends and
deliverers, would observe strict disci-

pline, would respect the temples and the
ceremonies of the established religion, and
would depart as soon as the Dutch oppres-
sors had been expelled and the ancient
constitution of the realm restored. The
short visit of Tourville to our coast had
shown how little reason there was to expect
such moderation from the soldiers of
Lewis. They had been in our island only
a few hours, and had occupied only a few
acres. But within a few hours and a few
acres had been exhibited in miniature the
devastation of the Palatinate. What had
happened was communicated to the whole
kingdom far more rapidly than by gazettes
or news letters. A brief for the relief of
the people of Teignmouth was read in
all the ten thousand parish churches of the
land. No congregation could hear with-
out emotion that the Popish marauders
had made desolate the habitations of quiet
and humble peasants, had outraged the
altars of God, had torn to pieces the Gos-
pels and the Communion service. A
street, built out of the contributions of the
charitable, on the site of the dwellings
which the invaders had destroyed, stiU
retains the name of French Street.

FRANCIS PARKMAN (1823-1893)

Francis Parkman is the eloquent historian of the epic struggle between France and England for a
continent. This long contest was a duel between the two most powerful nations in the world, the out-
come of which was to determine which civilization was to become the dominant colonizing force in the
world. The following pages, chosen from the "Conspiracy of Pontiac," describe the character and mode
of warfare of the Indian allies of the French.

THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC

CHAPTER VII
ANGER OF THE INDIANS THE CONSPIRACY

THE country was scarcely transferred
to the English when smothered murmurs of
discontent began to be audible among the
Indian tribes. From the head of the
Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the
Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every
wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-
rooted hatred of the English increased
with rapid growth. Nor is this to be
wondered at. We have seen with what
sagacious policy the French had labored

to ingratiate themselves with the In-
dians; and the slaughter of the Monon-
gahela, with the horrible devastation of
the western frontier, the outrages per-
petrated at Oswego, and the massacre
at Fort William Henry, bore witness to
the success of their efforts. Even the
Dela wares and Shawanoes, the faithful
allies of William Penn, had at length
been seduced by their blandishments;
and the Iroquois, the ancient enemies of
Canada, had half forgotten their former
hostility, and well-nigh taken part against
the British colonists. The remote na-
tions of the west had also joined in the
war, descending in their canoes for hun-

290

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

dreds of miles, to fight against the enemies
of France. All these tribes entertained
towards the English that rancorous en-
mity which an Indian always feels against
those to whom he has been opposed in
war.

Under these circumstances, it behooved
the English to use the utmost care in their
conduct towards the tribes. But even
when the conflict with France was im-
pending, and the alliance with the In-
dians of the last importance, they had
treated them with indifference and neglect.
They were not likely to adopt a different
course now that their friendship seemed a
matter of no consequence. In truth, the in-
tentions of the English were soon apparent.
In the zeal for retrenchment, which pre-
vailed after the close of hostilites, the pres-
ents which it had always been customary to
give the Indians, at stated intervals, were
either withheld altogether, or doled out with
a niggardly and reluctant hand; while, to
make the matter worse, the agents and
officers of government often appropriated
the presents to themselves, and afterwards
sold them at an exorbitant price to the
Indians. When the French had posses-
sion of the remote forts, they were ac-
customed, with a wise liberality, to supply
the surrounding Indians with guns, am-
munition, and clothing, until the latter
had forgotten the weapons and garments
of their forefathers, and depended on the
white men for support. The sudden
withholding of these supplies was, there-
fore, a grievous calamity. Want, suffer-
ing, and death were the consequences,
and this cause alone would have been
enough to produce general discontent.
But, unhappily, other grievances were
superadded.

The English fur-trade had never been
well regulated, and it was now in a worse
condition than ever. Many of the traders,
and those in their employ, were ruffians
of the coarsest stamp, who vied with each
other in rapacity, violence, and profligacy.
They cheated, cursed, and plundered the
Indians, and outraged their families;
offering, when compared with the French
traders, who were under better regulation,

a most unfavorable example of the char-
acter of their nation.

The officers and soldiers of the garrisons
did their full part in exciting the general
resentment. Formerly, when the war-
riors came to the forts, they had been wel-
comed by the French with attention and
respect. The inconvenience which their
presence occasioned had been disregarded,
and their peculiarities overlooked. But
now they were received with cold looks and
harsh words from the officers, and with
oaths, menaces, and sometimes blows,
from the reckless and brutal soldiers.
When, after their troublesome and in-
trusive fashion, they were lounging every-
where about the fort, or lazily reclining
hi the shadow of the walls, they were met
with muttered ejaculations of impatience
or abrupt orders to depart, enforced,
perhaps, by a touch from the butt of a
sentinel's musket. These marks of con-
tempt were unspeakably galh'ng to their
haughty spirit.

But what most contributed to the grow-
ing discontent of the tribes was the in-
trusion of settlers upon their lands, at
all tunes a fruitful source of Indian hos-
tility. Its effects, it is true, could only
be felt by those whose country bordered
upon the English settlements; but among
these were the most powerful and influen-
tial of the tribes. The Delawares and
Shawanoes, in particular, had by this
time been roused to the highest pitch of
exasperation. Their best lands had been
invaded, and all remonstrance had been
fruitless. They viewed with wrath and
fear the steady progress of the white man,
whose settlements had passed the Sus-
quehanna, and were fast extending to the
Alleghanies, eating away the forest like
a spreading canker. The anger of the
Delawares was abundantly shared by their
ancient conquerors, the Six Nations.
The threatened occupation of Wyoming
by settlers from Connecticut gave great
umbrage to the confederacy. The Sene-
cas were more especially incensed at Eng-
lish intrusion, since, from their position,
they were farthest removed from the sooth-
ing influence of Sir William Johnson,

and most exposed to the seductions of the
French, while the Mohawks, another
member of the confederacy, were justly
alarmed at seeing the better part of their
lands patented out without their consent.
Some Christian Indians of the Oneida
tribe, hi the simplicity of their hearts, sent
an earnest petition to Sir William John-
son, that the English forts within the
limits of the Six Nations might be re-
moved, or, as the petition expresses it,
kicked out of the way.

The discontent of the Indians gave
great satisfaction to the French, who saw
in it an assurance of safe and bloody ven-
geance on theu: conquerors. Canada, it is
true, was gone beyond hope of recovery;
but they still might hope to revenge its loss.
Interest, moreover, as well as passion,
prompted them to inflame the resentment
of the Indians ; for most of the inhabitants
of the French settlements upon the lakes
and the Mississippi were engaged in the
fur-trade, and, fearing the English as
formidable rivals, they would gladly have
seen them driven out of the country.
Traders, habitans, coureurs des bois, and all
other classes of this singular population,
accordingly dispersed themselves among
the villages of the Indians, or held councils
with them in the secret places of the
woods, urging them to take up arms
against the English. They exhibited the
conduct of the latter in its worst light, and
spared neither misrepresentation nor false-
hood. They told their excited hearers
that the English had formed a deliberate
scheme to root out the whole Indian race,
and, with that design, had already begun
to hem them in with settlements on the
one hand, and a chain of forts on the other.
Among other atrocious plans for then-
destruction, they had instigated the Chero-
kees to attack and destroy the tribes of the
Ohio valley. These groundless calum-
nies found ready belief. The French
declared, in addition, that the King of
France had of late years fallen asleep;
that, during his slumbers, the English
had seized upon Canada; but that he was
now awake again, and that his armies were
advancing up the St. Lawrence and the

29*

Mississippi, to drive out the intruders
from the country of their red children.
To these fabrications was added the more
substantial encouragement of arms, am-
munition, clothing, and provisions, which
the French trading companies, if not the
officers of the crown, distributed with a
liberal hand.

The fierce passions of the Indians, ex>
cited by their wrongs, real or imagined,
and exasperated by the representations
of the French, were yet farther wrought
upon by influences of another kind. A
prophet rose among the Delawares. This
man may serve as a counterpart to the
famous Shawanoe prophet, who figured
so conspicuously in the Indian outbreak
under Tecumseh, immediately before the
war with England in 1812. Many other
parallel instances might be shown, as the
great susceptibility of the Indians to
religious and superstitious impressions ren-
ders the advent of a prophet among them
no very rare occurrence. In the present
instance, the inspired Delaware seems to
have been rather an enthusiast than an
impostor; or perhaps he combined both
characters. The objects of his mission
were not wholly political. By means of
certain external observances, most of them
sufficiently frivolous and absurd, his dis-
ciples were to strengthen and purify their
natures, and make themselves acceptable
to the Great Spirit, whose messenger he
proclaimed himself to be. He also en-
joined them to lay aside the weapons and
clothing which they received from the
white men, and return to the primitive
life of theu: ancestors. By so doing, and
by strictly observing his other precepts,
the tribes would soon be restored to their
ancient greatness and power, and be en-
abled to drive out the white men who in-
fested their territory. The prophet had
many followers. Indians came from far
and near, and gathered together in large
encampments to listen to his exhortations.
His fame spread even to the nations of the
northern lakes; but though his disciples
followed most of his injunctions, flinging
away flint and steel, and making copious
use of emetics, with other observances

2Q2

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

equally troublesome, yet the requisition
to abandon the use of firearms was too
inconvenient to be complied with.

With so many causes to irritate their
restless and warlike spirit, it could not be
supposed that the Indians would long
remain quiet. Accordingly, in the summer
of the year 1761, Captain Campbell, then
commanding at Detroit, received infor-
mation that a deputation of Senecas had
come to the neighboring village of the
Wyandots for the purpose of instigating
the latter to destroy him and his garrison.
On further inquiry, the plot proved to be
general, and Niagara, Fort Pitt, and
other posts, were to share the fate of
Detroit. Campbell instantly despatched
messengers to Sir Jeffery Amherst, and the
commanding officers of the different forts;
and, by this timely discovery, the con-
spiracy was nipped in the bud. During
the following summer, 1762, another simi-
lar design was detected and suppressed.
They proved but the precursors of a temp-
est. Within two years after the discovery
of the first plot,, a scheme was matured
greater in extent, deeper and more com-
prehensive in design such a one as was
never, before or since, conceived or exe-
cuted by a North American Indian. It
was determined to attack all the English
forts upon the same day; then, having
destroyed their garrisons, to turn upon
the defenceless frontier, and ravage and
lay waste the settlements, until, as many
of the Indians fondly believed, the English
should all be driven into the sea, and the
country restored to its primitive owners.

It is difficult to determine which tribe
was first to raise the cry of war. There
were many who might have done so, for
all the savages hi the backwoods were ripe
for an outbreak, and the movement seemed
almost simultaneous. The Delawares and
Senecas were the most incensed, and
Kiashuta, chief of the latter, was perhaps
foremost to apply the torch; but, if this
were the case, he touched fire to materials
already on the point of igniting. It be-
longed to a greater chief than he to give
method and order to what would else have
been a wild burst of fury, and to convert

desultory attacks into a formidable and
protracted war. But for Pontiac, the
whole might have ended in a few trouble-
some inroads upon the frontier, and a little
whooping and yelling under the wails of
Fort Pitt.

Pontiac, as already mentioned, was
principal chief of the Ottawas. The Otta-
was, Ojibwas, and Pottawattamies, had
long been united in a loose kind of con-
federacy, of which he was the virtual head.
Over those around him his authority was
almost despotic, and his power extended
far beyond the limits of the three united
tribes. His influence was great among
all the nations of the Illinois country;
while, from the sources of the Ohio to those
of the Mississippi, and, indeed, to the farth-
est boundaries of the widespread Algonquin
race, his name was known and respected.

The fact that Pontiac was born the
son of a chief would in no degree account
for the extent of his power; for, among
Indians, many a chief's son sinks back into
insignificance, while the offspring of a
common warrior may succeed to his place.
Among all the wild tribes of the continent,
personal merit is indispensable to gaining
or preserving dignity. Courage, resolu-
tion, wisdom, address, and eloquence are
sure passports to distinction. With all
these Pontiac was pre-eminently endowed,
and it was chiefly to them, urged to their
highest activity by a vehement ambition,
that he owed his greatness. His intellect
was strong and capacious. He possessed
commanding energy and force of mind, and
in subtlety and craft could match the best
of his wily race. But, though capable of
acts of lofty magnanimity, he was a
thorough savage, with a wider range of
intellect than those around him, but shar-
ing all their passions and prejudices,
their fierceness and treachery. Yet his
faults were the faults of his race; and they
cannot eclipse his nobler qualities, the
great powers and heroic virtues of his
mind. His memory is still cherished
among the remnants of many Algonquin
tribes, and the celebrated Tecumseh
adopted him for his model, proving him-
self no unworthy imitator.

HISTORY

293

Pontiac was now about fifty years old.
Until Major Rogers came into the coun-
try, he had been, from motives probably
both of interest and inclination, a firm
friend of the French. Not long before
the French war broke out, he had saved
the garrison of Detroit from the imminent
peril of an attack from some of the dis-
contented tribes of the north. During
the war, he had fought on the side of
France. It is said that he commanded
the Ottawas at the memorable defeat of
Braddock; but, at all events, he was
treated with much honor by the French
officers, and received especial marks of
esteem from the Marquis of Montcalm.

We have seen how, when the tide of
affairs changed, the subtle and ambitious
chief trimmed his bark to the current,
and gave the hand of friendship to the
English. That he was disappointed in
their treatment of him, and in all the hopes
that he had formed from their alliance, is
sufficiently evident from one of his
speeches. A new light soon began to
dawn upon his untaught but powerful
mind, and he saw the altered posture of
affairs under its true aspect.

It was a momentous and gloomy crisis
for the Indian race, for never before had
they been exposed to such pressing and
imminent danger. With the downfall of
Canada, the Indian tribes had sunk at
once from their position of power and im-
portance. Hitherto the two rival Euro-
pean nations had kept each other in check
upon the American continent, and the
Indian tribes had, in some measure, held
the balance of power between them.
To conciliate their good will and gain
their alliance, to avoid offending them
by injustice and encroachment, was the
policy both of the French and English.
But now the face of affairs was changed.
The English had gained an undisputed
ascendency, and the Indians, no longer
important as allies, were treated as mere
barbarians, who might be trampled upon
with impunity. Abandoned to their own
feeble resources and divided strength, the
tribes must fast recede, and dwindle away
before the steady progress of the colo-

nial power. Already their best hunting-
grounds were invaded, and from the
eastern ridges of the Alleghanies they
might see, from far and near, the smoke
of the settlers' clearings, rising in tall
columns from the dark-green bosom of the
forest. The doom of the race was sealed,
and no human power could avert it; but
they, in their ignorance, believed other-
wise, and vainly thought that, by a des
perate effort, they might yet uproot and
overthrow the growing strength of thei
destroyers.

It would be idle to suppose that tht
great mass of the Indians understood
in its full extent, the danger which threat-
ened their race. With them, the war was
a mere outbreak of fury, and they turned
against their enemies with as little reason
or forecast as a panther when he leaps
at the throat of the hunter. Goaded by
wrongs and indignities, they struck for
revenge, and relief from the evil of the
moment. But the mind of Pontiac could
embrace a wider and deeper view. The
peril of the times was unfolded in its full
extent before him, and he resolved to
unite the tribes in one grand effort to
avert it. He did not, like many of his
people, entertain the absurd idea that the
Indians, by their unaided strength, could
drive the English into the sea. He adopt-
ed the only plan that was consistent with
reason, that of restoring the French ascen-
dency hi the west, and once more opposing
a check to British encroachment. With
views like these, he lent a greedy ear to
the plausible falsehoods of the Canadians,
who assured him that the armies of King
Louis were already advancing to recover
Canada, and that the French and their red
brethren, fighting side by side, would drive
the English dogs back within their own
narrow limits.

Revolving these thoughts, and remem-
bering moreover that his own ambitious
views might be advanced by the hostilities
he meditated, Pontiac no longer hesi-
tated. Revenge, ambition, and patriot-
ism, wrought upon him alike, and he
resolved on war. At the close of the year
1762, he sent out ambassadors to the dif-

294

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ferent nations. They visited the country of
the Ohio and its tributaries, passed north-
ward to. the region of the upper lakes, and
the wild borders of the River Ottawa; and
far southward towards the mouth of the
Mississippi. Bearing with them the war-
belt of wampum, broad and long, as the
importance of the message demanded;
and the tomahawk stained red, in token
of war; they went from camp to camp,
and village to village. Wherever they
appeared, the sachems and old men as-
sembled, to hear the words of the great
Pontiac. Then the head chief of the
embassy flung down the tomahawk on the
ground before them, and holding the war-
belt in his hand, delivered, with vehement
gesture, word for word, the speech with
which he was charged. It was heard
everywhere with approbation; the belt
was accepted, the hatchet snatched up,
and the assembled chiefs stood pledged to
take part in the war. The blow was to
be struck at a certain time in the month of
May following, to be indicated by the
changes of the moon. The tribes were to
rise together, each destroying the English
garrison in its neighborhood, and then,
with a general rush, the whole were to
turn against the settlements of the frontier.

The tribes, thus banded together against
the English, comprised, with a few unim-
portant exceptions, the whole Algonquin
stock, to whom were united the Wyandots,
the Senecas, and several tribes of the lower
Mississippi. The Senecas were the only
members of the Iroquois confederacy who
joined in the league, the rest being kept
quiet by the influence of Sir William John-
son, whose utmost exertions, however,
were barely sufficient to allay their irri-
tation.

While thus on the very eve of an out-
break, the Indians concealed their design
with the deep dissimulation of their
race. The warriors still lounged about
the forts, with calm, impenetrable faces,
begging as heretofore for tobacco, gun-
powder, and whiskey. Now and then,
some slight intimation of danger would
startle the garrisons from their security,
and an English trader, coming in from the

Indian villages, would report that, from
their manner and behavior, he suspected
them of mischievous designs. Some scoun-
drel half-breed would be heard boasting in
his cups that before next summer he would
have English hair to fringe his hunting-
frock. On one occasion, the plot was
nearly discovered. Early hi March, 1763,
Ensign Holmes, commanding at Fort
Miami, was told by a friendly Indian
that the warriors in the neighboring
village had lately received a war-belt,
with a message urging them to destroy
him and his garrison, and that this they
were preparing to do. Holmes called the
Indians together, and boldly charged them
with their design. They did as Indians on
such occasions have often done, confessed
their fault with much apparent contrition,
laid the blame on a neighboring tribe,
and professed eternal friendship to their
brethren the English. Holmes writes to
report his discovery to Major Gladwyn,
who, in his turn, sends the information to
Sir Jeffery Amherst, expressing his opinion
that there has been a general irritation
among the Indians, but that the affair
will soon blow over, and that, in the neigh-
borhood of his own post, the savages
were perfectly tranquil. Within cannon-
shot of the deluded officer's palisades, was
the village of Pontiac himself, the arch
enemy of the English, and prime mover
in the plot.

With the approach of spring, the Indians,
coming in from their wintering grounds,
began to appear in small parties about the
different forts; but now they seldom entered
them, encamping at a little distance in the
woods. They were fast pushing then-
preparations for the meditated blow, and
waiting with stifled eagerness for the
appointed hour.

CHAPTER vni

INDIAN PREPARATION

I INTERRUPT the progress of the narra-
tive to glance for a moment at the Indians
in their military capacity, and observe how
far they were qualified to prosecute the

HISTORY

295

formidable war. into which they were about
to plunge.

A people living chiefly by the chase, and
therefore, of necessity, thinly scattered
over a great space, divided into numerous
tribes, held together by no strong principle
of cohesion, and with no central govern-
ment to combine then- strength, could act
with little efficiency against such an enemy
as was now opposed to them. Loose
and disjointed as a whole, the government
even of individual tribes, and of their
smallest separate communities, was too
feeble to deserve the name. There were,
it is true, chiefs whose office was in a man-
ner hereditary; but their authority was
wholly of a moral nature, and enforced by
no compulsory law. Their province was
to advise, and not to command. Their
influence, such as it was, is chiefly to be
ascribed to the principle of hero-worship,
natural to the Indian character, and to the
reverence for age, which belongs to a
state of society where a patriarchal ele-
ment largely prevails. It was their office
to declare war and make peace; but when
war was declared, they had no power to
rarry the declaration into effect. The
warriors fought if they chose to do so; but
if, on the contrary, they preferred to re-
main quiet, no man could force them to
lift the hatchet. The war-chief, whose
part it was to lead them to battle, was a
mere partisan, whom his bravery and
exploits had led to distinction. If he
thought proper, he sang his war-song and
danced his war-dance, and as many of the
young men as were disposed to follow him
gathered around and enlisted themselves
under him. Over these volunteers he had
no legal authority, and they could desert
him at any moment, with no other penalty
than disgrace. When several war-parties,
of different bands or tribes, were united in
a common enterprise, their chiefs elected
a leader, who was nominally to command
the whole; but unless this leader was a man
of high distinction, and endowed with great
mental power, his commands were disre-
garded, and his authority was a cipher.
Among his followers was every latent ele-
ment of discord, pride, jealousy, and an-

cient half-smothered feuds, ready at any
moment to break out, and tear the whole
asunder. His warriors would often desert
in bodies; and many an Indian army, be-
fore reaching the enemy's country, has
been known to dwindle away until it was
reduced to a mere scalping party.

To twist a rope of sand would be as
easy a task as to form a permanent and
effective army of such materials. The
wild love of freedom, and impatience of
all control, which mark the Indian race,
render them utterly intolerant of military
discipline. Partly from their individual
character, and partly from this absence
of subordination, spring results highly
unfavorable to the efficiency of con-
tinued and extended military operation.
Indian warriors, when acting in large
masses, are to the last degree wayward,
capricious, and unstable; infirm of pur-
pose as a mob of children, and devoid of
providence and foresight. To provide
supplies for a campaign forms no part of
then* system. Hence the blow must be
struck at once, or not struck at all; and to
postpone victory is to insure defeat. It is
when acting in small, detached parties,
that the Indian warrior puts forth his
energies, and displays his admirable ad-
dress, endurance, and intrepidity. It is
then that he becomes a truly formidable
enemy. Fired with the hope of winning
scalps, he is staunch as a bloodhound.
No hardship can divert him from his pur-
pose, and no danger subdue his patient
and cautious courage.

From their inveterate passion for war,
the Indians are always prompt enough to
engage in it; and on the present occasion,
the prevailing irritation afforded ample
assurance that they would not remain idle.
While there was little risk that they would
capture any strong and well-defended
fort, or carry any important position,
there was, on the other hand, every reason
to apprehend wide-spread havoc, and a
destructive war of detail. That the war
might be carried on with vigor and
effect, it was the part of the Indian leaders
to work upon the passions of their people,
and keep alive their irritation; to whet

2Q6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

their native appetite for blood and glory,
and cheer them on to the attack; to guard
against all that might quench their
ardor, or abate their fierceness; to avoid
pitched battles; never to fight except under
advantage; and to avail themselves of all
the aid which surprise, craft, and treach-
ery could afford. The very circumstances
which unfitted the Indians for continued
and concentrated attack were, in another
view, highly advantageous, by preventing
the enemy from assailing them with vital
effect. It was no easy task to penetrate
tangled woods in search of a foe, alert
and active as a lynx, who would seldom
stand and fight, whose deadly shot and
triumphant whoop were the first and often
1 the last tokens of his presence, and who, at
the approach of a hostile force, would vanish
into the black recesses of forests and pine
swamps, only to renew his attacks afresh
with unabated ardor. There were no
forts to capture, no magazines to destroy,
and little property to seize upon. No
species of warfare could be more perilous
and harassing in its prosecution, or less
satisfactory in its results.

The English colonies at this time were
but ill fitted to bear the brunt of the im-
pending war. The army which had con-
quered Canada was now broken up and
dissolved; the provincials were disbanded,
and most of the regulars sent home. A
few fragments of regiments, miserably
wasted by war and sickness, had just
arrived from the West Indies; and of these,
several were already ordered to England,
to be discharged. There remained barely
troops enough to furnish feeble garrisons
for the various forts on the frontier and in
the Indian country. At the head of this
dilapidated army was Sir Jeffrey Amherst,
the able and resolute soldier who had
achieved the reduction of Canada. He
was a man well fitted for the emergency;
cautious, bold, active, far-sighted, and en-
dowed with a singular power of breath-
ing his own energy and zeal into those who
served under him. The command could
not have been hi better hands; and the
results of the war, lamentable as they
were, would have been much more dis-

astrous, but for his promptness and vigor,
and, above all, his judicious selection of
those to whom he confided the execution
of his orders.

While the war was on the eve of break-
ing out, an event occurred which had
afterwards an important effect upon its
progress the signing of the treaty of
peace at Paris, on the tenth of February,
1763. By this treaty France resigned her
claims to the territories east of the Mis-
sissippi, and that great river now became
the western boundary of the British co-
lonial possessions. In portioning out her
new acquisitions into separate govern-
ments, England left the valley of the Ohio
and the adjacent regions as an Indian
domain, and by the proclamation of the
seventh of October following, the intrusion
of settlers upon these lands was strictly
prohibited. Could these just and neces-
sary measures have been sooner adopted,
it is probable that the Indian war might
have been prevented, or, at all events,
rendered less general and violent, for th ?
treaty would have made it apparent that
the French could never repossess them-
selves of Canada, and have proved the
futility of every hope which the Indians
entertained of assistance from that quarter,
while, at the same time, the royal proc-
lamation would have greatly tended to
tranquilize their minds, by removing the
chief cause of irritation. But the remedy
came too late. While the sovereigns of
France, England, and Spain were signing
the treaty at Paris, countless Indian war-
riors in the American forests were singing
the war-song, and whetting their scalping-
knives.

Throughout the western wilderness, in a
hundred camps and villages, were cele-
brated the savage rites of war. Warriors,
women, and children were alike eager and
excited; magicians consulted their oracles,
and prepared charms to insure success;
while the war-chief, his body painted black
from head to foot, withdrawing from the
people, concealed himself among rocks
and caverns, or in the dark recesses of the
forest. Here, fasting and praying, he
calls day and night upon the Great Spirit,

HISTORY

297

consulting his dreams, to draw from them
auguries of good or evil; and if, perchance,
a vision of the great war-eagle seems to
hover over him with expanded wings, he
exults in the full conviction of triumph.
When a few days have elapsed, he
emerges from his retreat, and the people
discover him descending from the woods,
and approaching their camp, black as a
demon of war, and shrunken with fasting
and vigil. They flock around and listen
to his wild harangue. He calls on them to
avenge the blood of their slaughtered
relatives; he assures them that the Great
Spirit is on their side, and that victory is
certain. With exulting cries they disperse
to their wigwams, to array themselves in
the savage decorations of the war-dress.
An old man now passes through the camp,
and invites the warriors to a feast in the
name of the chief. They gather from all
quarters to his wigwam, where they find
him seated, no longer covered with black,
but adorned with the startling and fan-
tastic blazonry of the war-paint. Those
who join in the feast pledge themselves,
by so doing, to follow him against the
enemy. The guests seat themselves on
the ground, in a circle around the wigwam,
and the flesh of dogs is placed in wooden
dishes before them, while the chief,
though goaded by the pangs of his long,
unbroken fast, sits smoking his pipe with
unmoved countenance, and takes no part
in the feast.

Night has now closed in, and the rough
clearing is illumined by the blaze of fires
and burning pine-knots, casting their
deep red glare upon the dusky boughs of
the tall surrounding pine-trees, and upon
the wild multitude who, fluttering with
feathers and bedaubed with paint, have
gathered for the celebration of the war-
dance. A painted post is driven into
the ground, and the crowd form a wide
circle around it. The chief leaps into
the vacant space, brandishing his hatchet
as if rushing upon an enemy, and, in a
loud, vehement tone, chants his own ex-
ploits and those of his ancestors, enacting
the deeds which he describes, yelling the
war-whoop, throwing himself into all the

postures of actual fight, striking the post
as ii it were an enemy, and tearing the
scalp from the head of the imaginary vic-
tim. Warrior after warrior follows his
example, until the whole assembly, as if
fired with sudden frenzy, rush together
into the ring, leaping, stamping, and
whooping, brandishing knives and hatch-
ets in the firelight, hacking and stabbing
the air, and working themselves into the
fury of battle, while at intervals they all
break forth into a burst of ferocious yells,
which sounds for miles away over the
lonely, midnight forest.

In the morning, the warriors prepare to
depart. They leave the camp in single
file, still decorated in all their finery of
paint, feathers, and scalp-locks; and, as
they enter the woods, the chief fires his
gun, the warrior behind follows his ex-
ample, and the discharges pass in slow
succession from front to rear, the salute
concluding with a general whoop. They
encamp at no great distance from the vil-
lage, and divest themselves of their much-
valued ornaments, which are carried back
by the women, who have followed them
for this purpose. The warriors pursue
their journey, clad in the rough attire of
hard service, and move silently and stealth-
ily through the forest towards the hap-
less garrison, or defenceless settlement,
which they have marked as their prey.

The woods were now filled with war-
parties such as this, and soon the first
tokens of the approaching tempest began
to alarm the unhappy settlers of the fron-
tier. At first, some trader or hunter, weak
and emaciated, would come in from the
forest, and relate that his companions
had been butchered in the Indian villages,
and that he alone had escaped. Next
succeeded vague and uncertain rumors
of forts attacked and garrisons slaugh-
tered; and soon after, a report gained
ground that every post throughout the
Indian country had been taken, and every
soldier killed. Close upon these tidings
came the enemy himself. The Indian
war-parties broke out of the woods like
gangs of wolves, murdering, burning, and
laying waste, while hundreds of terror-

208

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

stricken families, abandoning their homes,
fled for refuge towards the older settle-
ments, and all was misery and ruin.

Passing over, for the present, this por-
tion of the war, we will penetrate at once
into the heart of the Indian country, and
observe those passages of the conflict
which took place under the auspices of
Pontiac himself the siege of Detroit,
and the capture of the interior posts and
garrisons.

CHAPTER DC
THE COUNCIL AT THE RIVER ECORCES

To BEGIN the war was reserved by Pon-
tiac as his own peculiar privilege. With
the first opening of spring his preparations
were complete. His light-footed messen-
gers, with their wampum belts and gifts of
tobacco, visited many a lonely hunting-
camp hi the gloom of the northern woods,
and called chiefs and warriors to attend
the general meeting. The appointed spot
was on the banks of the little River Ecor-
ces, not far from Detroit. Thither went
Pontiac himself with his squaws and his
children. Band after band came strag-
gling in from every side, until the meadow
was thickly dotted with their slender
wigwams. Here were idle warriors smok-
ing and laughing in groups, or beguiling the
lazy hours with gambling, with feasting,
or with doubtful stories of their own martial
exploits. Here were youthful gallants,
bedizened with all the foppery of beads,
feathers, and hawk's bells, but held as
yet in light esteem, since they had slain
no enemy, and taken no scalp. Here
also were young damsels, radiant with
bears' oil, ruddy with vermilion, and
versed in all the arts of forest coquetry;
shrivelled hags, with limbs of wire, and
voices like those of screech-owls; and
troops of naked children, with small,
black, mischievous eyes, roaming along
the outskirts of the woods.

The great Roman historian observes of
the ancient Germans, that when sum-
moned to a public meeting, they would
lag behind the appointed time in order to

show their independence. The remark
holds true, and perhaps with greater em-
phasis, of the American Indians; and thus
it happened, that several days elapsed
before the assembly was complete. In
such a motley concourse of barbarians,
where different bands and different tribes
were mustered on one common camping
ground, it would need all the art of a
prudent leader to prevent their dormant
jealousies from starting into open strife.
No people are more prompt to quarrel,
and none more prone, in the fierce excite-
ment of the present, to forget the pur-
pose of the future; yet, through good
fortune, or the wisdom of Pontiac, no rup-
ture occurred; and at length the last
loiterer appeared, and further delay was
needless.

The council took place on the twenty-
seventh of April. On that morning,
several old men, the heralds of the camp,
passed to and fro among the lodges, call-
ing the warriors, in a loud voice, to attend
the meeting.

In accordance with the summons, they
came issuing from their cabins the tall,
naked figures of the wild Ojibwas, with
quivers slung at their backs, and light
war-clubs resting in the hollow of their
arms; Ottawas, wrapped close in their
gaudy blankets; Wyandots, fluttering in
painted shirts, their heads adorned with
feathers, and then" leggings garnished
with bells. All were soon seated in a wide
circle upon the grass, row within row, a
grave and silent assembly. Each savage
countenance seemed carved in wood, an, I
none could have detected the deep and
fiery passions hidden beneath that im-
movable exterior. Pipes with ornamented
stems were lighted, and passed from hand
to hand.

Then Pontiac rose, and walked forward
into the midst of the council. According
to Canadian tradition, he was not above
the middle height, though his muscular
figure was cast hi a mould of remarkable
symmetry and vigor. His complexion
was darker than is usual with Ms race,
and his features, though by no means
regular, had a bold and stem expression,

HISTORY

299

while his habitual bearing was imperious
and peremptory, like that of a man accus-
tomed to sweep away all opposition by the
force of his impetuous will. His ordinary
attire was that of the primitive savage a
scanty cincture girt about his loins, and
his long black hair flowing loosely at his
back; but on occasions like this he was
wont to appear as befitted his power and
character, and he stood before the council
plumed and painted hi the full costume of
war.

Looking round upon his wild auditors,
he began to speak, with fierce gesture, and
loud, impassioned voice; and at every
pause, deep guttural ejaculations of as-
sent and approval responded to his words.
He inveighed against the arrogance, ra-
pacity, and injustice of the English, and
contrasted them with the French, whom
they had driven from the soil. He de-
clared that the British commandant had
treated him with neglect and contempt;
that the soldiers of the garrison had foully
abused the Indians; and that one of them
had struck a follower of his own. He repre-
sented the danger that would arise from
the supremacy of the English. They had
expelled the French, and now they only
waited for a pretext to turn upon the
Indians and destroy them. Then, hold-
ing out a broad belt of wampum, he told
the council that he had received it from
their great father the King of France, in
token that he had heard the voice of his
red children; that his sleep was at an end;
and that his great war-canoes would soon
sail up the St. Lawrence, to win back
Canada, and wreak vengeance on his
enemies. The Indians and their French
brethren should fight once more side by
side, as they had always fought; they
should strike the English as they had
struck them many moons ago, when their
great army marched down the Monon-
gahela, and they had shot them from their
ambush, like a flock of pigeons in the
woods.

Having roused in his warlike listeners
their native thirst for blood and vengeance,
he next addressed himself to their super-
stition, and told the following tale. Its

precise origin is not easy to determine.
It is possible that the Delaware prophet,
mentioned in a former chapter, may have
had some part in it; or it might have been
the offspring of Pontiac's heated imagi-
nation, during his period of fasting and
dreaming. That he deliberately invented
it for the sake of the effect it would pro-
duce, is the least probable conclusion of
all; for it evidently proceeds from the
superstitious mind of an Indian, brooding
upon the evil days in which his lot was
cast, and turning for relief to the myste-
rious Author of his being. It is, at all
events, a characteristic specimen of the
Indian legendary tales, and, like many of
them, bears an allegoric significancy. Yet
he who endeavors to interpret an Indian
allegory through all its erratic windings
and puerile inconsistencies, has under-
taken no easy or enviable task.

"A Delaware Indian," said Pontiac,
"conceived an eager desire to learn wis-
dom from the Master of Life; but, being
ignorant where to find him, he had re-
course to fasting, dreaming, and magical
incantations. By these means it was
revealed to him, that, by moving forward
in a straight, undeviating course, he would
reach the abode of the Great Spirit. He
told his purpose to no one, and having
provided the equipments of a hunter
gun, powder-horn, ammunition, and a
kettle for preparing his food he set
forth on his errand. For some time he
journeyed on in high hope and confidence.
On the evening of the eighth day, he
stopped by the side of a brook at the
edge of a small prairie, where he began to
make ready his evening meal, when,
looking up, he saw three large openings
hi the woods on the opposite side of the
meadow, and three well-beaten paths
which entered them. He was much sur-
prised; but his wonder increased, when,
after it had grown dark, the three paths
were more clearly visible than ever.
Remembering the important object of Ms
journey, he could neither rest nor sleep;
and, leaving his fire, he crossed the
meadow, and entered the largest of the
three openings. He had advanced but a

300

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

short distance into the forest, when a
bright flame sprang out of the ground
before him, and arrested his steps. In
great amazement he turned back, and
entered the second path, where the same
wonderful phenomenon again encountered
him; and now, in terror and bewilderment,
yet still resolved to persevere, he pursued
the last of the three paths. On this he
journeyed a whole day without interrup-
tion, when at length, emerging from the
forest, he saw before him a vast mountain,
of dazzling whiteness. So precipitous
was the ascent, that the Indian thought
it hopeless to go farther, and looked around
him in despair: at that moment he saw,
seated at some distance above, the figure
of a beautiful woman arrayed in white,
who arose as he looked upon her, and thus
accosted him: 'How can you hope, en-
cumbered as you are, to succeed in your
design? Go down to the foot of the
mountain, throw away your gun, your
ammunition, your provisions, and your
clothing; wash yourself hi the stream
which flows there, and you will then be
prepared to stand before the Master of
Life.' The Indian obeyed, and again
began to ascend among the rocks, while
the woman, seeing him still discouraged,
laughed at his faintness of heart, and told
him that, if he wished for success, he
must climb by the aid of one hand and
one foot only. After great toil and suffer-
ing, he at length found himself at the
summit. The woman had disappeared,
and he was left alone. A rich and beauti-
ful plain lay before him, and at a little
distance he saw three great villages, far
superior to the squalid dwellings of the
Delawares. As he approached the
largest, and stood hesitating whether he
should enter, a man gorgeously attired
stepped forth, and, taking him by the
hand, welcomed him to the celestial abode.
He then conducted him into the presence
of the Great Spirit, where the Indian
stood confounded at the unspeakable
splendor which surrounded him. The
Great Spirit bade him be seated, and thus
addressed him:

" 'I am the Maker of heaven and earth,

the trees, lakes, rivers, and all things else.
I am the Maker of mankind; and because
I love you, you must do my will. The
land on which you live I have made for
you, and not for others. Why do you
suffer the white man to dwell among you?
My children, you have forgotten the cus-
toms and traditions of your forefathers.
Why do you not clothe yourselves in skins,
as they did, and use the bows and arrows,
and the stone-pointed lances, which they
used? You have bought guns, knives,
kettles, and blankets from the white men,
until you can no longer do without them;
and, what is worse, you have drunk the
poison fire-water, which turns you into
fools. Fling all these things away; live
as your wise forefathers did before you.
And as for these English these dogs
dressed in red, who have come to rob
you of your hunting-grounds, and drive
away the game you must lift the hatchet
against them. Wipe them from the face
of the earth, and then you will win my
favor back again, and once more be
happy and prosperous. The children of
your great father, the King of France,
are not like the English. Never forget
that they are your brethren. They are
very dear to me, for they love the red
men, and understand the true mode of
worshipping me.'

"The Great Spirit next gave his hearer
various precepts of morality and religion,
such as the prohibition to marry more
than one wife, and a warning against the
practice of magic, which is worshipping
the devil. A prayer, embodying the sub-
stance of all that he had heard, was then
presented to the Delaware. It was cut
in hieroglyphics upon a wooden stick, after
the custom of his people, and he was
directed to send copies of it to all the
Indian villages.

"The adventurer now departed, and,
returning to the earth, reported all the
wonders he had seen in the celestial re-
gions."

Such was the tale told by Pontiac to the
council; and it is worthy of notice, that
not he alone, but many of the greatest men
who have arisen among the Indians, have

HISTORY

been opponents of civilization, and staunch
advocates of primitive barbarism. Red
Jacket and Tecumseh would gladly have
brought back their people to the wild
simplicity of their original condition.
There is nothing progressive in the
rigid, inflexible nature of an Indian. He
will not open his mind to the idea of im-
provement, and nearly every change
that has been forced upon him has been a
change for the worse.

Many other speeches were doubtless
made in the council, but no record of them
has been preserved. All present were
eager to attack the British fort, and
Pontiac told them, in conclusion, that on
the second of May he would gain admit-
tance with a party of his warriors, on pre-
tence of dancing the calumet dance before
the garrison; that they would take note
of the strength of the fortification, and,
this information gained, he would sum-
mon another council to determine the
mode of attack.

The assembly now dissolved, and all the
evening the women were employed in load-
ing the canoes, which were drawn up on
the bank of the stream. The encamp-
ments broke up at so early an hour, that
when the sun rose, the savage swarm had
melted away; the secluded scene was
restored to its wonted silence and solitude,
and nothing remained but the slender
framework of several hundred cabins,
with fragments of broken utensils, pieces
of cloth, and scraps of hide, scattered
over the trampled grass, while the smould-
ering embers of numberless fires mingled
their dark smoke with the white mist
which rose from the little river.

Every spring, after the winter hunt was
over, the Indians were accustomed to re-
turn to their villages, or permanent en-
campments, in the vicinity of Detroit; and,
accordingly, after the council had broken
up, they made then- appearance as usual
about the fort. On the first of May,
Pontiac came to the gate with forty men
of the Ottawa tribe, and asked permission
to enter and dance the calumet dance
before the officers of the garrison. After
some hesitation he was admitted; and

proceeding to the corner of the street,
where stood the house of the command-
ant, Major Gladwyn, he and thirty of his*
warriors began their dance, each recount-
ing his own valiant exploits, and boasting
himself the bravest of mankind. The
officers and men gathered around them;
while, in the meantime, the remaining
ten of the Ottawas strolled about the fort,
observing everything it contained. When
the dance was over, they all quietly with-
drew, not a suspicion of their sinister design
having arisen in the minds of the English.

After a few days had elapsed, Pon-
tiac's messengers again passed among the
Indian cabins, calling the principal chiefs
to another council, in the Pottawattamie
village. Here there was a large structure
of bark, erected for the public use on occa-
sions like the present. A hundred chiefs
were seated around this dusky council-
house, the fire in the center shedding its-
fitful light upon their dark, naked forms,
while the sacred pipe passed from hand to
hand. To prevent interruption, Pon-
tiac had stationed young men, as senti-
nels, near the house. He once more
addressed the chiefs, inciting them to
hostility against the English, and con-
cluding by the proposal of his plan for
destroying Detroit. It was as follows:
Pontiac would demand a council with the
commandant concerning matters of great
importance; and on this pretext he flat-
tered himself that he and his principal
chiefs would gain ready admittance within
the fort. They were all to carry weapons
concealed beneath their blankets. While
in the act of addressing the commandant
in the council-room, Pontiac was to make
a certain signal, upon which the chiefs
were to raise the war-whoop, rush upon
the officers present, and strike them down.
The other Indians, waiting meanwhile
at the gate, or loitering among the houses,
on hearing the yells and firing within the
building, were to assail the astonished and
half -armed soldiers; and thus Detroit
would fall an easy prey.

In opening this plan of treachery, Pon-
tiac spoke rather as a counsellor than as a
commander. Haughty as he was, he had

302

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

too much sagacity to wound the pride of
a body of men over whom he had no other
control than that derived from his per-
sonal character and influence. No one
was hardy enough to venture opposition
to the proposal of their great leader. His

plan was eagerly adopted. Deep, hoarse
ejaculations of applause echoed his speech;
and, gathering their blankets around
them, the chiefs withdrew to their respect-
ive villages, to prepare for the destruc-
tion of the unhappy little garrison.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN (1837-1883)

"A Short History of the English People" (1874) is at once the most popular and the most attractively
written history of the English people that we possess. Green's literary gift was never used to better
advantage than in portraying great historical figures, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth, which is
given below, is among the most memorable in the volume.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH
PEOPLE

PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH

NEVER had the fortunes of England sunk
to a lower ebb than at the moment when
Elizabeth mounted the throne. The coun-
try was humiliated by defeat and brought
to the verge of rebellion by the bloodshed
and misgovernment of Mary's reign. The
old social discontent, trampled down for
a time by the horsemen of Somerset,
remained a menace to public order. The
religious strife had passed beyond hope
of reconciliation, now that the reformers
were parted from their opponents by the
fires of Smithfield and the party of the
New Learning all but dissolved. The more
earnest Catholics were bound helplessly
to Rome. The temper of the Protes-
tants, burned at home or driven into
exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing,
and the Calvinistic refugees were pouring
back from Geneva with dreams of revo-
lutionary change in Church and State.
England, dragged at the heels of Philip
into a useless and ruinous war, was left
without an ally save Spain; while France,
mistress of Calais, became mistress of the
Channel. Not only was Scotland a stand-
ing danger in the north, through the
French marriage of its Queen Mary Stuart
and its consequent bondage to French
policy; but Mary Stuart and her husband
now assumed the style and arms of Eng-
lish sovereigns, and threatened to rouse
every Catholic throughout the realm
against Elizabeth's title. In presence of
tkus host of dangers the country lay help-

less, without army or fleet, or the means of
manning one, for the treasury, already
drained by the waste of Edward's reign,
had been utterly exhausted by Mary's
restoration of the Church-lands in pos-
session of the Crown, and by the cost of her
war with France.

England's one hope lay in the character
of her Queen. Elizabeth was now in her
twenty-fifth year. Personally she had
more than her mother's beauty; her figure
was commanding, her face long but
queenly and intelligent, her eyes quick and
fine. She had grown up amidst the liberal
culture of Henry's court a bold horse-
woman, a good shot, a graceful dancer,
a skilled musician, and an accomplished
scholar. She studied every morning the
Greek Testament, and followed this by
the tragedies of Sophocles or orations of
Demosthenes, and could "rub up her
rusty Greek" at need to bandy pedantry
with a Vice-Chancellor. But she was
far from being a mere pedant. The
new literature which was springing up
around her found constant welcome in her
court. She spoke Italian and French
as fluently as her mother-tongue. She
was familiar with Ariosto and Tasso.
Even amidst the affectation and love of
anagrams and puerilities which sullied
her later years, she listened with delight
to the "Faery Queen," and found a smile
for "Master Spenser" when he appeared
in her presence. Her moral temper re-
called in its strange contrasts the mixed
blood within her veins. She was at once
the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn.
From her father she inherited her frank

HISTORY

303

and 'hearty address, her love of popularity
and of free intercourse with the people,
her dauntless courage and her amazing
self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice,
her impetuous will, her pride, her furious
outbursts of anger came to her with her
Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as
if they were schoolboys; she met the in-
solence of Essex with a box on the ear;
she would break now and then into the
gravest deliberations to swear at her min-
isters like a fishwife. But strangely in
contrast with the violent outlines of her
Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self-
indulgent nature she derived from Anne
Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were
with Elizabeth the very air she breathed.
Her delight was to move in perpetual
progresses from castle to castle through a
series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and
extravagant as a caliph's dream. She
loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A
happy retort or a finished compliment
never failed to win her favor. She
hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innu-
merable. Her vanity remained, even to old
age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens.
No adulation was too fulsome for her, no
flattery of her beauty too gross. "To
see her was heaven," Hatton told her,
"the lack of her was hell." She would
play with her rings that her courtiers
might note the delicacy of her hands;
or dance a coranto that the French am-
bassador, hidden dexterously behind a
curtain, might report her sprightliness to
his master. Her levity, her frivolous
laughter, her unwomanly jests gave color
to a thousand scandals. Her character
in fact, like her portraits, was utterly with-
out shade. Of womanly reserve or self-
restraint she knew nothing. No instinct
of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper
which had broken out in the romps of her
girlhood and showed itself almost osten-
tatiously throughout her later life. Per-
sonal beauty in a man was a sure passport
to her liking. She patted handsome young
squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss
her hand, and fondled her "sweet Robin,"
Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.
It was no wonder that the statesmen

whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost
to the last to be little more than a frivo-
lous woman, or that Philip of Spam won-
dered how "a wanton" could hold in check
the policy of the Escurial. But the
Elizabeth whom they saw was far from
being all of Elizabeth. The wilfulness
of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn
played over the surface of a nature hard
as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the
very type of reason untouched by imagi-
nation or passion. Luxurious and pleas-
ure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth lived
simply and frugally, and she worked hard.
Her vanity and caprice had no weight
whatever with her in state affairs. The
coquette of the presence-chamber became
the coolest and hardest of politicians at the
council-board. Fresh from the flattery
of her courtiers, she would tolerate no
flattery in the closet; she was herself
plain and downright of speech with her
counsellors, and she looked for a corre-
sponding plainness of speech hi return. If
any trace of her sex lingered in her actual
statesmanship, it was seen in the sim-
plicity and tenacity of purpose that often
underlies a woman's fluctuations of feeling.
It was this in part which gave her her
marked superiority over the statesmen
of her tune. No nobler group of ministers
ever gathered round a council-board than
those who gathered round the council-
board of Elizabeth. But she was the
instrument of none. She listened, she
weighed, she used or put by the counsels
of each hi turn, but her policy as a whole
was her own. It was a policy, not of
genius, but of good sense. Her aims were
simple and obvious: to preserve her throne,
to keep England out of war, to restore
civil and religious order. Something of
womanly caution and timidity perhaps
backed the passionless indifference with
which she set aside the larger schemes of
ambition which were ever opening before
her eyes. She was resolute hi her refusal
of the Low Countries. She rejected with
a laugh the offers of the Protestants to
make her "head of the religion" and
"mistress of the seas." But her amazing
success in the end sprang mainly from this

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

wise limitation of her aims. She had a
finer sense than any of her counsellors of
her real resources; she knew instinctively
how far she could go, and what she could
do. Her cold, critical intellect was never
swayed by enthusiasm or by panic either
to exaggerate or to underestimate her
risks or her power.

Of political wisdom indeed in its larger
/nd more generous sense Elizabeth had
little or none; but her political tact was
unerring. She seldom saw her course at a
glance, but she played with a hundred
courses, fitfully and discursively, as a
musician runs his fingers over the key-
board, till she hit suddenly upon the right
one. Her nature was essentially practical
and of the present. She distrusted a plan
in fact just in proportion to its specula-
tive range or its outlook into the future.
Her notion of statesmanship lay in watch-
ing how things turned out around her,
and in seizing the moment for making the
best of them. A policy of this limited,
practical, tentative order was not only
best suited to the England of her day, to its
small resources and the transitional char-
acter of its religious and political belief,
but it was one eminently suited to Eliza-
beth's peculiar powers. It was a policy
of detail, and in details her wonderful
readiness and ingenuity found scope for
their exercise. "No War, my Lords,"
the Queen used to cry imperiously at the
council-board, "No War!" but her hatred
v >f war sprang less from her aversion to
blood or to expense, real as was her aver-
sion to both, than from the fact that peace
left the field open to the diplomatic ma-
noeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled.
Her delight in the consciousness of her
ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish
freaks, freaks in which one can hardly see
any purpose beyond the purpose of sheer
mystification. She revelled in "bye-
ways" and "crooked ways." She played
with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a
mouse, and with much of the same feline
delight in the mere embarrassment of
her victims. When she was weary of
mystifying foreign statesmen she turned
to find fresh sport hi mystifying her own

ministers. Had Elizabeth written the
story of her reign she would have prided
herself, not on the triumph of England or
the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with
which she had hoodwinked and outwitted
every statesman in Europe during fifty
years. Nor was her trickery without
political value. Ignoble, inexpressibly
wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems
to us now, tracing it as we do through a
thousand despatches, it succeeded in its
mam end. It gained time, and every
year that was gained doubled Elizabeth's
strength. Nothing is more revolting in
the Queen, but nothing is more characters
istic, than her shameless mendacity. It
was an age of political lying, but in the
profusion and recklessness of her lies
Elizabeth stood without a peer in Chris-
tendom. A falsehood was to her simply
an intellectual means of meeting a dif-
ficulty; and the ease with which she as-
serted or denied whatever suited her pur-
pose was only equalled by the cynical
indifference with which she met the ex-
posure of her lies as soon as their purpose
was answered. The same purely intellec-
tual view of things showed itself in the
dexterous use she made of her very faults.
Her levity carried her gaily over moments
of detection and embarrassment where
better women would have died of shame.
She screened her tentative and hesitating
statesmanship under the natural timidity
and vacillation of her sex. She turned
her very luxury and sports to good ac-
count. There were moments of grave
danger in her reign when the country
remained indifferent to its perils, as it
saw the Queen give her days to hawking
and hunting, and her nights to dancing
and plays. Her vanity and affectation,
her womanly fickleness and caprice, all
had their part in the diplomatic comedies
she played with the successive candidates
for her hand. If political necessities
made her life a lonely one, she had at any
rate the satisfaction of averting war and
conspiracies by love sonnets and romantic
interviews, or of gaining a year of tran-
quillity by the dexterous spinning out of a
flirtation.

HISTORY

305

As we track Elizabeth through her tor-
tuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the
sense of her greatness is almost lost in a
sense of contempt. But wrapped as
they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims
of her policy were throughout temperate
and simple, and they were pursued with a
singular tenacity. The sudden acts of
energy which from time to time broke her
habitual hesitation proved that it was no
hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could
wait and finesse; but when the hour was
come she could strike, and strike hard.
Her natural temper indeed tended to a
rash self-confidence rather than to self-
distrust. She had, as strong natures al-
ways have, an unbounded confidence in
her luck. " Her Majesty counts much on
Fortune," Walsingham wrote bitterly; "I
wish she would trust more in Almighty
God." The diplomatists who censured at
one moment her irresolution, her delay,
her changes of front, censure at the next
her " obstinacy," her iron will, her defiance
of what seemed to them inevitable ruin.
"This woman," Philip's envoy wrote
after a wasted remonstrance, "this woman
is possessed by a hundred thousand
devils." To her own subjects, indeed,
who knew nothing of her manoeuvres and
retreats, of her "bye- ways" and "crooked
ways," she seemed the embodiment of
dauntless resolution. Brave as they were,
the men who swept the Spanish Main or
glided between the icebergs of Baffin's
Bay never doubted that the palm of
bravery lay with their Queen. Her stead-
iness and courage in the pursuit of her aims
was equaled by the wisdom with which
she chose the men to accomplish them.
She had a quick eye for merit of any sort,
and a wonderful power of enlisting its
whole energy in her service. The sa-
gacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham
was just as unerring in its choice of the
meanest of her agents. Her success in-
deed in securing from the beginning of her
reign to its end, with the single exception
of Leicester, precisely the right men for
the work she set them to do sprang in
great measure from the noblest character-
istic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim

her temper fell below many of the temper*,
of her time, in the breadth of its range, in
the universality of its sympathy it stood
far above them all. Elizabeth could talk
poetry with Spenser and philosophy with
Bruno; she could discuss Euphuism with
Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex;
she could turn from talk of the last fash-
ions to pore with Cecil over despatches
and treasury books; she could pass from
tracking traitors with Walsingham to
settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to
calculate with Frobisher the chances of a
northwest passage to the Indies. The
versatility and many-sidedness of her mind
enabled her to understand every phase of
the intellectual movement of her day, and
to fix by a sort of instinct on its higher
representatives. But the greatness of
the Queen rests above all on her power
over her people. We have had grander
and nobler rulers, but none so popular as
Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty,
of admiration which finds its most perfect
expression in the "Faery Queen," throb-
bed as intensely through the veins of her
meanest subjects. To England, during
her reign of half a century, she was a virgin
and a Protestant Queen; and her im-
morality, her absolute want of religious
enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the
brightness of the national ideal. Her
worst acts broke fruitlessly against the
general devotion. A Puritan, whose hand
she cut off in a freak of tyrannous resent-
ment, waved his hat with the hand that
was left, and shouted "God save Queen
Elizabeth!" Of her faults, indeed, Eng-
land beyond the circle of her court knew
little or nothing. The shiftings of her
diplomacy were never seen outside the
royal closet. The nation at large could
only judge her foreign policy by its main
outlines, by its temperance and good sense,
and above all by its success. But every
Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth
in her rule at home, in her love of peace,
her instinct of order, the firmness and
moderation of her government, the judi-
cious spirit of conciliation and compromise
among warring factions which gave the
country an unexampled tranquillity at

306

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

a time when almost every other country in
Europe was torn with civil war. Every
sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of
London as it became the mart of the
world, of stately mansions as they rose on
every manor, told, and justly told, in
Elizabeth's favor. In one act of her
civil administration she showed the bold-
ness and originality of a great ruler; for
the opening of her reign saw her face the
social difficulty which had so long im-
peded English progress, by the issue of a
commission of inquiry which ended in the
solution of the problem by the system of
poor-laws. She lent a ready patronage
to the new commerce; she considered its
extension and protection as a part of
public policy, and her statue in the center
of the London Exchange was a tribute on
the part of the merchant class to the
interest with which she watched and
shared personally in its enterprises. Her
thrift won a general gratitude. The
memories of the Terror and of the Martyrs
threw into bright relief the aversion from
bloodshed which was conspicuous in her
earlier reign, and never wholly wanting
through its fiercer close. Above all there
was a general confidence in her instinctive
knowledge of the national temper. Her
finger was always on the public pulse.
She knew exactly when she could resist
the feeling of her people, and when she
must give way before the new sentiment
of freedom which her policy unconsciously
fostered. But when she retreated, her
defeat had all the grace of victory; and
the frankness and unreserve of her sur-
render won back at once the love that her
resistance had lost. Her attitude at home
in fact was that of a woman whose pride
in the well-being of her subjects, and whose
longing for their favor, was the one warm
touch in the coldness of her natural temper.
If Elizabeth could be said to love any-
thing, she loved England. "Nothing,"
she said to her first Parliament in words
of unwonted fire, "nothing, no worldly
thing under the sun, is so dear to me as
the love and good-will of my subjects."
And the love and good-will which were so
dear to her she fully won.

She clung perhaps to her popularity the
more passionately that it hid in some meas-
ure from her the terrible loneliness of her
life. She was the last of the Tudors, the
last of Henry's children; and her nearest
relatives were Mary Stuart and the House
of Suffolk, one the avowed, the other the
secret claimant of her throne. Among
her mother's kindred she found but a
single cousin. Whatever womanly ten-
derness she had, wrapt itself around Leices-
ter; but a marriage with Leicester was im-
possible, and every other union, could she
even have bent to one, was denied to her
by the political difficulties of her position.
The one cry of bitterness which burst
from Elizabeth revealed her terrible sense
of the solitude of her life. "The Queen
of Scots," she cried at the birth of James,
"has a fair son, and I am but a barren
stock." But the loneliness of her posi-
tion only reflected the loneliness of her
nature. She stood utterly apart from
the world around her, sometimes above it,
sometimes below it, but never of it. It
was only on its intellectual side that
Elizabeth touched the England of her
day. All its moral aspects were simply
dead to her. It was a time when men
were being lifted into nobleness by the
new moral energy which seemed suddenly
to pulse through the whole people, when
honor and enthusiasm took colors of
poetic beauty, and religion became a
chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the
men around her touched Elizabeth simply
as the fair tints of a picture would have
touched her. She made her market with
equal indifference out of the heroism of
William of Orange or the bigotry of
Philip. The noblest aims and lives were
only counters on her board. She was the
one soul in her realm whom the news of
St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst
for vengeance; and while England was
thrilling with its triumph over the Ar-
mada, its Queen was coolly grumbling over
the cost, and making her profit out of the
spoiled provisions she had ordered for the
fleet that saved her. To the voice of
gratitude, indeed, she was for the most
part deaf. She accepted services such as

HISTORY

307

were never rendered to any other English
sovereign without a thought of return.
Walsingham spent his fortune in saving
her life and her throne, and she left him to
die a beggar. But, as if by a strange irony,
it was to this very want of sympathy
that she owed some of the grander fea-
tures of her character. If she was without
love she was without hate. She cherished
no petty resentments; she never stooped
to envy or suspicion of the men who served
her. She was indifferent to abuse. Her
good-humor was never ruffled by the
charges of wantonness and cruelty with
which the Jesuits filled every Court in
Europe. She was insensible to fear.
Her life became at last the mark for as-
sassin after assassin, but the thought of
peril was the one hardest to bring home to
her. Even when the Catholic plots broke
out in her very household she would listen
to no proposals for the removal of Cath-
olics from her court.

It was this moral isolation which told so
strangely both for good and for evil on her
policy towards the Church. The young
Queen was not without a sense of religion.
But she was almost wholly destitute of
spiritual emotion, or of any consciousness
of the vast questions with which theology
strove to deal. While the world around
her was being swayed more and more by
theological beliefs and controversies,
Elizabeth was absolutely untouched by
them. She was a child of the Italian
Renascence rather than of the New Learn-
ing of Colet or Erasmus, and her attitude
towards the enthusiasm of her time was
that of Lorenzo de' Medici towards Sa-
vonarola. Her mind was unruffled by the
spiritual problems which were vexing the
minds around her; to Elizabeth indeed
they were not only unintelligible, they
were a little ridiculous. She had the same
intellectual contempt for the superstition
of the Romanist as for the bigotry of the
Protestant. While she ordered Catholic
images to be flung into the fire, she quiz-
zed the Puritans as "brethren in Christ."
But she had no sort of religious aversion
from either Puritan or Papist. The
Protestants grumbled at the Catholic

nobles whom she admitted to the presence.
The Catholics grumbled at the Protestant
statesmen whom she called to her council-
board. But to Elizabeth the arrange-
ment was the most natural thing in the
world. She looked at theological dif-
ferences in a purely political light. She
agreed with Henry the Fourth that a
kingdom was well worth a mass. It
seemed an obvious thing to her to hold
out hopes of conversion as a means of
deceiving Philip, or to gain a point in
negotiations by restoring the crucifix to
her chapel. The first interest in her own
mind was the interest of public order, and
she never could understand how it could
fail to be first in every one's mind. Her
ingenuity set itself to construct a system
in which ecclesiastical unity should not
jar against the rights of conscience; a
compromise which merely required outer
"conformity" to the established worship
while, as she was never weary of repeating,
it "left opinion free." She fell back from
the very first on the system of Henry the
Eighth. " I will do," she told the Spanish
ambassador, "as my father did." She
opened negotiations with the Papal See,
tUl the Pope's summons to submit her
claim of succession to the judgment of
Rome made compromise impossible. The
first work of her Parliament was to de-
clare her legitimacy and title to the crown,
to restore the royal supremacy, and to
abjure all foreign authority and juris-
diction. At her entry into London Eliza-
beth kissed the English Bible which the
citizens 'presented to her and promised
"diligently to read therein." Further she
had no personal wish to go. A third of
the Council and at least two-thirds of the
people were as opposed to any radical
changes in religion as the Queen. Among
the gentry the older and wealthier were on
the conservative side, and only the
younger and meaner on the other. But
it was soon necessary to go further. If
the Protestants were the less numerous,
they were the abler and the more vigorous
party; and the exiles who returned from
Geneva brought with them a fiercer ha-
tred of Catholicism. To every Protestant

3 o8

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the Mass was identified with the fires of
Smithfield, while Edward's Prayer-book
was hallowed by the memories of the
Martyrs. But if Elizabeth won the
Protestants by an Act of Uniformity
which restored the English Prayer-book
and enforced its use on the clergy on pain
of deprivation, the alterations she made
in its language showed her wish to con-
ciliate the Catholics as far as possible.
She had no mind merely to restore the
system of the Protectorate. She dropped
the words "Head of the Church" from the
royal title. The forty-two Articles which
Cranmer had drawn up were left in
abeyance. If Elizabeth had had her will,
she would have retained the celibacy of
the clergy and restored the use of cruci-
fixes in the churches. In part indeed of
her effort she was foiled by the increased
bitterness of the reformers. The London
mob tore down the crosses in the streets.
Her attempt to retain the crucifix or
enforce the celibacy of the priesthood fell
dead before the opposition of the Pro-
testant clergy. On the other hand, the
Marian bishops, with a single exception,
discerned the Protestant drift of the
changes she was making, and bore impris-
onment and deprivation rather than
accept the oath required by the Act of
Supremacy. But to the mass of the
nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems
to have been fairly acceptable. The bulk
of the clergy, if they did not take the oath,
practically submitted to the Act of Su-
premacy and adopted the Prayer-book.
Of the few who openly refused only two
hundred were deprived, and many went
unharmed. No marked repugnance to
the new worship was shown by the people
at large; and Elizabeth was able to turn
from questions of belief to the question
of order.

She found in Matthew Parker, whom
Pole's death enabled her to raise to the
see of Canterbury, an agent in the reor-
ganization of the Church whose patience
and moderation were akin to her own.
Theologically the Primate was a moderate
man, but he was resolute to restore order
in the discipline and worship of the

Church. The whole machinery of English
religion had been thrown out of gear by
the rapid and radical changes of the past
two reigns. The majority of the parish
priests were still Catholic in heart; some-
times mass was celebrated at the parson-
age for the more rigid Catholics, and the
new communion in church for the more
rigid Protestants. Sometimes both parties
knelt together at the same altar-rails, the
one to receive hosts consecrated by the
priest at home after the old usage, the
other wafers consecrated in Church after
the new. In many parishes of the north
no change of service was made at all. On
the other hand, the new Protestant clergy
were often unpopular, and roused the
disgust of the people by their violence
and greed. Chapters plundered their own
estates by leases and fines and by felling
timber. The marriages of the clergy
became a scandal, which was increased
when the gorgeous vestments of the old
worship were cut up into gowns and bodices
for the priests' wives. The new services
sometimes turned into scenes of utter dis-
order where the clergy wore what dress
they pleased and the communicant stood
or sate as he liked; while the old altars
were broken down and the communion-
table was often a bare board upon trestles.
The people, naturally enough, were found
to be "utterly devoid of religion," and
came to church "as to a May game."
To the difficulties which Parker found in
the temper of the reformers and their
opponents new difficulties were added by
the freaks of the Queen. If she had no
convictions, she had tastes; and her taste
revolted from the bareness of Protestant
ritual and above all from the marriage of
priests. "Leave that alone," she shouted
to Dean Nowell from the royal closet as
he denounced the use of images "stick
to your text, Master Dean, leave that
alone!" When Parker was firm in resist-
ing the introduction of the crucifix or of
celibacy, Elizabeth showed her resent-
ment at his firmness by an insult to his
wife. Married ladies were addressed at
this time as "Madam," unmarried ladies
as "Mistress;" and when Mrs. Parker

HISTORY

309

advanced at the close of a sumptuous
entertainment at Lambeth to take leave
of the Queen, Elizabeth feigned a momen-
tary hesitation. "Madam," she said at
last, "I may not call you, and Mistress I
am loth to call you; however, I thank you
for your good cheer." To the end of her
reign indeed Elizabeth remained as bold
a plunderer of the wealth of the bishops
as either of her predecessors, and carved
out rewards for her ministers from the
Church-lands with a queenly disregard of
the rights of property. Lord Burleigh
built up the estate of the house of Cecil
out of the demesnes of the see of Peter-
borough. The neighborhood of Hat-
ton Garden to Ely Place recalls the spolia-
tion of another bishopric in favor of the

Queen's sprightly chancellor. Her reply
to the bishop's protest against this rob-
bery showed what Elizabeth meant by
her Ecclesiastical Supremacy. "Proud
prelate," she wrote, "you know what you
were before I made you what you are!
If you do not immediately comply with
my request, by God, I will unfrock you."
But freaks of this sort had little real in-
fluence beside the steady support which
the Queen gave to the Primate in his work
of order. She suffered no plunder save her
own, and she was earnest for the restoration
of order and decency in the outer arrange-
ments of the Church. The vacant sees were
filled for the most part with learned and
able men; and England seemed to settle
quietly down in a religious peace.

BIOGRAPHY,
PLUTARCH (about 50-120 A. D.)

Plutarch was the great biographer of Greece and Rome. As a portrayer of character, as a painter
of great scenes, and as a moralist of a high order, he has hardly been surpassed since he wrote. The
life selected should have peculiar interest, portraying as it does the great sea-captain who led the Athen-
ians in encompassing the defeat of the Persian armada.

The translaticn is that revised by Arthur Hugh dough.

THEMISTOCLES

THE birth of Themistocles was some-
what too obscure to do him honor. His
father, Neocles, was not of the distin-
guished people of Athens, but of the town-
ship of Phrearrhi, and of the tribe Leontis;
and by his mother's side, as it is reported,
he was base-born

"I am not of the noble Grecian race,
I'm poor Abrotonon, and born in Thrace;
Let the Greek women scorn me, if they please,
I was the mother of Themistocles."

Yet Phanias writes that the mother of
Themistocles was not of Thrace but of
Caria, and that her name was not Abro-
tonon, but Euterpe; and Neanthes add&
farther that she was of Halicarnassus in
Caria. And, as illegitimate children, in-
cluding those that were of half-blood or
had but one parent an Athenian, had to
attend at the Cynosarges (a wrestling-
place outside the gates, dedicated to
Hercules, who was also of half-blood
amongst the gods, having had a mortal
woman for his mother), Themistocles
persuaded several of the young men of high
birth to accompany him to anoint and
exercise themselves together at Cyno-
sarges; an ingenious device for destroying
the distinction between the noble and the
base-born, and between those of the whole
and those of the half-blood of Athens.
However, it is certain that he was re-
lated to the house of the Lycomedae; for
Simonides records that he rebuilt the

chapel of Phlya, belonging to that family,
and beautified it with pictures and other
ornaments, after it had been burnt by
the Persians.

It is confessed by all that from his youth
he was of a vehement and impetuous
nature, of a quick apprehension, and a
strong and aspiring bent for action ana
great affairs. The holidays and inter-
vals in his studies he did not spend in play
or idleness, as other children, but would
be always inventing or arranging some
oration or declamation to himself, the
subject of which was generally the excus-
ing or accusing his companions, so that his
master would often say to him, "You, my
boy, will be nothing small, but great one
way or other, for good or else for bad." He
received reluctantly and carelessly instruc-
tions given him to improve his manners and
behavior, or to teach him any pleasing or
graceful accomplishment, but whatever
was said to improve him in sagacity, or
in management of affairs, he would give
attention to, beyond one of his years, from
confidence in his natural capacities for
such things. And thus afterwards, when
in company where people engage them-
selves in what are commonly thought the
liberal and elegant amusements, he was
obliged to defend himself against the ob-
servations of those who considered them-
selves highly accomplished, by the some-
what arrogant retort, that he certainly
could not make use of any stringed in-
strument, could only, were a small and
obscure city put into his hands, make it

310

BIOGRAPHY

great and glorious. Notwithstanding this,
Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was
a hearer of Anaxagoras, and that he
studied natural philosophy under Melissus,
contrary to chronology; Melissus com-
manded the Samians in the siege by Per-
icles, who was much Themistocles 's ju-
nior; and with Pericles, also, Anaxagoras
was intimate. They, therefore, might
rather be credited who report, that
Themistocles was an admirer of Mnes-
iphilus the Phrearrhian, who was neither
rhetorician nor natural philosopher, but
a professor of that which was then called
wisdom, consisting in a sort of political
shrewdness and practical sagacity, which
had begun and continued, almost like a
sect of philosophy, from Solon: but those
who came afterwards, and mixed it with
pleadings and legal artifices, and trans-
formed the practical part of it into a mere
art of speaking and an exercise of words,
were generally called sophists. Themis-
tocles resorted to Mnesiphilus when he
had already embarked in politics.

In the first essays of his youth he wks not
regular nor happily balanced; he allowed
himself to follow mere natural character,
which, without the control of reason and
instruction, is apt to hurry, upon either
side, into sudden and violent courses, and
very otten to break away and determine
upon the worst; as he afterwards owned
himself, saying, that the wildest colts make
the best horses, if they only get properly
trained and broken in. But those who
upon this fasten stories of their own inven-
tion, as of his being disowned by his father,
and that his mother died for grief of her
son's ill-fame, certainly calumniate him;
and there are others who relate, on the.
contrary, how that to deter him from pub-
lic business, and to let him see how the
vulgar behave themselves towards their
leaders when they have at last no farther
use of them, his father showed him the
old galleys as they lay forsaken and cast
about upon the sea-shore.

Yet it is evident that his mind was early
imbued with the keenest interest in public
affairs, and the most passionate ambition
for distinction. Eager from the first to

obtain the highest place, he unhesitat-
ingly accepted the hatred of the most
powerful and influential leaders in the
city, but more especially of Aristides, the
son of Lysimachus, who always opposed
him. And yet all this great enmity be-
tween them arose, it appears, from a very
boyish occasion, both being attached to
the beautiful Stesilaus of Ceos, as Ariston
the philosopher tells us; ever after which
they took opposite sides, and were rivals
in politics. Not but that the incom-
patibility of their lives and manners may
seem to have increased the difference, for
Aristides was of a mild nature, and of a
nobler sort of character, and, in public
matters, acting always with a view, not
to glory or popularity, but to the best
interest of the state consistently with
safety and honesty, he was often forced
to oppose Themistocles, and interfere
against the increase of his influence,
seeing him stirring up the people to all
kinds of enterprises, and introducing
various innovations. For it is said that
Themistocles was so transported with the
thoughts of glory, and so inflamed with
the passion for great actions, that, though
he was still young when the battle of
Marathon was fought against the Per-
sians, upon the skilful conduct of the gen-
eral, Miltiades, being everywhere talked
about, he was observed to be thoughtful
and reserved, alone by himself; he passed
the nights without sleep, and avoided all
his usual places of recreation, and to those
who wondered at the change, and inquired
the reason of it, he gave the answer, that
" the trophy of Miltiades would not let him
sleep." And when others were of opinion
that the battle of Marathon would be an
end to the war, Themistocles thought that
it was but the beginning of far greater
conflicts, and for these, to the benefit
of all Greece, he kept himself in continual
readiness, and his city also in proper train-
ing, foreseeing from far before what would
happen.

And, first of all, the Athenians being
accustomed to divide amongst them-
selves the revenue proceeding from the
silver mines at Laurium, he was the only

312

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

man that durst propose to the people that
this distribution should cease, and that
with the money ships should be built to
make war against the ^Eginetans, who
were the most flourishing people in all
Greece, and by the number of their ships
held the sovereignty of the sea; and
Themistocles thus was more easily able
to persuade them, avoiding all mention
of danger from Darius or the Persians,
who were at a great distance, and their
coming very uncertain, and at that time
not much to be feared; but by a seasonable
employment of the emulation and anger
felt by the Athenians against the ^Egine-
tans, he induced them to preparation.
So that with this money an hundred ships
were built, with which they afterwards
fought against Xerxes. And hencefor-
ward, little by little, turning and drawing
the city down towards the sea, in the belief
that, whereas by land they were not a fit
mftch for their next neighbors, with
their ships they might be able to repel
the Persians and command Greece, thus,
as Plato says, from steady soldiers he
turned them into mariners and seamen
tossed about the sea, and gave occasion
for the reproach against him, that he
took away from the Athenians the spear
and the shield, and bound them to the
bench and the oar. These measures he
carried in the assembly, against the oppo-
sition, as Stesimbrotus relates, of Mil-
tiades; and whether or no he hereby in-
jured the purity and true balance of gov-
ernment may be a question for philoso-
phers, but that the deliverance of Greece
came at that time from the sea, and that
these galleys restored Athens again after
it was destroyed, were others wanting,
Xerxes himself would be sufficient evi-
dence, who, though his land-forces were
still entire, after his defeat at sea, fled
away, and thought himself no longer able
to encounter the Greeks; and, as it seems
to me, left Mardonius behind him, not
out of any hopes he could have to bring
them into subjection, but to hinder them
from pursuing him.

Themistocles is said to have been eager
in the acquisition of riches, according to

some, that he might be the more liberal;
for loving to sacrifice often, and to be
splendid in his entertainment of strangers,
he required a plentiful revenue, yet he is
accused by others of having been par-
simonious and sordid to that degree that
he would sell provisions which were sent
to him as a present. He desired Diph-
ilides, who was a breeder of horses, to
give him a colt, and when he refused it,
threatened that in a short time he would
turn his house into a wooden horse, inti-
mating that he would stir up dispute and
litigation between him and some of his
relations.

He went beyond all men in the passion
for distinction. When he was still young
and unknown in the world, he entreated
Episcles of Hermione, who had a good
hand at the lute and was much sought
after by the Athenians, to come and prac-
tice at home with him, being ambitious
of having people inquire after his house
and frequent his company. When he
came to the Olympic games, and was so
splendid in his equipage and entertain-,
ments, in his rich tents and furniture,'
that he strove to outdo Cimon, he dis-
pleased the Greeks, who thought that
such magnificence might be allowed in
one who was a young man and of a great
family, but was a great piece of insolence
in one as yet undistinguished, and with-
out title or mtttns for making any such
display In a dramatic contest, the play
he paid for won the prize, which was then
a matter that excited much emulation
he put up a tablet in record of it, with th
inscription: "Themistocles of Phrearrh^
was at the charge of it; Phrynichus made
it; Adimantus was archon." He was well
liked by the common people, would salute
every particular citizen by his own name,
and always show himself a just judge
in questions of business between private
men; he said to Simonides, the poet of
Ceos, who desired something of him,
when he was commander of the army,
that was not reasonable, " Simonides,
you would be no good poet if you wrote
false measure, nor should I be a good mag-
istrate if for favor I made false law."

BIOGRAPHY

And atanother time, laughing atSimonides,
he said, that he was a man of little judg-
ment to speak against the Corinthians,
who were inhabitants of a great city, and
to have his own picture drawn so often,
having so ill-looking a face.

Gradually growing to be great, and
winning the favor of the people, he at
last gained the day with his faction over
that of Aristides, and procured his banish-
ment by ostracism. When the king of
Persia was now advancing against Greece,
and the Athenians were in consultation
who should be general, and many with-
drew themselves of their own accord,
being terrified with the greatness of the
danger, there was one Epicydes, a popular
speaker, son to Euphemides a man of an
elegant tongue, but of a faint heart, and
a slave to riches, who was desirous of
the command, and was looked upon to be
in a fair way to carry it by the number of
votes; but Themistocles, fearing that, if
the command should fall into such hands,
all would be lost, bought off Epicydes and
his pretensions, it is said, for a sum of
money.

When the king of Persia sent messen-
gers into Greece, with an interpreter, to
demand earth and water, as an acknowl-
edgement of subjection, Themistocles, by
the consent of the people, seized upon the
interpreter, and put him to death, for
presuming to publish the barbarian orders
and decrees in the Greek language; this
is one of the actions he is commended for,
as also for what he did to Arthmius of
Zelea, who brought gold from the king of
Persia to corrupt the Greeks, and was, by
an order from Themistocles, degraded and
disfranchised, he and his children and his
posterity; but that which most of all
redounded to his credit was, that he put
an end to all the civil wars of Greece,
composed their differences, and persuaded
them to lay aside all enmity during the
war with the Persians; and in this great
work, Chileus the Arcadian was, it is said,
of great assistance to him.

Having taken upon himself the com-
mand of the Athenian forces, he imme-
diately endeavored to persuade the citi-

zens to leave the city, and to embark upon
their galleys, and meet with the Persians
at a great distance from Greece ; but many
being against this, he led a large force,
together with the Lacedaemonians, into
Tempe, that in this pass they might main-
tain the safety of Thessaly, which had not
as yet declared for the king; but when they
returned without performing anything,
and it was known that not only the Thes-
salians, but all as far as Boeotia, was going
over to Xerxes, then the Athenians more
willingly hearkened to the advice of The-
mistocles to fight by sea, and sent him with
a fleet to guard the straits of Artemisium.

When the contingents met here, the
Greeks would have the Lacedaemonians
to command, and Eurybiades to be their
admiral; but the Athenians, who sur-
passed all the rest together in number of
vessels, would not submit to come after
any other, till Themistocles, perceiving
the danger of the contest, yielded his own
command to Eurybiades, and got the
Athenians to submit, extenuating the
loss by persuading them, that if in this
war they behaved themselves like men,
he would answer for it after that, that the
Greeks, of their own will, would submit to
their command. And by this moderation
of his, it is evident that he was the chief
means of the deliverance of Greece, and
gained the Athenians the glory of alike
surpassing their enemies in valor, and
then* confederates in wisdom.

As soon as the Persian armada arrived
at Aphetas, Eurybiades was astonished
to see such a vast number of vessels before
him, and being informed that two hun-
dred more were sailing around behind the
island of Sciathus, he immediately deter-
mined to retire farther into Greece, and to
sail back into some part of Peloponnesus,
where their land army and their fleet
might join, for he looked upon the Per-
sian forces to be altogether unassailable
by sea. But the Eubceans, fearing that
the Greeks would forsake them, and leave
them to the mercy of the enemy, sent
Pelagon to confer privately with The-
mistocles, taking with him a good sum of
money, which, as Herodotus reports, he

314

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

accepted and gave to Eurybiades. In
this affair none of his own countrymen
opposed him so much as Architeles, cap-
tain of the sacred galley, who, having no
money to supply his seamen, was eager to
go home; but Themistocles so incensed the
Athenians against him, that they set
upon him and left him not so much as his
supper, at which Architeles was much sur-
prised, and took it very ill; but Themis-
tocles immediately sent him in a chest a
service of provisions, and at the bottom
of it a talent of silver, desiring him to sup
to-night, and to-morrow provide for his
seamen; if not, he would report it among
the Athenians that he had received money
from the enemy. So Phanias the Les-
bian tells the story.

Though the fights between the Greeks
and Persians in the straits of Eubcea
were not so important as to make any
final decision of the war, yet the expe-
rience which the Greeks obtained in them
was of great advantage; for thus, by actual
trial and in real danger, they found out
that neither number of ships, nor riches
and ornaments, nor boasting shouts, nor
barbarous songs of victory, were any way
terrible to men that knew how to fight,
and were resolved to come hand to hand
with their enemies; these things they were
to despise, and to come up close and
grapple with their foes. This Pindar
appears to have seen, and says justly
enough of the fight at Artemisium, that

"There the sons of Athens set
The stone that freedom stands on yet."

For the first step towards victory un-
doubtedly is to gain courage. Arte-
misium is in Eubcea, beyond the city of
Histiaea, a sea-beach open to the north;
most nearly opposite to it stands Olizon,
in the country which formally was under
Philoctetes; there is a small temple there,
dedicated to Diana, surnamed of the Dawn,
and trees about it, around which again
stand pillars of white marble; and if you
rub them with your hand, they send forth
both the smell and color of saffron. On
one of these pillars these verses are en-
graved:

"With numerous tribes from Asia's region brought
The sons of Athens on these waters fought;
Erecting, after they had quelled the Mede,
To Artemis this record of the deed."

There is a place still to be seen upon this
shore, where, in the middle of a great heap
of sand, they take out from the bottom
a dark powder like ashes, or something
that has passed the fire; and here, it is
supposed, the shipwrecks . and bodies of
the dead were burnt.

But when news came from Thermopylae
to Artemisium informing them that king
Leonidas was slain, and that Xerxes had
made himself master of all the passages by
land, they returned back to the interior
of Greece, the Athenians having the com-
mand of the rear, the place of honor and
danger, and much elated by what had
been done.

As Themistocles sailed along the coasts,
he took notice of the harbors and fit
places for the enemy's ships to come to
land at, and engraved large letters in such
stones as he found there by chance, as also
in others which he set up on purpose near
to the landing-places, or where they were
to water; in which inscriptions he called
upon the lonians to forsake the Medes, if
it were possible, and to come over to the
Greeks, who were their proper founders
and fathers, and were now hazarding all
for their liberties; but, if this could not be
done, at any rate to impede and disturb
the Persians in all engagements. He
hoped that these writings would prevail
with the lonians to revolt, or raise some
trouble by making their fidelity doubtful
to the Persians.

Now, though Xerxes had already passed
through Doris and invaded the country
of Phocis, and was burning and destroy-
ing the cities of the Phocians, yet the
Greeks sent them no relief; and, though
the Athenians earnestly desired them
to meet the Persians in Bceotia, before
they could come into Attica, as they
themselves had come forward by sea at
Artemisium, they gave no ear to their re-
quests, being wholly intent upon Pelo-
ponnesus, and resolved to gather all their
forces together within the Isthmus, and

BIOGRAPHY

to build a wall from sea to sea in that nar-
row neck of land; so that the Athenians
were enraged to see themselves betrayed,
and at the same time afflicted and dejected
at their own destitution. For to fight
alone against such a numerous army was
to no purpose, and the only expedient
now left them was to leave their city and
cling to their ships; which the people
were very unwilling to submit to, imagin-
ing that it would signify little now to gain
a victory, and not understanding how
there could be deliverance any longer after
they had once forsaken the temples of their
gods and exposed the tombs and monu-
ments of their ancestors to the fury of
their enemies.

Themistocles, being at a loss, and not
able to draw the people over to his opinion
by any human reason, set his machines to
work, as in a theater, and employed prod-
igies and oracles. The serpent of Mi-
nerva, kept in the inner part of her temple,
disappeared; the priest gave it out to the
people that the offerings which were set
for it were found untouched, and declared,
by the suggestion of Themistocles, that
the goddess had left the city, and taken
her flight before them towards the sea.
And he often urged them with the oracle
which bade them trust to walls of wood,
showing them that walls of wood could
signify nothing else but ships; and that
the island of Salamis was termed in it, not
miserable or unhappy, but had the epithet
of divine, for that it should one day be
associated with a great good fortune of the
Greeks. At length his opinion prevailed,
and he obtained a decree that the city
should be committed to the protection
of Minerva, "Queen of Athens;" that they
who were of age to bear arms should em-
bark, and that each should see to sending
away his children, women, and slaves
where he could. This decree being con-
firmed, most of the Athenians removed
their parents, wives, and children to
Trcezen, where they were received with
eager good-will by the Troezenians, who
passed a vote that they should be main-
tained at the public charge, by a daily
payment of two obols to every one, and

leave be given to the children to gather
fruit where they pleased, and school-
masters paid to instruct them. This
vote was proposed by Nicagoras.

There was no public treasure at that
time in Athens; but the council of Areo-
pagus, as Aristotle says, distributed to
every one that served eight drachmas,
which was a great help to the manning of
the fleet; but Clidemus ascribes this also
to the art of Themistocles. When the
Athenians were on their way down to the
haven of Piraeus, the shield with the head
of Medusa was missing; and he, under the
pretext of searching for it, ransacked all
places, and found among their goods con-
siderable sums of money concealed, which
he applied to the public use; and with this
the soldiers and seamen were well provided
for their voyage.

When the whole city of Athens were
going on board, it afforded a spectacle
worthy alike of pity and admiration, to
see them thus send away their fathers and
children before them, and, unmoved with
their cries and tears, pass over into the
island. But that which stirred compassion
most of all was, that many old men, by
reason of their great age, were left behind;
and even the tame domestic animals could
not be seen without some pity, running
about the town and howling, as desirous
to be carried along with their masters that
hi d kept them; among which it is reported
that Xanthippus, the father of Pericles,
had a dog that would not endure to stay
behind, but leaped into the sea, and swam
along by the galley's side till he came to
the island of Salamis, where he fainted
away and died, and that spot in the island,
which is still called the Dog's Grave, is
said to be his.

Among the great actions of Themis-
tocles at this crisis, the recall of Aris-
tides was not the least, for, before the war,
he had been ostracised by the party which
Themistocles headed, and was in banish-
ment; but now, perceiving that the people
regretted his absence, and were fearful
that he might go over to the Persians to
revenge himself, and thereby ruin the
affairs of Greece, Themistocles proposed

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

a decree that those who were banished for
a time might return again, to give assist-
ance by word and deed to the cause of
Greece with the rest of their fellow-citizens.
Eurybiades, by reason of the greatness
of Sparta, was admiral of the Greek fleet,
but yet was faint-hearted in time of dan-
ger, and willing to weigh anchor and set
sail for the isthmus of Corinth, near which
the land army lay encamped; which
Themistocles resisted; and this was the
occasion of the well-known words, when
Eurybiades, to check his impatience, told
him that at the Olympic games they that
start up before the rest are lashed; "And
they," replied Themistocles, "that are
left behind are not crowned." Again,
Eurybiades lifting up his staff as if he
were going to strike, Themistocles said,
"Strike if you will, but hear;" Eurybiades,
wondering much at his moderation, de-
sired him to speak, and Themistocles
now brought him to a better understand-
ing. And when one who stood by him
told Him that it did not become those who
had neither city nor house to lose, to per-
suade others to relinquish their habita-
tions and forsake their countries, The-
mistocles gave this reply: "We have indeed
left our houses and our walls, base fellow,
not thinking it fit to become slaves for the
sake of things that have no life nor soul;
and yet our city is the greatest of all
Greece, consisting of two hundred galleys,
which are here to defend you, if you please;
but if you run away and betray us, as you
did once before, the Greeks shall soon hear
news of the Athenians possessing as fair a
country, and as large and free a city, as
that they have lost." These expressions
of Themistocles made Eurybiades suspect
that if he retreated the Athenians would
fall off from him. When one of Eretria
began to oppose him, he said, "Have you
anything to say of war, that are like an
ink-fish? you have a sword, but no heart."
Some say that while Themistocles was
thus speaking upon the deck, an owl was
seen flying to the right hand of the fleet,
which came and sate upon the top of the
mast; and this happy omen so far dis-
posed the Greeks to follow his advice,

that they presently prepared to fight.
Yet, when the enemy's fleet was arrived
at the haven of Phalerum, upon the coast
of Attica, and with the number of their
ships concealed all the shore, and when
they saw the king himself in person come
down with his land army to the seaside,
with all his forces united, then the good
counsel of Themistocles was soon for-
gotten, and the Peloponnesians cast their
eyes again towards the isthmus, and took
it very ill if any one spoke against their
returning home; and, resolving to depart
that night, the pilots had orders what
course to steer.

Themistocles, in great distress that the
Greeks should retire, and lose the advan-
tage of the narrow seas and strait passage,
and slip home every one to his own city,
considered with himself, and contrived
that stratagem that was carried out by
Sicinnus. This Sicinnus was a Persian
captive, but a great lover of Themis-
tocles, and the attendant of his children.
Upon this occasion, he sent him privately
to Xerxes, commanding him to tell the
king that Themistocles, the admiral of the
Athenians, having espoused his interest,
wished to be the first to inform him that
the Greeks were ready to make their
escape, and that he counselled him to
hinder their flight, to set upon them while
they were in this confusion and at a dis-
tance from their land army, and hereby
destroy all their forces by sea. Xerxes
was very joyful at this message, and re-
ceived it as from one who wished him all
that was good, and immediately issued
instructions to the commanders of his
ships, that they should instantly set out
with two hundred galleys to encompass
all the islands, and enclose all the straits
and passages, that none of the Greeks
might escape, and that they should after-
wards follow with the rest of their fleet
at leisure. This being done, Aristides,
the son of Lysimachus, was the first man
that perceived it, and went to the tent of
Themistocles, not out of any friendship,
for he had been formerly banished by his
means, as has been related, but to inform
him how they were encompassed by their

BIOGRAPHY

317

enemies. Themistocles, knowing the gene-
rosity of Artistides, and much struck by
his visit at that time, imparted to him all
that he had transacted by Sicinnus, and
entreated him that, as he would be more
readily believed among the Greeks, he
would make use of his credit to help to
induce them to stay and fight their enemies
in the narrow seas. Aristides applauded
Themistocles, and went to the other com-
manders and captains of the galleys, and
encouraged them to engage; yet they did
not perfectly assent to him, till a galley
of Tenos, which deserted from the Persians,
of which Panaetius was commander, came
in, while they were still doubting, and con-
firmed the news that all the straits and
passages were beset; and then their rage
and fury, as well as their necessity, pro-
voked them all to fight.

As soon as it was day, Xerxes placed
himself high up, to view his fleet, and how
it was set in order. Phanodemus says, he
sat upon a promontory above the temple
of Hercules, where the coast of Attica is
separated from the island by a narrow
channel; but Acestodorus writes, that it
was in the confines of Megara, upon those
hills which are called the Horns, where he
sat in a chair of gold, with many secre-
taries about him to write down all that
was done in the fight.

When Themistocles was about to sacri-
fice, close to the admiral's galley, there
were three prisoners brought to him, fine
looking men, and richly dressed in orna-
mented clothing and gold, said to be the
children of Artayctes and Sandauce, sister
to Xerxes. As soon as the prophet Eu-
phrantides saw them, and observed that at
the same time the fire blazed out from the
offerings with a more than ordinary flame,
and a man sneezed on the right, which
was an intimation of a fortunate event,
he took Themistocles by the hand, and
bade him consecrate the three young men
for sacrifice, and offer them up with
prayers for victory to Bacchus the Devour-
er; so should the Greeks not only save
themselves, but also obtain victory. The-
mistocles was much disturbed at this
strange and terrible prophecy, but the

common people, who in any difficult
crisis and great exigency ever look for
relief rather to strange and extravagant
than to reasonable means, calling upon
Bacchus with one voice, led the captives
to the altar, and compelled the execution
of the sacrifice as the prophet had com-
manded. This is reported by Phanias
the Lesbian, a philosopher well read in
history.

The number of the enemy's ships the
poet ^schylus gives in his tragedy called
the Persians, as on his certain knowledge,
in the following words :

"Xerxes, I know, did into battle lead
One thousand ships; of more than usual speed
Seven and two hundred. So it is agreed."

The Athenians had a hundred and eighty;
in every ship eighteen men fought upon
the deck, four of whom were archers and
the rest men at arms.

As Themistocles had fixed upon the
most advantageous place, so, with no less
sagacity, he chose the best time of fight-
ing; for he would not run the prows
of his galleys against the Persians, nor
begin the fight till the time of day was
come, when there regularly blows in a
fresh breeze from the open sea, and brings
in with it a strong swell into the channel;
which was no inconvenience to the Greek
ships, which were low-built, and little
above the water, but did much to hurt
the Persians, which had high sterns and
lofty decks, and were heavy and cumbrous
in their movements, as it presented them
broadside to the quick charges of the
Greeks, who kept their eyes upon the
motions of Themistocles, as their best
example, and more particularly because,
opposed to his ship, Ariamenes, admiral
to Xerxes, a brave man and by far the
best and worthiest of the king's brothers,
was seen throwing darts and shooting
arrows from his huge galley, as from the
walls of a castle. Aminias the Decelean
and Sosicles the Pedian, who sailed in the
same vessel, upon the ships meeting stem
to stem, and transfixing each the other
with their brazen prows, so that they were
fastened together, when Ariamenes at-

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tempted to board theirs, ran at him with
their pikes, and thrust him into the sea;
his body, as it floated amongst other
shipwrecks, was known to Artemisia, and
carried to Xerxes.

It is reported that, in the middle of the
fight, a great flame rose into the air above
the city of Eleusis, and that sounds and
voices were heard through all the Thria-
sian plain, as far as the sea, sounding like a
number of men accompanying and escort-
ing the mystic lacchus, and that a mist
seemed to form and rise from the place
from whence the sounds came, and, pass-
ing forward, fell upon the galleys.
Others believed that they saw apparitions,
in the shape of armed men, reaching out
their hands from the island of ^Egina
before the Grecian galleys; and supposed
they were the ^Eacidae, whom they had
invoked to their aid before the battle.
The first man that took a ship was Ly-
comedes the Athenian, cap tain of the galley,
who cut down its ensign, and dedicated
it to Apollo the Laurel-crowned. And
as the Persians fought in a narrow arm
of the sea, and could bring but part of
their fleet to fight, and fell foul of one
another, the Greeks thus equaled them
in strength, and fought with them till the
evening forced them back, and obtained,
as says Simonides, that noble and famous
victory, than which neither amongst the
Greeks nor barbarians was ever known
more glorious exploit on the seas; by the
joint valor, indeed, and zeal of all who
fought, but by the wisdom and sagacity
of Themistocles.

After this sea-fight, Xerxes, enraged at
his ill-fortune, attempted, by casting
great heaps of earth and stones into the
sea, to stop up the channel and to make
a dam, upon which he might lead his land-
forces over into the island of Salamis.

Themistocles, being desirous to try
the opinion of Aristides, told him that he
proposed to set sail for the Hellespont,
to break the bridge of ships, so as to shut
up, he said, Asia a prisoner within Europe;
but Aristides, disliking the design, said:
"We have hitherto fought with an enemy
who has regarded little else but his pleas-

ure and luxury; but if we shut him up
within Greece, and drive him to necessity,
he that is master of such great forces will
no longer sit quietly with an umbrella of
gold over his head, looking upon the fight
for his pleasure; but in such a strait will
attempt all things; he will be resolute
and appear himself in person upon all
occasions, he will soon correct his errors,
and supply what he has formerly omitted
through remissness, and will be better
advised in all things. Therefore, it is
noways our interest, Themistocles," he
said, "to take away the bridge that is
already made, but rather to build another,
if it were possible, that he might make his
retreat with the more expedition." To
which Themistocles answered: "If this
be requisite, we must immediately use all
diligence, art, and industry, to rid our-
selves of him as soon as may be;" and to
this purpose he found out among the cap-
tives one of the King of Persia's eunuchs,
named Arnaces, whom he sent to the king,
to inform him that the Greeks, being now
victorious by sea, had decreed to sail to
the Hellespont, where the boats were
fastened together, and destroy the bridge;
but that Themistocles, being concerned
for the king, revealed this to him, that he
might hasten towards the Asiatic seas,
and pass over into his own dominions;
and in the meantime would cause delays
and hinder the confederates from pursuing
him. Xerxes no sooner heard this, but,
being very much terrified, he proceeded
to retreat out of Greece with all speed.
The prudence of Themistocles and Aris-
tides in this was afterwards more fully
understood at the battle of Plataea, where
Mardonius, with a very small fraction
of the forces of Xerxes, put the Greeks in
danger of losing all.

Herodotus writes, that of all the cities 01
Greece, ^Egina was held to have performed
the best service in the war ; while all single
men yielded to Themistocles, though, out
of envy, unwillingly; and when they re-
turned to the entrance of Peloponnesus,
where the several commanders delivered
their suffrages at the altar, to determine
who was most worthy, every one gave the

BIOGRAPHY

first vote for himself and the second for
Themistocles. The Lacedaemonians car-
ried him with them to Sparta, where, giv-
ing the rewards of valor to Eurybiades,
and of wisdom and conduct to Themis-
tocles, they crowned him with olive, pre-
sented him with the best chariot in the
city, and sent three hundred young men to
accompany him to the confines of their
country. And at the next Olympic games,
when Themistocles entered the course,
the spectators took no farther notice of
those who were contesting the prizes,
but spent the whole day in looking upon
him, showing him to the strangers, ad-
miring him, and applauding him by clap-
ping their hands, and other expressions of
joy, so that he himself, much gratified,
confessed to his friends that he then reaped
the fruit of all his labors for the Greeks.

He was, indeed, by nature, a great lover
of honor, as is evident from the anecdotes
recorded of him. When chosen admiral
by the Athenians, he would not quite con-
clude any single matter of business,
either public or private, but deferred all
till the day they were to set sail, that, by
despatching a great quantity of business
all at once, and having to meet a great
variety of people, he might make an ap-
pearance of greatness and power. View-
ing the dead bodies cast up by the sea,
he perceived brace 1 ets and necklaces of
gold about them, yet passed on, only
showing them to a friend that followed him,
saying, "Take you these things, for you
are not Themistocles." He said to Anti-
phates, a handsome young man, who had
formerly avoided, but now in his glory
courted him, "Time, young man, has
taught us both a lesson." He said that
the Athenians did not honor him or admire
him, but made, as it were, a sort of plane-
tree of him; sheltered themselves under
him in bad weather, and as soon as it
was fine, plucked his leaves and cut his
branches. When the Seriphian told him
that he had not obtained this honor by
himself, but by the greatness of the city,
he replied, "You speak truth; I should
never have been famous if I had been of
Seriphus; nor you, had you been of

Athens." When another of the generals,
who thought he had performed consider-
able service for the Athenians, boastingly
compared his actions with those of The-
mistocles, he told him that once upon a
time the Day after the Festival found fault
with the Festival: "On you there is
nothing but hurry and trouble and prep-
aration, but, when I come, everybody
sits down quietly and enjoys himself;"
which the Festival admitted was true, but
"if I had not come first, you would not
have come at all." "Even so," he said,
"if Themistocles had not come before,
where had you been now?" Laughing
at his own son, who got his mother, and,
by his mother's means, his father also,
to indulge him, he told him that he had
the most power of any one in Greece:
" For the Athenians command the rest of
Greece, I command the Athenians, your
mother commands me, and you command
your mother." Loving to be singular in
all things, when he had land to sell, he
ordered the crier to give notice that there
were good neighbors near it. Of two
who made love to his daughter, he pre-
ferred the man of worth to the one who
was rich, saying he desired a man without
riches, rather than riches without a man.
Such was the character of his sayings.

After these things, he began to rebuild
and fortify the city of Athens, bribing,
as Theopompus reports, the Lacedae-
monian ephors not to be against it, but,
as most relate it, overreaching and deceiv-
ing them. For, under the pretext of an
embassy, he went to Sparta, whereupon
the Lacedaemonians charging him with
rebuilding the walls, and Poliarchus com-
ing on purpose from ;gina to denounce
it, he denied the fact, bidding them to
send people to Athens to see whether it
were so or no; by which delay he got time
for the building of the wall, and also
placed these ambassadors in the hands of
his countrymen as hostages for him; and
so, when the Lacedaemonians knew the
truth, they did him no hurt, but, suppress-
ing all display of their anger for the present,
sent him away.

Next he proceeded to establish the bar-

320

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

bor of Piraeus, observing the great nat-
ural advantages of the locality, and desir-
ous to unite the whole city with the sea,
and to reverse, in a manner, the policy
of ancient Athenian kings, who, endeavor-
ing to withdraw their subjects from the
sea, and to accustom them to live, not by
sailing about, but by planting and tilling
the earth, spread the story of the dispute
between Minerva and Neptune for the
sovereignty of Athens, in which Minerva,
by producing to the judges an olive-tree,
was declared to have won; whereas The-
mistocles did not only knead up, as Aris-
tophanes says, the port and the city into
one, but made the city absolutely the
dependant and the adjunct of the port,
and the land of the sea, which increased
the power and confidence of the people
against the nobility; the authority coming
into the hands of sailors and boatswains
and pilots. Thus it was one of the orders
of the thirty tyrants, that the hustings
in the assembly, which had faced towards
the sea, should be turned round towards
the land; implying their opinion that the
empire by sea had been the origin of the
democracy, and that the farming popula-
tion were not so much opposed to oligarchy.
Themistocles, however, formed yet
higher designs with a view to naval su-
premacy. For, after the departure of
Xerxes, when the Grecian fleet was ar-
rived at Pagasae, where they wintered,
Themistocles, in a public oration to the
people of Athens, told them that he had a
design to perform something that would
tend greatly to their interests and safety,
but was of such a nature that it could not
be made generally public. The Athen-
ians ordered him to impart it to Aris-
tides only; and, if he approved of it, to
put it in practice. And when Themis-
tocles had discovered to him that his
design was to burn the Grecian fleet in
the haven of Pagasas, Artistides coming
out to the people, gave this report of the
stratagem contrived by Themistocles,
that no proposal could be more politic,
or more dishonorable; on which the
Athenians commanded Themistocles to
think no farther of it

When the Lacedaemonians proposed,
at the general council of the Amphicty-
onians, that the representative of those
cities which were not in the league, nor
had fought against the Persians, should be
excluded, Themistocles, fearing that the
Thessalians, with those of Thebes, Argos,
and others, being thrown out of the coun-
cil, the Lacedaemonians would become
wholly masters of the votes, and do what
they pleased, supported the deputies of
the cities, and prevailed with the members
then sitting to alter their opinion on this
point, showing them that there were but
one-and-thirty cities which had partaken in
the war, and that most of these, also, were
very small; how intolerable would it be,
if the rest of Greece should be excluded,
and the general council should come to be
ruled by two or three great cities. By
this, chiefly, he incurred the displeasure
of the Lacedaemonians, whose honors and
favors were now shown to Cimon, with
a view to making him the opponent of the
State policy of Themistocles.

He was also burdensome to the confed-
erates, sailing about the islands and col
lecting money from them. Herodotus says,,
that, requiring money of those of the is-
land of Andros, he told them that he
had brought with him two goddesses,
Persuasion and Force; and they answered
him that they had also two great god-
desses, which prohibited them from giving
him any money, Poverty and Impos-
sibility. Timocreon, the Rhodian poet,
reprehends him somewhat bitterly for
being wrought upon by money to let
some who were banished return, while
abandoning himself, who was his guest
and friend. The verses are these:

"Pausanias you may praise, and Xanthippus, he

be for,

For Leutychidas, a third; Aristides, I proclaim,
From the sacred Athens came,
The one true man of all; for Themistocles Latona

doth abhor,

The liar, traitor, cheat, who to gain his filthy pay,
Timocreon, his friend, neglected to restore
To his native Rhodian shore;
Three silver talents took, and departed (curses

with him) on his way,
Restoring people here, expelling there, and killing

here.

BIOGRAPHY

321

Filling evermore his purse: and at the Isthmus

gave a treat,

To be laughed at, of cold meat,
Which they ate, and prayed the gods some one

else might give the feast another year."

But after the sentence and banishment

of Themistocles, Timocreon reviles him

yet more immoderately and wildly in a
poem that begins thus:

"Unto all the Greeks repair,
O Muse, and tell these verses there,
As is fitting and is fair."

The story is, that it was put to the question
whether Timocreon should be banished
for siding with the Persians, and Themis-
tocles gave his vote against him. So
when Themistocles was accused of in-
triguing with the Medes, Timocreon made
these lines upon him:

" So now Timocreon, indeed, is not the sole friend

of the Mede,
There are some knaves besides; nor is it only

mine that fails,
But other foxes have lost tails. "

When the citizens of Athens began to
listen willingly to those who traduced and
reproached him, he was forced, with some-
what obnoxious frequency, to put them in
mind of the great services he had per-
formed, and ask those who were offended
with him whether they were weary with
receiving benefits often from the same per-
sons, so rendering himself more odious.
And he yet more provoked the people by
building a temple to Diana with the epi-
thet of Aristobule, or Diana of Best Coun-
sel; intimating thereby, that he had given
the best counsel, not only to the Athen-
ians, but to all Greece. He built this
temple near his own house, in the dis-
trict called Melite, where now the public
officers carry out the bodies of such as are
executed, and throw the halters and
clothes of those that are strangled or
otherwise put to death. There is to this
day a small figure of Themistocles in the
temple of Diana of Best Counsel, which
represents him to be a person not only of a
noble mind, but also of a most heroic
aspect. At length the Athenians ban-

ished him, making use of the ostracism to
humble his eminence and authority, as
they ordinarily did with all whom they
thought too powerful, or, by their great-
ness, disproportionable to the equality
thought requisite in a popular govern-
ment. For the ostracism was instituted,
not so much to punish the offender, as to
mitigate and pacify the violence of the
envious, who delighted to humble emi-
nent men, and who, by fixing this dis-
grace upon them, might vent some part
of their rancor.

Themistocles being banished from Ath-
ens, while he stayed at Argos the detection
of Pausanias happened, which gave such
advantage to his enemies, that Leobotes
of Agraule, son of Alcmaeon, indicted him
of treason, the Spartans supporting him
in the accusation.

When Pausanias went about this trea-
sonable design, he concealed it at first
from Themistocles, though he were his
intimate friend; but when he saw him
expelled out of the commonwealth, and
how impatiently he took his banishment,
he ventured to communicate it to him,
and desired his assistance, showing him
the King of Persia's letters, and exasperat-
ing him against the Greeks, as a villain-
ous, ungrateful people. However, The-
mistocles immediately rejected the pro-
posals of Pausanias, and wholly refused to
be a party in the enterprise, though he
never revealed his communications, nor dis-
closed the conspiracy to any man, either
hoping that Pausanias would desist from
his intentions, or expecting that so incon-
siderate an attempt after such chimerical
objects would be discovered by other
means.

After that Pausanias was put to death,
letters and writings being found concern-
ing this matter, which rendered Themis-
tocles suspected, the Lacedaemonians were
clamorous against him, and his enemies
among the Athenians accused him; when,
being absent from Athens, he made his
defence by letters, especially against the
points that had been previously alleged
against him. In answer to the malicious
detractions of his enemies, he merely

322

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

wrote to the citizens, urging that he who
was always ambitious to govern, and not
of a character or a disposition to serve,
would never sell himself and his country
into slavery to a barbarous and hostile
nation.

Notwithstanding this, the people, being
persuaded by his accusers, sent officers to
take him and bring him away to be tried
before a council of the Greeks, but, hav-
ing timely notice of it, he passed over into
the island of Corcyra, where the state
was under obligations to him; for, being
chosen as arbitrator in a difference be-
tween them and the Corinthians, he de-
cided the controversy by ordering the
Corinthians to pay down twenty talents,
and declaring the town and island of
Leucas a joint colony from both cities.
From thence he fled into Epirus, and the
Athenians and Lacedaemonians still pur-
suing him, he threw himself upon chances
of safety that seemed all but desperate.
For he fled for refuge to Admetus, king
of the Molossians, who had formerly
made some request to the Athenians, when
Themistocles was in the height of his
authority, and had been disdainfully
used and insulted by him, and had let it
appear plain enough, that, could he lay
hold of him, he would take his revenge.
Yet in this misfortune, Themistocles,
fearing the recent hatred of his neighbors
and fellow-citizens more than the old dis-
pleasure of the king, put himself at his
mercy and became an humble suppliant
to Admetus, after a peculiar manner dif-
ferent from the custom of other countries.
For taking the king's son, who was then a
child, in his arms, he laid himself down at
his hearth, this being the most sacred
and only manner of supplication among
the Molossians, which was not to be re-
fused. And some say that his wife, Phthia,
intimated to Themistocles this way of
petitioning, and placed her young son
with him before the hearth; others, that
King Admetus, that he might be under a
religious obligation not to deliver him up to
his pursuers, prepared and enacted with

him a sort of stage-play to this effect.
At this tune Epicrates of Acharnae pri-
vately conveyed his wife and children out
of Athens, and sent them hither, for which
afterwards Cimon condemned him and
put him to death; as Stesimbrotus re-
ports, and yet somehow, either forgetting
this himself, or making Themistocles to
be little mindful of it, says presently that
he sailed into Sicily, and desired hi mar-
riage the daughter of Hiero, tyrant of
Syracuse, promising to bring the Greeks
under his power; and, on Hiero refusing
him, departed thence into Asia; but this is
not probable.

For Theophrastus writes, in his work
on Monarchy, that when Hiero sent race-
horses to the Olympian games, and
erected a pavilion sumptuously furnished,
Themistocles made an oration to the
Greeks, inciting them to pull down the
tyrant's tent, and not to suffer his horse?
to run. Thucydides says, that, passing
overland to the ^Egasan Sea, he took ship
at Pydna in the bay Therme, not being
known to any one in the ship, till, being
terrified to see the vessel driven by the
winds near to Naxos, which was then
besieged by the Athenians, he made him-
self known to the master and pilot, and
partly entreating them, partly threatening
that if they went on shore he would accuse
them, and make the Athenians to believe
that they did not take him in out of igno-
rance, but that he had corrupted them with
money from the beginning, he compelled
them to bear off and stand out to sea, and
sail forward towards the coast of Asia.

A great part of his estate was privately
conveyed away by his friends, and sent
after him by sea into Asia; besides which,
there was discovered and confiscated to
the value of fourscore talents, as Theo-
phrastus writes; Theopompus says an
hundred; though Themistocles was never
worth three talents before he was con-
cerned hi public affairs.

[The remainder of the Life recounts his sojourn
at the Persian court until his death.]

BIOGRAPHY

323

THOMAS FULLER (1608-1661)

THE HOLY STATE

BOOK H, CHAPTER XXH

THE LIFE OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

FRANCIS DRAKE was born nigh South
Tavistock in Devonshire, and brought up
in Kent; God dividing the honor betwixt
two counties, that the one might have his
birth, and the other his education. His
father, being a minister, fled into Kent,
for fear of the Six Articles, wherein the
sting of Popery still remained in England,
though the teeth thereof were knocked
out, and the Pope's supremacy abolished.
Coming into Kent, he bound his son
Francis apprentice to the master of a small
bark, which traded into France and Zea-
land, where he underwent a hard service;
and pains, with patience in his youth, did
knit the joints of his soul, and made them
more solid and compacted. His master,
dying unmarried, in reward of his industry,
bequeathed his bark unto him for a legacy.

For some time he continued his mas-
ter's profession; but the narrow seas were
a prison for so large a spirit, born for
greater undertakings. He soon grew
weary of his bark; which would scarce
go alone, but as it crept along by the
shore: wherefore, selling it, he unfortu-
nately ventured most of his estate with
Captain John Hawkins into the West
Indies, in 1567; whose goods were taken
by the Spaniards at St. John de Ulva, and
he himself scarce escaped with life: the
King of Spain being so tender in those
parts, that the least touch doth wound
him; and so jealous of the West Indies,
his wife, that willingly he would have
none look upon her: he therefore used
them with the greater severity.

Drake was persuaded by the minister
of his ship, that he might lawfully recover
in value of the King of Spain, and repair
his losses upon him anywhere else. The
case was clear in sea-divinity; and few are
such infidels, as not to believe doctrines
which make for their own profit. Where-

upon Drake, though a poor private man,
hereafter undertook to revenge himself
on so mighty a monarch; who, as not con-
tented that the sun riseth and setteth in
his dominions, may seem to desire to
make all his own where he shineth. And
now let us see how a dwarf, standing on
the mount of God's providence, may
prove an overmatch for a giant.

After two or three several voyages to
gain intelligence in the West Indies, and
some prizes taken, at last he effectually
set forward from Plymouth with two ships,
the one of seventy, the other twenty-five
tons, and seventy-three men and boys in
both. He made with all speed and
secrecy to Nombre de Dios, as loath to
put the town to too much charge (which
he knew they would willingly bestow)
in providing beforehand for his entertain-
ment; which city was then the granary of
the West Indies, wherein the golden
harvest brought from Panama was hoard-
ed up till it could be conveyed into Spain.
They came hard aboard the shore, and
lay quiet all night, intending to attempt
the town in the dawning of the day.

But he was forced to alter his resolution,
and assault it sooner; for he heard his
men muttering amongst themselves of the
strength and greatness of the town: and
when men's heads are once fly-blown with
buzzes of suspicion, the vermin multiply
instantly, and one jealousy begets another.
Wherefore, he raised them from their
nest before they had hatched their fears;
and, to put away those conceits, he per-
suaded them it was day-dawning when the
moon rose, and instantly set on the town,
and won it, being unwalled. In the
market-place the Spaniards saluted them
with a volley of shot; Drake returned
their greeting with a flight of arrows, the
best and ancient English compliment,
which drave their enemies away. Here
Drake received a dangerous wound,
though he valiantly concealed it a long
time; knowing if his heart stooped, his
men's would fall, and loath to leave off

324

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the action, wherein if so bright an oppor-
tunity once setteth, it seldom riseth again.
But at length his men forced him to return
to his ship, that his wound might be
dressed; and this unhappy accident de-
feated the whole design. Thus victory
sometimes slips through their fingers who
have caught it in their hands.

But his valor would not let him give
over the project as long as there was
either life or warmth in it; and therefore,
having received intelligence from the ne-
groes called Symerons, of many mules'-
lading of gold and silver, which was to
be brought from Panama, he, leaving
competent numbers to man his ship,
went on land with the rest, and bestowed
himself hi the woods by the way as they
were to pass, and so intercepted and car-
ried away an infinite mass of gold. As
for the silver, which was not portable over
the mountains, they digged holes hi the
ground and hid it therein.

There want not those who love to beat
down the price of every honorable action,
though they themselves never mean to be
chapmen. These cry up Drake's for-
tune herein to cry down his valor; as if
this his performance were nothing, wherein
a golden opportunity ran his head, with
his long forelock, into Drake's hands be-
yond expectation. But, certainly, his
resolution and unconquerable patience
deserved much praise, to adventure on
such a design, which had in it just no
more probability than what was enough
to keep it from being impossible. Yet
I admire not so much at ah 1 the treasure
he took, as at the rich and deep mine of
God's providence.

Having now full freighted himself with
wealth, and burnt at the House of Crosses
above two hundred thousand pounds'
worth of Spanish merchandise, he re-
turned with honor and safety into Eng-
land, and, some years after (December
i3th, 1577) undertook that his famous
voyage about the world, most accurately
described by our English authors: and
yet a word or two thereof will not be
amiss.

Setting forward from Plymouth, he

bore up for Cabo-verd, where, near to the
island of St. Jago, he took prisoner Nuno
de Silva, an experienced Spanish pilot,
whose direction he used in the coasts
of Brazil and Magellan Straits, and
afterwards safely landed him at Gua-
tulco in New Spain. Hence they took
their course to the Island of Brava; and
hereabouts they met with those tempes-
tuous winds whose only praise is, that they
continue not an hour, in which time they
change all the points of the compass.
Here they had great plenty of rain,
poured (not, as in other places, as it were
out of sieves, but) as out of spouts, so
that a butt of water falls down in a place ;
which, notwithstanding, is but a courteous
injury in that hot climate far from land,
and where otherwise fresh water cannot
be provided. Then cutting the Line,
they saw the face of that heaven which
earth hideth from us, but therein only
three stars of the first greatness, the rest
few and small compared to our hemis-
phere; as if God, on purpose, had set up
the best and biggest candles in that room
wherein his civilest guests are entertained.

Sailing the south of Brazil, he after-
wards passed the Magellan Straits (Au-
gust aoth, 1578) and then entered Mare
Pacificum [the Pacific Ocean], came to the
southernmost land at the height of 55^
latitudes; thence directing his course
northward, he pillaged many Spanish
towns, and took rich prizes of high value
in the kingdoms of Chili, Peru, and New
Spain. Then, bending westwards, he
coasted China, and the Moluccas, where,
by the king of Terrenate, a true gen-
tleman Pagan, he was most honorably
entertained. The king told them, they
and he were all of one religion in this
respect, that they believed not in gods
made of stocks and stones, as did the
Portugals. He furnished them also with
all necessaries that they wanted.

On January gth following (1579), his
ship, having a large wind and a smooth
sea, ran aground on a dangerous shoal,
and struck twice on it; knocking twice
at the door of death, which, no doubt,
had opened the third tune. Here they

BIOGRAPHY

325

stuck, from eight o'clock at night till four
the next afternoon, having ground too
much, and yet too little to land on; and
water too much, and yet too little to sail in.
Had God (who, as the wise man saitb/'hold-
eth the winds in his fist," Prov. xxx.4) but
opened his little finger, and let out the
smallest blast, they had undoubte<lly been
cast away; but there blew not any wind
all the while. Then they, conceiving
aright that the best way to lighten the
ship was, first, to ease it of the burden of
their sins by true repentance, humbled
themselves, by fasting, under the hand of
God. Afterwards they received the com-
munion, dining on Christ in the sacra-
ment, expecting no other than to sup with
him in heaven. Then they cast out of
their ship six great pieces of ordnance,
threw overboard as much wealth as
would break the heart of a miser to think
on it, with much sugar, and packs of
spices, making a caudle of the sea round
about. Then they betook themselves to
their prayers, the best lever at such a
dead lift indeed; and it pleased God, that
the wind, formerly their mortal enemy,
became their friend; which, changing
from the starboard to the larboard of
the ship, and rising by degrees, cleared
them off to the sea again, for which
they returned unfeigned thanks to Al-
mighty God.

By the Cape of Good Hope and west
ot Africa, he returned safe into England,
and (November 3rd, 1580) landed at
Plymouth (being almost the first of those
that made a thorough light through the
world), having, hi his whole voyage,
though a curious searcher after the time,
lost one day through the variation of
several climates. He feasted the queen
in his ship at Dartford, who knighted
him for his service. Yet it grieved him
not a little, that some prime courtiers
refused the gold he offered them, as gotten
by piracy. Some of them would have been
loath to have been told, that they had aurum
Tholosanum [gold of Spain] in their own
purses. Some think, that they did it
to show that their envious pride was above
their covetousness, who of set purpose did

blur the fair copy of his performance, be-
cause they would not take pains to write
after it.

I pass by his next West-Indian voyage
(1585), wherein he took the cities of St.
Jago, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St.
Augustine in Florida; as also his service
performed in 1588, wherein he, with many
others, helped to the waning of that half-
moon, which sought to govern all the
motion of our sea. I haste to his last
voyage.

Queen Elizabeth, in 1595, perceiving
that the only way to make the Spaniard
a cripple forever, was to cut his sinews
of war in the West Indies, furnished Sir
Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins,
with six of her own ships, besides twenty-
one ships and barks of their own provid-
ing, containing in all two thousand five
hundred men and boys, for some service
on America. But, alas! this voyage was
marred before begun. For, so great prep-
arations being too big for a cover, the
King of Spain knew of it, and sent a car-
aval of adviso to the West Indies; so
that they had intelligence three weeks
before the fleet set forth of England, either
to fortify or remove their treasure; whereas,
in other of Drake's voyages, not two of his
own men knew whither he went; and
managing such a design is like carrying a
mine in war, if it hath any vent, all is
spoiled. Besides, Drake and Hawkins,
being in joint commission, hindered each
other. The latter took himself to be
inferior rather in success than skill; and
the action was unlike to prosper when
neither would follow, and both could not
handsomely go abreast. It vexed old
Hawkins, that his counsel was not fol-
lowed, in present sailing to America, but
that they spent time hi vain in assaulting
the Canaries; and the grief that his advice
was slighted, say some, was the cause of his
death. Others impute it to the sorrow he
took for the taking of his bark called the
"Francis," which five Spanish frigates had
intercepted. But when the same heart
hath two mortal wounds given it together,
it is hard to say which of them killeth.

Drake continued his course for Porto

326

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Rico; and, riding within the road, a shot
from the Castle entered the steerage of
^he ship, took away the stool from under
him as he sat at supper, wounded Sir
Nicholas Clifford, and Brute Brown to
death. "Ah, dear Brute!" said Drake,
"I could grieve for thee, but now is no
tune for me to let down my spirits."
And, indeed, a soldier's most proper be-
moaning a friend's death in war, is in
revenging it. And, sure, as if grief had
made the English furious, they soon after
fired five Spanish ships of two hundred
tons apiece, in despite of the Castle.

America is not unfitly resembled to an
hourglass, which hath a narrow neck
of land (suppose it the hole where the
sand passe th), betwixt the parts thereof,
Mexicana and Peruana. Now, the
English had a design to march by land
over this Isthmus, from Porto Rico to
Panama, where the Spanish treasure was
laid up. Sir Thomas Baskerville, gen-
eral of the land-forces, undertook the
service with seven hundred and fifty
armed men. They marched through deep
ways, the Spaniards much annoying them
with shot out of the woods. One fort
in the passage they assaulted in vain,
and heard two others were built to stop
them, besides Panama itself. They had
so much of this breakfast they thought
they should surfeit of a dinner and sup-
per of the same. No hope of conquest,
except with cloying the jaws of death,
and thrusting men on the mouth of the
cannon. Wherefore, fearing to find the
proverb true, that "gold may be bought
too dear," they returned to their ships.
Drake afterwards fired Nombre de Dios,
and many other petty towns (whose
treasure the Spaniards had conveyed
away), burning the empty casks, when their
precious liquor was run out before, and
then prepared for their returning home.

Great was the difference betwixt the
Indian cities now, from what they were
when Drake first haunted these coasts.
At first, the Spaniards here were safe and
secure, counting their treasure sufficient
to defend itself, the remoteness thereof
being the greatest (almost only) resist-

ance, and the fetching of it more than
the fighting for it. Whilst the King of
Spain guarded the head and heart of
his dominions in Europe, he left his long
legs in America open to blows; till, find-
ing them to smart, being beaten black and
blue by the English, he learned to arm
them at last, fortifying the most impor-
tant of them to make them impregnable.
Now began Sir Francis's discontent to
feed upon him. He conceived, that ex-
pectation, a merciless usurer, computing
each day since his departure, exacted an
interest and return of honor and profit
proportionable to his great preparations,
and transcending his former achieve-
ments. He saw that all the good which
he had done in this voyage, consisted in
the evil he had done to the Spaniards
afar off, whereof he could present but
small visible fruits in England. These
apprehensions, accompanying, if not
causing, the disease of the flux, wrought
his sudden death, January a8th, 1595.
And sickness did not so much untie his
clothes, as sorrow did rend at once the
robe of his mortality asunder. He lived
by the sea, died on it, and was buried in
it. Thus an extempore performance
(scarce heard to be begun before we hear
it is ended!) comes off with better ap-
plause, or miscarries with less disgrace,
than a long-studied and openly-premedi-
tated action. Besides, we see how great
spirits, having mounted to the highest
pitch of performance, afterwards strain
and break their credits in striving to go
beyond it. Lastly, God oftentimes leaves
the brightest men in an eclipse, to show
that they do but borrow their luster from
his reflexion. We will not justify all the
actions of any man, though of a turner pro-
fession than a sea-captain, in whom civility
is often counted preciseness. For the main,
we say that this our captain was a relig-
ious man towards God and his houses (gen-
erally sparing churches where he came),
chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true
of his word, and merciful to those that were
under him, hating nothing so much as
idleness: and therefore, lest his soul
should rust in peace, at spare hours he

327

urought fresh water to Plymouth. Care-
tul he was for posterity (though men of
his profession have as well an ebb of
riot, as a float of fortune) and provi-
dently raised a worshipful family of his

kindred. In a word: should those that
speak against him fast till they fetch their
bread where he did his, they would have
a good stomach to eat it.

(1642)

JAMES BOSWELL (1740-1795)

This Scotch burr assiduously attached himself during several years to the person of the great con-
versational hero and dictator, and out of his notes has compiled perhaps the most interesting biography
that has ever been written (1791). The mind, the manners, the opinions on all sorts of subjects, of that
remarkable eighteenth century Englishman have been presented with the utmost fidelity. The follow-
ing extracts from this fascinating book reveal his peculiarities and display his strength, his fine common
sense, and his prejudices.

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON
BOSWELL'S FIRST MEETING WITH JOHNSON

MR. THOMAS D AVIES, the actor, who then
kept a bookseller's shop in Russell-street,
Covent-Garden, told me that Johnson
was very much his friend, and came fre-
quently to his house, where he more than
once invited me to meet him; but by some
unlucky accident or other he was pre-
vented from coming to us.

At last, on Monday, the i6th of May,
when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-
parlor, after having drunk tea with him
and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly
came into the shop; and Mr. Davies hav-
ing perceived him, through the glass-door
in the room in which we were sitting, ad-
vancing towards us, he announced his
awful approach to me, somewhat in the
manner of an actor in the part of Horatio,
when he addresses Hamlet on the appear-
ance of his father's ghost, "Look, my Lord,
it comes! " I found that I had a very per-
fect idea of Johnson's figure, from the
portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds soon after he had published his
Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in his
easy chair in deep meditation. Mr. Davies
mentioned my name, and respectfully
introduced me to him. I was much agi-
tated; and recollecting his prejudice
against the Scotch, of which I had heard
much, I said to Davies, " Don't tell where
I come from." "From Scotland," cried
Davies, roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said
I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but
I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter

myself that I meant this as light pleas-
antry to soothe and conciliate him, and
not as an humiliating abasement at the
expense of my country. But however
that might be, this speech was somewhat
unlucky; for with that quickness of wit
for which he was so remarkable, he seized
the expression, "come from Scotland,"
which I used hi the sense of being of that
country; and, as if I had said that I had
come away from it, or left it, retorted,
"That, sir, I find, is what a very great
many of your countrymen cannot help."
This stroke stunned me a good deal; and
when we had sat down, I felt myself not a
little embarrassed, and apprehensive of
what might come next. He then addressed
himself to Davies: "What do you think
of Garrick? He has refused me an order
for the play for Miss Williams, because he
knows the house will be full, and that an
order would be worth three shilling."
Eager to take any opening to get into
conversation with him, I ventured to
say, "O sir, I cannot think Mr. Gar-
rick would grudge such a trifle to you."
"Sir," said he, with a stern look, "I have
known David Garrick longer than you
have done; and I know no right you have
to talk to me on the subject." Perhaps
I deserved this check; for it was rather
presumptuous in me, an entire stranger,
to express any doubt of the justice of his
animadversion upon his old acquaintance
and pupil. I now felt myself much morti-
fied, and began to think that the hope which
I had long indulged of obtaining his ac-
quaintance was blasted. And, in truth,

328

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

had not my ardor been uncommonly
strong, and my resolution uncommonly
persevering, so rough a reception might
have deterred me from ever making any
further attempts. Fortunately, however,
I remained upon the field not wholly
discomfited; and was soon rewarded by
hearing some of his conversation, of which
I preserved the following short minute,
without marking the questions and obser-
vations by which it was produced.

"People," he remarked, "may be taken
in once, who imagine that an author is
greater in private life than other men.
Uncommon parts require uncommon op-
portunities for their exertion.

"In barbarous society, superiority of
parts is of real consequence. Great strength
or great wisdom is of much value to an
individual. But in more polished times
there are people to do everything for
money; and then there are a number of
other superiorities, such as those of birth,
and fortune, and rank, that dissipate men's
attention, and leave no extraordinary
share of respect for personal and intellect-
ual superiority. This is wisely ordered
by Providence, to preserve some equality
among mankind."

I was highly pleased with the extraor-
dinary vigor of his conversation, and
regretted that I was drawn away from it
by an engagement at another place. I
had, for a part of the evening, been left
alone with him, and had ventured to make
an observation now and then, which he
received very civilly; so that I was satis-
fied that, though there was a roughness
in his manner, there was no ill-nature in
his disposition. Davies followed me to
the door, and when I complained to him
a little of the hard blows which the great
man had given me, he kindly took upon
him to console me by saying, "Don't
be uneasy. I can see he likes you very
well."

A few days afterwards I called on Davies,
and asked him if he thought I might take
the liberty of waiting on Mr. Johnson at
his chambers in the Temple. He said I
certainly might, and that Mr. Johnson
would take it as a compliment. So, on

Tuesday, the 24th of May, after having
been enlivened by the witty sallies of
Messieurs Thornton, Wilkes, Churchill,
and Lloyd, with whom I had passed the
morning, I boldly repaired to Johnson. His
chambers were on the first floor of No. i,
Inner Temple-lane, and I entered them
with an impression given me by the Rev-
erend Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, who had
been introduced to him not long before,
and described his having "found the Giant
in his den;" an expression which, when I
came to be pretty well acquainted with
Johnson, I repeated to him, and he was
diverted at this picturesque account of
himself. Dr. Blair had been presented
to him by Dr. James Fordyce. At this
time the controversy concerning the
pieces published by Mr. James Mac-
pherson, as translations of Ossian, was at
its height. Johnson had all along denied
their authenticity; and, what was still
more provoking to their admirers, main-
tained that they had no merit. The
subject having been introduced by Dr.
Fordyce, Dr. Blair, relying on the internal
evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr.
Johnson whether he thought any man of
a modern age could have written such
poems? Johnson replied, " Yes, sir, many
men, many women, and many children."
Johnson, at this time, did not know that
Dr. Blair had just published a Dissertation,
not only defending their authenticity, but
seriously ranking them with the poems
of Homer and Virgil; and when he was
afterwards informed of this circumstance,
he expressed some displeasure at Dr.
Fordyce's having suggested the topic,
and said, "I am not sorry that they got
thus much for their pains. Sir, it was like
leading one to talk of a book, when the
author is concealed behind the door."

He received me very courteously; but
it must be confessed that his apartment,
and furniture, and morning dress, were
sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of
clothes looked very rusty: he had on a little
old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which
was too small for his head; his shirt-neck
and knees of his breeches were loose; his
black worsted stockings ill drawn up, and

BIOGRAPHY

329

he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way
of slippers. But all these slovenly partic-
ularities were forgotten the moment that
lie began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom
! do not recollect, were sitting with him;
and when they went away, I also rose; but
he said to me, "Nay, don't go." "Sir,"
said I, "I am afraid that I intrude upon
you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit
and hear you." He seemed pleased with
this compliment, which I sincerely paid
him, and answered, "Sir, I am obliged to
any man who visits me." I have pre-
served the following short minute of what
passed this day:

"Madness frequently discovers itself
merely by unnecessary deviation from the
usual modes of the world. My poor friend
Smart showed the disturbance of his mind,
by falling upon his knees, and saying his
prayers in the street, or in any other un-
usual place. Now, although, rationally
speaking, it is greater madness not to
pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I
am afraid there are so many who do not
pray, that their understanding is not
called in question."

Concerning this unfortunate poet, Chris-
v.opher Smart, who was confined in a mad-
house, he had, at another time, the follow-
ing conversation with Dr. Burney.
BURNEY: "How does poor Smart do,
sir; is he likely to recover?" JOHNSON:
" It seems as if his mind had ceased to
struggle with the disease: for he grows
fat upon it." BURNEY: "Perhaps, sir,
that may be from want of exercise."
JOHNSON: "No, sir; he has partly as much
exercise as he used to have, for he digs in
the garden. Indeed, before his confine-
ment, he used for exercise to walk to the
ale-house; but he was carried back again.
I did not think he ought to be shut up.
His infirmities were not noxious to society.
He insisted on people praying with him,
and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as
any one else. Another charge was, that
he did not love clean linen; and I have no
passion for it."

Johnson continued: "Mankind have
a great aversion to intellectual labor; but
even supposing knowledge to be easily

attainable, more people would be content
to be ignorant than would take even a
little trouble to acquire it."

"The morality of an action depends
on the motive from which we act. If
I fling half-a-crown to a beggar, with inten-
tion to break his head, and he picks it up
and buys victuals with it, the physical
effect is good; but, with respect to me,
the action is very wrong. So religious
exercises, if not performed with an inten-
tion to please God, avail us nothing. As
our Saviour says of those who perform
them from other motives, 'Verily they
have their reward.'"

Talking of Garrick, he said, "He is the
first man in the world for sprightly con-
versation."

When I rose a second time, he again
pressed me to stay, which I did.

He told me, that he generally went
abroad at four in the afternoon, and sel-
dom came home till two in the morning.
I took the liberty to ask if he did not think
it wrong to live thus, and not make
more use of his great talents. He owned
it a bad habit. On reviewing, at the
distance of many years, my journal of this
period, I wonder how, at my first visit, I
ventured to talk to him so freely, and that
he bore it with so much indulgence.

Before we parted, he was so good as
to promise to favor me with his company
one evening at my lodgings; and, as I took
my leave, shook me cordially by the
hand. It is almost needless to add that
I felt no little elation at having now so
happily established an acquaintance of
which I had been so long ambitious.

My readers will, I trust, excuse me for
being thus minutely circumstantial, when
it is considered that the acquaintance of
Dr. Johnson was to me a most valuable
acquisition, and laid the foundation of
whatever instruction and entertainment
they may receive from my collections con-
cerning the great subject of the work which
they are now perusing.

I did not visit him again till Monday,
June 13, at which time I recollect no part
of his conversation, except, that when I
told him I had been to see Johnson ride

330

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

upon three horses, he said, "Such a man,
sir, should be encouraged; for his perform-
ances show the extent of the human
powers in one instance, and thus tend to
raise our opinion of the faculties of man.
He shows what may be attained by per-
severing application; so that every man
may hope, that by giving as much appli-
cation, although, perhaps, he may never
ride three horses at a time, or dance upon
a wire, yet he may be equally expert in
whatever profession he has chosen to
pursue."

He again shook me by the hand at part-
ing, and asked me why I did not come
oftener to him. Trusting that I was now
in his good graces, I answered, that he had
not given me much encouragement, and
reminded him of the check I had received
from him at our first interview. "Poh,
poh!" said he, with a complacent smile,
"never mind these things. Come to me
as often as you can. I shall be glad to see
you."

I had learnt that his place of frequent
resort was the Mitre tavern in Fleet-
street, where he loved to sit up late, and I
begged I might be allowed to pass an
evening with him there soon, which he
promised I should. A few days afterwards
I met him near Temple-bar about one
o'clock in the morning, and asked if he
would then go to the Mitre. "Sir," said
he, "it is too late, they won't let us in.
But I'll go with you another night, with all
my heart."

A revolution of some importance in my
plan of life had just taken place: for in-
stead of procuring a commission in the
foot guards, which was my own inclina-
tion, I had, in compliance with my
father's wishes, agreed to study the law,
and was soon to set out for Utrecht, to
hear the lectures of an excellent civilian
in that University, and then to proceed
on my travels. Though very desirous
of obtaining Dr. Johnson's advice and
instructions on the mode of pursuing my
studies, I was at this time so occupied,
shall I call it? or so dissipated by the
amusements of London, that our next
meeting was not till Saturday, June 25,

when happening to dine at Clifton's eating-
house, in Butcher-row, I was surprised to
perceive Johnson come in and take his
seat at another table. The mode of din-
ing, or rather being fed, at such houses in
London, is well known to many to be
particularly unsocial, as there is no ordi-
nary, or united company, but each person
has his own mess, and is under no obliga-
tion to hold any intercourse with any one.
A liberal and full-minded man, however,
who loves to talk, will break through this
churlish and unsocial restraint. Johnsan
and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute
concerning the cause of some part of man-
kind being black. "Why, sir," said
Johnson, "it has been accounted for in
three ways: either by supposing that they
are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed,
or that God at first created two kinds of
men, one black, and another white, or
that, by the heat of the sun, the skin is
scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue.
This matter has been much canvassed
among naturalists, but has never been
brought to any certain issue." What the
Irishman said is totally obliterated from
my mind; but I remember that he be-
came very warm and intemperate in his
expressions; upon which Johnson rose,
and quietly walked away. When he had
retired, his antagonist took his revenge,
as he thought, by saying, "He has a
most ungainly figure, and an affectation
of pomposity unworthy of a man of
genius."

Johnson had not observed that I was
in the room. I followed him, however,
and he agreed to meet me in the evening
at the Mitre. I called on him, and we
went thither at nine. We had a good
supper, and port wine, of which he then
sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox
high-church sound of the Mitre, the
figure and manner of the celebrated Sam-
uel Johnson, the extraordinary power
and precision of his conversation, and the
pride, arising from finding myself admitted
as his companion, produced a variety of
sensations, and a pleasing elevation of
mind beyond what I had ever before
experienced.

BIOGRAPHY

JOHNSON'S INTERVIEW WITH THE KING

IN FEBRUARY, 1767, there happened one
of the most remarkable incidents of John-
son's life, which gratified his monarchical
enthusiasm, and which he loved to relate
with all its circumstances, when requested
by his friends. This was his being hon-
ored by a private conversation with his
Majesty, hi the library at the Queen's
house. He had frequently visited those
splendid rooms, and noble collection of
books, which he used to say was more
numerous and curious than he supposed
any person could have made in the time
which the king had employed. Mr. Bar-
nard, the librarian, took care that he
should have every accommodation that
could contribute to his ease and conve-
nience, while indulging his literary taste
in that place so that he had here a very
agreeable resource at leisure hours.

His Majesty having been informed of
his occasional visits, was pleased to signify
a desire that he should be told when Dr.
Johnson came next to the library. Ac-
cordingly, the next time that Johnson did
come, as soon as he was fairly engaged with
a book, on which, while he sat by the fire,
he seemed quite intent, Mr. Barnard stole
round to the apartment where the king
was, and, hi obedience to his Majesty's
commands, mentioned that Dr. Johnson
was then in the library. His Majesty
said he was at leisure, and would go to him:
upon which Mr. Barnard took one of the
candles that stood on the king's table,
and lighted his Majesty through a suite
of rooms, till they came to a private door
into the library, of which his Majesty had
the key. Being entered, Mr. Barnard
stepped forward hastily to Dr. Johnson,
who was still in a profound study, and
whispered him, "Sir, here is the king."
Johnson started up, and stood still. His
Majesty approached him, and at once
was courteously easy.

His Majesty began by observing, that
he understood he came sometimes to the
library: and then mentioned his having
heard that the Doctor had been lately at
Oxford, asked him if he was not fond of

going thither. To which Johnson an-
swered, that he was indeed fond of going
to Oxford sometimes, but was likewise
glad to come back again. The king then
asked him what they were doing at Ox-
ford. Johnson answered, he could not
much commend then: diligence, but that
in some respects they were mended, for
they had put their press under better
regulations, and were at that tune printing
Polybius. He was then asked whether
there were better libraries at Oxford or
Cambridge. He answered, he believed
the Bodleian was larger than any they had
at Cambridge; at the same time adding,
"I hope, whether we have more books or
not than they have at Cambridge, we
shall make as good use of them as they
do." Being asked whether All-Souls or
Christ-Church library was the largest,
he answered, "All-Souls library is the
largest we have, except the Bodleian."
"Ay," said the king, "that is the public
library."

His Majesty inquired if he was then
writing anything. He answered, he was
not, for he had pretty well told the world
what he knew, and must now read to ac-
quire more knowledge. The king, as it
should seem with a view to urge him to
rely on his own stores as an original
writer, and to continue his labors, then
said, "I do not think you borrow much
from anybody." Johnson said, he thought
he had already done his part as a writer.
" I should have thought so too," said the
king, "if you had not written so well."
Johnson observed to me, upon this, that
"no man could have paid a handsomer
compliment; and it was fit for a king to
pay. It was decisive." When asked by
another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's
whether he made any reply to this high
compliment, he answered, "No, sir.
When the king had said it, it was to be so.
It was not for me to bandy civilities with
my sovereign." Perhaps no man who
had spent his whole life in courts could
have shown a more nice and dignified
sense of true politeness than Johnson
did in this instance.

His Majesty having observed to him

332

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

that he supposed he must have read a
great deal, Johnson answered, that he
thought more than he read; that he had
read a great deal in the early part of his
life, but having fallen into ill-health, he
had not been able to read much, compared
with others; for instance, he said he had
not read much, compared with Dr.
Warburton. Upon which the king said,
that he heard Dr. Warburton was a man
of such general knowledge, that you could
scarce talk with him on any subject on
which he was not qualified to speak; and
that his learning resembled Garrick's
acting, in its universality. His Majesty
then talked of the controversy between
Warburton and Lowth, which he seems
to have read, and asked Johnson what he
thought of it. Johnson answered, "War-
burton has most general, most scholastic
learning: Lowth is the more correct
scholar. I do not know which of them
, calls names best." The king was pleased
to say he was of the same opinion: adding,
"You do not think, then, Dr. Johnson,
that there was much argument in the
case." Johnson said, he did not think
there was. "Why, truly," said the king,
"when once it comes to calling names,
argument is pretty well at an end."

His Majesty then asked him what he
thought of Lord Lyttelton's history,
which was then just published. Johnson
said, he thought his style pretty good,
but that he had blamed Henry the Second
rather too much. "Why," said the king,
"they seldom do these things by halves."
"No, sir," answered Johnson, "not to
kings." But fearing to be misunderstood,
he proceeded to explain himself; and im-
mediately subjoined, "That for those who
spoke worse of kings than they deserved,
he could find no excuse; but that he could
more easily conceive how some might
speak better of them than they deserved,
without any ill intention; for, as kings had
much hi their power to give, those who
were favored by them would frequently,
from gratitude, exaggerate then* praises;
and as this proceeded from a good motive,
it was certainly excusable, as far as error
could be excusable." \

The king then asked him what he
thought of Dr. Hill. Johnson answered,
that he was an ingenious man, but had no
veracity; and immediately mentioned,
as an instance of it, an assertion of that
writer, that he had seen objects magni-
fied to a much greater degree by using
three or four microscopes at a time than
by using one. "Now," added Johnson,
"every one acquainted with microscopes
knows, that the more of them he looks
through, the less the object will appear."
"Why," replied the king, "this is not only
telling an untruth, but telling it clumsily;
for, if that be the case, every one who can
look through a microscope will be able
to detect him."

"I now," said Johnson to his friends,
when relating what had passed, "began to
consider that I was depreciating this man
in the estimation of his sovereign, and
thought it was time for me to say some-
thing that might be more favorable."
He added, therefore, that Dr. Hill was,
notwithstanding, a very curious observer;
and if he would have been contented to
tell the world no more than he knew, he
might have been a very considerable man,
and needed not to have recourse to such
mean expedients to raise his reputation.

The king then talked of literary jour-
nals, mentioned particularly the Journal
des savans, and asked Johnson if it was
well done. Johnson said, it was formerly
very well done, and gave some account of
the persons who began it, and carried it
on for some years; enlarging, at the same
time, on the nature and use of such works.
The king asked him if it was well done
now. Johnson answered, he had no reason
to think that it was. The king then
asked him if there were any other literary
journals published in this kingdom, except
the Monthly and Critical Reviews; and
on being answered there was no other, his
Majesty asked which of them was the
best; Johnson answered, that the Monthly
Review was done with most care, the
Critical upon the best principles; adding,
that the authors of the Monthly Review
were enemies to the Church. This the
king said he was sorry to hear.

BIOGRAPHY

333

The conversation next turned on the
Philosophical Transactions, when Johnson
observed that they had now a better
method of arranging their materials than
formerly. "Ay," said the king, "they
are obliged to Dr. Johnson for that:" for
his Majesty had heard and remembered
the circumstance, which Johnson himself
had forgot.

His Majesty expressed a desire to have
the literary biography of this country ably
executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to
undertake it. Johnson signified his readi-
ness to comply with his Majesty's wishes.

During the whole of this interview,
Johnson talked to his Majesty with pro-
found respect, but still in his firm manly
manner with a sonorous voice, and never
in that subdued tone which is commonly
used at the levee and in the drawing-room.
After the king withdrew Johnson showed
himself highly pleased with his Majesty's
conversation, and gracious behavior. He
said to Mr. Barnard, "Sir, they may talk
of fie king as they will; but he is the finest
geikJeman I have ever seen." And he
afterwards observed to Mr. Langton,
"Sir, his manners are those of as fine a
gentleman as we may suppose Louis the
Fourteenth or Charles the Second."

JOHNSON'S CONVERSATIONS

IN 1769, so far as I can discover, the
public was favored with nothing of John-
son's composition, either for himself or
any of his friends. His "Meditations"
too strongly prove that he suffered much
both in body and mind; yet was he per-
petually striving against evil, and nobly
endeavoring to advance his intellectual
and devotional improvement.

His Majesty having the preceding year
instituted the Royal Academy of Arts in
London, Johnson had now the honor of
being appointed Professor in Ancient
Literature.

I came to London in the autumn, and
having informed him that I was going to
be married in a few months, I wished to
have as much of his conversation as I
could before engaging in a state of life

which would probably keep me more in
Scotland, and prevent me seeing him so
often as when I was a single man; but I
found he was at Brighthelmstone with
Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. After his return
to town, we met frequently, and I con-
tinued the practice of making notes of his
conversation, though not with so much
assiduity as I wish I had done. At this
tune, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for
not being able to appropriate so much
time to my journal; for General Paoli,
after Corsica had been overpowered by
the monarchy of France, was now no
longer at the head of his brave country-
men, but having with difficulty escaped
from bis native island, had sought an
asylum in Great Britain; and it was my
duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend
much upon him. Such particulars of
Johnson's conversation at this period as I
have committed to writing, I shall here
introduce, without any strict attention to
methodical arrangement. Sometimes short
notes of different days shall be blended
together, and sometimes a day may seem
important enough to be separately dis-
tinguished.

He said, he would not have Sunday
kept with rigid severity and gloom, but
with a gravity and simplicity of behavior.

He would not admit the importance of
the question concerning the legality of
general warrants. "Such a power," he
observed, "must be vested in every gov-
ernment, to answer particular cases of
necessity; and there can be no just com-
plaint but when it is abused, for which
those who administer government must be
answerable. It is a matter of such
indifference, a matter about which the
people care so very little, that were a man
to be sent over Britain to offer them an
exemption from it at a halfpenny apiece,
very few would purchase it." This was
a specimen of that laxity of talking, which
I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for,
surely, while the power of granting gen-
eral warrants was supposed to be legal,
and the apprehension of them hung over
our heads, we did not possess that security
of freedom, congenial to our happy con-

334

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

stitution, and which, by the intrepid exer-
tions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily
established.

He said, "The duration of Parliament,
whether for seven years or the life of the
King, appears to me so immaterial, that I
would not give half-a-crown to turn the
scale one way or the other. The habeas
corpus is the single advantage which our
government has over that of other coun-
tries."

On the 3oth of September we dined to-
gether at the Mitre. I attempted to
argue for the superior happiness of the
savage life, upon the usual fanciful topics.
JOHNSON: "Sir, there can be nothing more
false. The savages have no bodily ad-
vantages beyond those of civilized men.
They have not better health; and as to
care or mental uneasiness, they are not
above it, but below it, like bears. No,
sir; you are not to talk such paradox:
let me have no more on't. It cannot en-
tertain, far less can it instruct. Lord
Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges,
talked a great deal of such nonsense. I
suffered him, but I will not suffer you."
BOSWELL: "But, sir, does not Rousseau
talk such nonsense?" JOHNSON: "True,
sir; but Rousseau knows he is talking non-
sense, and laughs at the world for staring at
him." BOSWELL: "How so, sir?" JOHNSON:
"Why, sir, a man who talks nonsense so
well, must know that he is talking non-
sense. But I am afraid (chuckling and
laughing) Monboddo, does not know that
he is talking nonsense." BOSWELL: "Is
it wrong then, sir, to affect singularity, in
order to make people stare?" JOHNSON:
"Yes, if you do it by propagating error;
and, indeed, it is wrong in any way.
There is in human nature a general incli-
nation to make people stare; and every
wise man has himself to cure of it, and
does cure himself. If you wish to make
people stare by doing better than others,
why make them stare till they stare their
eyes out. But consider how easy it is to
make people stare by being absurd. I
may do it by going into a drawing room
without my shoes. You remember the
gentleman in 'The Spectator,' who had

a commission of lunacy taken out against
him for his extreme singularity, such as
never wearing a wig, but a night-cap.
Now, sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was
best: but, relatively, the advantage was
overbalanced by his making the boys
run after him."

Talking of a London life, he said, "The
happiness of London is not to be conceived
but by those who have been in it. I will
venture to say, there is more learning and
science within the circumference cif ten
miles from where we now sit, than in all
the rest of the kingdom." BOSWELL:
"The only disadvantage is the great dis-
tance at which people live from one an-
other." JOHNSON: "Yes sir; but that
is occasioned by the largeness of it, which
is the cause of all the other advantages."
BOSWELL: "Sometimes I have been in
the humor of wishing to retire to a desert."
JOHNSON: "Sir, you have desert enough
in Scotland."

Although I had promised myself a great
deal of instructive conversation with him
on the conduct of the married state, of
which I had then a near prospect, he did
not say much upon that topic. Mr.
Seward heard him once say, that "a man
has a very bad chance for happiness in
that state, unless he marries a woman of
very strong and fixed principles of reli-
gion." He maintained to me, contrary
to the common notion, that a woman
would not be the worse wife for being
learned; in which, from all that I have
observed of Artemisias, I humbly differed
from him.

When I censured a gentleman of my
acquaintance for marrying a second time,
as it showed a disregard of his first wife, he
said, "Not at all, sir. On the contrary,
were he not to marry again, it might be
concluded that his first wife had given him
a disgust to marriage; but by taking a
second wife he pays the highest compli-
ment to the first, by showing that she
made him so happy as a married man,
that he wishes to be so a second time."
So ingenious a turn did he give to this deli-
cate question. And yet, on another
occasion, he owned that he once had al-

BIOGRAPHY

335

most asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson
that she would not marry again, but had
checked himself. I presume that her
having been married before had, at times,
given him some uneasiness; for I remem-
ber his observing upon the marriage of one
of our common friends, "He has done a
very foolish thing; he has married a widow,
when he might have had a maid."

We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I
had last year the pleasure of seeing Mrs.
Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morning, and
had conversation enough with her to ad-
mire her talents, and to show her that I
was as Johnsonian as herself. Dr. John-
son had probably been kind enough to
speak well of me, for this evening he de-
livered me a very polite card from Mr.
Thrale and her, inviting me to Streatham.

On the 6th of October I complied with
his obliging invitation, and found, at an
elegant villa, six miles from town, every
circumstance that can make society pleas-
ing. Johnson, though quite at home, was
yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by
affection, and seemed to be equally the
care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced
at seeing him so happy.

He played off his wit against Scotland
with a good-humored pleasantry, which
gave me, though no bigot to national prej-
udices, an opportunity for a little contest
with him. I having said that England
was obliged to us for gardeners, almost all
their good gardeners being Scotchmen
JOHNSON: "Why, sir, that is because
gardening is much more necessary among
you than with us, which makes so many
of your people learn it. It is all garden-
ing with you. Things which grow wild
here, must be cultivated with great
care in Scotland. Pray now," throw-
ing himself back in his chair, and laugh-
ing, "are you ever able to bring the sloe
to perfection? "

I boasted that we had the honor of
being the first to abolish the unhospitable,
troublesome, and ungracious custom of
giving veils to servants . JOHNSON : "Sir,
you abolished veils because you were too
poor to be able to give them."

Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the

merit of Prior. He attacked him power-
fully; said he wrote of love like a man who
had never felt it: his love verses were col-
lege verses; and he repeated the song
"Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains," etc.,
in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all
wonder how any one could have been
pleased with such fantastical stuff. Mrs.
Thrale stood to her gun with great courage
in defence of amorous ditties, which John-
son despised, till he at last silenced her by
saying, "My dear lady, talk no more of
this. Nonsense can be defended but by
nonsense."

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's
talents for light, gay poetry; and, as a
specimen, repeated his song hi "Florizel
and Perdita," and dwelt with peculiar
pleasure on this line:

"I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the
poor."

JOHNSON: "Nay, my dear lady, this will
never do. Poor David! Smile with the
simple. What folly is that? And who
would feed with the poor that can help
it? No, no; let me smile with the wise,
and feed with the rich."

Talking of history, Johnson said, "We
may know historical facts to be true, as
we may know facts hi common life to be
true. Motives are generally unknown.
We cannot trust to the characters we find
in history, unless when they are drawn
by those who knew the persons; as those,
for instance, by Sallust and by Lord
Clarendon."

He would not allow much merit to Whit-
field's oratory. "His popularity, sir,"
said he, "is chiefly owing to the peculiarity
of his manner. He would be followed by
crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the
pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree."

I know not from what spirit of con-
tradiction he burst out into a violent
declamation against the Corsicans, of
whose heroism I talked in high terms.
"Sir," said he, "what is all this rout
about the Corsicans? They have been
at war with the Genoese for upwards of
twenty years, and have never yet taken

336

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

their fortified towns. They might have
battered down their walls and reduced
them to powder in twenty years. They
might have pulled the walls in pieces, and
cracked the stones with their teeth in
twenty years." It was in vain to argue
with him upon the want of artillery; he
was not to be resisted for the moment.

On the evening of October roth, I pre-
sented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli. I
had greatly wished that two men, for
whom I had the highest esteem, should
meet. They met with a manly ease,
mutually conscious of their own abilities,
and of the abilities of each other. The
General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson
English, and understood one another very
well, with a little aid of interpretation
from me, in which I compared myself to
'an isthmus which joins two great conti-
'nents. Upon Johnson's approach, the
General said, "From what I have read of
your works, sir, and from what Mr. Bos-
well has told me of you, I have long held
you in great veneration." The General
talked of languages being formed on the
particular notions and manners of a
people, without knowing which, we can-
not know the language. We may know
the direct signification of single words;
but by these no beauty of expression, no
sally of genius, no wit is conveyed to the
mind. All this must be by allusion to
other ideas. "Sir," said Johnson, "you
talk of language, as if you had never done
anything else but study it, instead of
governing a nation." The General said,
"Questo & un troppo gran complimento:"
this is too great a compliment. Johnson
answered, "I should have thought so, sir,
if I had not heard you talk." The Gen-
eral asked him what he thought of the
spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent.
JOHNSON: "Sir, this gloom of infidelity,
I hope, is only a transient cloud passing
through the hemisphere, which will soon
be dissipated, and the sun break forth
with his usual splendor." "You think
then," said the General, "that they will
change their principles like their clothes."
JOHNSON: "Why, sir, if they bestow no
more thought on principles than on dress,

it must be so." The General said, that
"a great part of the fashionable infidelity
was owing to a desire of showing courage.
Men who have no opportunity of showing
it as to things in this life, take death and
futurity as objects on which to display it."
JOHNSON: "That is mighty foolish affec-
tation. Fear is one of the passions of
human nature, of which it is impossible to
divest it. You remember that the Em-
peror Charles V. when he read upon the
tombstone of a Spanish nobleman, 'Here
lies one who never knew fear,' wittily
said, 'Then he never snuffed a candle with
his fingers.'"

Dr. Johnson went home with me, and
drank tea till late in the night. He said,
" General Paoli had the loftiest port of any
man he had ever seen." He denied that
military men were always the best bred
men. "Perfect good breeding," he ob
served, "consists in having no particular
mark of any profession, but a general ele-
gance of manners; whereas, hi a military
man, you can commonly distinguish the
brand of a soldier, I'homme d'epee."

Dr. Johnson shunned to-night any dis-
cussion of the perplexed question of fate
and free will, which I attempted to agi-
tate: "Sir," said he, "we know our will
is free, and there's an end on't."

He honored me with his company at
dinner on the i6th of October, at my lodg-
ings in Old Bond-street with Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith,
Mr. Murphy, Mr. Bickerstaff, and Mr.
Thomas Davies. Garrick played round
him with a fond vivacity, taking hold of
the breasts of his coat, and, looking up in
his face with a lively archness, compli-
mented him on the good health which he
seemed then to enjoy; while the sage,
shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle
complacency. One of the company not
being come at the appointed hour, I pro-
posed, as usual upon such occasions, to
order dinner to be served; adding, "Ought
six people to be kept waiting for one?"
"Why, yes," answered Johnson, with a
delicate humanity, "if the one will suffer
more by your sitting down than the six
will do by waiting." Goldsmith, to

BIOGRAPHY

337

divert the tedious minutes, strutted about
bragging of his dress, and I believe was
seriously vain of it, for his mind was won-
derfully prone to such impressions.
"Come, come," said Garrick, "talk no
more of that. You are perhaps the
worst eh, eh!" Goldsmith was eagerly
attempting to interrupt him, when Gar-
rick went on, laughing ironically, "Nay,
you will always look like a gentleman; but
I am talking of being well or ill drest."
"Well, let me tell you," said Goldsmith,
"when my tailor brought home my bloom-
colored coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favor
to beg of you. When anybody asks you
who made your clothes, be pleased to
mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in
Water-lane.'" JOHNSON: "Why, sir,
that was because he knew the strange
color would attract crowds to gaze at
it, and thus they might hear of him, and
see how well he could make a coat even
of so absurd a color."

After dinner our conversation first
turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his
characters of men were admirably drawn,
those of women not so well. He repeated
to us, in his forcible melodious manner,
the concluding lines of the Dunciad.
While he was talking loudly in praise of
those lines, one of the company ventured
to say, "Too fine for such a poem: a
poem on what?" JOHNSON (with a dis-
dainful look) : "Why, on dunces. It was
worth while being a dunce then. Ah, sir,
hadst thou lived in those days! It is not
worth while being a dunce now, when there
are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a
peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame
was higher when he was alive than it was
then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were
poor things, though the versification was
fine. He told us, with high satisfaction,
the anecdote of Pope's inquiring who was
the author of his "London," and saying,
he will be soon delerrt. He observed,
that hi Dryden's poetry there were pas-
sages drawn from a profundity which
Pope could never reach. He repeated
some fine lines on love, by the former
(which I have now forgotten), and gave
great applause to the character of Zimri.

Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of
Addison showed a deep knowledge of the
human heart. Johnson said, that the
description of the temple, in "The Mourn-
ing Bride,"* was the finest poetical passage
he had ever read; he recollected none in
Shakespeare equal to it. "But," said
Garrick, all alarmed for "the God of his
idolatry," "we know not the extent and
variety of his powers. We are to suppose
there are such passages hi his works.
Shakespeare must not suffer from the
badness of our memories." Johnson,
diverted by this enthusiastic jealousy,
went on with great ardor: "No, sir; Con-
greve has nature;" (smiling on the tragic
eagerness of Garrick) ; but composing him-
self, he added, "Sir, this is not comparing
Congreve on the whole with Shakespeare
on the whole; but only maintaining that
Congreve has one finer passage than any
that can be found in Shakespeare. Sir, a
man may have no more than ten guineas
in the world, but he may have those ten
guineas in one piece; and so may have a
finer piece than a man who has ten thou-
sand pounds: but then he has only one ten-
guinea piece. What I mean is, that you
can show me no passage, where there is
simply a description of material objects,
without any intermixture of moral no-
tions, which produces such an effect."
Mr. Murphy mentioned Shakespeare's
description of the night before the battle
of Agincourt; but it was observed it had
men in it. Mr. Davies suggested the
speech of Juliet, in which she figures her-
self awaking in the tomb of her ancestors.
Some one mentioned the description of
Dover Cliff. JOHNSON: "No, sir; it
should be all precipice all vacuum.
The crows impede your fall. The dimin-
ished appearance of the boats, and other
circumstances, are all very good descrip-
tion; but do not impress the mind at once
with the horrible idea of immense height.
The impression is divided; you pass on by

*Act., c. 3.

"How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arch'd and pond'rous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable.
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight."

338

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

computation, from one stage of the tre-
mendous space to another. Had the girl
in 'The Mourning Bride' said, she could
not cast her shoe to the top of one of the
pillars hi the temple, it would not have
aided the idea, but weakened it."

Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished
for having written an Essay on Shake-
speare, being mentioned REYNOLDS : " I
think that essay does her honor." JOHN-
SON: "Yes, sir; it does her honor, but it
would do nobody else honor. I have,
indeed, not read it all. But when I take
up the end of a web, and find it packthread,
I do not expect, by looking further, to find
embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say,
there is not one sentence of true criticism
in her book." GARRICK: "But, sir,
surely it shows how much Voltaire has mis-
taken Shakespeare, which nobody else has
done." JOHNSON: "Sir, nobody else has
thought it worth while. And what merit is
there in that? You may as well praise a
schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has
construed ill. No, sir, there is no real crit-
icism in it: none showing the beauty of
thought, as formed on the workings of the
human heart."

Johnson proceeded: "The Scotchman
has taken the right method in his 'Ele-
ments of Criticism.' I do not mean that
he has taught us anything; but he has
told us old things in a new way." MUR-
PHY: "He seems to have read a great
deal of French criticism, and wants to
make it his own; as if he had been for
years anatomizing the heart of man, and
peeping into every cranny of it." GOLD-
SMITH: "It is easier to write that book
than to read it." JOHNSON: "We have
an example of true criticism in Burke's
'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful;'
and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos;
and Bouhours, who shows all beauty to de-
pend on truth. There is no great merit
in telling how many plays have ghosts in
them and how this ghost is better than
that. You must show how terror is im-
pressed on the human heart. In the
description of night in Macbeth, the beetle
and the bat detract from the general idea
of darkness, inspissated gloom."

Politics being mentioned, he said, "This
petitioning is a new mode of distressing
government, and a mighty easy one. I
will undertake to get petitions either
against quarter guineas or half guineas,
with the help of a little hot wine. Therb
must be no yielding to encourage this.
The object is not important enough. We
are not to blow up half a dozen palaces,
because one cottage is burning."

The conversation then took another
turn. JOHNSON: " The ballad of Hardy-
knute has no great merit, if it be really
ancient. People talk of nature. But
mere obvious nature may be exhibited with
very little power of mind."

On Thursday, October 19, I passed the
evening with him at his house. He ad-
vised me to complete a Dictionary of
words peculiar to Scotland, of which I
showed him a specimen. "Sir," said he,
"Ray has made a collection of north
country words. By collecting those of
your country, you will do a useful thing
towards the history of the language." He
bade me also go on with collections which
I was making upon the antiquities of
Scotland. "Make a large book a folio."
BOSWELL: "But of what use will it be,
sir?" JOHNSON: "Never mind the use,
do it."

I complained that he had not mentioned
Garrick hi his Preface to Shakespeare: and
asked him if he did not admire him.
JOHNSON: "Yes, as 'a poor player, who
frets and struts his hours upon the stage
as a shadow." BOSWELL: "But has he
not brought Shakespeare into notice?"
JOHNSON: "Sir, to allow that, would be
to lampoon the age. Many of Shake-
speare's plays are the worse for being
acted: Macbeth, for instance." BOS-
WELL: "What, sir! is nothing gained by
decoration and action? Indeed, I do wish
that you had mentioned Garrick." JOHN-
SON: "My dear sir, had I mentioned
hmi, I must have mentioned many more:
Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Gibber, nay, and
Mr. Gibber too: he, too, altered Shake-
speare." BOSWELL: " You have read his
apology, sir?" JOHNSON: "Yes, it is
very entertaining. But as for Gibber him-

BIOGRAPHY

339

self, taking from his conversation all that
he ought not to have said, he was a poor
creature. I remember when he brought
me one of his Odes to have my opinion of
it, I could not bear such nonsense, and
would not let him read it to the end: so
little respect had I for that great man!
(laughing). Yet I remember Richardson
wondering that I could treat him with
familiarity."

I mentioned to him that I had seen the ex-
ecution of several convicts at Tyburn, two
days before, and that none of them seemed
to be under any concern. JOHNSON:
" Most of them, sir, have never thought at
all." BOSWELL: " But is not the fear of
death natural to man? " JOHNSON: "So
much so, sir, that the whole of life is but
keeping away the thoughts of it." He
then, in a low and earnest tone, talked of
his meditating upon the awful hour of his
own dissolution, and in what manner he
should conduct himself upon that occasion:
"I know not," said he, "whether I wish
to have a friend by me, or have it all be-
tween God and myself." Talking of our
feeling for the distresses of others JOHN-
SON: "Why, sir, there is much noise
made about it, but it is greatly exag-
gerated. No, sir, we have a certain de-
gree of feeling to prompt us to do good;
more than that, providence does not in-
tend. It would be misery to no purpose."
BOSWELL: "But suppose now, sir, that
one of your intimate friends were appre-
hended for an offence for which he might
be hanged." JOHNSON: "I should do
what I could to bail him, and give him
any other assistance; but if he were once
fairly hanged, I should not suffer." BOS-
WELL: "Would you eat your dinner that
day, sir?" JOHNSON: "Yes, sir, and
eat it as if he were eating with me. Why,
there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his
life to-morrow: friends have risen up for
hun on every side: yet if he should be
hanged, none of them will eat a slice of
plum pudding the less. Sir, that sym-
pathetic feeling goes a very little way in
depressing the mind."

I told hun that I had dined lately at
Foote's, who showed me a letter which

he had received from Tom Davies, telling
hun that he had not been able to sleep
from the concern he felt on account of
"this sad affair of Baretti" begging of him
to try if he could suggest any thing that
might be of service; and, at the same time,
recommending to him an industrious
young man who kept a pickle shop.
JOHNSON: "Ay, sir, here you have a
specimen of human sympathy: a friend
hanged, and a cucumber pickled. We
know not whether Baretti or the pickle-
man has kept Davies from sleep: nor does
he know himself. And as to his not sleep-
ing, sir, Tom Davies is a very great man;
Tom has been upon the stage, and knows
how to do those things: I have not been
upon the stage, and cannot do those
things." BOSWELL: "I have often
blamed myself, sir, for not feeling for
others as sensibly as many say they do."
JOHNSON: "Sir, don't be duped by them
any more. You will find those very feel-
ing people are not very ready to do you
good. They pay you by feeling."

BOSWELL: "Foote has a great deal of
humor." JOHNSON: "Yes, sir." BOS-
WELL: "He has a singular talent of ex-
hibiting character." JOHNSON: "Sir, it
is not a talent it is a vice: it is what
others abstain from. It is not comedy,
which exhibits the character of a species,
as that of a miser gathered from many
misers: it is farce, which exhibits indi-
viduals." BOSWELL: "Did not he think
of exhibiting you, sir? " JOHNSON : " Sir,
fear restrained him; he knew I would have
broken his bones. I would have saved
him the trouble of cutting off a leg; I
would not have left him a leg to cut off."
BOSWELL: "Pray, sir, is not Foote an
infidel?" JOHNSON: "I do not know,
sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he
be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an
infidel; that is to say, he has never thought
upon the subject." BOSWELL: "I sup-
pose, sir, he has thought superficially, and
seized the first notion which occurred to
his mind." JOHNSON: "Why then, sir,
still he is like a dog, that snatches the piece
next him. Did you never observe that
dogs have not the power of comparing?

340

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

A dog will take a small bit of meat as
readily as a large, when both are before
him."

He again talked of the passage in Con-
greve with high commendation, and said,
"Shakespeare never has six lines together
without a fault. Perhaps you may find
seven; but this does not refute my gen-
eral assertion. If I come to an orchard
and say there's no fruit here, and then
comes a poring man, who finds two apples
and pears, and tells me, 'Sir, you are mis-
taken, I have found both apples and
pears,' I should laugh at him: what would
that be to the purpose? "

Next day, October 20, he appeared for
the only time I suppose in his life, as a
witness in a court of justice, being called
to give evidence to the character of Mr.
Baretti, who having stabbed a man in the
street, was arraigned at the Old Bailey
for murder. Never did such a constella-
tion of genius enlighten the awful Sessions-
house, emphatically called Justice-hall:
Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Beauclerk,
and Dr. Johnson; and undoubtedly their
favorable testimony had due weight with
the court and Jury. Johnson gave his
evidence in a slow, deliberate, and distinct
manner, which was uncommonly impres-
sive. It is well known that Mr. Baretti
was acquitted.

On the 26th of October, we dined to-
gether at the Mitre Tavern. Talking of
trade, he observed, "It is a mistaken
notion that a vast deal of money is brought
into a nation by trade. It is not so.
Commodities come from commodities;
but trade produces no capital accession
of wealth. However, though there should
be little profit in money, there is a con-
siderable profit in pleasure, as it gives to
one nation the productions of another;
as we have wines and fruits and many
other foreign articles brought to us."
BOSWELL: " Yes, sir, and there is a profit
in pleasure, by its furnishing occupation to
such numbers of mankind." JOHNSON:
"Why, sir, you cannot call that pleasure
to which all are averse, and which none
begin but with the hope of leaving off;
a thing which men dislike before they have

tried it, and when they have tried it."
BOSWELL: "But, sir, the mind must be
employed, and we grow weary when idle."
JOHNSON: "That is, sir, because others
being busy, we want company; but if we
were all idle, there would be no growing
weary; we should all entertain one another.
There is, indeed, this in trade: it gives
men an opportunity of improving their
situation. If there were no trade, many
who are poor would always remain poor.
But no man loves labor for itself." BOS-
WELL: "Yes, sir, I know a person who
does. He is a very laborious judge, and he
loves the labor." JOHNSON: "Sir, that
is because he loves respect and distinc-
tion. Could he have them without labor,
he would like it less." BOSWELL: "He
tells me he likes it for itself." "Why,
sir, he fancies so, because he is not accus-
tomed to abstract."

We went home to his house to tea.
Mrs. Williams made it with sufficient
dexterity, notwithstanding her blindness,
though her manner of satisfying herself
that the cups were full enough appeared
to me a little awkward; for I fancied she
put her finger down a certain way, till
she felt the tea touch it.* In my first
elation at being allowed the privilege of
attending Dr. Johnson at his late visits to
this lady, which was like being e secre-
tioribus consiliis, I willingly drank cup
after cup, as if it had been the Heliconian
spring. But as the charm of novelty
went off, I grew more fastidious; and be-
sides, I discovered that she was of a peev-
ish temper.

There was a pretty large circle this even-
ing. Dr. Johnson was in very good
humor, lively, and ready to talk upon all
subjects. Dominicetti being mentioned,
he would not allow him any merit.
"There is nothing in all this boasted sys-
tem. No, sir; medicated baths can be no
better than warm water; their only effect
can be that of tepid moisture." One of
the company took the other side, main-

BIOGRAPHY

34i

taining that medicines of various sorts,
and some too of most powerful effect,
are introduced into the human frame by
the medium of the pores; and, therefore,
when warm water is impregnated with
salutiferous substances, it may produce
great effects as a bath. This appeared to
me very satisfactory. Johnson did not
answer it; but talking ior victory, and
determined to be master of the field, he
had recourse to the device which Gold-
smith imputed to him in the witty words
of one of Gibber's comedies: "There is
no arguing with Johnson; for when his
pistol misses fire, he knocks you down
with the butt-end of it." He turned to
the gentlemen, "Well, sir, go to Domi-
nicetti, and get thyself fumigated; but be
sure that the steam be directed to thy
head, for that is the peccant part." This
produced a triumphant roar of laughter
from the motley assembly of philosophers,
printers, and dependents, male and fe-
male.

BOSWELL: "Do you think, sir, that
what, is called natural affection is born
with us? It seems to me to be the effect
of habit, or of gratitude for kindness.
No child has it for a parent whom it has
not seen." JOHNSON: " Why, sir, I think
there is an instinctive natural affection
in parents towards their children."

Russia being mentioned as likely to
become a great empire, by the rapid
increaseof population : JOHNSON : " Why,
sir, I see no prospect of their propagating
more. They can have no more children
than they can get. I know of no way to
make them breed more than they do.
It is not from reason and prudence that
people marry, but from inclination. A
man is poor: he thinks, 'I cannot be
worse, and so I'll e'en take Peggy.'"
BOSWELL: "But have not nations been
more populous at one period than an-
other?" JOHNSON: "Yes, sir, but that
has been owing to the people being less
thinned at one period than another,
whether by emigrations, war, or pesti-
lence, not by their being more or less
prolific. Births at all times beaff the
same proportion to the same number of

people." BOSWELL: "But to consider
the state of our own country: does not
throwing a number of farms into one hand
hurt population?" JOHNSON: "Why
no, sir; the same quantity of food being
produced, will be consumed by the same
numbers of mouths, though the people
may be disposed of in different ways.
We see, if corn be dear and butchers' meat
cheap, the farmers all apply themselves
to the raising of corn, till it becomes plen-
tiful and cheap, and then butchers' meat
becomes dear; so that an equality is
always preserved, No, sir, let fanciful
men do as they will, depend upon it, it is
difficult to disturb the system of life."
BOSWELL: " But, sir, is it not a very bad
thing for landlords to oppress their tenants,
by raising their rents?" JOHNSON:
"Very bad. But, sir, it can never have
any general influence; it may distress some
individuals. For, consider this: land-
lords cannot do without tenants. Now,
tenants will not give more for land than
land is worth. If they can make more of
their money by keeping a shop, or any
other way, they'll do it, and so oblige
landlords to let lands come back to a
reasonable rent, in order that they may
get tenants. Land in England is an
article of commerce. A tenant who pays
his landlord his rent, thinks himself no
more obliged to him than you think your-
self obliged to a man in whose shop you
buy a piece of goods. He knows the land-
lord does not let him have his land for less
than he can get from others, in the same
manner as the shopkeeper sells his goods.
No shopkeeper sells a yard of ribbon for
sixpence when sevenpence is the current
price." BOSWELL: "But, sir, is it not
better that tenants should be dependent
on landlords?" JOHNSON: "Why, sir, as
there are many more tenants than land-
lords, perhaps, strictly speaking, we should
wish not. But if you please you may let
your lands cheap, and so get the value,
part hi money and part in homage.
I should agree with you in that."
BOSWELL: "So, sir, you laugh at
schemes of political improvement."
JOHNSON: "Why, sir, most schemes of

342

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

political improvement are very laughable
things."

He observed, "Providence has wisely
ordered that the more numerous men are,
the more difficult it is for them to agree
in anything, and so they are governed.
There is no doubt, that if the poor should
reason, 'We'll be the poor no longer, we'll
make the rich take their turn,' they could
easily do it, were it not that they can't
agree. So the common soldiers, though
so much more numerous than their officers,
are governed by them for the same
reason."

He said, "Mankind have a strong at-
tachment to the habitations to which
they have been accustomed. You see
the inhabitants of Norway do not with
one consent quit it, and go to some part
of America, where there is a mild climate,
and where they may have the same pro-
duce from land, with the tenth part of the
labor. No, sir; their affection for their
old dwellings, and the terror of a general
change, keep them at home. Thus, we
see many of the finest spots in the world
thinly inhabited, and many rugged spots
well inhabited."

I had hired a Bohemian as my servant
while I remained in London, and being
much pleased with him, I asked Dr.
Johnson whether his being a Roman
Catholic should prevent my taking him
with me to Scotland." JOHNSON: " Why
no, sir. If he has no objection, you can
have none." BOSWELL: "So, sir, you
are no great enemy to the Roman Cath-
olic religion." JOHNSON: "No more, sir,
than to the Presbyterian religion." BOS-
WELL: "You are joking." JOHNSON:
"No, sir, I really think so. Nay, sir, of
the two, I prefer the Popish." BOSWELL:
"How so, sir?" JOHNSON: "Why, sir,
the Presbyterians have no church, no
apostolical ordination. ' ' BOSWELL : ' ' And
do you think that absolutely essen-
tial, sir?" JOHNSON: "Why, sir, as it
was an apostolical institution, I think it is
dangerous to be without it. And, sir, the
Presbyterians have no public worship:
they have no form of prayer hi which they
know they are to join. They go to hear

a man pray, and are to judge whether
they will join with him." BOSWELL:
"But, sir, their doctrine is the same with
that of the Church of England. Their
confession of faith, and the thirty-nine
articles, contain the same points, even the
doctrine of predestination." JOHNSON:
"Why yes, sir; predestination was a part
of the clamor of the times, so it is men-
tioned in our articles, but with as little
positiveness as could be." BOSWELL:
"Is it necessary, sir, to believe all the
thirty-nine articles?" JOHNSON: "Why
sir, that is a question which has been much
agitated. Some have thought it neces-
sary that they should all be believed;
others have considered them to be only
articles of peace; that is to say, you arc
not to preach against them." I pro-
ceeded: "What do you think, sir, of pur-
gatory, as believed by the Roman Cath-
olics?" JOHNSON: "Why, sir, it is a
very harmless doctrine. They are of
opinion that the generality of mankind
are neither so obstinately wicked as to
deserve everlasting punishment, nor so
good as to merit being admitted into the
society of blessed spirits; and therefore
that God is graciously pleased to allow of
a middle state, where they may be purified
by certain degrees of suffering. You see,
sir, there is nothing unreasonable in
this." BOSWELL: "But then, sir, their
masses for the dead?" JOHNSON: "Why,
sir, if it be once established that there
are souls in purgatory, it is as proper to
pray for them, as for our brethren of
mankind who are yet in this life." BOS-
WELL: "The Idolatry of the Mass?"
JOHNSON: "Sir, there is no idolatry in
the Mass. They believe God to be there,
and they adore him." BOSWELL: "The
worship of Saints?" JOHNSON: "Sir,
they do not worship Saints; they invoke
them: they only ask their prayers. I am
talking aU this time of the doctrines cf
the Church of Rome. I grant you that,
in practice, purgatory is made a lucrative
imposition, and that people do become
idolatrous as they recommend them-
selves to the tutelary protection of partic-
ular saints. I think their giving the

BIOGRAPHY

343

sacrament only in one kind is criminal,
because it is contrary to the express
institution of CHRIST, and I wonder how
the Council of Trent admitted it."
BOSWELL: "Confession?" JOHNSON:
"Why, I don't know but that is a good
thing. The Scripture says, 'Confess your
faults one to another,' and the priests
confess as well as the laity. Then it must
be considered that their absolution is only
upon repentance, and often upon penance
also. You think your sins may be for-
given without penance, upon repentance
alone."

I thus ventured to mention all the com-
mon objections against the Roman Cath-
olic Church, that I might hear so great a
man upon them. What he said is here
accurately recorded. But it is not im-
probable that if one had taken the other
side, he might have reasoned differently.

When we were alone, I introduced the
subject of death, and endeavored to
maintain that the fear of it might be got
over. I told him that David Hume said
to me, he was no more uneasy to think he
should not be after his life, than that he had
not been before he began to exist. JOHNSON:
"Sir, if he really trunks so, his perceptions
are disturbed; he is mad. If he does not
think so, he lies. He may tell you he holds
his finger in the flame of a candle, without
feeling pain; would you believe him?
When he dies, he at least gives up all he
has." BOSWELL: "Foote, sir, told me,
that when he was very ill he was not
afraid to die." JOHNSON: "It is not
true, sir. Hold a pistol to Foote's breast,
or to Hume's breast, and threaten to kill
them, and you'll see how they behave."
BOSWELL: "But may we not fortify
our minds for the approach of death?"
Here I am sensible I was in the wrong, to
bring before his view what he ever looked
upon with horror; for although when
in a celestial frame of mind in his "Vanity
of Human Wishes," he has supposed
death to be "kind Nature's signal for
retreat," from this state of being to "a
happier seat," his thoughts upon this awful
change were in general full of dismal ap-
prehensions. To my questions he answered

in a passion, "No sir, let it alone. It
matters not how a man dies, but how he
lives. The act of dying is not of import-
ance, it lasts so short a tune." He added
(with an earnest look), "A man knows it
must be so, and submits. It will do him
no good to whine."

I attempted to continue the conversa-
tion. He was so provoked that he said:
"Give us no more of this:" and was
thrown into such a state of agitation that
he expressed himself in a way that alarmed
and distressed me; showed an impatience
that I should leave him, and when I was
going away, called to me sternly, "Don't
let us meet to-morrow."

I went home exceedingly uneasy. All
the harsh observations which I had ever
heard made upon his character crowded
into my mind: and I seemed to myself
like the man who had put his head into
the lion's mouth a great many tunes with
perfect safety, but at last had it bit off.

Next morning I sent him a note, stating
that I might have been in the wrong,
but it was not intentionally; he was there-
fore, I could not help thinking, too severe
upon me. That, notwithstanding our
agreement not to meet that day, I would
call on him in my way to the city, and
stay five minutes by my watch. "You
are," said I, "hi my mind, since last
night, surrounded with cloud and storm.
Let me have a glimpse of sunshine, and go
about my affairs in serenity and cheer-
fulness."

Upon entering his study, I was glad
that he was not alone, which would have
made our meeting more awkward. I There
were with him Mr.Steevens and Mr.Tyers,
both of whom I now saw for the first
time. My note had, on his own reflec-
tion, softened him, for he received me
very complacently; so that I unexpectedly
found myself at ease, and joined in the
conversation.

Johnson spoke unfavorably of a certain
pretty voluminous author, saying, "He
used to write anonymous books, and then
other books commending those books, in
which there was something of rascality."

I whispered him, "Well, sir, you are,

$44

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

now in good humor." JOHNSON: "Yes,
sir." I was going to leave him, and had
got as far as the staircase. He stopped
me, and smiling, said, " Get you gone in:"
a curious mode of inviting me to stay,
which I accordingly did for some tune
longer.

This little incidental quarrel and recon-
ciliation, which, perhaps, I may be thought
to have detailed too minutely, must be
esteemed as one of many proofs which his
friends had, that though he might be
charged with bad humor at times, he was
always a good-natured man; and I have
heard Sir Joshua Reynolds, a nice and deli-
cate observer of manners, particularly
remark, that when upon any occasion
Johnson had been rough to any person in
rompany, he took the first opportunity of
reconciliation, by drinking to him, or
addressing his discourse to him; but if
he found his dignified indirect overtures
sullenly neglected, he was quite indifferent,
and considered himself as having done
all that he ought to do, and the other as
now in the wrong.

Being to set out for Scotland on the
xoth of November, I wrote to him at
Streatham, begging that he would meet
me in town on the pth: but if this should be
very inconvenient to him, I would go
thither. I was detained in town till it
was too late on the pth, so went to him
early in the morning of the loth of No-
vember. "Now," said he, "that you
are going to marry, do not expect more
from life than life will afford. You may
often find yourself out of humor, and
you may often think your wife not stu-
dious enough 1 to please you; and yet you
may have reason to consider yourself
as upon the whole very happily married."

Talking of marriage in general, he ob-
served, "Our marriage service is too re-
fined. It is calculated only for the best
kind of marriages; whereas, we should
have a form for matches of convenience, of
which there are many." He agreed with
me that there was no absolute necessity
for having the marriage ceremony per-
formed by a regular clergyman, for this
was not commanded in scripture.

DINNER WITH JOHN WILKES

I AM now to record a very curious inci-
dent in Dr. Johnson's life, which fell
under my observation; of which pars
tnagnafui, and which I am persuaded will,
with the liberal-minded, be much to his
credit.

My desire of being acquainted with cele-
brated men of every description, had made
me, much about the same tune, obtain an
introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and
to John Wilkes, Esq.* Two men more
different could perhaps not be selected out
of mankind. They had even attacked one
another with some asperity in their writ-
ings; yet I lived in habits of friendship
with both. I could fully relish the ex-
cellence of each; for I have ever delighted
in that intellectual chemistry which car
separate good qualities from evil in the
same person.

My worthy booksellers and friends,
Messieurs Dilly in the Poultry, at whose
hospitable and well-covered table I have
seen a greater number of literary men,
than at any other, except that of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to
meet Mr. Wilkes and some other gentle-
men, on Wednesday, May 15. "Pray,"
said I, "let us have Dr. Johnson."-
"What, with Mr. Wilkes? Not for the
world," said Mr. Edward Dilly; "Dr.
Johnson would never forgive me,"-
" Come," said I, "if you'll let me negotiate
for you, I will be answerable that all shall
go well." DILLY: "Nay, if you will
take it upon you, I am sure I shafi be very
happy to see them both here."

Notwithstanding the high veneration
which I entertained for Dr. Johnson, I was
sensible that he was sometimes a little
actuated by the spirit of contradiction,
and by means of that I hoped I should
gain my point. I was persuaded, that if I
had come upon him with a direct proposal,
"Sir, will you dine in company with
Jack Wilkes? " he would have flown into a
passion, and would probably have an-
swered, "Dine with Jack Wilkes, sir.

A member of Parliament whom Johnson considered a
demagogue and a man whose influence was subversive of
tstablished institution*.

BIOGRAPHY

345

I'd as soon dine with Jack Ketch." I
therefore, while we were sitting quietly by
ourselves at his house in an evening, took
occasion to open my plan thus: "Mr.
Dilly, sir, sends his respectful compli-
ments to you, and would be happy if you
would do him the honor to dine with him
on Wednesday next along with me, as I
must soon go to Scotland." JOHNSON:
"Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will
wait upon him. " BOSWELL: "Pro-
vided, sir, I suppose, that the company
which he is to have is agreeable to you."
JOHNSON: "What do you mean, sir?
What do you take me for? Do you think
that I am so ignorant of the world, as to
imagine that I am to prescribe to a gentle-
man what company he is to have at his
table? " BOSWELL: " I beg your pardon,
sir, for wishing to prevent you from meet-
ing people whom you might not like.
Perhaps he may have some of what he
calls his patriotic friends with him."
JOHNSON: "Well, sir, and what then?
What care / for his patriotic friends?
Poh!" BOSWELL: "I should not be
surprised to find Jack Wilkes there."
JOHNSON: "And if Jack Wilkes should
be there, what is that to me, sir? My
dear friend, let us have no more of this.
I am sorry to be angry with you; but
really it is treating me strangely to talk
to me as if I could not meet any company
whatever, occasionally."

Thus I secured him, and told Dilly
that he would find him very well pleased
to be one of his guests on the day ap-
pointed.

Upon the much-expected Wednesday,
I called on him about half an hour before
dinner, as I often did when we were to
dine out together to see that he was ready
in time, and to accompany him.

When we entered Mr. Dilly's drawing-
room, he found himself in the midst of a
company he did not know. I kept myself
snug and silent, watching how he would
conduct himself. I observed him whisper-
ing to Mr. Dilly, "Who is that gentleman,
sir?" "Mr. Arthur Lee." JOHNSON:
"Too, too, too," (under his breath,)
which was one of his habitual mutterings.

Mr. Arthur Lee could not but be very
obnoxious to Johnson, for he was not only
a patriot but an American. He was
afterwards minister from the United
States at the Court of Madrid. "And
who is the gentleman in lace?" "Mr.
Wilkes, sir." This information con-
founded him still more; he had some dif-
ficulty to restrain himself, and taking up a
book sat down upon a window-seat and
read, or at least kept his eye intently upon
it for some time, till he composed him-
self. His feelings, I dare say, were awk-
ward enough. But he no doubt recol-
lected having rated me, for supposing that
he could be at all disconcerted by any com-
pany, and he, therefore, resolutely set
himself to behave quite as an easy man of
the world, who could adapt himself at
once to the disposition and manners of
those whom he might chance to meet.

The cheering sound of "Dinner is upon
the table," dissolved his reverie, and we
all sat down without any symptom of ill-
humor. There were present beside Mr.
Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur Lee, who was an
old companion of mine when he studied
physic at Edinburgh Mr. (now Sir John)
Miller, Dr. Lettsom, and Mr. Slater the
druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next
to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with
so much attention and politeness, that he
gained upon him insensibly. No man
eat more heartily than Johnson, or loved
better what was nice and delicate. Mr.
Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him
to some fine veal. "Pray give me leave,
sir; It is better here A little of the
brown Some fat, sir A little of the
stuffing Some gravy Let me have the
pleasure of giving you some butter
Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this
orange; or the lemon, perhaps, may have
more zest." "Sir, sir, I am obliged to
you, sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turn-
ing his head to him with a look for some
time of "surly virtue," but, in a short
while, of complacency.

Foote being mentioned, Johnson said,
"He is not a good mimic." One of the
company added, "A merry Andrew, a
buffoon?" JOHNSON: "But he has wit,

346

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

too, and is not deficient in ideas, or in
fertility and variety of imagery, and not
empty of reading; he has knowledge
enough to fill up his part. One species
of wit he has in an eminent degree, that
of escape. You drive him into a corner
with both hands; but he's gone, sir, when
you think you have got him like an
animal that jumps over your head. Then
he has a great range for wit; he never lets
truth stand between him and a jest, and
he is sometimes mighty coarse. Garrick
is under many restraints from which Foote
is free." WILKES: "Garrick's wit is
more like Lord Chesterfield's." JOHN-
SON: "The first time I was in company
with Foote, was at Fitzherbert's. Having
no good opinion of the fellow, I was re-
solved not to be pleased; and it's very dif-
ficult to please a man against his will. I
went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly,
affecting not to mind him; but the dog
was so very comical, that I was obliged
to lay down my knife and fork, throw my-
self back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it
out. No, sir, he was irresistible. He upon
one occasion experienced, in an extraor-
dinary degree, the efficacy of his powers
of entertaining. Amongst the many and
various modes which he tried of getting
money, he became a partner with a small-
beer brewer, and he was to have a share
of the profits for procuring customers
amongst his numerous acquaintance.
Fitzherbert was one who took his small-
beer; but it was so bad that the servants
resolved not to drink it. They were at
some loss how to notify their resolution,
being afraid of offending their master,
who they knew liked Foote much as a
companion. At last they fixed upon a
little black boy, who was rather a favorite,
to be their deputy, and deliver their re-
monstrance; and having infested him
with the whole authority of the kitchen,
he was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert, in all
their names, upon a certain day, that
they would drink Foote's small-beer no
longer. On that day Foote happened to
dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy served
at table; he was so delighted with Foote's
stories, and merriment, and grimace, that

when he went down stairs he told them,
'This is the finest man I have ever seen.
I will not deliver your message. I will
drink his small-beer.'"

Talking of the great difficulty of obtain-
ing authentic information for biography,
Johnson told us, "When I was a young
fellow I wanted to write the 'Life of
Dryden,' and in order to get materials I
applied to the only two persons then
alive who had seen him; these were old
Swinney, and old Gibber. Swinney's in-
formation was no more than this, 'That
at Will's coffee house Dryden had a partic-
ular chair for himself, which was set by
the fire in winter, and was then called his
winter-chair; and it was carried out for
him to the balcony in summer, and was
then called his summer-chair.' Gibber
could tell no more but 'That he remem-
bered him a decent old man, arbiter of
critical disputes at Will's.' You are to
consider that Gibber was then at a great
distance from Dryden, had perhaps, one
leg only in the room, and durst not draw
in the other." BOSWELL: "But Gibber
was a man of observation?" JOHNSON:
"I think not." BOSWELL: "You will
allow his 'Apology' to be well done."
JOHNSON: "Very well done, to be sure,
sir. That book is a striking proof of the
justice of Pope's remark:

'Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.' "

BOSWELL: "And his plays are good."
JOHNSON: "Yes; but that was his trade;
I'esprit du corps; he had been all his life
among players and play-writers. I won-
dered that he had so little to say in conver-
sation, for he had kept the best company,
and learnt all that can be got by the ear.
He abused Pindar to me, and then showed
me an ode of his own, with an absurd
couplet making a linnet soar on an eagle's
wing. I told him, that when the ancients
made a simile, they always made it like
something real."

Mr. Wilkes remarked, that "among all
the bold flights of Shakespeare's imagina-
tion, the boldest was making Birnam-

BIOGRAPHY

347

wood march to Dunsinane, creating a
wood where there was never a shrub; a
wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!" And
he also observed, that "the clannish
slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was
the single exception to Milton's remark of
'The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty,'
being worshipped in all hilly countries.
When I was at Inverary," said he, "on a
visit to my old friend, Archibald Duke of
Argyle, his dependents congratulated me
on being such a favorite of his Grace. I
said, 'It is, then, gentlemen, truly lucky
for me; for if I had displeased the Duke,
and he had wished it, there is not a Camp-
bell among you but would have been
ready to bring John Wilkes's head to him
in a charger. It would have been only

'Off with his head! So much for Aylesbury.'

I was then member for Aylesbury."

Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch
who had taken possession of a barren
part of America, and wondered why they
should choose it. JOHNSON: "Why, sir,
all barrenness is comparative. The
Scotch would not know it to be barren."
BOSWELL: "Come, come, he is flattering
the English. You have now been in
Scotland, sir, and say if you did not see
meat and drink enough there." JOHN-
SON: "Why yes, sir; meat and drink
enough to give the inhabitants sufficient
strength to run away from home." All
these quick and lively sallies were said

sportively, quite in jest, and with a smile,
which showed that he meant only wit.
Upon this topic, he and Mr. Wilkes could
perfectly assimilate; here was a bond of
union between them, and I was conscious
that as both of them had visited Cale-
donia, both were fully satisfied of the
strange narrow ignorance of those who
imagine that it is a land of famine. But
they amused themselves with persevering
in the old jokes.

After dinner we had an accession of Mrs.
Knowles, the Quaker lady, well known
for her various talents, and of Mr. Alder-
man Lee. Amidst some patriotic groans,
somebody, I think the Alderman, said,
"Poor old England is lost." JOHNSON:
"Sir, it is not so much to be lamented
that old England is lost, as that the Scotch
have found it."

Mr. Wilkes held a candle to show a fine
print of a beautiful female figure which
hung in the room, and pointed out the
elegant contour of the bosom, with the
finger of an arch connoisseur. He after-
wards, in a conversation with me, wag-
gishly insisted, that all the time Johnson
showed visible signs of a fervent admira-
tion of the corresponding charms of the fair
Quaker.

I attended Dr. Johnson home, and
had the satisfaction to hear him tell Mrs.
Williams how much he had been pleased
with Mr. Wilkes's company, and what an
agreeable day he had passed.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)

Common sense is Franklin's distinguishing trait common sense in such abundant measure and so
variously applied that, whether we regard him as scientist and inventor, statesman and diplomat, or

as street-cleaning and the improvement

humor of the author of "Poor Richard's Almanac".

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CONCERNING MILITIA AND THE FOUND-
ING OF A COLLEGE

I HAD, on the whole, abundant reason
to be satisfied with my being established
in Pennsylvania. There were, however,
two things that * regretted, there being

thing of the instructive

no provision for defence, nor for a com-
plete education of youth; no militia, nor
any college. I therefore, hi 1743, drew
up a proposal for establishing an academy;
and at that time, thinking the Reverend
Mr. Peters, who was out of employ, a
fit person to superintend such an insti-
tution, I communicated the project to

348

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

him; but he, having more profitable views
in the service of the proprietaries, which
succeeded, declined the undertaking; and,
not knowing another at that time suitable
for such a trust, I let the scheme lie a
while dormant. I succeeded better the
next year, 1744, in proposing and establish-
ing a Philosophical Society. The paper
I wrote for that purpose will be found
among my writings, when collected.

With respect to defence, Spain having
been several years at war against Great
Britain, and being at length joined by
France, which brought us into great
danger, and the labored and long-con-
tinued endeavor of our governor, Thomas,
to prevail with our Quaker Assembly to
pass a militia law, and make other pro-
visions for the security of the province,
having proved abortive, I determined to
try what might be done by a voluntary
association of the people. To promote
this, I first wrote and published a pamph-
let, entitled Plain Truth, in which I
stated our defenceless situation in strong
lights, with the necessity of union and dis-
cipline for our defence, and promised to
propose in a few days an association, to be
generally signed for that purpose. The
pamphlet had a sudden and surprising
effect. I was called upon for the in-
strument of association, and having set-
tled the draft of it with a few friends, I
appointed a meeting of the citizens in the
large building before mentioned. The
house was pretty full; I had prepared a
number of printed copies, and provided
pens and ink dispersed all over the room.
I harangued them a little on the subject,
read the paper, and explained it, and then
distributed the copies, which were eagerly
signed, not the least objection being made.

When the company separated, and the
papers were collected, we found above
twelve hundred hands; and other copies
being dispersed in the country, the sub-
scribers amounted at length to upward of
ten thousand. These all furnished them-
selves as soon as they could with arms,
formed themselves in to companies and regi-
ments, chose their own officers, and met
every week to be instructed in the manual

exercise, and other parts of military disci-
pline. The women, by subscriptions
among themselves, provided silk colors,
which they presented to the companies,
painted with different devices and mottoes,
which I supplied.

The officers of the companies composing
the Philadelphia regiment, being met,
chose me for their colonel; but, conceiving
myself unfit, I declined that station, and
recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine per-
son, and man of influence, who was ac-
cordingly appointed. I then proposed a
lottery to defray the expense of building
a battery below the town, and furnishing
it with cannon. It filled expeditiously,
and the battery was soon erected, the
merlons being framed of logs and filled
with earth. We bought some old cannon
from Boston, but these not being sufficient,
we wrote to England for more, soliciting,
at the same time, our proprietaries for
some assistance, though without much
expectation of obtaining it.

Meanwhile Colonel Lawrence, William
Allen, Abram Taylor, Esquire, and myself
were sent to New York by the associators,
commissioned to borrow some cannon of
Governor Clinton. He at first refused us
peremptorily; but at dinner with his coun-
cil, where there was great drinking of
Madeira wine, as the custom of that place
then was, he softened by degrees, and
said he would lend us six. After a few
more bumpers he advanced to ten; and
at length he very good-naturedly conceded
eighteen. They were fine cannon, eight-
een-pounders, with their carriages, which
we soon transported and mounted on our
battery, where the associators kept a
nightly guard while the war lasted, and
among the rest I regularly took my turn
of duty there as a common soldier.

My activity in these operations was
agreeable to the governor and council;
they took me into confidence, and I wa;
consulted by them in every measure
wherein their concurrence was thought
useful to the association. Calling in the
aid of religion, I proposed to them the
proclaiming a fast, to promote reformation,
and implore the blessing of Heaven on our

BIOGRAPHY

349

undertaking. They embraced the motion ;
but, as it was the first fast ever thought
of hi the province, the secretary had no
precedent from which to draw the procla-
mation. My education in New England,
where a fast is proclaimed every year, was
here of some advantage: I drew it hi the
accustomed style; it was translated into
German, printed in both languages, and
divulged through the province. This gave
the clergy of the different sects an oppor-
tunity of influencing their congregations to
join in the association, and it would prob-
ably have been general among all but Quak-
ers if the peace had not soon intervened.
It was thought by some of my friends
that, by my activity in these affairs, I
should offend that sect, and thereby lose
my interest in the Assembly of the prov-
ince, where they formed a great majority.
A young gentleman, who had likewise some
friends in the House, and wished to suc-
ceed me as their clerk, acquainted me
that it was decided to displace me at the
next election; and he, therefore, in good
will, advised me to resign, as more con-
sistent with my honor than being turned
out. My answer to him was, that I had
read or heard of some public man who
made it a rule never to ask for an office,
and never to refuse one when offered to
him. "I approve," says I, "of his rule,
and will practise it with a small addition:
I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever
resign an office. If they will have my
office of clerk to dispose of to another,
they shall take it from me. I will not,
by giving it up, lose my right of some tune
or other making reprisals on my adver-
saries." I heard, however, no more of
this; I was chosen again unanimously as
usual at the next election. Possibly, as
they disliked my late intimacy with the
members of council, who had joined the
governors hi all the disputes about mili-
tary preparations, with which the House
had long been harassed, they might have
been pleased if I would voluntarily have
left them; but they did not care to displace
me on account merely of my zeal for the
association, and they could not well give
another reason.

Indeed, I had some cause to believe
that the defence of the country was not
disagreeable to any of them, provided they
were not required to assist in it. And
I found that a much greater number of
them than I could have imagined, though
against offensive war, were clearly for the
defensive. Many pamphlets pro and con
were published on the subject, and some
by good Quakers, in favor of defense,
which I believe convinced most of their
younger people.

A transaction in our fire company gave
me some insight into their prevailing
sentiments. It had been proposed that we
should encourage the scheme for building
a battery by laying out the present stock,
then about sixty pounds, in tickets of the
lottery. By our rules, no money could be
disposed of till the next meeting after the
proposal. The company consisted of
thirty members, of which twenty-two
were Quakers, and eight only of other
persuasions. We eight punctually at-
tended the meeting; but though we thought
that some of the Quakers would joir us,
we were by no means sure of a majority.
Only one Quaker, Mr. James Morris, ap-
peared to oppose the measure. He ex-
pressed much sorrow that it had ever
been proposed, as he said Friends were all
against it, and it would create such dis-
cord as might break up the company.
We told huii that we saw no reason for
that; we were the minority, and if Friends
were against the measure, and outvoted
us, we must and should, agreeably to the
usage of all societies, submit. When the
hour for business arrived it was moved to
put the vote; he allowed we might then
do it by the rules, but, as he could assure
us that a number of members intended
to be present for the purpose of opposing
it, it would be but candid to allow a little
time for their appearing.

While we were disputing this, a waiter
came to tell me two gentlemen below de-
sired to speak with me. I went down,
and found they were two of our Quaker
members. They told me there were
eight of them assembled at a tavern just
by; that they were determined to come and

350

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

vote with us if there should be occasion,
which they hoped would not be the case,
and desired we would not call for their
assistance if we could do without it, as
their voting for such a measure might em-
broil them with their elders and friends.
Being thus secure of a majority, I went
up, and after a little seeming hesitation,
agreed to a delay of another hour. This
Mr. Morris allowed to be extremely fair.
Not one of his opposing friends appeared,
at which he expressed great surprise; and
at the expiration of the hour, we carried
the resolution eight to one; and as, of the
twenty-two Quakers, eight were ready to
vote with us, and thirteen, by their ab-
sence, manifested that they were not in-
clined to oppose the measure, I afterwards
estimated the proportion of Quakers sin-
cerely against defense as one to twenty-
one only; for these were all regular mem-
bers of that society, and in good reputation
among them, and had due notice of what
was proposed at that meeting.

The honorable and learned Mr. Logan,
who had always been of that sect, was one
who wrote an address to them, declaring his
approbation of defensive war, and sup-
porting his opinion by many strong
arguments. He put into my hands sixty
pounds to be laid out in lottery tickets for
the battery, with directions to apply what
prizes might be drawn wholly to that ser-
vice. He told me the following anecdote
of his old master, William Penn, respecting
defense. He came over from England,
when a young man, with that proprietary,
and as his secretary. It was war tune, and
their ship was chased by an armed vessel,
supposed to be an enemy. Their captain
prepared for defense; but told William
Penn, and his company of Quakers,
that he did not expect their assistance,
and they might retire into the cabin,
which they did, except James Logan,
who chose to stay upon deck, and was
quartered to a gun. The supposed enemy
proved a friend, so there was no fighting;
but when the secretary went down to
communicate the intelligence, William
Penn rebuked him severely for staying
upon deck, and undertaking to assist in

defending the vessel, contrary to the prin-
ciples of Friends, especially as it had not
been required by the captain. This re-
proof, being before all the company,
piqued the secretary, who answered, "I
being thy servant, why did thee not order
me to come down ? But thee was witting
enough that I should stay and help to fight
the ship when thee thought there was danger."

My being many years in the Assembly,
the majority of which were constantly
Quakers, gave me frequent opportunities
of seeing the embarrassment given them
by their principle against war, whenever
application was made to them, by ordei
of the crown, to grant aids for military
purposes. They were unwilling to offend
government, on the one hand, by a direct
refusal; and their friends, the body of the
Quakers, on the other, by a compliance
contrary to their principles; hence a va-
riety of evasions to avoid complying, and
modes of disguising the compliance when
it became unavoidable. The common
mode at last was, to grant money undei
the phrase of its being "for the king's
use" and never to inquire how it was
applied.

But if the demand was not directly
from the crown, that phrase was found nc *
so proper, and some other was to be in-
vented. As, when powder was wanting
(I think it was for the garrison at Louis-
burg), and the government of New Eng-
land solicited a grant of some from Penn-
sylvania, which was much urged on the
House by Governor Thomas, they could
not grant money to buy powder, because
that was an ingredient of war; but they
voted an aid to New England of three
thousand pounds, to be put into the hands
of the governor, and appropriated it for
the purchasing of bread, flour, wheat, or
other grain. Some of the council, desirous
of giving the House still further em-
barrassment, advised the governor not to
accept provision, as not being the thing
he had demanded; but he replied, "I shall
take the money, for I understand very
well their meaning; other grain is gun-
powder," which he accordingly bought,
and they never objected to it,

BIOGRAPHY

It was in allusion to this fact that when,
in our fire company, we feared the success
of our proposal in favor of the lottery,
and I had said to my friend Mr. Syng,
one of our members, "If we fail, let us
move the purchase of a fire-engine with the
money; the Quakers can have no objection
to that; and then, if you nominate me and
I you as a committee for that purpose, we
will buy a great gun, which is certainly
a fire-engine," "I see," says he, "you
have improved by being so long in the
Assembly; your equivocal project would
be just a match for their wheat or other
grain. 1 "

These embarrassments that the Quakers
suffered from having established and pub-
lished it as one of their principles that no
kind of war was lawful, and which, being
once published, they could not afterwards,
however they might change their minds,
easily get rid of, reminds me of what I
think a more prudent conduct in another
sect among us, that of the Bunkers. I
was acquainted with one of its founders,
Michael Welfare, soon after it appeared.
He complained to me that they were griev-
ously calumniated by the zealots of other
persuasions, and charged with abominable
principles and practices, to which they
were utter strangers. I told him this had
always been the case with new sects, and
that, to put a stop to such abuse, I imag-
ined it might be well to publish the articles
of their belief, and the rules of their dis-
cipline. He said that it had been pro-
posed among them, but not agreed to, for
this reason: "When we were first drawn
together as a society," says he, "it has
pleased God to enlighten our minds so
far as to see that some doctrines, which
we once esteemed truths, were errors;
and that others, which we had esteemed
errors, were real truths. From tune to
tune He had been pleased to afford us
farther light, and our principles have been
improving, and our errors diminihshig.
Now we are not sure that we are arrived
at the end of this progression, and at the
perfection of spiritual or theological knowl-
edge; and we fear that, if we should once
print our confession of faith, we should

feel ourselves as if bound and confined by
it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive
farther improvement, and our successors
still more so, as conceiving what we their
elders and founders had done, to be some-
thing sacred, never to be departed from."

This modesty in a sect is perhaps a sin-
gular instance in the history of mankind,
every other sect supposing itself in pos-
session of all truth, and that those who
differ are so far in the wrong; like a man
travelling hi foggy weather, those at some
distance before him on the road he sees
wrapped up in the fog, as well as those
behind him, and also the people in the
fields on each side, but near him all ap-
pears clear, though in truth he is as much
in the fog as any of them. To avoid this
kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have
of late years been gradually declining the
public service in the Assembly and in the
magistracy, choosing rather to quit their
power than their principle.

In order of tune, I should have men-
tioned before, that having, in 1742, in-
vented an open stove for the better warm-
ing of rooms, and at the same time saving
fuel, as the fresh ah- admitted was warmed
in entering, I made a present of the model
to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early
friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found
the casting of the plates for these stoves a
profitable thing, as they were growing hi
demand. To promote that demand, I
wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled
"An Account of the new-invented Penn-
sylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Con-
struction and Manner of Operation is
particularly explained; their Advantages
above every other Method of warming Rooms
demonstrated; and all Objections that have
been raised against the Use of them answered
and obviated" etc. This pamphlet had a
good effect. Governor Thomas was so
pleased with the construction of this stove,
as described in it, that he offered to give
me a patent for the sole vending of them
for a term of years; but I declined it from
a principle which has ever weighed with
me on such occasions, viz., That, as we
enjoy great advantages from the inventions
of others, we should be glad of an opportunity

352

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously.

An ironmonger in London, however,
assuming a good deal of my pamphlet,
and working it up into his own, and making
some small changes in the machine, which
rather hurt its operation, got a patent for
it there, and made, as I was told, a little
fortune by it. And this is not the only
instance of patents taken out for my in-
ventions by others, though not always
with the same success, which I never con-
tested, as having no desire of profiting
by patents myself, and hating disputes.
The use of these fireplaces hi very many
bouses, both of this and the neighboring
colonies, has been, and is, a great saving
of wood to the inhabitants.

Peace being concluded, and the associa-
tion business therefore at an end, I turned
my thoughts again to the affair of estab-
lishing an academy. The first step I took
was to associate in the design a number of
active friends, of whom the Junto fur-
nished a good part; the next was to write
and publish a pamphlet, entitled Proposals
relating to the Education of Youth in Penn-
sylvania. This I distributed among the
principal inhabitants gratis; and as soon
as I could suppose their minds a little
prepared by the perusal of it, I set on foot
a subscription for opening and supporting
an academy; it was to be paid in quotas
yearly for five years; by so dividing it, I
judged the subscription might be larger,
and I believe it was so, amounting to no
less, if I remember right, than five thou-
sand pounds.

In the introduction to these proposals,
I stated their publication, not as an act
of mine, but of some public-spirited gen-
tlemen, avoiding as much as I could, ac-
cording to my usual rule, the presenting
myself to the public as the author of any
scheme for their benefit.

The subscribers, to carry the project
into immediate execution, chose out of
then- number twenty-four trustees, and
appointed Mr. Francis, then attorney-
general, and myself to draw up constitu-
tions for the government of the academy;
which being done and signed, a house was

hired, masters engaged, and the schools
opened, I think, in the same year, 1749.

The scholars increasing fast, the house
was soon found too small, and we were
looking out for a piece of ground, properly
situated, with intention to build, when
Providence threw into our way a large
house ready built, which, with a few al-
terations, might well serve our purpose.
This was the building before mentioned,
erected by the hearers of Mr. Whitefield,
and was obtained for us in the following
manner.

It is to be noted that the contributions
to this building being made by people of
different sects, care was taken hi the nomi-
nation of trustees, in whom the building
and ground was to be vested, that a pre-
dominancy should not be given to any
sect, lest hi time that predominancy
might be a means of appropriating the
whole to the use of such sect, contrary i
to the original intention. It was therefore
that one of each sect was appointed, viz.,
one Church-of-England man, one Presby-
terian, one Baptist, one Moravian, etc.,
those, in case of vacancy by death, were
to fill it by election from among the con-
tributors. The Moravian happened not
to please his colleagues, and on his death
they resolved to have no other of that
sect. The difficulty then was, how to
avoid having two of some other sect, by
means of the new choice.

Several persons were named, and for
that reason not agreed to. At length one
mentioned me, with the observation that
I was merely an honest man, and of no
sect at all, which prevailed with them to
choose me. The enthusiasm which existed
when the house was built had long since
abated, and its trustees had not been able
to procure fresh contributions for paying
the ground-rent, and discharging some
other debts the building had occasioned,
which embarrassed them greatly. Being
now a member of both sets of trustees,
that for the building and that for the
academy, I had a good opportunity of
negotiating with both, and brought them
finally to an agreement, by which the
trustees for the building were to cede it

BIOGRAPHY

to those of the academy, the latter under-
taking to discharge the debt, to keep for-
ever open in the building a large hall for
occasional preachers, according to the
original intention, and maintain a free
school for the instruction of poor children.
Writings were accordingly drawn, and
on paying the debts the trustees of the
academy were put in possession of the
premises; and by dividing the great and
lofty hall into stories, and different rooms
above and below for the several schools,
and purchasing some additional ground,
the whole was soon made fit for our pur-
pose, and the scholars removed into the
building. The care and trouble of agree-
ing with the workmen, purchasing ma-
terials, and superintending the work,
fell upon me; and I went through it the
more cheerfully, as it did not then interfere
with my private business, having the year
before taken a very able, industrious, and
honest partner, Mr. David Hall, with
whose character I was well acquainted,
as he had worked for me four years. He
took off my hands all care of the printing
office, paying me punctually my share of
the profits. This partnership continued
eighteen years, successfully for us both.

The trustees of the academy, after a
while, were incorporated by a charter
from the governor; their funds were in-
creased by contributions in Britain and
grants of land from the proprietaries, to
which the Assembly has since made con-
siderable addition; and thus was estab-
lished the present University of Phila-
delphia. I have been continued one of
its trustees from the beginning, now near
forty years, and have had the very great
pleasure of seeing a number of the youth
who have received their education in it,
distinguished by their unproved abilities,
serviceable in public stations, and orna-
ments to their country.

PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTIONS

IN 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond, a particular
friend of mine, conceived the idea of es-
tablishing a hospital in Philadelphia (a
very beneficent design, which has been

ascribed to me, but was originally his)
for the reception and cure of poor sick per-
sons, whether inhabitants of the province
or strangers. He was zealous and active
in endeavoring to procure subscriptions
for it, but the proposal being a novelty in
America, and at first not well understood,
he met but with small success.

At length he came to me with the com-
pliment that he found there was no such
thing as carrying a public-spirited project
through without my being concerned in it.
"For," says he, "I am often asked by
those to whom I propose subscribing,
Have you consulted Franklin upon this
business? And what does he think of it?
And when I tell them that I have not
(supposing it rather out of your line), they
do not subscribe, but say they will con-
sider of it." I inquired into the nature
and probable utility of his scheme, and
receiving from him a very satisfactory
explanation, I not only subscribed to it
myself, but engaged heartily in the de-
sign of procuring subscriptions from
others. Previously, however, to the solici-
tation I endeavored to prepare the minds
of the people by writing on the subject in
the newspapers, which was my usual cus-
tom in such cases, but which he had
omitted.

The subscriptions afterwards were more
free and generous; but, beginning to flag,
I saw they would be insufficient without
some assistance from the Assembly, and
therefore proposed to petition for it,
which was done. The country members
did not at first relish the project; they
objected that it could only be serviceable
to the city, and therefore the citizens alone
should be at the expense of it; and they
doubted whether the citizens themselves
generally approved of it. My allegation
on the contrary, that it met with such
approbation as to leave no doubt of our
being able to raise two thousand pounds by
voluntary donations, they considered as
a most extravagant supposition and ut-
terly impossible.

On this I formed my plan; and, asking
leave to bring hi a bill for incorporating
the contributors according to the prayer

354

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

of their petition, and granting them a
blank sum of money, which leave was ob-
tained chiefly on the consideration that
the House could throw the bill out if they
did not like it, I drew it so as to make the
important clause a conditional one, viz.,
"And be it enacted, by the authority afore-
said, that when the said contributors shall
have met and chosen their managers and
treasurer, and shall have raised by their

contributions a capital stock of value

(the yearly interest of which is to be ap-
plied to the accommodating of the sick
poor in the said hospital, free of charge
for diet, attendance, advice, and medi-
cines), and shall make the same appear to
the satisfaction of the speaker of the Assem-
bly for the time being, that then it shall and
may be lawful for the said speaker, and
he is hereby required, to sign an order on
the provincial treasurer for the payment
of two thousand pounds, in two yearly
payments, to the treasurer of the said hos-
pital, to be applied to the founding, build-
ing, and finishing of the same."

This condition carried the bill through;
for the members who had opposed the
grant, and now conceived they might
have the credit of being charitable without
the expense, agreed to its passage; and
then, in soliciting subscriptions among the
people, we urged the conditional promise
of the law as an additional motive to give,
since every man's donation would be
doubled; thus the clause worked both
ways. The subscriptions accordingly soon
exceeded the requisite sum, and we claimed
and received the public gift, which en-
abled us to carry the design into execution.
A convenient and handsome building was
soon erected; the institution has by con-
stant experience been found useful, and
flourishes to this day; and I do not re-
member any of my political manoeuvres,
the success of which gave me at the time
more pleasure, or wherein, after thinking
of it, I more easily excused myself for
having made some use of cunning.

It was about this time that another
projector, the Rev. Gilbert Tennent, came
to me with a request that I would assist
him in procuring a subscription for erect-

ing a new meeting-house. It was' to be
for the use of a congregation he had gath-
ered among the Presbyterians, who were
originally disciples of Mr. Whitefield.
Unwilling to make myself disagreeable
to my fellow-citizens by too frequently
soliciting their contributions, I absolutely
refused. He then desired I would furnish
him with a list of the names of persons I
knew by experience to be generous and
public-spirited. I thought it would be
unbecoming in me, after their kind com-
pliance with my soliictations, to mark
them out to be worried by other beggars,
and therefore refused also to give such a
list. He then desired I would at least give
him my advice. "That I will readily
do," said I; "and, in the first place, I ad-
vise you to apply to all those whom you
know will give something; next, to those
whom you are uncertain whether they will
give anything or not, and show them the
list of those who have given; and, lastly, do
not neglect those who you are sure will
give nothing, for in some of them you may
be mistaken." He laughed and thanked
me, and said he would take my advice.
He did so, for he asked of everybody, and he
obtained a much larger sum than he ex-
pected, with which he erected the capacious
and very elegant meeting-house that
stands in Arch Street.

IMPROVING CITY STREETS

OUR city, though laid out with a beauti-
ful regularity, the streets large, straight,
and crossing each other at right angles,
had the disgrace of suffering those streets
to remain long unpaved, and in wet
weather the wheels of heavy carriages
ploughed them into a quagmire, so that it
was difficult to cross them; and in dry
weather the dust was offensive. I had
lived near what was called the Jersey
Market, and saw with pain the inhabitants
wading in mud while purchasing their
provisions. A strip of ground down the
middle of that market was at length
paved with brick, so that, being once in
the market, they had firm footing, but
were often over shoes in dirt to get there.

BIOGRAPHY

355

By talking and writing on the subject, I
was at length instrumental in getting the
street paved with stone between the mar-
ket and the bricked foot pavement, that
was on each side next the houses. This,
for some time, gave an easy access to the
market dry-shod; but the rest of the street
not being paved, whenever a carriage came
out of the mud upon this pavement, it
shook off and left its dirt upon it, and it was
soon covered with mire, which was not
removed, the city as yet having no scav-
engers.

After some inquiry, I found a poor, in-
dustrious man, who was willing to under-
take keeping the pavement clean, by
sweeping it twice a week, carrying off
the dirt from before all the neighbors'
doors, for the sum of sixpence per month,
to be paid by each house. I then wrote
and printed a paper setting forth the ad-
vantages to the neighborhood that might
be obtained by this small expense; the
greater ease in keeping our houses clean,
so much dirt not being brought in by
people's feet; the benefit to the shops
by more custom, etc., etc., as buyers could
more easily get at them; and by not hav-
ing, in windy weather, the dust blown in
upon their goods, etc., etc. I sent one of
these papers to each house, and hi a day
or two went round to see who would sub-
scribe an agreement to pay these six-
pences; it was unanimously signed, and
for a tune well executed. All the inhabi-
tants of the city were delighted with the
cleanliness of the pavement that sur-
rounded the market, it being a conve-
nience to all, and this raised a general desire
to have all the streets paved, and made the
people more willing to submit to a tax
for that purpose.

After some time I drew a bill for paving
the city, and brought it into the Assembly.
It was just before I went to England, in
1757, and did not pass till I was gone, and
then with an alteration in the mode of
assessment, which I thought not for the
better, but with an additional provision
for lighting as well as paving the streets,
which was a great improvement. It was
by a private person, the late Mr. John

Clifton, his giving a sample of the utility
of lamps, by placing one at his door, that
the people were first impressed with the
idea of enlighting all the city. The honor
of this public benefit has also been ascribed
to me, but it belongs truly to that gentle-
man. I did but follow his example, and
have only some merit to claim respecting
the form of our lamps, as differing from the
globe lamps we were at first supplied with
from London. Those we found incon-
venient in these respects: they admitted
no air below; the smoke, therefore, did
not readily go out above, but circulated
in the globe, lodged on its inside, and soon
obstructed the light they were intended
to afford; giving, besides, the daily trouble
of wiping them clean; and an accidental
stroke on one of them would demolish it
and render it totally useless. I therefore
suggested the composing them of four flat
panes, with a long funnel above to draw
up the smoke, and crevices admitting air
below, to facilitate the ascent of the smoke;
by this means they were kept clean, and
did not grow dark in a few hours, as the
London lamps do, but continued bright
till morning, and an accidental stroke
would generally break but a single pane,
easily repaired.

I have sometimes wondered that the
Londoners did not, from the effect holes
in the bottom of the globe lamps used at
Vauxhall have in keeping them clean,
learn to have such holes in their street
lamps. But, these holes being made for
another purpose, viz., to communicate
flame more suddenly to the wick by a
little flax hanging down through them,
the other use, of letting in air, seems not
to have been thought of; and therefore,
after the lamps have been lit a few hours,
the streets of London are very poorly
illuminated.

The mention of these improvements
puts me in mind of one I proposed, when
in London, to Dr. Fothergill, who was
among the best men I have known, and a
great promoter of useful projects. I had
observed that the streets, when dry, were
never swept, and the light dust carried
away; but it was suffered to accumulate

356

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

till wet weather reduced it to mud, and
then, after lying some days so deep on the
pavement that there was no crossing but
in paths kept clean by poor people with
brooms, it was with great labor raked
together and thrown up into carts open
above, the sides of which suffered some
of the slush at every jolt on the pavement
to shake out and fall, sometimes to the
annoyance of foot-passengers. The reason
given for not sweeping the dusty streets
was, that the dust would fly into the win-
dows of shops and houses.

An accidental occurrence had instructed
me how much sweeping might be done in
a little time. I found at my door in
Craven Street, one morning, a poor woman
sweeping my pavement with a birch
broom; she appeared very pale and feeble,
as just come out of a fit of sickness. I
asked who employed her to sweep there;
she said, "Nobody; but I am very poor
and in distress, and I sweeps before gentle-
folkses doors, and hopes they will give me
something." I bid her sweep the whole
street clean, and I would give her a shill-
ing; this was at nine o'clock; at twelve
she came for the shilling. From the
slowness I saw at first in her working
I could scarce believe that the work was
done so soon, and sent my servant to
examine it, who reported that the whole
street was swept perfectly clean, and all
the dust placed in the gutter, which
was in the middle; and the next rain
washed it quite away, so that the
pavement and even the kennel were
perfectly clean.

I then judged that, if that feeble woman
could sweep such a street in three hours,
a strong, active man might have done it
in half the time. And here let me remark
the convenience of having but one gutter
in such a narrow street, running down its
middle, instead of two, one on each side,
near the footway; for where all the rain
that falls on a street runs from the sides
and meets in the middle, it forms there a
current strong enough to wash away all
the mud it meets with; but when divided
into two channels, it is often too weak to
cleanse either, and only makes the mud

it finds more fluid, so that the wheels of
carriages and feet of horses throw and
dash it upon the foot-pavement, which
is thereby rendered foul and slippery, and
sometimes splash it upon those who are
walking. My proposal, communicated
to the good doctor, was as follows:

"For the more effectual cleaning and
keeping clean the streets of London and
Westminster, it is proposed that the sev-
eral watchmen be contracted with to have
the dust swept up in dry seasons, and the
mud raked up at other times, each in the
several streets and lanes of his round;
that they be furnished with brooms and
other proper instruments for these pur-
poses, to be kept at their respective stands,
ready to furnish the poor people they may
employ in the service.

"That in the dry summer months the
dust be all swept up into heaps at proper
distances, before the shops and windows
of houses are usually opened, when the
scavengers, with close-covered carts, shall
also carry it all away.

"That the mud, when raked up, be not
left in heaps to be spread abroad again
by the wheels of carriages and trampling
of horses, but that the scavenger! be
provided with bodies of carts, not placed
high upon wheels, but low upon sliders
with lattice bottoms, which, being covered
with straw, will retain the mud thrown
into them, and permit the water to drain
from it, whereby it will become much
lighter, water making the greatest part
of its weight; these bodies of carts to be
placed at convenient distances, and the
mud brought to them in wheelbarrows;
they remaining where placed till the mud
is drained, and then horses brought to
draw them away."

I have since had doubts of the practica-
bility of the latter part of this proposal,
on account of the narrowness of some
streets, and the difficulty of placing the
draining-sleds so as not to encumber too
much the passage; but I am still of opinion
that the former, requiring the dust to be
swept up and carried away before the
shops are open, is very practicable in the
summer, when the days are long; for, in

BIOGRAPHY

357

walking through the Strand and Fleet
Street one morning at seven o'clock, I
observed there was not one shop open,
though it had been daylight and the sun
up above three hours; the inhabitants of
London choosing voluntarily to live much
by candle-light, and sleep by sunshine,
and yet often complain, a little absurdly,
of the duty on candles, and the high price
of tallow.

Some may think these trifling matters
not worth minding or relating; but when
they consider that though dust blown
into the eyes of a single person, or into a
single shop on a windy day, is but of small
importance, yet the great number of the
instances in a populous city, and its fre-
quent repetitions give it weight and
consequence, perhaps they will not censure
very severely those who bestow some at-
tention to affairs of this seemingly low
nature. Human felicity is produced not

so much by great pieces of good fortune
that seldom happen, as by little advantages
that occur every day. Thus, if you teach
a poor young man to shave himself, and
keep his razor in order, you may contribute
more to the happiness of his life than in
giving him a thousand guineas. The
money may be soon spent, the regret only
remaining of having foolishly consumed it;
but in the other case, he escapes the fre-
quent vexation of waiting for barbers, and
of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive
breaths, and dull razors; he shaves when
most convenient to him, and enjoys daily
the pleasure of its being done with a good
instrument. With these sentiments I
have hazarded the few preceding pages,
hoping they may afford hints which some-
time or other may be useful to a city I
love, having lived many years hi it very
happily, and perhaps to some of our town?
in America.

VII
LETTERS

SAMUEL JOHNSON

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL
OF CHESTERFIELD*

February 7, 1755.

MY LORD, I have been lately informed,
by the proprietor of "The World," that
two papers, in which my Dictionary is
recommended to the public, were written
by your lordship. To be so distinguished
is an honor, which, being very little ac-
customed to favors from the great, I
know not well how to receive, or hi what
terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encourage-
ment, I first visited your lordship, I was
overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by
the enchantment of your address, and
could not forbear to wish that I might
boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de
la terre; that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but
I found my attendance so little encour-
aged, that neither pride nor modesty
would suffer me to continue it. When I
had once addressed your lordship hi public,
I had exhausted all the art of pleasing
which a retired and uncourtly scholar
can possess. I had done all that I could;
and no man is well pleased to have his all
neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my lord, have now passed,
since I waited in your outward rooms, or
was repulsed from your door; during which
tune I have been pushing on my work
through difficulties, of which it is useless
to complain, and have brought it, at last,

When Samuel Johnson, uncouth and unkempt, solicited
Lord Chesterfield for a subscription for his projected "Diction-
ary of the English Language," the needy but sensitive scholar
was rebuffed at his Lordship's door. Later the elegant gen-
tleman endeavored to gain credit by some faint praise of the
book after its author had won fame in the world, but this manly
letter spoke out plainly, forever breaking the hold of the patron
upon the world of letters.

to the verge of publication, without ont
act of assistance, one word of encourage-
ment, or one smile of favor. Such treat-
ment I did not expect, for I never had a
patron before.

The shepherd in "Virgil" grew at last
acquainted with Love, and found him a
native of the rocks.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who
looks with unconcern on a man strug-
gling for life in the water, and, when he has
reached ground, encumbers him with help?
The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labors had it been early, had
been kind; but it has been delayed till I
am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till
I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till 1
am known, and do not want it. I hope
it is no very cynical asperity, not to con-
fess obligations where no benefit has been
received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a
patron, which Providence has enabled me
to do myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with
so little obligation to any favorer of learn-
ing, I shall not be disappointed though 1
shall conclude it, if less be possible, with
less; for I have been long wakened from
that dream of hope, in which I once
boasted myself with so much exultation,

My Lord, your lordship's most humble,
Most obedient servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

MODEL OF A LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION
OF A PERSON YOU ARE UNACQUAINTED WITH

SIR,

PARIS, 2 April, 1777.

The bearer of this, who is going to
America, presses me to give him a letter

358

LETTERS

359

of recommendation, though I know noth-
ing of him, not even his name. This may
seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is
not uncommon here. Sometimes, in-
deed, one unknown person brings another
equally unknown, to recommend him; and
sometimes they recommend one another!
As to this gentleman, I must refer you to
himself for his character and merits, with
which he is certainly better acquainted
than I can possibly be. I recommend
him, hoAvever, to those civilities, which
every stranger, of whom one knows no
harm, has a right to; and I request you
will do him all the good offices, and show
him all the favor, that, on further acquain-
tance, you shall find him to deserve. I
have the honor to be, etc.

CHARLES LAMB

TO THOMAS MANNING

24th Sept., 1802, LONDON.

MY DEAR MANNING,

Since the date of my last letter I have
been a traveller. A strong desire seized
me of visiting remote regions. My first
impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a
trivial objection to my aspiring mind,
that I did not understand a word of the
language, since I certainly intend some-
tune in my life to see Paris, and equally
certainly intend never to learn the lan-
guage; therefore that could be no objec-
tion. However, I am very glad I did
not go, because you had left Paris (I see)
before I could have set out. I believe
Stoddart promising to go with me another
year, prevented that plan. My next
scheme (for to my restless, ambitious
mind London was become a bed of
thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak in
Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they
say, without breeches. This my purer
mind rejected as indelicate. And my final
resolve was, a tour to the Lakes. I set out
with Mary to Keswick, without giving
Coleridge any notice, for my time, being
precious, did not admit of it. He re-
ceived us with all the hospitality in the
world, and gave up his time to show us all

the wonders of the country. He dwells
upon a small hill by the side of Keswick,
in a comfortable house, quite enveloped
on all sides by a net of mountains: great
floundering bears and monsters they
seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got
in in the evening, travelling in a post-
chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a
gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all
the mountains into colors, purple, &c.,
&c. We thought we had got into fairy-
land. But that went off (as it never
came again; while we stayed we had no
more fine sunsets;) and we entered Cole-
ridge's comfortable study just in the dusk,
when the mountains were all dark with
clouds upon their heads. Such an im-
pression I never received from objects of
sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever
again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows,
Skiddaw, &c., I never shall forget ye,
how ye lay about that night, like an in-
trenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed,
for the night, but promising that ye were
to be seen in the morning. Coleridge
had got a blazing fire in his study; which is
a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an
old-fashioned organ, never played upon,
big enough for a church, shelves of scat-
tered folios, an ^Eolian harp, and an old
sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out
upon the last fading view of Skiddaw,
and his broad-breasted brethren: what a
night! Here we stayed three full weeks,
in which tune I visited Wordsworth's
cottage, where we stayed a day or two
with the Clarksons, (good people, and
most hospitable, at whose house we tar-
ried one day and night,) and saw Lloyd.
The Wordsworths were gone to Calais.
They have since been in London, and past
much time with us: he is now gone into
Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen
Keswick, Grasmere, Amblesidc, Ulswater,
(where the Clarksons live,) and a place
at the other end of Ulswater; I forget the
name: to which we travelled on a very
sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn.
We have clambered up to the top of
Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of
Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself
that there is such a thing as that which

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tourists call romantic, which I very much
suspected before: they make such a splut-
tering about it, and toss their splendid
epithets around them, till they give as
dim a light as at four o'clock next morning
the lamps do after an illumination.
Mary was excessively tired when she got
about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came
to a cold rill (than which nothing can be
imagined more cold, running over cold
stones,) and with the reinforcement of a
draught of cold water, she surmounted it
most manfully. Oh, its fine black head,
and the bleak air atop of it, with a pros-
pect of mountains all about and about,
making you giddy; and then Scotland afar
off, and the border countries so famous in
song and ballad! It was a day that will
stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in
my life. But I am returned, (I have now
been come home near three weeks: I was
a month out,) and you cannot conceive
the degradation I felt at first, from being
accustomed to wander free as air among
mountains, and bathe hi rivers without
being controlled by anyone, to come home
and work. I felt very little. I had been
dreaming I was a very great man. But
that is going off, and I find I shall conform
in time to that state of life to which it has
pleased God to call me. Besides, after
all, Fleet Street and the Strand are better
places to live in for good and all than
amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to
those great places where I wandered about,
participating in their greatness. After all,
I could not live in Skiddaw. I could
spend a year, two, three years among
them, but I must have a prospect of seeing
Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I
should mope and pine away, I know.
Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My
habits are changing, I think, i.e., from
drunk to sober. Whether I shall be
happy or not remains to be proved. I
shall certainly be more happy in a morn-
ing; but whether I shall not sacrifice the
fat, and the marrow, and the kidneys, i.e.,
the night, glorious care-drowning night,
that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into
our mortifications, changes the scene from
indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant!

O Manning, if I should have formed a dia-
bolical resolution, by the time you come to
England, of not admitting any spirituous
liquors into my house, will you be my
guest on such shameworthy terms? Is
life, with such limitations, worth trying?
The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest
of friendly harpies about my house, who
consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be
read at St. Gothard, but it is just now
nearest my heart. Fenwick is a ruined
man. He is hiding himself from his
creditors, and has sent his wife and
children into the country. Fell, my other
drunken companion, (that has been:
nam hie ccestus artemque repono,) is
turned editor of a Naval Chronicle.
Godwin continues a steady friend, though
the same facility does not remain of visiting

him often. That has detached

Marshall from his house; Marshall, the
man who went to sleep when the "Ancient
Mariner" was reading; the old, steady,
unalterable friend of the Professor. Hoi-
croft is not yet come to town. I expect
to see him and will deliver your message.
Things come crowding in to say, and no
room for 'em. Some things are too little
to be told, i.e., to have a preference;
some are too big and circumstantial.
Thanks for yours, which was most deli-
cious. Would I had been with you, be-
nighted, &c.! I fear my head is turned
with wandering. I shall never be the
same acquiescent being. Farewell. Write
again quickly, for I shall not like to haz-
ard a letter, not knowing where the
fates have carried you. Farewell, my
dear fellow.

C. LAMB.

TO THOMAS MANNING
[A HOAXING LETTER]

Dec. 25th, 1815.

DEAR OLD FRIEND AND ABSENTEE,

This is Christmas Day 1815 with us;
what it may be with you I don't know,
the i2th of June next year perhaps; and
if it should be the consecrated season with
you, I don't see how you can keep it

LETTERS

You have no turkeys; you would not
desecrate the festival by offering up a
withered Chinese Bantam, instead of the
savory grand Norfolcian holocaust, that
smokes all around my nostrils at this
moment from a thousand firesides. Then
what puddings have you? Where will
you get holly to stick in your churches, or
churches to stick your dried tea-leaves
(that must be the substitute) hi? What
memorials you can have of the holy time,
I see not. A chopped missionary or
two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and
the wilderness; but what standing evi-
dence have you of the Nativity? 'Tis
our rosy-cheeked, home-stalled divines,
whose faces shine to the tune of "Unto
us a child is born," faces fragrant with
the mince-pies of half a century, that
alone can authenticate the cheerful mys-
tery. I feel my bowels refreshed with
the holy tide; my zeal is great against the
unedified heathen. Down with the Pa-
godas down with the idols Ching-
chong-fo and his foolish priesthood!
Come out of Babylon, O my friend! for
her tune is come; and the child that is
native, and the Proselyte of her gates,
shall kindle and smoke together! And
in sober sense what makes you so long
from among us, Manning? You must
not expect to see the same England again
which you left.

Empires have been overturned, crowns
trodden into dust, the face of the western
world quite changed. Your friends have
all got old those you left blooming; my-
self, (who am one of the few that remember
you,) those golden hairs which you recol-
lect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery
and grey. Mary has been dead and buried
many years: she desired to be buried in
the silk gown you sent her. Rickman,
that you remember active and strong,
now walks out supported by a servant
maid and a stick. Martin Burney is a
very old man. The other day an aged
woman knocked at my door, and pre-
tended to my acquaintance. It was long
before I had the most distant cognition
of her; but at last, together, we made her
out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs.

Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had
been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Ken-
ney, whose first husband was Holcroft,
the dramatic writer of the last century.
St. Paul's church is a heap of ruins; the
Monument isn't half so high as you knew
it, divers parts being successively taken
down which the ravages of time had
rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing
Cross is gone, no one knows whither; and
all this has taken place while you have
been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should
be spelt with a , or a. For aught I
see you might almost as well remain
where you are, and not come like a Struld-
brug into a world where few were born
when you went away. Scarce here and
there one will be able to make out your
face. All your opinions will be out of
date, your jokes obsolete, your puns
rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the
last age. Your way of mathematics has
already given way to a new method, which
after all is I beh'eve the old doctrine of
Maclaurin, new-vamped up with what he
borrowed of the negative quantity of
fluxions from Euler.

Poor Godwin! I was passing his
tomb the other day in Cripplegate church-
yard. There are some verses upon it

written by Miss , which if I thought

good enough I would send you. He was
one of those who would have hailed your
return, not with boisterous shouts and
clamors, but with the complacent gratula-
tions of a philosopher anxious to promote
knowledge as leading to happiness; but
his systems and his theories are ten feet
deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is
just dead, having lived just long 'enough
to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid
the debt to Nature but a week or two
before. Poor Col, but two days before
he died he wrote to a bookseller, proposing
an epic poem on the "Wanderings of
Cam," in twenty-four books. It is said
he has left behind him more than forty
thousand treatises in criticism, meta-
physics, and divinity, but few of them in a
state of completion. They are now des-
tined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You
see what mutations the busy hand of Time

362

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

has produced, while you have consumed
in foolish voluntary exile that time which
might have gladdened your friends
benefited your country; but reproaches are
useless. Gather up the wretched reli-
ques, my friend, as fast <is you can, and
come to your old home. I will rub my
eyes and try to recognise you. We will
shake withered hands together, and talk
of old things of St. Mary's Church and
the barber's opposite, where the young
students in mathematics used to assemble.
Poor Crips, that kept it afterwards, set
up a fruiterer's shop in Trumpington
Street, and for aught I know resides there
still, for I saw the name up in the last
journey I took there with my sister just
before she died. I suppose you heard
that I had left the India House, and gone
into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over
the bridge. I have a little cabin there,
small and homely, but you shall be wel-
come to it. You like oysters, and to
open them yourself; I'll get you some if
you come in oyster tune. Marshall,
Godwin's old friend, is still alive, and
talks of the faces you used to make.
Come as soon as you can.

C. LAMB.

TO THE SAME
[CORRECTING THE PRECEDING]

Dec. 26th, 1815.
DEAR MANNING,

Following your brother's example, I
have just ventured one letter to Canton,
and am now hazarding another (not ex-
actly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The
first was full of unprobable romantic
fictions, fitting the remoteness of the
mission it goes upon; in the present I mean
to confine myself nearer to truth as you
come nearer home. A correspondence
with the uttermost parts of the earth
necessarily involves in it some heat of
fancy, it sets the brain agoing, but I can
think on the half-way house tranquilly.
Your friends then are not all dead or
grown forgetful of you through old age, as
that lying letter asserted, anticipating
rather what must happen if you kept

tarrying on forever on the skirts of creation,
as there seemed a danger of your doing;
but they are all tolerably well and in full
and perfect comprehension of what is
meant by Manning's coming home again.
Mrs. Kenny never lets her tongue run riot
more than in remembrances of you.
Fanny expends herself in phrases that can
only be justified by her romantic nature.
Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not
to be buried in, (as the false nuncio asserts)
but to make up spick and span into a
bran-new gown to wear when you come.
I am the same as when you knew me,
almost to a surfeiting identity. This
very night I am going to leave of tobacco I
Surely there must be some other world
in which this unconquerable purpose shall
be realized. The soul hath not her gen-
erous aspirings implanted in her in vain.
One that you knew, and I think the only
one of those friends we knew much of in
common, has died in earnest. Poor Pris-
cilla! Her brother Robert is also dead,
and several of the grown-up brothers and
sisters, in the compass of a very few years.
Death has not otherwise meddled much
in families that I know. Not but he has
his eye upon us, and is whetting his feath-
ered dart every instant, as you see him
truly pictured in that impressive moral
picture, "The good man at the hour of
death." I have in trust to put in the
post four letters from Diss, and one from
Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will
accompany this safe, and one from Lynn,
and the one before spoken of from me, to
Canton. But we all hope that these
letters may be waste paper. I don't
know why I have forborne writing so long;
but it is such a forlorn hope to send a
scrap of paper straggling over wide oceans !
And yet I know, when you come home, I
shall have you sitting before me at our
fireside just as if you had never been away.
In such an instant does the return of a
person dissipate all the weight of imaginary
perplexity from distance of time and space !
I'll promise you good oysters. Cory is
dead that kept the shop opposite St.
Dunstan's; but the tougher materials of
the shop survive the perishing frame of its

LETTERS

363

keeper. Oysters continue to flourish there
under as good auspices. Poor Cory!
But if you will absent yourself twenty
years together, you must not expect
numerically the same population to con-
gratulate your return which wetted the
sea-beach with their tears when you went
away. Have you recovered the breathless
stone-staring astonishment into which
you must have been thrown upon learning
at landing that an Emperor of France was
living at St. Helena? What an event in
the solitude of the seas! like finding a
fish's bone at the top of Plinlimmon; but
these things are nothing in our western
world. Novelties cease to affect. Come
and try what your presence can.

God bless you. Your old friend,
C. LAMB.

TO P. G. PATMORE

LONDRES, Julie 19, 1827.
DEAR P.

I am so poorly. I have been to a fu-
neral, where I made a pun, to the con-
sternation of the rest of the mourners.
And we had wine. I can't describe to you
the howl which the widow set up at proper
intervals. Dash could, for it was not
unlike what he makes.

The letter I sent you was one directed

to the care of E. W , India House, for

Mrs. H. Which Mrs. H I don't yet

know; but A has taken it to France

on speculation. Really it is embarrassing.
There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and
Mrs. John H., and to which of the three
Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not.
I wanted to open it, but 't is transporta-
tion.

I am sorry you are plagued about your
book. I would strongly recommend you
to take for one story Massinger's Old Law.
It is exquisite. I can think of no other.

Dash is frightful this morning. He
whines and stands up on his hind legs.
He misses Becky, who is gone to town.
I took him to Barnet the other day, and he
couldn't eat his vittles after it. Pray God
his intellectuals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I

suppose 't is no use to ask you to come and
partake of 'em; else there is a steam
vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts,
and have got on tolerably; but it will be
refused, or worse. I never had luck with
anything my name was put to.

O, I am so poorly! I -waked it at my
cousin's the bookbinder, who is now with
God; or, if he is not, 't is no fault of mine.

We hope the frank wines do not disagree
with Mrs. P . By the way, I like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them
if you can. They are like little Lilliput
rabbits, only a thought nicer.

How sick I am! not of the world, but
of the widow's shrub. She 's sworn under
6,000, but I think she perjured herself.
She howls in E la, and I comfort her in
B flat. You understand music?

If you hav'n't got Massinger, you have
nothing to do but go to the first Biblio-
theque you can light upon at Boulogne,
and ask for it (Gilford's edition); and if
they hav'n't got it you can have " Athalie "
par Monsieur Racine, and make the best
of it. But that Old Law is delicious.

"No shrimps!" (that's in answer to
Mary's question about how the soles are
to be done).

I am uncertain where this wandering
letter may reach you. What you mean
by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you
mean I must pay the postage? So I do, to
Dover.

We had a merry passage with the widow
at the Commons. She was howling part
howling and part giving directions to the
proctor when crash! down went my sister
through a crazy chair, and made the clerks
grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered,
and then I knew that she was not incon-
solable. Mary was more frightened than
hurt.

She'd make a good match for any body
(by she I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a relict away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain."
SHENSTONE.

Proctor has got a wen growing out at
the nape of his neck, which his wife wants

3 6 4

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

him to have cut off; but I think it is rather
an agreeable excrescence: like his poetry,
redundant. Hone has hanged himself
for debt. Godwin was taken up for
picking pockets. Moxon, has fallen in
love with Emma, our nut-brown maid.
Becky takes to bad courses. Her father
was blown up in a steam machine. The
coroner found it "insanity." I should
not like him to sit on my letter.

Do you observe my direction. Is it
Gallic-classical? Do try and get some
frogs. You must ask for " grenouilles "
(green eels). They don't understand
"frogs," though 't is a common phrase
with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne,)
inquire if old Godfrey is living, and how
he got home from the crusades. He must
be a very old man.

If there is anything new in politics or
literature in France, keep it till I see you
again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty
Briant* is well, I hope.

I think I have no more news; only give
both our loves (all three, says Dash,) to

Mrs. P , and bid her get quite well,

as I am at present, bating qualms, and the
grief incident to losing a valuable relation.

C. L.

LORD BYRON

TO THOMAS MOORE

RAVENNA, Dec. 9, 1820.

I open my letter to tell you a fact, which
will show the state of this country better
than I can. The commandant of the
troops is now lying dead in my house. He
was shot at a little past eight o'clock,
about two hundred paces from my door.
I was putting on my great-coat to visit
Madame la Contessa G. when I heard the
shot. On coming into the hall, I found all
my servants on the balcony, exclaiming
that a man was murdered. I immediately
ran down, calling on Tita (the bravest of
them) to follow me. The rest wanted to
hinder us from going, as it is the custom

'Chateaubriand.

for every body here, it seems, to run
away from "the stricken deer."

However, down we ran, and found him
lying on his back, almost, if not quite,
dead, with five wounds; one in the heart,
two in the stomach, one in the finger, and
the other in the arm. Some soldiers
cocked their guns, and wanted to hinder
me from passing. However, we passed,
and I found Diego, the adjutant, crying
over him like a child a surgeon, who said
nothing of his profession a priest, sobbing
a frightened prayer and the command-
ant, all this time, on his back, on the hard,
cold pavement, without light or assistance,
or anything around him but confusion
and dismay.

As nobody could, or would, do anything
but howl and pray and as no one would
stir a finger to move him, for fear of con-
sequences, I lost my patience made my
servant and a couple of the mob take up
the body sent off two soldiers to the
guard despatched Diego to the Cardinal
with the news, and had the commandant
carried upstairs into my own quarter.
But it was too late, he was gone not at
all disfigured bled inwardly not above
an ounce or two came out.

I had him partly stripped made the
surgeon examine him, and examined him
myself. He had been shot by cut balls or
slugs. I felt one of the slugs, which had
gone through him, all but the skin.
Everybody conjectures why he was killed,
but no one knows how. The gun was
found close by him an old gun, half
filed down.

He only said, Dio I and Gesu I two
or three times, and appeared to have suf-
fered very little. Poor fellow! he was a
brave officer, but had made himself much
disliked by the people. I knew him per-
sonally, and had met with him often at
conversazioni and elsewhere. My house
is full of soldiers, dragoons, doctors, priests,
and all kinds of persons, though I have
now cleared it, and clapt sentinels at the
doors. To-morrow the body is to be
moved. The town is in the greatest con-
fusion, as you may suppose.

You are to know that, if I had not had

LETTERS

365

the body moved, they would have left
him there till morning in the street, for
fear of consequences. I would not choose
to let even a dog die in such a manner,
without succor: and, as for conse-
quences, I care for none in a duty.

Yours, etc.

P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the
body is smoking his pipe with great com-
posure. A queer people this.

JOSEPH MAZZINI

LETTER TO HIS PUBLISHERS IN 1847 CON-
CERNING AN OPEN LETTER TO CHARLES
ALBERT, KING OF SARDINIA, IN
l8 3 I.

I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE SALVATION
OF ITALY CAN BE ACHIEVED NOW OR AT
ANY FUTURE TIME, BY PRINCE, POPE, OR
KING.

For a king to unite, and give independ-
ence to Italy, he must possess alike
genius, Napoleonic energy, and the highest
virtue. Genius, in order to conceive the
idea of the enterprise and the conditions
of victory ; energy not to front its dangers,
for to a man of genius they would be
few and brief but to dare to break at
once with every tie of family or alliance,
and the habits and necessities of an exist-
ence distinct and removed from that of
the people, and to extricate himself
both from the web of diplomacy and the
counsels of wicked or cowardly advisers;
virtue enough voluntarily to renounce a
portion at least of his actual power; for it
is only by redeeming them from slavery
that a people may be aroused to battle
and sacrifice.

And these are the qualities unknown
to those who govern at the present day
qualities forbidden alike to them by their
education, their habits of ingrained dis-
trust, and as I believe by God himself,
\vho is preparing the way for the era of
the peoples; and I held these convictions
even at the time when I wrote that letter.
Charles Albert then ascended the throne
in the vigor of manhood, the memory of

the solemn promises of 1821 still freshly
stamped on his heart, amid the last echoes
of the insurrection which had taught him
the wants and wishes of the Italians, and
the first throbs of that almost universal
hope in him, which should have taught
him his duty.

I made myself the interpreter of that
hope, in which I did not share.

Should you decide to republish these
pages of mine, they may at least serve to
convince those who now style themselves
the creators and organizers of a new party,
that they are but feebly reviving the illu-
sions of sixteen years ago, and that all
which they now attempt has been already
tried by the national party, ere they were
taught by bitter deceptions and torrents
of fraternal blood, to declare to their
countrymen Your sole hope is in God and r
in yourselves. Yours,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

A LETTER OF PROTEST TO "LA TRIBUNA/"
A REPUBLICAN ORGAN OF FRANCE,
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS EXILE
FROM FRANCE, 2O SEP-
TEMBER, 1832.

IN THE presence of an exceptional system,,
wherein the rights of individual liberty and
domicile are infringed by an unjust law
still more unjustly applied; wherein ac-
cusation, judgment, and condemnation,
all emanate from one and the same power,
and no possibility is allowed of defence;
wherein the eye meets naught but exam-
ples of tyranny and submission on every
side; it is the duty of every man possess-
ing a sense of dignity to protest.

The object of such protest is not an
useless attempt at defence, nor desire
of awaking sympathy in those who are
suffering under the same evils. It is the
necessity felt of holding up to infamy a
power which abuses its strength, and of
making the crimes of the government
known to the country wherein the injus-
tice is committed; of adding yet another
to the many documents which will, sooner
or later, decide the people to condemn those
by whom it is condemned and betrayed.

3 66

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

For these reasons I do protest.

The newspapers have published the
letter sent to me by the French Ministry,
and the motives upon which that order is
founded.

I am accused of conspiring for the
emancipation of my country, and of seek-
ing to arouse the Italians to that aim by
my letters and printed publications.

I am accused of maintaining a corres-
pondence with a Republican Committee in
Paris, and of having I, an Italian in
Marseilles, and without means or con-
nections held dangerous communication
with the combatants of the Cloister of
St. Mary.

I shall certainly not shrink from assum-
ing the responsibility of the first accusa-
tion. If the endeavor to spread useful
truths in my own country, through the
medium of the press, be conspiracy, I do
conspire. If to exhort my fellow-country-
men not to slumber in slavery, but rather
to perish in the struggle against it; to lie
in wait for, and to seize the first opportu-
nity of gaining a country, and a national
government, be conspiracy, I do conspire.

It is the duty of every man to con-
spire for the honor and salvation of his
brother man, and no government assuming
the title of liberal has a right to treat the
man who fulfils the sacred duty as a crim-
inal. These are principles which none
but the men of the State of Siege* will deny.

But what proofs are there of the second
accusation?

The ministerial dispatches quote certain
passages from certain sequestrated letters,
which they affirm to have been written
by me to friends in the interior.

These letters are stated by the Ministry
to contain revelations as to the affair of
the 5th and 6th of June. They are said
to declare that the incidents of those two
days have done no injury to the Republi-
can party in France; that the movement
failed simply because those patriots from
the provinces who were to have gone to Paris
failed to keep their word; that another m-

This refers to the state of siege in which the city of Paris was
placed during the insurrection of the $th and 6ti of June on
the occasion of the funeral of General Lamarque,

surrection is being prepared, and will take
place at no remote period; that the throne
of Louis Philippe is undermined on every
side; and, finally, that the Republican Com-
mittee of Paris is aboiit to send five or six
emissaries to Italy in order to organize
and cooperate with the party of liberty there.

Where are these letters? In Paris?
Were they sequestered by the French
Government? Have they ever been com-
municated to the accused? Is there any-
thing in my conduct, in my acts, or in my
correspondence, tending to confirm the
assertion that these letters were written
by me?

No. The quotations made from these
letters were made by the Sardinian
police, and the originals are stated to be
in the archives. The French minister only
quotes extracts, and those on the testi-
mony of others. But he believes that
these statements are deserving of credence.

Why? How? Does the

French police possess one single indication
of my having conspired against the Gov-
ernment of France? Have I ever been
found guilty of rebellion? or detected in
the insurrectionary ranks?

While such is the position of things,
what course can I pursue?

It is possible to demonstrate the false-
hood of a special and definite assertion,
that may embrace the acts or thoughts
of a whole life. It is not possible to de-
fend one's self against an accusation un-
supported by any description of evidence.

I demanded to have these ministerial
letters communicated to me, and was
refused. Nothing therefore was left for
me to do but to deny the facts, and I did
so. I denied the existence hi any letter
of mine of the lines printed in italics,
which are the only lines implying an under-
standing between me and the French
Republican party. The rest are mere
observations and expressions of opinion,
upon which no act of accusation could be
founded.

I said these things hi a letter written
to the minister, dated the ist August.
I denied the existence of the lines quoted,
and defied the French and Sardinian police

LETTERS

367

to prove them. I demanded an inquiry.
I demanded to be tried and judged.

The minister did not condescend to
answer me. The Prefect of Marseilles,
who had promised me to await the reply
M. de Montalivet, suddenly sent me a
second order to depart, and I was com-
pelled to submit.

Such are the facts.

Men in power, what is it you hope?
that your shameful submission to the pre-
tensions of the Holy Alliance will cause us
to betray our duty to our country, or that
your incessant persecutions may at last
dishearten and weary us of the sacred
idea of liberty, which you betrayed on your
accession to power? Think you that this
succession of arbitrary acts will enable you
to succeed in the retrograde mission you
have assumed, that you will sow the seeds
of suspicion and distrust in those amongst
whom the bond of fraternity is daily
gaining in strength; or do you desire to
arouse a spirit of reaction in the patriots
of other lands against that of France, the
fulfilment of whose mission you alone
interrupt?

Or do you hope, in your abject coward-
ice, to cancel the brand of infamy on your
brow, by chasing away the men whom
you urged to the brink of the abyss, to
forsake them in the moment of danger
men whose presence in France is a bitter
proof and perennial remorse to you? Be-
lieve it not. That brand of shame will
never be cancelled; it is deepened every
day of your rule, every day that the voice
of an exile is lifted up to curse you, and to
cry aloud unto you:

Goon! You have torn from us liberty,
country, and the very means of existence;
now take from us the power of free speech;
take from us the very air that wafts to us
the perfumed breath of our own land;
take from the exile his last comfort left,
the right to gaze over the far sea, and whis-
per to himself, There lies Italy. Go on!
go on from one humiliation to another;
drag yourselves to the feet of Tzar, Pope,
or Metternich; implore them to grant you
yet a few days of existence, and offer them
in exchange, now the liberty, and now the

head of a patriot. Go on! proceed yet
further on the path leading to ruin through
dishonor. It is well for the interest and
salvation of the peoples, that you should
reveal, in all its hideous nudity, a system
of baseness and deceit unequalled in
Europe. It is well for the triumph of the
sacred cause, that you should demonstrate
by your acts the impossibility of all alliance
between the cause of the peoples and the
cause of kings.

But when the measure shall be full;
when the tocsin of the peoples shall sound
the hour of liberty; when France hi arms
shall ask of you, What use have you
made of the power with which I entrusted
you? then woe unto you! Peoples
and kings will alike repudiate and reject
you.

You consigned your unsuspecting and
defenceless country to the snares of des-
pots. You heaped dishonor upon her.
You have impeded the progress of univer-
sal association. You have cast the liber-
ties of the peoples into the jaws of the
Holy Alliance. Through you, the noble
impulse given to the spirit of fraternity
by the days of July has been interrupted;
the souls of men have been poisoned; and
the hearts of the good have been darkened
by distrust.

And when the victims of your diplo-
macy, of your treacherous protocols, ap-
peared like specters before you and
demanded an asylum, you overwhelmed
them with outrage, and drove them forth;
effacing from your code the inviolable
rights of misfortune and the duties of
hospitality.

As for us men of action, a minority
consecrated by misfortune, and the sen-
tinels on the outposts of revolution
we bade solemn farewell to all the joys
and comforts of existence on the day when
we swore fidelity to the cause of the
oppressed. Our hearts are unstained by
anger and injurious suspicion. The gov-
erning faction has nothing in common
with the peoples, who suffer like ourselves.
Let us be united, and close up our ranks.
The hour of justice will arrive for all.
JOSEPH MAZZINI.

3 68

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

LETTER TO GENERAL JOSEPH HOOfcER

January 26, 1863.
GENERAL:

I have placed you at the head of the
Army of the Potomac. Of course I have
done this upon what appear to me to be
sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best
for you to know that there are some things
in regard to which I am not quite satis-
fied with you. I believe you to be a brave
and skillful soldier, which of course I like.
I also believe you do not mix politics with
your profession, in which you are right.
You have confidence in yourself, which is
a valuable if not an indispensable quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reason-
able bounds, does good rather than harm;
but I think that during General Burn-
side's command of the army you have
taken counsel of your ambition and
thwarted him as much as you could, in
which you did a great wrong to the coun-
try and to a most meritorious and honor-
able brother officer. I have heard, in
such a way as to believe it, of your re-
cently saying that both the army and
the government needed a dictator. Of
course it was not for this, but in spite of
it, that I have given you the command.
Only those generals who gain successes
can set up dictators. What I now ask
of you is military success, and I will risk
the dictatorship. The government will
support you to the utmost of its ability,
which is neither more nor less than it has
done and will do for all commanders. I
much fear that the spirit which you have
aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing
their commander and withholding confi-
dence from him, will now turn upon you.
I shall assist you as far as I can to put it
down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he
were alive again, could get any good out
of an army while such a spirit prevails in it;
and now beware of rashness. Beware of
rashness, but with energy and sleepless
vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Yours very truly
A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY

November 21, 1864.
DEAR MADAM:

I have been shown in the files of the
War Department a statement of the
Adjutant General of Massachusetts that
you are the mother of five sons who have
died gloriously on the field of battle. I
feel how weak and fruitless must be any
words of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so over-
whelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may
be found in the thanks of the republic
they died to save. I pray that our Heav-
enly Father may assuage the anguish 01
your bereavement, and leave you only
the cherished memory of the loved and
lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice
upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

THOMAS CARLYLE

REFUSING A BARONETCY AND THE GRAND
CROSS OF THE BATH

TO THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI

5, CHEYNE Row, CHELSEA:
December 29, 1874.

SIR, Yesterday, to my great surprise, I
had the honor to receive your letter con-
taining a magnificent proposal for my
benefit, which will be memorable to me
for the rest of my life. Allow me to say
that the letter, both in purport and ex-
pression, is worthy to be called magnani-
mous and noble, that it is without example
in my own poor history; and I think it is
unexampled, too, in the history of govern-
ing persons towards men of letters at the
present, as at any tune; and that I will
carefully preserve it as one of the things
precious to memory and heart. A real
treasure or benefit it, independent of all
results from it.

This said to yourself and reposited with
many feelings in my own grateful mind,

LETTERS

369

I have only to add that your splendid and
generous proposals for my practical be-
hoof, must not any of them take effect;
that titles of honor are, in all degrees of
them, out of keeping with the tenor of
my own poor existence hitherto in this
epoch of the world, and would be an en-
cumbrance, not a furtherance to me; that
as to money, it has, after long years of
rigorous and frugal, but also (thank God,
and those that are gone before me) not
degrading poverty, become in this latter
time amply abundant, even superabun-
dant; more of it, too, now a hindrance,
not a help to me; so that royal or other
bounty would be more than thrown away
hi my case; and in brief, that except the
feeling of your fine and noble conduct on
this occasion, which is a real and perma-
nent possession, there cannot anything
be done that would not now be a sorrow
rather than a pleasure.
With thanks more than usually sincere,
I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
T. CARLYLE.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

TO MRS. R. L. STEVENSON*

KALAWAO, MOLOKAI [May, 1889].

DEAR FANNY, I had a lovely sail up.
Captain Cameron and Mr. Gilfillan, both
born in the States, yet the first still with a
strong Highland, and the second still
with a strong Lowland accent, were good
company; the night was warm, the victuals
plain but good. Mr. Gilfillan gave me his
berth, and I slept well, though I heard
the sisters sick In the next state-room,
poor souls. Heavy rolling woke me hi
the morning; I turned in all standing,
so went right on the upper deck. The
day was on the peep out of a low morning
bank, and we were wallowing along under
stupendous cliffs. As the lights bright-
ened, we could see certain abutments and
buttresses on their front, where wood
clustered and grass grew brightly. But

Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

the whole brow seemed quite impassable,
and my heart sank at the sight. Two
thousand feet of rock making 19 (the
Captain guesses) seemed quite beyond
my powers. However, I had come so far;
and, to tell you the truth, I was so cowed
with fear and disgust that I dared not go
back on the adventure in the interests of
my own self-respect. Presently we came
up with the leper promontory: lowland,
quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little
town of wooden houses, two churches, a
landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, north-
erly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the
great wall of the pali [precipice] cutting the
world out on the south. Our lepers were
sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one
poor child very horrid, one white man,
leaving a large grown family behind him
in Honolulu, and then into the second
stepped the sisters and myself. I do not
know how it would have been with me
had the sisters not been there. My horror
of the horrible is about my weakest point;
but the moral loveliness at my elbow
blotted all else out; and when I found that
one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly
under her veil, I cried a little myself; then
I felt as right as a trivet, only a little
crushed to be there so uselessly. I
thought it was a sin and a shame she
should feel unhappy; I turned round to
her, and said something like this: "Ladies,
God Himself is here to give you welcome.
I'm sure it is good for me to be beside you;
I hope it will be blessed to me; I thank
you for myself and the good you do me."
It seemed to cheer her up; but indeed I
had scarce said it when we were at the
landing-stairs, and there was a great
crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pan-
tomime masks in poor human flesh, wait-
ing to receive the sisters and the new
patients.

Every hand was offered: I had gloves,
but I had made up my mind on the boat's
voyage not to give my hand, that seemed
less offensive than the gloves. So the
sisters and I went up among that crew,
and presently I got aside (for I felt I had
no business there) and set off on foot across
the promontory, carrying my wrap and

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the camera. All horror was quite gone
from me: to see these dread creatures smile
and look happy was beautiful. On my
way through Kalaupapa I was exchanging
cheerful alohas with the patients coming
galloping over on their horses; I was stop-
ping to gossip at house-doors; I was happy,
only ashamed of myself that I was here
for no good. One woman was pretty, and
spoke good English, and was infinitely
engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly;
she thought I was the new white patient;
and when she found I was only a visitor, a
curious change came in her face and voice
the only sad thing morally sad, I mean
that I met that morning. But for all
that, they tell me none want to leave.
Beyond Kalaupapa the houses became
rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stony land,
one sick pandanus; a dreary country;
from overhead in the little clinging wood
shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell;
the low sun was right in my face; the trade
blew pure and cool and delicious; I felt
as right as nine-pence, and stopped and
chatted with the patients whom I still met
on their horses, with not the least disgust.
About half-way over, I met the superin-
tendent (a leper) with a horse for me, and
O, was n't I glad! But the horse was one
of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes
that always dully want to go somewhere
else, and my traffic with him completed
my crushing fatigue. I got to the guest-
house, an empty house with several rooms,
kitchen,bath, etc. There was no one there,
and I let the horse go loose in the garden,
lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.

Dr. Swift woke me and gave me break-
fast, then I came back and slept again
while he was at the dispensary, and he
woke me for dinner; and I came back and
slept again, and he woke me about six for
supper; and then in about an hour I felt
tired again, and came up to my solitary
guest-house, played the flageolet, and am
now writing to you. As yet, you see, I
have seen nothing of the settlement, and
my crushing fatigue (though I believe
that was moral and a measure of my cow-
ardice) and the doctor's opinion make
me think the pali hopeless. "You don't

look a strong man," said the doctor; "but
are you sound?" I told him the truth;
then he said it was out of the question,
and if I were to get up at all, I must be
carried up. But, as it seems, men as
well as horses continually fall on this
ascent: the doctor goes up with a change
of clothes it is plain that to be carried
would in itself be very fatiguing to both
mind and body; and I should then be
at the beginning of thirteen miles of moun-
tain road to be ridden against time. How
should I come through? I hope you will
think me right in my decision: I mean to
stay, and shall not be back in Honolulu
till Saturday, June first. You must all
do the best you can to make ready.

Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son,
beginning to toddle and run, and they live
here as composed as brick and mortar
at least the wife does, a Kentucky Ger-
man, a fine enough creature, I believe, who
was quite amazed at the sisters shedding
tears! How strange is mankind! Gil-
fillan too, a good fellow I think, and far
from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland
Scottish talk in the boat while the sister
was covering her face; but I believe he
knew, and did it (partly) in embarrass-
ment, and part perhaps in mistaken kind-
ness. And that was one reason, too,
why I made my speech to them. Partly,
too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do
so, and remembered one of my golden
rules, "When you are ashamed to speak,
speak up at once." But, mind you, that
rule is only golden with strangers; with
your own folks, there are other con-
siderations. This is a strange place to be
in. A bell has been sounded at intervals
while I wrote, now all is still but a musical
humming of the sea, not unlike the sound
of telegraph wires; the night is quite cool
and pitch dark, with a small fine rain;
one light over in the leper settlement, one
cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp
here by my bedside, and my pen cheeping
between my inky fingers.

Next day, lovely morning, slept all
night, 80 in the shade, strong, sweet
Anaho trade-wind.

Louis.

VIII
ORATIONS

PLATO (427-347 B. C.)

Plato, the greatest of philosophers, exerted an influence upon the intellectual life of the world
greater perhaps than that of any other man. The Platonic dialogues are constructed about the figure
of Socrates, the devoted seeker after the truth, who by his vexatious questions sought to arouse in his
pupils a consuming desire to examine the foundations of their beliefs. These questions searched out
the reasons for the acceptance of conventional dogmas and never ceased until all unthinking faith in
established opinions had been destroyed. He was finally tried and condemned to death by the city of
Athens on the ground that he was undermining the religious beliefs of the youth of that city. The fa-
mous Apology, which is given below, is Plato's reproduction of his master's defense of his conduct. It
not only reveals the manner of court procedure in Athens when she was at the height of her power, but
it remains one of the most beautiful pieces of prose in any language. And throughout there stands forth
the resplendent figure of the noblest and the most human man of Antiquity.

Translation by Benjamin Jowett.

THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES

How you have felt, O men of Athens, at
hearing the speeches of my accusers, I
cannot tell; but I know that their persua-
sive words almost made me forget who I
was, such was the effect of them; and yet
they have hardly spoken a word of truth.
But many as their falsehoods were, there
was one of them which quite amazed me:
I mean when they told you to be upon
your guard, and not to let yourselves
be deceived by the force of my eloquence.
They ought to have been ashamed of say-
ing this, because they were sure to be
detected as soon as I opened my lips and
displayed my deficiency; they certainly
did appear to be most shameless in saying
< his, unless by the force of eloquence they
mean the force of truth; for then I do in-
deed admit that I am eloquent. But in
'iow different a way from theirs! Well, as
I was saying, they have hardly uttered a
word, or not more than a word, of truth;
but you shall hear from me the whole
Iruth: not, however, delivered after their
manner, in a set oration duly ornamented
with words and phrases. No, indeed!
but I shall use the words and arguments
which occur to me at the moment; for I
am certain that this is right, and that at
my time of life I ought not to be appearing

before you, O men of Athens, in the char-
acter of a juvenile orator: let no one expect
this of me. And I must beg of you to
grant me one favor, which is this, If
you hear me using the same words in my
defense which I have been in the habit
of using, and which most of you may have
heard hi the agora, and at the tables of
the money-changers, or anywhere else,
I would ask you not to be surprised at
this, and not to interrupt me. For I am
more than seventy years of age, and this
is the first time that I have ever appeared
in a court of law, and I am quite a stranger
to the ways of the place; and therefore I
would have you regard me as if I were
really a stranger, whom you would excuse
if he spoke in his native tongue, and after
the fashion of his country: that I think
is not an unfair request. Never mind the
manner, which may or may not be good;
but think only of the justice of my cause,
and give heed to that: let the judge decide
justly and the speaker speak truly.

And first, I have to reply to the older
charges and to my first accusers, and then
I will go on to the later ones. For I have
had many accusers, who accused me of old,
and their false charges have continued
during many years; and I am more afraid
of them than of Anytus and his associates,
who are dangerous, too, in their own way.

372

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

But far more dangerous are these, who
began when you were children, and took
possession of your minds with their false-
hoods, telh'ng of one Socrates, a wise man,
who speculated about the heaven above,
and searched into the earth beneath, and
made the worse appear the better cause.
These are the accusers whom I dread;
for they are the circulators of this rumor,
and their hearers are too apt to fancy that
speculators of this sort do not believe in
the gods. And they are many, and their
charges against me are of ancient date,
and they made them in days when you
were impressible, in childhood, or per-
haps in youth, and the cause when heard
went by default, for there was none to
answer. And hardest of all, their names
I do not know and cannot tell; unless in
the chance case of a comic poet. But
the main body of these slanderers who
from envy and malice have wrought upon
you, and there are some of them who
are convinced themselves, and impart
their convictions to others, all these, I
say, are most difficult to deal with; for
I cannot have them up here, and examine
them, and therefore I must simply fight
with shadows in my own defense, and ex-
amine when there is no one who answers.
I will ask you then to assume with me,
as I was saying, that my opponents are
of two kinds, one recent, the other
ancient; and I hope that you will see the
propriety of my answering the latter first,
for these accusations you heard long be-
fore the others, and much oftener.

Well, then, I will make my defense, and
I will endeavor in the short time which is
allowed to do away with this evil opinion
of me which you have held for such a
long time and I hope that I may succeed,
if this be well for you and me, and that
my words may find favor with you. But
I know that to accomplish this is not easy
I quite see the nature of the task. Let
the event be as God wills: in obedience to
the law I make my defense.

I will begin at the beginning, and ask
what the accusation is which has given
rise to this slander of me, and which has
encouraged Meletus to proceed against

me. What do the slanderers say? They
shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up
their words in an affidavit: "Socrates is
an evil-doer, and a curious person, who
searches into things under the earth and
in heaven, and he makes the worse appear
the better cause; and he teaches the afore-
said doctrines to others." That is the
nature of the accusation, and that is what
you have seen yourselves in the comedy
of Aristophanes, who has introduced a
man whom he calls Socrates, going about
and saying that he can walk in the air,
and talking a deal of nonsense concerning
matters of which I do not pretend to know
either much or little not that I mean to
say anything disparaging of any one who
is a student of natural philosophy. I
should be very sorry if Meletus could lay
that to my charge. But the simple truth
is, O Athenians, that I have nothing to do
with these studies. Very many of those
here present are witnesses to the truth of
this, and to them I appeal. Speak then,
you who have heard me, and tell your
neighbors, whether any of you have ever
known me hold forth in few words or in
many upon matters of this sort. . . .
You hear their answer. And from what
they say of this you will be able to judge
of the truth of the rest.

As little foundation is there for the re-
port that I am a teacher, and take money;
that is no more true than the other.
Although, if a man is able to teach, I
honor him for being paid. There is
Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of
Ceos, and Hippias of Elis, who go the
round of the cities, and are able to per-
suade the young men to leave their own
citizens, by whom they might be taught
for nothing, and come to them, whom they
not only pay, but are thankful if they
may be allowed to pay them. There is
actually a Parian philosopher residing in
Athens, of whom I have heard; and I came
to hear of him in this way: I met a man
who has spent a world of money on the
Sophists, Callias the son of Hipponicus,
and knowing that he had sons, I asked
him: "Callias," I said, "if your two sons
were foals or calves, there would be no

ORATIONS

373

difficulty in finding some one to put over
them; we should hire a trainer of horses,
or a farmer probably, who would improve
and perfect them in their own proper vir-
tue and excellence; but as they are human
beings, whom are you thinking of placing
over them? Is there any one who under-
stands human and political virtue? You
must have thought about this as you have
sons; is there any one?" "There is,"
he said. "Who is he?" said I, "and of
what country? and what does he charge? "
"Evenus the Parian," he replied; "he is
the man, and his charge is five minae."
Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if
he really has this wisdom, and teaches
at such a modest charge. Had I the same,
I should have been very proud and con-
teited; but the truth is that I have no
knowledge of the kind, O Athenians.

I dare say that some one will ask the
question, "Why is this, Socrates, and what
is the origin of these accusations of you:
for there must have been some thing strange
which you have been doing? All this
great fame and talk about you would
never have arisen if you had been like
other men: tell us, then, why this is, as
we should be sorry to judge hastily of
you." Now I regard this as a fair chal-
lenge, and I will endeavor to explain to
you the origin of this name of "wise," and
of this evil fame. Please to attend, then.
And although some of you may think
that I am joking, I declare that I will tell
you the entire truth. Men of Athens,
this reputation of mine has come of a
certain sort of wisdom which I possess.
If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I
reply, such wisdom as is attainable by
man, for to that extent I am inclined to
believe that I am wise ; whereas the persons
of whom I was speaking have a super-
human wisdom, which I may fail to de-
scribe, because I have it not myself; and
he who says that I have, speaks falsely,
and is taking away my character. And
here, O men of Athens, I must beg you
not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say
something extravagant. For the word
which I will speak is not mine. I will re-
fer you to a witness who is worthy of

credit, and will tell you about my wisdom
whether I have any and of what sort
and that witness shall be the God of
Delphi. You must have known Chaere-
phon; he was early a friend of mine, and
also a friend of yours, for he shared in the
exile of the people, and returned with you.
Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very
impetuous in all his doings, and he went
to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to
tell him whether as I was saying, I must
beg you not to interrupt he asked the
oracle to tell him whether there was any
one wiser than I was, and the Pythian
prophetess answered, that there was no
man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself,
but his brother, who is hi court, will con-
firm the truth of this story.

Why do I mention this? Because I am
going to explain to you why I have such
an evil name. When I heard the answer,
I said to myself, What can the god mean?
and what is the interpretation of this
riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom,
small or great. What can he mean when
he says that I am the wisest of men? And
yet he is a god and cannot he; that would
be against his nature. After a long con-
sideration, I at last thought of a method
of trying the question. I reflected that if
I could only find a man wiser than myself,
then I might go to the god with a refuta-
tion hi my hand. I should say to him,
"Here is a man who is wiser than I am;
but you said that I was the wisest."
Accordingly I went to one who had the
reputation of wisdom, and observed to
him his name I need not mention; he
was a politician whom I selected for ex-
amination and the result was as follows:
When I began to talk with him, I could
not help thinking that he was not really
wise, although he was thought wise by
many, and wiser still by himself; and I
went and tried to explain to him that he
thought himself wise, but was not really
wise; and the consequence was that he
hated me, and his enmity was shared by
several who were present and heard me.
So I left him, saying to myself, as I went
away: Well, although I do not suppose
that either of us knows anything really

374

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

beautiful and good, I am better off
than he is, for he knows nothing, and
thinks that he knows. I neither know
nor think that I know. In this latter
particular, then, I seem to have slightly
the advantage of him. Then I went to
another who had still higher philosophical
pretensions, and my conclusion was ex-
actly the same. I made another enemy of
him, and of many others beside him.

After this I went to one man after an-
other, being not unconscious of the enmity
which I provoked, and I lamented and
feared this: but necessity was laid upon
me, the word of God, I thought, ought
to be considered first. And I said to
myself, Go I must to all who appear to
know, and find out the meaning of the
oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians,
by the dog I swear! for I must tell you
the truth the result of my mission was
just this: I found that the men most in
repute were all but the most foolish; and
that some inferior men were really wiser
and better. I will tell you the tale of my
wanderings and of the "Herculean" la-
bors, as I may call them, which I endured
only to find at last the oracle irrefutable.
When I left the politicians, I went to the
poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts.
And there, I said to myself, you will be
detected; now you will find out that you
are more ignorant than they are. Ac-
cordingly, I took them some of the most
elaborate passages in their own writings,
and asked what was the meaning of them
thinking that they would teach me
something. Will you believe me? I am
almost ashamed to speak of this, but still
I must say that there is hardly a person
present who would not have talked better
about their poetry than they did them-
selves. That showed me in an instant
that not by wisdom do poets write poetry,
but by a sort of genius and inspiration;
they are like diviners or soothsayers who
also say many fine things, but do not un-
derstand the meaning of them. And the
poets appeared to me to be much in the
same case; and I further observed that
upon the strength of their poetry they
believed themselves to be the wisest of

men in other things in which they were not
wise. So I departed, conceiving myself
to be superior to them for the same reason
that I was superior to the politicians.

At last I went to the artisans, for I was
conscious that I knew nothing at all, as
I may say, and I was sure that they knew
many fine things; and in this I was not
mistaken, for they did know many things
of which I was ignorant, and in this they
certainly were wiser than I was. But I
observed that even the good artisans fell
into the same error as the poets; because
they were good workmen they thought
that they also knew all sorts of high
matters, and this defect in them over-
shadowed their wisdom therefore I asked
myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I
would like to be as I was, neither having
their knowledge nor their ignorance, or
like them in both; and I made answer to
myself and the oracle that I was better off
as I was.

This investigation has led to my having
many enemies of the worst and most dan-
gerous kind, and has given occasion also
to many calumnies. And I am called wise,
for my hearers always imagine that I
myself possess the wisdom which I find
wanting in others: but the truth is, O men
of Athens, that God only is wise; and in
this oracle he means to say that the wis-
dom of men is little or nothing; he is not
speaking of Socrates, he is only using my
name as an illustration, as if he said,
He,O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates,
knows that his wisdom is in truth worth
nothing. And so I go my way, obedient
to the god, and make inquisition into the
wisdom of any one, whether citizen or
stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he
is not wise, then in vindication of the orac-
cle I show him that he is not wise; and this
occupation quite absorbs me, and I have
no time to give either to any public matter
of interest or to any concern of my own,
but I am in utter poverty by reason of my
devotion to the god.

There is another thing: young men of
the richer classes, who have not much to
do, come about me of their own accord;
they like to hear the pretenders examined,

ORATIONS

375

and they often imitate me, and examine
other* themselves; there are plenty of
persons, as they soon enougk discover,
who think that they know something, but
really know littb or nothing: and then
those who are examined by them instead
of being angry with themselves are angry
with me : This confounded Socrates, they
say; this villainous misleader of youth!
and then if somebody asks them, Why,
what evil does he practice or teach? they
do not know, and cannot tell; but in order
that they may not appear to be at a loss,
they repeat the ready-made charges which
are used against all philosophers about
teaching things up in the clouds and under
the earth, and having no gods, and making
the worse appear the better cause; for
they do not like to confess that their pre-
tense of knowledge has been detected
which is the truth: and as they are nu-
merous and ambitious and energetic, and
are all in battle array and have persuasive
tongues, they have filled your ears with
their loud and inveterate calumnies.
And this is the reason why my three ac-
cusers, Meletus and Anytus and Lycon,
have set upon me: Meletus, who has a
quarrel with me on behalf of the poets;
Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen; Lycon,
on behalf of the rhetoricians: and as I
said at the beginning, I cannot expect to
get rid of this mass of calumny all in a
moment. And this, O men of Athens,
is the truth and the whole truth; I have
concealed nothing, I have dissembled
nothing. And yet, I know that this plain-
ness of speech makes them hate me, and
what is their hatred but a proof that I
am speaking the truth? this is the occa-
sion and reason of their slander of me, as
you will find out either in this or in an>
future inquiry.

I have said enough in my defense against
the first class of my accusers; I turn to
the second class who are headed by Mele-
tus, that good and patriotic man, as he
calls himself. And now I will try to de-
fend myself against them: these new
accusers must also have their affidavit
read. What do they say? Something of
this sort: That Socrates is a doer of evil,

and corrupter of the youth, and he doe*
not believe in the gods of the state, and has
other new divinities of his own. That is
the sort of charge; and now let us examine
the particular counts. He says that I
am a doer of evil, who corrupt the youth ;
but I say, men of Athens, that Meletus
is a doer of evil, and the evil is that he
makes a joke of a serious matter, and is
too ready at bringing other men to trial
from a pretended zeal and interest about
matters in which he really never had the
smallest interest. And the truth of this
I will endeavor to prove.

Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask
a question of you. You think a great deal
about the improvement of youth?

Yes I do.

Tell the judges, then, who is their im-
prover; for you must know, as you have
taken the pains to discover their corrupter,
and are citing and accusing me before
them. Speak, then, and tell the judges
who their improver is. Observe, Meletus,
that you are silent, and have nothing to
say. But is not this rather disgraceful,
and a very considerable proof of what I
was saying, that you have no interest in
the matter? Speak up, friend, and tell us
who their improver is.

The laws.

But that, my good sir, is not my mean-
ing. I want to know who the person is,
who, in the first place, knows the laws.

The judges, Socrates, who are present in
court.

What, do you mean to say, Meletus,
that they are able to instruct and improve
youth?

Certainly they are.

What, all of them, or some only and not
others?

All of them.

By the goddess Here, that is good news!
There are plenty of improvers, then. And
what do you say of the audience, do they
improve them?

Yes, they do.

And the senators?

Yes, the senators improve them.

But perhaps the ecclesiasts corrupt
them? or do they too improve them?

376

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

They improve them.

Then every Athenian improves and
elevates them; all with the exception of
myself; and I alone am their corrupter?
Is that what you affirm?

That is what I stoutly affirm.

I am very unfortunate if that is true.
But suppose I ask you a question: Would
you say that this also holds true in the
case of horses? Does one man do them
harm and all the world good? Is not the
exact opposite of this true? One man is
able to do them good, or at least not many;
the trainer of horses, that is to say, does
them good, and others who have to do
with them rather injure them? Is not
that true, Meletus, of horses, or any other
animals? Yes, certainly. Whether you
and Anytus say yes or no, that is no mat-
ter. Happy indeed would be the condi-
tion of youth if they had one corrupter
only, and all the rest of the world were
their improvers. And you, Meletus, have
sufficiently shown that you never had a
thought about the young : your carelessness
is seen in your not caring about the matters
spoken of in this very indictment.

And now, Meletus, I must ask you an-
other question: Which is better, to live
among bad citizens, or among good ones?
Answer, friend, I say; for that is a ques-
tion which may be easily answered. Do
not the good do their neighbors good, and
the bad do them evil?

Certainly.

And is there any one who would rather
be injured than benefited by those who
live with him? Answer, my good friend;
the law requires you to answer does any
one like to be injured?

Certainly not.

And when you accuse me of corrupting
and deteriorating the youth, do you allege
that I corrupt them intentionally or unin-
tentionally?

Intentionally, I say.

But you have just admitted that the
good do their neighbors good, and the
evil do them evil. Now, is that a truth
which your superior wisdom has recognized
thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in
such darkness and ignorance as not to

know that if a man with whom 1 have to
live is corrupted by me, I am very likely
to be harmed by him, and yet I corrupt
him, and intentionally, too; that is what
you are saying, and of that you will never
persuade me or any other human being.
But either I do not corrupt them, or I
corrupt them unintentionally, so that on
either view of the case you lie. If my
offense is unintentional, the law has no
cognizance of unintentional offenses: you
ought to have taken me privately, and
warned and admonished me; for if I had
been hotter advised, I should have left
off doing what I only did unintentionally,
no doubt I should; whereas you hated
to converse with me or teach me, but you
indicted me in this court, which is a place,
not of instruction, but of punishment.

I have shown, Athenians, as I was say-
ing, that Meletus has no care at all, great
or small, about the matter. But still I
should like to know, Meletus, in what I
am affirmed to corrupt the young. I sup-
pose you mean, as I infer from your indict-
ment, that I teach them not to acknowl-
edge the gods which the state acknowl-
edges, but some other new divinities 01
spiritual agencies in their stead. These
are the lessons which corrupt the youth, as
you say.

Yes, that I say emphatically.

Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we
are speaking, tell me ,nd the court, in
somewhat plainer terms, what you mean!
for I do not as yet understand whether
you affirm that I teach others to acknowl-
edge some gods, and therefore do believe
in gods and am not an entire atheist
this you do not lay to my charge ; but only
that they are not the same gods which
the city recognizes the charge is that
they are different gods. Or, do you mean
to say that I am an atheist simply, and a
teacher of atheism?

I mean the latter that you are a com-
plete atheist.

That is an extraordinary statement,
Meletus. Why do you say that? Do you
mean that I do not believe in the godhead
of the sun or moon, which is the common
creed of all men?

ORATIONS

377

I assure you, judges, that he does not
believe in them; for he says that the sun is
stone, and the moon earth.

Friend Meletus, you think that you are
accusing Anaxagoras: and you have but a
bad opinion of the judges, if you fancy
them ignorant to such a degree as not to
know that these doctrines are found in the
books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian,
who is full of tnem. And these are the
doctrines which the youth are said to
learn of Socrates, when there are not un-
frequently exhibitions of them at the
theater (price of admission one drachma
at the most) ; and they might cheaply pur-
chase them, and laugh at Socrates if he
pretends to father such eccentricities.
And so, Meletus, you really think that
I do not believe in any god?

I swear by Zeus that you believe abso-
lutely in none at all.

You are a liar, Meletus, not believed
even by yourself. For I cannot help
thinking, O men of Athens, that Meletus
is reckless and impudent, and that he has
written this indictment in a spirit of mere
wantonness and youthful bravado. Has
he not compounded a riddle, thinking to
try me? He said to himself: I shall see
whether this wise Socrates will discover
my ingenious contradiction, or whether
I shall be able to deceive him and the
rest of them. For he certainly does ap-
pear to me to contradict himself in the
indictment as much as if he said that Soc-
rates is guilty of not believing in the gods,
and yet of believing in them but this
surely is a piece of fun.

I should like you, O men of Athens, to
join me in examining what I conceive to
be his inconsistency; and do you, Meletus,
answer. And I must remind you that
you are not to interrupt me if I speak in
my accustomed manner.

Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the
existence of human things, and not of
human beings? ... I wish, men of
Athens, that he would answer, and not be
always trying to get up an interruption.
Did ever any man believe in horseman-
ship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing,
and not in flute-players? No, my friend;

I will answer to you and to the court, as
you refuse to answer for yourself. There
is no man who ever did. But now please
to answer the next question: Can a man
believe in spiritual and divine agencies,
and not in spirits or demigods?

He cannot.

I am glad that I have extracted that
answer, by the assistance of the court;
nevertheless you swear in the indictment
that I teach and believe in divine or spirit-
ual agencies (new or old, no matter for
that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual
agencies, as you say and swear in die affi-
davit; but if I believe in divine beings, I
must believe in spirits or demigods; is not
that true? Yes, that is true, for I may
assume that your silence gives assent to
that. Now what are spirits or demigods?
are they not either gods or the sons of
gods? Is that true?

Yes, that is true.

But this is just the ingenious riddle of
which I was speaking: the demigods or
spirits are gods, and you say first that I
don't believe in gods, and then again that
I do believe in gods, that is, if I believe in
demigods. For if the demigods are the
illegitimate sons of gods, whether by the
nymphs or by any other mothers, as is
thought, that, as all men will allow,
necessarily implies the existence of their
parents. You might as well affirm the
existence of mules, and deny that of horses
and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could
only have been intended by you as a trial
of me. You have put this into the indict-
ment because you had nothing real of
which to accuse me. But no one who has
a particle of understanding will ever be
convinced by you that the same men can
believe in divine and superhuman things,
and yet not believe that there are gods
and demigods and heroes.

I have said enough in answer to the
charge of Meletus: any elaborate defense
is unnecessary; but as I was saying before,
I certainly have many enemies, and this
is what will be my destruction if I am de-
stroyed; of that I am certain; not Meletus,
nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detrac-
tion of the world, which has been the death

378

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

of many good men, and will probably
be the death of many more; there is no
danger of my being the last of them.

Some one will say: \And are you not
ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life
which is likely to bring you to an untimely
end? To him I may fairly answer: There
you are mistaken: a man who is good for
anything ought not to calculate the chance
of living or dying; he ought only to con-
sider whether in doing anything he is
doing right or wrong acting the part of a
good man or of a bad. Whereas, accord-
ing to your view, the heroes who fell at
Troy were not good for much, and the son
of Thetis above all, who altogether de-
spised danger in comparison with dis-
grace; and when his goddess mother said
to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector,
that if he avenged his companion Patro-
clus, and slew Hector, he would die him-
self, "Fate," as she said, "waits upon
you next after Hector;" he, hearing this,
utterly despised danger and death, and
instead of fearing them, feared rather to
live in dishonor, and not to avenge his
friend. "Let me die next," he replies,
"and be avenged of my enemy, rather
than abide here by the beaked ships, a
scorn and a burden of the earth." Had
Achilles any thought of death and danger?
For wherever a man's place is, whether
the place which he has chosen or that
in which he has been placed by a com-
mander, there he ought to remain in the
hour of danger; he should not think of
death or of anything, but of disgrace.
And this, O men of Athens, is a true say-
ing.

Strange, indeed, would be my conduct,
O men of Athens, if I who, when I was
ordered by the generals whom you chose
to command me at Potidaea and Amphi-
polis and Delium, remained where they
placed me, like any other man, facing
death, if, I say, now, when, as I conceive
and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the
philosopher's mission of searching into
myself and other men, I were to desert
my post through fear of death, or any
other fear; that would indeed be strange,
and I might justly be arraigned in court

for denying the existence of the gods, if
I disobeyed the oracle because I fcras
afraid of death: then I should be fancying
that I was wise when I was not wise.
For this fear of death is indeed the pre-
tense of wisdom, and not real wisdom,
being the appearance of knowing the un-
known; since no one knows whether death,
which they in their fear apprehend to be
the greatest evil, may not be the greatest
good. Is there not here conceit of knowl-
edge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignor-
ance? And this is the point in which, as
I think, I am superior to men in general,
and in which I might perhaps fancy my-
self wiser than other men, that whereas
I know but little of the world below, I do
not suppose that I know: but I do know
that injustice and disobedience to a better,
whether God or man, is evil and dishonor-
able, and I will never fear or avoid a possi-
ble good rather than a certain evil. And
therefore if you let me go now, and reject
the counsels of Anytus, who said that if
I were not put to death I ought not to have
been prosecuted, and that if I escape now,
your sons will all be utterly ruined by lis-
tening to my words, if you say to me }
Socrates, this time we will not mind Any-
tus, and will let you off, but upon one
condition, that you are not to inquire and
speculate in this way any more, and that
if you are caught doing this again you shall
die, if this was the condition on which
you let me go, I should reply: Men of
Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall
obey God rather than you, and while
I have life and strength I shall never cease
from the practice and teaching of philoso-
phy, exhorting any one whom I meet
after my manner, and convincing him,
saying: O my friend, why do you, who are
a citizen of the great and mighty and wise
city of Athens, care so much about laying
up the greatest amount of money and
honor and reputation, and so little about
wisdom and truth and the greatest im-
provement of the soul, which you never
regard or heed at all? Are you not
ashamed of this? And if the person with
whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do
care; I do not depart or let him go at once;

ORATIONS

379

I interrogate and examine and cross-
examine him, and if I think that he has no
virtue, but only says that he has, I re-
proach him with undervaluing the greater,
and overvaluing the less. And this I
should say to every one whom I meet,
young and old, citizen and alien, but es-
pecially to the citizens, inasmuch as they
are my brethren. For this is the com-
mand of God, as I would have you know;
and I believe that to this day no greater
good has ever happened in the state than
my service to the God. For I do nothing
but go about persuading you all, old and
young alike, not to take thought for your
persons or your properties, but first and
chiefly to care about the greatest improve-
ment of the soul. I tell you that virtue is
not given by money, but that from virtue
come money and every other good of man,
public as well as private. This is my
teaching, and if this is the doctrine which
corrupts the youth my influence is ruin-
ous indeed. But if any one says that this
is not my teaching, he is speaking an un-
truth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I
say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as
Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not;
but whatever you do, know that I shall
never alter my ways, not even if I have to
die many times.

Men of Athens, do not interrupt, "but
hear me; there was an agreement between
us that you should hear me out. And
I think that what I am going to say will
do you good: for I have something more
to say, at which you may be inclined to
cry out; but I beg that you will not do this.
I would have you know, that if you kill
such a one as I am, you will injure your-
selves more than you will injure me.
Meletus and Anytus will not injure me:
they cannot: for it is not in the nature of
things that a bad man should injure a
better than himself. I do not deny that
he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him
into exile, or deprive him of civil rights;
and he may imagine, and others may im-
agine, that he is doing him a great injury:
but in that I do not agree with him; for
the evil of doing as Anytus is doing of
unjustly taking away another man's life

is greater far. And now, Athenians, I am
not going to argue for my own sake, as
you may think, but for yours, that you
may not sin against the God, or lightly
reject his boon by condemning me. For
if you kill me you will not easily find an-
other like me, who, if I may use such a
ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of
gadfly, given to the state by the God; and
the state is like a great and noble steed
who is tardy in his motions owing to his
very size, and requires to be stirred into
life. I am that gadfly which God has
given the state, and all day long and in
all places am always fastening upon you,
arousing and persuading and reproaching
you. And as you will not easily find an-
other like me, I would advise you to spare
me. I dare say that you may feel irritated
at being suddenly awakened when you are
caught napping; and you may think that if
you were to strike me dead as Anytus
advises, which you easily might, then you
would sleep on for the remainder of your
lives, unless God in his care of you gives
you another gadfly. And that I am given
to you by God is proved by this: that if
I had been like other men, I should not
have neglected all my own concerns, or
patiently seen the neglect of them during
all these years, and have been doing yours,
coming to you individually, like a father
or elder brother, exhorting you to regard
virtue; this, I say, would not be like human
nature. And had I gained anything, or if
my exhortations had been paid, there
would have been some sense in that: but
now, as you will perceive, not even the
impudence of my accusers dares to say
that I have ever exacted or sought pay of
any one; they have no witness of that.
And I have a witness of the truth of what
I say ; my poverty is a sufficient witness.

Some one may wonder why I go about
in private, giving advice and busying my-
self with the concerns of others, but do
not venutre to come forward in public
and advise the state. I will tell you the
reason of this. You have often heard me
speak of an oracle or sign which comes to
me, and is the divinity which Meletus
ridicules in the indictment. This sign I

3 8o

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

have had ever since I was a child. The
sign is a voice which comes to me and
always forbids me to do something which
I am going to do, but" never commands
me to do anything, and this is what stands
in the way of my being a politician. And
rightly, as I think. For I am certain, O
men of Athens, that if I had engaged in
politics, I should have perished long ago,
and done no good either to you or to my-
self. And don't be offended at my telling
you the truth: for the truth is, that no man
who goes to war with you or any other
multitude, honestly struggling against the
commission of unrighteousness and wrong
in the state, will save his life; he who will
really fight for the right, if he would live
even for a little while, must have a private
station and not a public one.

I can give you as proofs of this, not
words only, but deeds, which you value
more than words. Let me tell you a pas-
sage of my own life, which will prove to
you that I should never have yielded to
injustice from any fear of death, and that
if I had not yielded I should have died
at once. I will tell you a story tasteless,
perhaps, and commonplace, but neverthe-
less true. The only office of state which
I ever held, O men of Athens, was that of
senator; the tribe Antiochis, which is my
tribe, had the presidency at the trial of
the generals who had not taken up the
bodies of the slain after the battle of Ar-
ginusae; and you proposed to try them all
together, which was illegal, as you all
thought afterwards; but at the time I was
the only one of the prytanes who was
opposed to the illegality, and I gave my
vote against you; and when the orators
threatened to impeach and arrest me, and
have me taken away, and you called and
shouted, I made up my mind that I would
run the risk, having law and justice with
me, rather than take part in your injustice
because I feared imprisonment and death.
This happened in the days of the democ-
racy. But when the oligarchy of the
Thirty was in power, they sent for me
and four others into the rotunda, and bade
us bring Leon the Salaminian fromSalamis,
as they wanted to execute him. This

was a specimen of the sort of commands
which they were always giving with
the view of implicating as many as possi-
ble in their crimes; and then I showed,
not in word only but in deed, that, if I
may be allowed to use such an expression,
I cared not a straw for death, and that
my only fear was the fear of doing an
unrighteous or unholy thing. For the
strong arm of that oppressive power did
not frighten me into doing wrong; and
when we came out of the rotunda the other
four went to Salamis and fetched Leon,
but I went quietly home. For which 1
might have lost my life, had not the power
of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to
an end. And to this many will witness.

Now do you really imagine that I could
have survived all these years, if I had led a
public life, supposing that like a good
man I had always supported the right and
had made justice, as I ought, the first
thing? No indeed, men of Athens, neither
I nor any other. But I have been always
the same in all my actions, public as well
as private, and never have I yielded any
base compliance to those who are slan-
derously termed my disciples, or to any
other. For the truth is that I have no
regular disciples: but if any one likes to
come and hear me while I am pursuing
my mission, whether he be young or old,
he may freely come. Nor do I converse
with those who pay only, and not with
those who do not pay; but any one,
whether he be rich or poor, may ask and
answer me and listen to my words; and
whether he turns out to be a bad man or a
good one, that cannot be justly laid to
my charge, as I never taught him any-
thing. And if any one says that he has
ever learned or heard anything from me
in private which all the world has not
heard, I should like you to know that he is
speaking an untruth.

But I shall be asked, Why do people
delight in continually conversing with
you? I have told you already, Athenians,
the whole truth about this: they like to
hear the cross-examination of the pre-
tenders to wisdom; there is amusement in
this. And this is a duty which the Goo

has imposed upon me, as I am assured by
oracles, visions, and in every sort of way
in which the will of divine power was ever
signified to any one. This is true, O
Athenians; or, if not true, would be soon
refuted. For if I am really corrupting
the youth, and have corrupted some of
them already, those of them who have
grown up and have become sensible that
I gave them bad advice in the days of
their youth should come forward as ac-
cusers and take their revenge; and if they
do not like to come themselves, some of
their relatives, fathers, brothers, or other
kinsmen, should say what evil their fam-
ilies suffered at my hands. Now is their
time. Many of them I see in the court.
There is Crito, who is of the same age and
of the same deme with myself; and there
is Critobulus his son, whom I also see.
Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettus,
who is the father of Aeschines, he is
present; and also there is Antiphon of
Cephisus, who is the father of Epigenes;
and there are the brothers of several who
have associated with me. There is Nicos-
tratus the son of Theosdotides, and the
brother of Theodotus (now Theodotus
himself is dead, and therefore he, at any
rate, will not seek to stop him) ; and there
is Paralus the son of Demodocus, who had
a brother Theages, and Adeimantus the
son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is
present; and Aeantodorus, who is the
brother of Apollodorus, whom I also see.
I might mention a great many others,
any of whom Meletus should have pro-
duced as witnesses in the course of his
speech; and let him still produce them, if
he has forgotten; I will make way for him.
And let him say, if he has any testimony
of the oort which he can produce. Nay,
Athenians, the very opposite is the truth.
For all these are ready to witness on behalf
of the corrupter, of the destroyer of their
kindred, as Meletus and Anytus call me;
not the corrupted youth only, there
might have been a motive for that, but
their uncorrupted elder relatives. Why
should they too support me with their
testimony? Why, indeed, except for the
sake of truth and justice, and because

they know that I am speaking the truth,
and that Meletus is lying.

Well, Athenians, this and the like of
this is nearly all the defense which I have
to offer. Yet a word more. Perhaps
there may be some one who is offended at
me, when he calls to mind how he himself
on a similar, or even a less serious occa-
sion, had recourse to prayers and supplica-
tions with many tears, and how he pro-
duced his children in court, which was a
moving spectacle, together with a posse
of his relations and friends; whereas I,
who am probably in danger of my life,
will do none of these things. Perhaps this
may come into his mind, and he may be
set against me, and vote in anger because
he is displeased at this. Now if there be
such a person among you, which I am
far from affirming, I may fairly reply to
him: My -friend, I am a man, and like
other men, a creature of flesh and blood,
and not of wood or stone, as Homer says;
and I have a family, yes, and sons, O
Athenians, three in number, one of whom
is growing up, and the two others are still
young; and yet I will not bring any of
them hither in order to petition you for
an acquittal. And why not? Not from
any self-will or disregard of you. Whether
I am or am not afraid of death is another
question, of which I will not now speak.
But my reason simply is, that I feel such
conduct to be discreditable to myself, and
you, and the whole state. One who has
reached my years, and who has a name
for wisdom, whether deserved or not,
ought not to demean himself. At any
rate, the world has decided that Socrates
is in some way superior to other men.
And if those among you who are said to
be superior in wisdom and courage, and
any other virtue, demean themselves in
this way, how shameful is their conduct!
I have seen men of reputation, when
they have been condemned, behaving
in the strangest manner: they seemed to
fancy that they were going to suffer some-
thing dreadful if they died, and that they
could be immortal if you only allowed
them to live; and I think that they were a
dishonor to the state, and that any strange/

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

coming in would say of them that the
most eminent men of Athens, to whom the
Athenians themselves give honor and
command, are no better than women.
And I say that these things ought not to
be done by those of us who are of reputa-
tion; and if they are done, you ought not
to permit them; you ought rather to show
that you are more inclined to condemn,
not the man who is quiet, but the man
who gets up a doleful scene, and makes the
city ridiculous.

But, setting aside the question of dis-
honor, there seems to be something wrong
in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring
an acquittal instead of informing and
convincing him. For his duty is, not to
make a present of justice, but to give
judgment; and he has sworn that he will
judge according to the laws, and not
according to his own good pleasure; and

. neither he nor we should get into the habit
of perjuring ourselves there can be
no piety in that. Do not then require
me to do what I consider dishonorable
and impious and wrong, especially now,

' when I am being tried for impiety on the
indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of
Athens, by force of persuasion and en-
treaty, I could overpower your oaths,
then I should be teaching you to believe
that there are no gods, and convict my-
self, in my own defense, of not believing in
them. But that is not the case; for I do
believe that there are gods, and in a far
higher sense than that in which any of
my accusers believe in them. And to you
and to God I commit my cause, to be de-
termined by you as is best for you and me.

There are many reasons why I am not
grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of
condemnation. I expected this, and am
only surprised that the votes are so nearly
equal; for I had thought that the majority
against me would have been far larger;
but now, had thirty votes gone over to the
other side, I should have been acquitted.
And I may say that I have escaped
Meletus. And I may say more; for with-
out the assistance of Anytus and Lycon,
he would not have had a fifth part of the

votes, as the law requires, in which case he
would have incurred a fine of a thousand
drachmae, as is evident.

And so he proposes death as the penalty.
And what shall I propose on my part, O
men of Athens? Clearly that which
is my due. And what is that which I
ought to pay or to receive? What shall
be done to the man who has never had
the wit to be idle during his whole life;
but has been careless of what the many
care about wealth, and family interests,
and military offices, and speaking in the
assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and
parties. Reflecting that I was really
too honest a man to follow in this way
and live, I did not go where I could do no
good to you or to myself; but where I could
do the greatest good privately to every
one of you, thither I went, and sought to
persuade every man among you, that he
must look to himself, and seek virtue and
wisdom before he looks to his private in-
terests, and look to the state before he
looks to the interests of the state; and that
this should be the order which he observes
in all his actions. What shall be done to
such a one? Doubtless some good thing,
O men of Athens, if he has his reward;
and the good should be of a kind suitable
to him. What would be a reward suitable
to a poor man who is your benefactor, who
desires leisure that he may instruct you?
There can be no more fitting reward than
maintenance in the prytaneum, O men of
Athens, a reward which he deserves far
more than the citizen who has won the
prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot
race, whether the chariots were drawn
by two horses or by many. For I am in
want, and he has enough; and he only
gives you the appearance of happiness,
and I give you the reality. And if I am to
estimate the penalty justly, I say that
maintenance in the prytaneum is the just
return.

Perhaps you may think that I am brav-
ing you in saying this, as in what I said
before about the tears and prayers. But
that is not the case. I speak rather be-
cause I am convinced that I never in-
tentionally wronged any one, although

ORATIONS

383

I cannot convince you of that for we
have had a short conversation only;
but if there were a law at Athens, such as
there is in other cities, that a capital
cause should not be decided hi one day,
then I believe that I should have con-
vinced you; but now the time is too short.
I cannot in a moment refute great slan-
ders; and, as I am convinced that I never
wronged another, I will assuredly not
wrong myself. I will not say of myself
that I deserve any evil, or propose any
penalty. Why should I ? Because I
am afraid of the penalty of death which
Meletus proposes? When I do not know
whether death is a good or an evil, why
should I propose a penalty which would
certainly be an evil? Shall I say im-
prisonment? And why should I live in
prison, and be the slave of the magistrates
of the year of the eleven? Or shall the
penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until
the fine is paid? There is the same objec-
tion. I should have to lie in prison, for
money I have none, and cannot pay.
And if I say exile (and this may possibly
be the penalty which you will affix), I
must indeed be blinded by the love of life,
if I were to consider that when you, who
are my own citizens, cannot endure my
discourses and words, and have found
them so grievous and odious that you would
fain have done with them, others are
likely to endure me. No indeed, men
of Athens, that is not very likely. And
what a life should I lead, at my age,
wandering from city to city, living in ever-
changing exile, and always being driven
out! For I am quite sure that into what-
ever place I go, as here so also there, the
young men will come to me; and if I drive
them away, their elders will drive me out
at their desire: and if I let them come,
their fathers and friends will drive me
out for their sakes.

Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but
cannot you hold your tongue, and then
you may go into a foreign city, and no one
will interfere with you? Now I have
great difficulty in making you understand
my answer to this. For if I tell you that
this would be a disobedience to a divihe

command, and therefore that I cannot
hold my tongue, you will not believe that
I am serious; and if I say again that the
greatest good of man is daily to converse
about virtue, and all that concerning
which you hear me examining myself and
others, and that the life which is unexam-
ined is not worth living that you are still
less likely to believe. And yet what I say
is true, although a thing of which it is
hard for me to persuade you. Moreover,
I am not accustomed to think that I de-
serve any punishment. Had I money I
might have proposed to give you what I
had, and have been none the worse. But
you see that I have none, and can only ask
you to proportion the fine to my means.
However, I think that I could afford a
mina, and therefore I propose that penalty;
Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus,
my friends here, bid me say thirty minae,
and they will be the sureties. Well, then,
say thirty minae, let that be the penalty;
for that they will be ample security to you.
Not much time will be gained, O Athen-
ians, in return for the evil name which
you will get from the detractors of the
city, who will say that you killed Socrates,
a wise man; for they will call me wise
even although I am not wise when they
want to reproach you. If you had waited
a little while, your desire would have been
fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am
far advanced in years, as you may per-
ceive, and not far from death. I am
speaking now only to those of you who
have condemned me to death. And I
have another thing to say to them: You
think that I was convicted through de-
ficiency of words I mean, that if I had
thought fit to leave nothing undone, noth-
ing unsaid, I might have gained an acquit-
tal. Not so; the deficiency which led to
my conviction was not of words certainly
not. But I had not the boldness or impu-
dence or inclination to address you as you
would have liked me to address you, weep-
ing and wailing and lamenting, and saying
and doing many things which you have
been accustomed to hear from others, and
which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But
I thought that I ought not to do anything

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

common or mean in the hour of danger:
nor do I now repent of the manner of my
defense, and I would rather die having
spoken after my manner, than speak in
your manner and live. For neither in
war nor yet at law ought any man to use
every way of escaping death. For often
in battle there is no doubt that if a man
will throw away his arms, and fall on his
knees before his pursuers, he may escape
death; and in other dangers there are other
ways of escaping death if a man is willing
to say and do anything. The difficulty,
my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in
avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs
faster than death. I am old and move
slowly, and the slower runner has over-
taken me, and my accusers are keen and
quick, and the faster runner, who is un-
righteousness, has overtaken them. And
now I depart hence condemned by you to
suffer the penalty of death, and they too
go their ways condemned by the truth to
suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong;
and I must abide by my award let them
abide by theirs. I suppose that these
things may be regarded as fated, and I
think that they are well.

And now, O men who have condemned
me, I would fain prophesy to you; for
I am about to die, and that is the hour in
which men are gifted with prophetic
power. And I prophesy to you who are
my murderers, that immediately after my
death punishment far heavier than you
have inflicted on me will surely await
you. Me you have killed because you
wanted to escape the accuser, and not to
give an account of your lives. But that
will not be as you suppose: far otherwise.
For I say that there will be more accusers
of you than there are now; accusers whom
hitherto I have restrained: and as they are
younger they will be more severe with
you, and you will be more offended at
them. For if you think that by killing
men you can avoid the accuser censuring
your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a
way of escape which is either possible or
honorable; the easiest and the noblest way
is not to be crushing others, but to be im-
proving yourselves. This is the prophecy

which I utter before my departure to the
judges who have condemned me.

Friends, who would have acquitted me,
I would like also to talk with you about
this thing which has happened, while the
magistrates are busy, and before I go to
the place at which I must die. Stay then
a while, for we may as well talk with one
another while there is time. You are my
friends, and I should like to show you the
meaning of this event which has happened
to me. O my judges for you I may truly
call judges I should like to tell you of a
wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the
familiar oracle within me has constantly
been in the habit of opposing me even
about trifles, if I was going to make a slip
or error about anything; and now as you
see there has come upon me that which
may be thought, and is generally believed
to be, the last and worst evil. But the
oracle made no sign of opposition, either
as I was leaving my house and going out in
the morning, or when I was going up into
this court, or while I was speaking, at
anything which I was going to say; and
yet I have often been stopped in the middle
of a speech, but now in nothing I either
said or did touching this matter has the
oracle opposed me. What do I take to be
the explanation of this? I will tell you. I
regard this as a proof that what has hap-
pened to me is a good, and that those of
us who think that death is an evil are in
error. This is a great proof to me of
what I am saying, for the customary sign
would surely have opposed me had I
been going to evil and not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we
shall see that there is great reason to hope
that death is a good, for one of two things:
either death is a state of nothingness and
utter unconsciousness, or, as men say,
there is a change and migration of the
soul from this world to another. Now
if you suppose that there is no conscious-
ness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who
is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams,
death will be an unspeakable gain. For
if a person were to select the night in
which his sleep was undisturbed even by
dreams, and were to compare with this the

ORATIONS

385

other days and nights of his life, and then
were to tell us how many days and nights
he had passed in the course of his life
better and more pleasantly than this one,
I think that any man, I will not say a
private man, but even the great king will
not find many such days or nights, when
compared with the others. Now if death
is like this, I say that to die is gain; for
eternity is then only a single night. But
if death is the journey to another place,
and there, as men say, all the dead are,
what good, my friends and judges, can
be greater than this? If indeed when the
pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is
delivered from the professors of justice in
this world, and finds the true judges who
are said to give judgment there, Minos
and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and
Triptolemus, and other sons of God who
were righteous in their own life, that pil-
grimage will be worth making. What
would not a man give if he might converse
with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod
and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let
me die again and again. I, too, shall have
a wonderful interest in a place where I can
converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the
son of Telamon, and other heroes of old,
who have suffered death through an un-
just judgment; and there will be no small
pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own
suffering with theirs. Above afl, I shall
be able to continue my search into true
and false knowledge; as in this world, so
also in that; I shall find out who is wise,
and who pretends to be wise, and is not.
What would not a man give, O judges, to
be able to examine the leader of the great
Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisy-
phus, or numberless others, men and
women too! What infinite delight would
there be in conversing with them and ask-
ing them questions! For in that world
they do not put a man to death for this;
certainly not. For besides being happier
in that world than in this, they will be
immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer
about death, and know this of a truth
that no evil can happen to a good man,
either in life or after death. He and his

are not neglected by the gods; nor has
my own approaching end happened by
mere chance. But I see clearly that to die
and be released was better for me; and
therefore the oracle gave no sign. For
which reason, also, I am not angry with
my accusers or my condemners; they have
done me no harm, although neither of them
meant to do me any good; and for this I
may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them.
When my sons are grown up, I would ask
you, O my friends, to punish them; and
I would have you trouble them, as I have
troubled you, if they seem to care about
riches, or anything, more than about vir-
tue; or if they pretend to be something
when they are really nothing, then re-
prove them, as I have reproved you, for
not caring about that for which they
ought to care, and thinking that they are
something when they are really nothing.
And if you do this, I and my sons will have
received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and
we go our ways I to die, and you to live.
Which is better God only knows.

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)
Ax THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS

MY LORDS, you have now heard the
principles on which Mr. Hastings governs
the part of Asia subjected to the British
Empire. Here he has declared his opinion
that he is a despotic prince; that he is to
use arbitrary power; and, of course, all
his acts are covered with that shield. "I
know," says he, "the Constitution of Asia
only from its practise." Will your lord-
ships submit to hear the corrupt practises
of mankind made the principles of govern-
ment? He have arbitrary power! my
lords, the East India Company have not
arbitrary power to give him; the king has
no arbitrary power to give him; your lord-
ships have not; nor the Commons; nor the
whole Legislature.

We have no arbitrary power to give,
because arbitrary power is a thing which
neither any man can hold nor any man

3 86

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

can give. No man can lawfully govern
himself according to his own will much
less can one person be governed by the
will of another. We arc all born in sub-
jection all born equally, high and low,
governors and governed, in subjection to
one great, immutable, preexistent law,
prior to all our devices, and prior to all our
contrivances, paramount to all our ideas
and to all our sensations, antecedent to our
very existence, by which we are knit and
connected in the eternal frame of the uni-
verse, out of which we can not stir.

This great law does not arise from our
conventions or compacts; on the contrary,
it gives to our conventions and compacts
all the force and sanction they can have:
it does not arise from our vain institutions.
Every good gift is of God, all power is of
God; and He who has given the power,
and from whom alone it originates, will
never suffer the exercise of it to be prac-
tised upon any less solid foundation than
the power itself.

If, then, all dominion of man over man
is the effect of the divine disposition, it is
bound by the eternal laws of Hun that
gave it, with which no human authority
can dispense; neither he that exercises it,
nor even those who are subject to it; and,
if they were mad enough to make an ex-
press compact, that should release their
magistrate from his duty, and should
declare their lives, liberties and properties,
dependent upon, not rules and laws, but
his mere capricious will, that covenant
would be void.

This arbitrary power is not to be had
by conquest. Nor can any sovereign have
it by succession; for no man can succeed
to fraud, rapine, and violence. Those
who give and those who receive arbitrary
power are alike criminal; and there is no
man but is bound to resist it to the best
of his power, wherever it shall show its
face to the world.

Law and arbitrary power are in eternal
enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I
will name property; name me power, and I
will name protection. It is a contradiction
in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is
wickedness in politics, to say that any

man can have arbitrary power. In every
patent of office the duty is included. For
what else does a magistrate exist? To sup-
pose for power, is an absurdity in idea.
Judges are guided and governed by the
eternal laws of justice, to which we are
all subject. We may bite our chains, if
we will; but we shall be made to know
ourselves, and be taught that man is
born to be governed by law; and he that
will substitute will in the place of it is an
enemy to God.

My lords, I do not mean now to go
farther than just to remind your lordships
of this that Mr. Hastings' government
was one whole system of oppression, of
robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the
public, and of supersession of the whole
system of the English government, in order
to vest in the worst of the natives all the
power that could possibly exist in any
government; in order to defeat the ends
which all governments ought, in common,
to have in view. In the name of the Com-
mons of England, I charge all this villainy
upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment
of my application to you.

My lords, what is it that we want here,
to a great act of national justice? Do we
want a cause, my lords? You have the
cause of oppressed princes, of undone
women of the first rank, of desolated
provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my lords?
When was there so much iniquity ever
laid to the charge of any one? No, my
lords, you must not look to punish any
other such delinquent from India.
Warren Hastings has not left substance
enough in India to nourish such another
delinquent.

My lords, is it a prosecutor you want?
You have before you the Commons of
Great Britain as prosecutors; and I be-
lieve, my lords, that the sun, in his benefi-
cent progress round the world, does not
behold a more glorious sight than that of
men, separated from a remote people
by the material bounds and barriers of na-
ture, united by the bond of a social and
moral community all the Commons of
England resenting, as their own, the. in-

ORATIONS

387

dignities and cruelties that are offered
to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My lords, no
example of antiquity, nothing in the
modern world, nothing in the range of
human imagination, can supply us with a
tribunal like this. We commit safely the
interests of India and humanity into your
hands. Therefore, it is with confidence
that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of
high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons
of Great Britain in Parliament assembled,
whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the
Commons of Great Britain, whose national
character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people
of India, whose laws, rights and liberties
he has subverted; whose properties he has
destroyed; whose country he has laid
waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue
of those eternal laws of justice which he
has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human
nature itself, which he has cruelly out-
raged, injured and oppressed, in both
sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and
condition of life.

My lords, at this awful close, in the
name of the Commons and surrounded by
them, I attest the retiring, I attest the
advancing generations, between which, as
a link in the great chain of eternal order, we
stand. We call this nation, we call the
world to witness, that the Commons have
shrunk from no labor; that we have been
guilty of no prevarication; that we have
made no compromise with crime; that we
have not feared any odium whatsoever, in
the long warfare which we have carried on
with the crimes, with the vices, with the ex-
orbitant wealth , with the enormous and over-
powering influence of Eastern corruption.

My lords, it has pleased Providence to
place us in such a state that we appear
every moment to be upon the verge of
some great mutations. There is one thing,
and one thing only, which defies all muta-
tion: that which existed before the world,

and will survive the fabric of the world
itself I mean justice; that justice which,
emanating from the Divinity, has a place
in the breast of every one of us, given us
for our guide with regard to ourselves and
with regard to others, and which will stand,
after this globe is burned to ashes, our ad-
vocate or our accuser, before the great
Judge, when He comes to call upon us for
the tenor of a well-spent life.

My lords, the Commons will share in
every fate with your lordships; there is
nothing sinister which can happen to you, in
which we shall not ah 1 be involved; and, if it
should so happen that we shall be sub-
jected to some of those frightful changes
which we have seen if it should happen
that your lordships, stripped of all the
decorous distinctions of human society,
should, by hands at once base and cruel, be
led to those scaffolds and machines of
murder upon which great kings and glorious
queens have shed their blood, amidst the
prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst the
magistrates, who supported their thrones
may you hi those moments feel that con-
solation which I am persuaded they felt in
the critical moments of their dreadful agony !

My lords, if you must fall, may you so
fall! but, if you stand and stand I trust
you will together with the fortune of this
ancient monarchy, together with the an-
cient laws and liberties of this great and
illustrious kingdom, may you stand as
unimpeached in honor as in power; may
you stand, not as a substitute for virtue,
but as an ornament of virtue, as a security
for virtue; may you stand long, and long
stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand
the refuge of afflicted nations; may you
stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual
residence of an inviolable justice!

(1788)

GEORGES JACQUES DANTON

(1759-1794)

"DARE, DARE AGAIN, ALWAYS DARE"*

IT is gratifying to the ministers of a free
people to have to announce to them that

Translation by Scott Robinson. Reprinted from the
"World's Famous Orations" by permission of the Funk 4
Wagnalls Company.

3 88

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

their country will be saved. All are stirred,
all are excited, all burn to fight. You
know that Verdun is not yet in the power
of our enemies. You 'know that its
garrison swears to immolate the first who
breathes a proposition of surrender.

One portion of our people will proceed
'to the frontiers, another will throw up
intrenchments, and the third with pikes
will defend the hearts of our cities. Paris
will second these great efforts. The com-
missioners of the Commune will solemnly
proclaim to the citizens the invitation to
arm and march to the defense of the coun-
try. At such a moment you can proclaim
that the capital deserves well of all France.

At such a moment this National Assem-
bly becomes a veritable committee of war.
We ask that you concur with us hi direct-
ing this sublime movement of the people,
by naming commissioners who will second
us hi these great measures. We ask that
any one refusing to give personal service
or to furnish arms shall be punished with
death. We ask that a set of instructions
be drawn up for the citizens to direct their
movements. We ask that couriers be
sent to all the departments to notify them
of the decrees that you proclaim here.
The tocsin we are about to ring is not an
alarm signal; it sounds the charge on the
enemies of our country. To conquer them
we must dare, dare again, always dare and
France is saved!

(1792)

DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852)
IN REPLY TO HAYNE

WHEN the mariner has been tossed for
many days hi thick weather, and on an
unknown sea, he naturally avails himself
of the first pause in the storm, the earliest
glance of the sun, to take his latitude and
ascertain how far the elements have driven
him from his true course. Let us imitate
this prudence, and, before we float farther
on the waves of this debate, refer to the
point from which we departed, that we
may at least be able to conjecture where
we now are. I ask for the reading of the
resolution before the Senate.

The gentleman, sir, in declining to post-
pone the debate, told the Senate, with the
emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that
there was something rankling here, which
he wished to relieve. [Mr. Hayne rose
and disclaimed having used the word
rankling.] It would not, Mr. President,
be safe for the honorable member to ap-
peal to those around him, upon the ques-
tion whether he did in fact make use of
that word. But he may have been un-
conscious of it. At any rate, it is enough
that he disclaims it. But still, with or
without the use of that particular word,
he had yet something here, he said, of
which he wished to rid himself by an im-
mediate reply. In this respect, sir, I have
a great advantage over the honorable
gentleman. There is nothing here, sir,
which gives me the slightest uneasiness;
neither fear, nor anger, nor that which is
sometimes more troublesome than either,
the consciousness of having been in the
wrong.

Let me observe that the eulogium pro-
nounced by the honorable gentleman on
the character of the State of South Caro-
lina, for her Revolutionary and other
merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I
shall not acknowledge that the honorable
member goes before me in regard for what-
ever of distinguished talent, or distin-
guished character, South Carolina has
produced. I claim part of the honor; I
partake in the pride of her great names.
I claim them for countrymen, one and all
the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinck-
neys, the Sumters, the Marions Amer-
icans all, whose fame is no more to be
hemmed in by State lines, than their
talents and patriotism were capable of be-
ing circumscribed within the same narrow
limits. In their day and generation, they
served and honored the country, and the
whole country; and their renown is of the
treasures of the whole country. Him
whose honored name the gentleman him-
self bears, does he esteem me less capable
of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympa-
thy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had
first opened upon the light of Massachu-
setts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does

ORATIONS

339

he suppose it in his power to exhibit a
Carolina name so bright as to produce
envy in my bosom? No, sir, increased
gratification and delight, rather. I thank
God that, if I am gifted with little of the
spirit which is able to raise mortals to the
skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that
other spirit which would drag angels
down. When I shall be found, sir, in my
place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to
sneer at public merit, because it happens
to spring up beyond the little limits of my
own State or neighborhood; when I re-
fuse, for any such cause or for any cause,
the homage due to American talent, to
elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to
liberty and the country; or, if I see an un-
common endowment of heaven, if I see
extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any
son of the South, and if, moved by local
prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy,
I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair
from his just character and just fame,
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth !

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections;
let me indulge in refreshing remembrance
of the past; let me remind you that, in
early times, no States cherished greater
harmony, both of principle and feeling,
than Massachusetts and South Carolina.
Would to God that harmony might again
return! Shoulder to shoulder they went
through the Revolution; hand hi hand they
stood round the administration of Wash-
ington, and felt his own great arm lean
on them for support. Unkind feeh'ng (if
it exist), alienation, and distrust are the
growth, unnatural to such soils, of false
principles since sown. They are weeds,
the seeds of which that same great arm
never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no en-
comium upon Massachusetts; she needs
none. There she is! Behold her, and
judge for yourselves. There is her his-
tory; the world knows it by heart. The
past, at least, is secure. There is Boston,
and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker
Hill; and there they will remain for ever.
The bones of her sons, falling in the great
struggle for Independence, now lie mingled

with the soil of every State from New
England to Georgia; and there they will
lie for ever. And, sir, where American
Liberty raised its first voice, and where
its youth was nurtured and sustained,
there it still lives, in the strength of its
manhood and full of its original spirit.
If discord and disunion shall wound it,
if party strife and blind ambition shall
hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness,
if uneasiness under salutary and necessary
restraint, shall succeed in separating it
from that Union by which alone its exist-
ence is made sure, it wi-1 stand, in the end,
by the side of that cradle in which its
infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth
its arm with whatever of vigor it may
still retain over the friends who gather
round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it
must, amid the proudest monuments of
its own glory, and on the very spot of its
origin.

There yet remains to be performed, Mr.
President, by far the most grave and im-
portant duty which I feel to be devolved
on me by this occasion. It is to state, and
to defend, what I conceive to be the true
principles of the Constitution under which
we are here assembled. I might well have
desired that so weighty a task should have
fallen into other and abler hands. I co'^ld
have wished that it should have been exe-
cuted by those whose character and ex-
perience give weight and influence to their
opinions, such as can not possibly belong
to mine. But, sir, I have met the occasion,
not sought it; and I shall proceed to state
my own sentiments, without challenging
for them any particular regard, with stud-
ied plainness, and as much precision as
possible.

I understand the honorable gentleman
from South Carolina to maintain that it is
a right of the State Legislatures to inter-
fere whenever, in their judgment, this
government transcends its constitutional
limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws.

I understand him to maintain this right,
as a right existing under the Constitution,
not as a right to overthrow it on the ground
of extreme necessity, such as would justify
violent revolution,

390

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

I understand him to maintain an au-
thority, on the part of the States, thus to
interfere, for the purpose of correcting the
exercise of power by the general govern-
ment, of checking it, and of compelling it
to conform to their opinion of the extent
of its powers. I understand him to
maintain that the ultimate power of judg-
ing of the constitutional extent of its own
authority is not lodged exclusively in the
general government, or any branch of it;
but that, on the contrary, the States may
lawfully decide for themselves, and each
State for itself, whether, in a given case,
the act of the general government tran-
scends its power.

I understand him to insist that, if the
exigency of the case, in the opinion of any
State government, require it, such State
government may, by its own sovereign
authority, annul an act of the general
government which it deems plainly and
palpably unconstitutional.

This is the sum of what I understand
from him to be the South Carolina doc-
trine, and the doctrine which he main-
tains. I propose to consider it, and com-
pare it with the Constitution. Allow me
to say, as a preliminary remark, that I call
this the South Carolina doctrine only
because the gentleman himself has so
denominated it. I do not feel at liberty
to say that South Carolina, as a State, has
ever advanced these sentiments. I hope
she has not, and never may. That a great
majority of her people are opposed to the
tariff laws is doubtless true. That a ma-
jority, somewhat less than that just men-
tioned, conscientiously believe these laws
unconstitutional may probably also be
true. But that any majority holds to the
right of direct State interference at State
discretion, the right of nullifying acts of
Congress by acts of State legislation, is
more than I know, and what I shall be
slow to believe.

That there are individuals besides the
honorable gentlemen who do maintain
these opinions, is quite certain. I recol-
lect the recent expression of a sentiment,
which circumstances attending its utter-
ance and publication justify us in suppos- ,

ing was not unpremeditated. ' ' The sover-
eignty of the State, never to be con-
trolled, construed, or decided on, but by
her own feelings of honorable justice."

We all know that civil institutions are
established for the public benefit, and that
when they cease to answer the ends of their
existence they may be changed. But I
do not understand the doctrine now con-
tended for to be that which, for the sake of
distinction, we may call the right of revo-
lution. I understand the gentleman to
maintain that it is constitutional to in-
terrupt the administration of the Consti-
tution itself, in the hands of those who are
chosen and sworn to administer it, by the
direct interference, in form of law, of the
States, in virtue of their sovereign ca-
pacity. The inherent right in the people
to reform their government I do not deny;
and they have another right, and that is
to resist unconstitutional laws, without
overturning the government. It is no
doctrine of mine that unconstitutional
laws bind the people. The great question
is, Whose prerogative is it to decide on
the constitutionality or unconstitution-
ality of the laws? On that the main
debate hinges.

The proposition that in case of a sup-
posed violation of the Constitution by
Congress the States have a constitutional
right to interfere and annul the law of Con-
gress, is the proposition of the gentleman.
I do not admit it. If the gentleman had
intended no more than to assert the right
of revolution for justifiable cause, he
would have said only what all agree to.
But I can not conceive that there can be a
middle course, between submission to the
laws when regularly pronounced constitu-
tional, on the one hand, and open resist-
ance (which is revolution or rebellion) on
the other.

This leads us to inquire into the origin
of this government and the source of its
power. Whose agent is it? Is it the crea-
ture of the State Legislatures, or the
creature of the people? If the govern-
ment of the United States be the agent
of the State governments, then they may
control it, provided they can agree in the

ORATIONS

391

manner of controlling it; if it be the agent
of the people, then the people alone can
control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it.
It is observable enough that the doctrine
for which the honorable gentleman con-
tends leads him to the necessity of main-
taining, not only that this general govern-
ment is the creature of the States, but that
it is the creature of each of the States
severally, so that each may assert the
power for itself of determining whether it
acts within the limits of its authority. It
is the servant of four-and-twenty masters,
of different wills and different purposes,
and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity
(for it seems no less) arises from a miscon-
ception as to the origin of this government
and its true character. It is, sir, the
people's Constitution, the people's govern-
ment, made for the people, made by the
people, and answerable to the people. The
people of the United States have declared
that this Constitution shall be the supreme
kw. We must either admit the proposi-
tion or dispute their authority.

The States are, unquestionably, sov-
ereign, so far as their sovereignty is not
affected by the supreme law. But the
State Legislatures, as political bodies,
however sovereign, are yet not sovereign
over the people. So far as the people
have given power to the general govern-
ment, so far the grant is unquestionably
good, and the government holds of the
people, and not of the State governments.
We are all agents of the same supreme
power, the people. The general govern-
ment and the State governments derive
their authority from the same source.
Neither can, in relation to the other, be
called primary, the one is definite and
restricted, and the other general and
residuary. The national government pos-
sesses those powers which it can be shown
the people have conferred on it, and no
more. All the rest belongs to the State
governments, or to the people themselves.
So far as the people have restrained State
sovereignty, by the expression of their will,
in the Constitution of the United States,
so far, it must be admitted, State sover-
eignty is effectually controlled. I do not

contend that it is, or ought to be, con-
trolled farther.

The sentiment to which I have referred
propounds that State sovereignty is only
to be controlled by its own "feeling of
justice"; that is to say, it is not to be
controlled at all, for one who is to follow
his own feelings is under no legal control.
Now, however men may think this ought
to be, the fact is, that the people of the
United States have chosen to impose con-
trol on State sovereignties. There are
those, doubtless, who wish they had been
left without restraint; but the Constitution
has ordered the matter differently. To
make war, for instance, is an exercise of
sovereignty; but the Constitution declares
that no State shall make war. To coin
money is another exercise of sovereign
power; but no State is at liberty to coin
money. Again, the Constitution says
that no sovereign State shall be so sov-
ereign as to make a treaty. These prohi-
bitions, it must be confessed, are a control
on the State sovereignty of South Caro-
lina, as well as of the other States, which
does not arise "from her own feelings of
honorable justice." The opinion referred
to, therefore, is in defiance of the plainest
provisions of the Constitution.

In Carolina, the tariff is a palpable,
deliberate usurpation; Carolina, therefore,
may nullify it, and refuse to pay the duties.
In Pennsylvania it is both clearly constitu-
tional and highly expedient; and there the
duties are to be paid. And yet we live
under a government of uniform laws, and
under a Constitution, too, which contains
an express provision, as it happens, that
all duties shall be equal in all the States.
Does not this approach absurdity?

If there be no power to settle such
questions, independent of either of the
States, is not the whole Union a rope of
sand? Are we not thrown back again,
precisely upon the old Confederation?

It is too plain to be argued. Four-and-
twenty interpreters of constitutional law,
each with a power to decide for itself, and
none with authority to bind anybody else,
and this constitutional kw the only bond
of their union! What is such a state of

392

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

things but a mere connection during
pleasure, or, to use the phraseology of the
times, during feeling ? And that feeling,
too, not the feeling of the people who es-
tablished the Constitution, but the feeling
of the State governments.

Resolutions, sir, have been recently
passed by the Legislature of South Caro-
lina. I need not refer to them; they go
no farther than the honorable gentleman
himself has gone, and I hope not so far.
I content myself, therefore, with debating
the matter with him.

And now, sir, what I have first to say
on this subject is, that at no time, and
under no circumstances, has New England,
or any State in New England, or any re-
spectable body of persons in New England,
or any public man of standing in New
England, put forth such a doctrine as
this Carolina doctrine.

The gentleman has found no case, he
can find none, to support his own opinions
by New England authority. New Eng-
land has studied the Constitution in other
schools and under other teachers. She
looks upon it with other regards, and deems
more highly and reverently both of its
just authority and its utility and ex-
cellence. The history of her legislative
proceedings may be traced. The ephem-
eral effusions of temporary bodies, called
together by the excitement of the occasion,
may be hunted up; they have been hunted
up. The opinions and votes of her public
men, in and out of Congress, may be ex-
plored; it will all be in vain. The Caro-
lina doctrine can derive from her neither
countenance nor support. She rejects it
now; she always did reject it; and till she
loses her senses, she always will reject it.

The honorable member has referred to
expressions on the subject of the embargo
law, made in this place, by an honorable
and venerable gentleman, now favoring
us with his presence. He quotes that H ; s-
tinguished senator as saying that, hi his
judgment, the embargo law was unconsti-
tutional, and that therefore, in his opinion,
the people were not bound to obey it.
That, sir, is perfectly constitutional lan-
guage. An unconstitutional law is not

binding; but then it does not rest with a reso-
lution or a law of a State Legislature to
decide whether an act of Congress be or be ncl
constitutional. An unconstitutional act of
Congress would not bind the people of this
District, although they have no Legislature
to interfere in their behalf; and, on the
other hand, a constitutional law of Con-
gress does bind the citizen of every State,
although all their Legislatures should un-
dertake to annul it by act or resolution.
The venerable Connecticut senator is a
constitutional lawyer of sound principles
and enlarged knowledge, a statesman prac-
tised and experienced, bred in the com-
pany of Washington, and holding just
views upon the nature of our governments.
He believes the embargo unconstitutional,
and so did others; but what then? Who
did he suppose was to decide that ques-
tion? The State Legislatures? Certainly
not. No such sentiment ever escaped his
lips.

Let us follow up, sir, this New England
opposition to the embargo laws; let us
trace it till we discern the principle which
controlled and governed New England
throughout the whole course of that oppo-
sition. We shall then see what similarity
there is between the New England school
of constitutional opinions, and this modern
Carolina school. The gentleman, I think,
read a petition from some single individ-
ual addressed to the Legislature of Massa-
chusetts, asserting the Carolina doctrine;
that is, the right of State interference to
arrest the laws of the Union. The fate of
that petition shows the sentiment of the
Legislature. It met no favor. The opin-
ions of Massachusetts were very different.
They had been expressed in 1798, in an-
swer to the resolutions of Virginia, and she
did not depart from them, nor bend them
to the times. Misgoverned, wronged,
oppressed, as she felt herself to be, she
still held fast her integrity to the Union.
The gentleman may find in her proceedings
much evidence of dissatisfaction with the
measures of government, and great and
deep dislike to the embargo all this makes
the case so much the stronger for her; for,
notwithstanding all this dissatisfaction

ORATIONS

393

and dislike, she still claimed no right to
sever the bonds of the Union. There was
heat and there was anger in her political
feeling.

Be it so; but neither her heat nor her
anger betrayed her into infidelity to the
government. The gentleman labors to
prove that she disliked the embargo as
much as South Carolina dislikes the tariff,
and expressed her dislike as strongly.
Be it so; but did she propose the Carolina
remedy? Did she threaten to interfere,
by State authority, to annul the laws of the
Union? That is the question for the gen-
tleman's consideration.

No doubt, sir, a great majority of the
people of New England conscientiously
believed the embargo law of 1807 uncon-
stitutional; as conscientiously, certainly,
as the people of South Carolina hold that
opinion of the tariff. They reasoned thus:
Congress has power to regulate commerce;
but here is a law, they said, stopping all
commerce, and stopping it indefinitely.
The law is perpetual; that is, it is not
limited in point of time, and must of course
continue until it shah 1 be repealed by some
other law. It is perpetual, therefore, as
the law against treason or murder. Now,
is this regulating commerce or destroying
it? Is it guiding, controlling, giving the
rule to commerce, as a subsisting tiling, or
is it putting an end to it altogether?
Nothing is more certain than that a ma-
jority in New England deemed this law a
violation of the Constitution. The very
case required by the gentleman to justify
State interference had then arisen. Mas-
sachusetts believed this law to be "a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exer-
cise of a power not granted by the Con-
stitution." Deliberate it was, for it was
long continued; palpable she thought it,
as no words in the Constitution gave the
power, and only a construction, in her
opinion most violent, raised it; dangerous
it was, since it threatened utter ruin to
her most important interests.

Here, then, was a Carolina case. How
did Massachusetts deal with it? It was,
as she thought, a plain, manifest, palpable
violation of the Constitution, and it

brought ruin to her doors. Thousands of
famifies, and hundreds of thousands of
individuals, were beggared by it. While
she saw and felt all this, she saw and felt
also that, as a measure of national policy,
it was perfectly futile; that the country
was in no way benefited by that which
caused so much individual distress; that
it was efficient only for the production of
evil, and all that evil inflicted on ourselves.
In such a case, under such circumstances,
how did Massachusetts demean herself?
Sir, she remonstrated, she memorialized,
she addressed herself to the general gov-
ernment, not exactly "with the concen-
trated energy of passion," but with her
own strong sense, and the energy of sober
conviction.

But she did not interpose the arm of her
own power to arrest the law and break the
embargo. Far from it. Her principles
bound her to two things, and she followed
her principles, lead where they might:
first, to submit to every constitutional law
of Congress; and secondly, if the constitu-
tional validity of the law be doubted, to
refer that question to the decision of the
proper tribunals. The first principle is
vain and ineffectual without the second.
A majority of us in New England believed
the embargo law unconstitutional; but
the great question was, and always will be
in such cases, Who is to decide this?
Who is to judge between the people and
the government? And, sir, it is quite
plain that the Constitution of the United
States confers on the government itself,
to be exercised by its appropriate depart-
ment, and under its own responsibility
to the people, this power of deciding ulti-
mately and conclusively upon the just
extent of its own authority. If this had
not been done, we should not have ad-
vanced a single step beyond the old
Confederation.

Being fully of the opinion that the em-
bargo law was unconstitutional, the people
of New England were yet equally clear
in the opinion (it was a matter they did
not doubt upon) that the question, after
all, must be decided by the judicial tri-
bunals of the United States. Before these

394

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tribunals, therefore, they brought the
question. Under the provisions of the
law, they had given bonds to millions in
amount, and which were alleged to be for-
feited. They suffered the bonds to be
sued, and thus raised the question. In
the old-fashioned way of settling disputes,
they went to law. The case came to
hearing and solemn argument; and he who
espoused their cause and stood up for
them against the validity of the embargo
act, was none other than the great man
of whom the gentleman has made honor-
able mention, Samuel Dexter.

He was then, sir, in the fulness of his
knowledge and the maturity of his
strength. He had retired from long and
distinguished public service here, to the
renewed pursuit of professional duties,
carrying with him all that enlargement
and expansion, all the new strength and
force, which an acquaintance with the
more general subjects discussed in the
national councils is capable of adding to
professional attainment, in a mind of
true greatness and comprehension. He
was a lawyer, and he was also a statesman.
He had studied the Constitution, when he
filled public station, that he might defend
it; he had examined its principles that he
might maintain them. More than all
men, or at least as much as any man, he
was attached to the general government
and to the union of the States. His feel-
ings and opinions all ran in that direction.
A question of constitutional law, too, was,
of all subjects, that one which was best
suited to his talents and learning. Aloof
from technicality, and unfettered by arti-
ficial rule, such a question gave opportu-
nity for that deep and clear analysis,
that mighty grasp of principle, which so
much distinguished his higher efforts.
His very statement was argument; his
inference seemed demonstration. The
earnestness of his own conviction wrought
conviction in others. One was con-
vinced, and believed, and assented, be-
cause it was gratifying, delightful, to think,
and feel, and believe, in unison with an
intellect of such evident superiority.

Sir, the human mind is so constituted

that the merits of both sides of a contro-
versy appear very clear and very palpable
to those who respectively espouse them;
and both sides usually grow clearer as
the controversy advances. South Caro-
lina sees unconstitutionality in the tariff;
she sees oppression there also, and she sees
danger. Pennsylvania, with a vision not
less sharp, looks at the same tariff, and
sees no such thing in it; she sees it all con-
stitutional, all useful, all safe. The faith
of South Carolina is strengthened by
opposition, and she now not only sees, but
resolves, that the tariff is palpably un-
constitutional, oppressive, and dangerous;
but Pennsylvania, not to be behind her
neighbors, and equally willing to strengthen
her own faith by a confident assevera-
tion, resolves, also, and gives to every
warm affirmative of South Carolina, a
plain, downright, Pennsylvania negative.
South Carolina, to show the strength and
unity of her opinion, brings her assembly
to a unanimity, within seven voices;
Pennsylvania, not to be outdone in
this respect any more than in others,
reduces her dissentient fraction to a single
vote.

Now, sir, again I ask the gentleman,
What is to be done? Are these States both
right? Is he bound to consider them both
right? If not, which is in the wrong? or
rather, which has the best right to decide?
And if he, and if I, are not to know what the
Constitution means, and what it is, till
those two State legislatures, and the
twenty-two others, shall agree in its con-
struction, what have we sworn to when
we have sworn to maintain it? I was
forcibly struck, sir, with one reflection,
as the gentleman went on in his speech.
He quoted Mr. Madison's resolutions, to
prove that a State may interfere, in a case
of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous
exercise of a power not granted. The
honorable member supposes the tariff law
to be such an exercise of power; and that
consequently a case has arisen in which
the State may, if it see fit, interfere by its
own law. Now it so happens, neverthe-
less, that Mr. Madison deems this same
tariff law quite constitutional. Instead

ORATIONS

395

of a clear and palpable violation, it is, in
his judgment, no violation at all. So that,
while they use his authority for a hypo-
thetical case, they reject it in the very case
before them. All this, sir, shows the
inherent futility I had almost used a
stronger word of conceding this power
of interference to the State, and then at-
tempting to secure it from abuse by im-
posing qualifications of which the States
themselves are to judge. One of two
things is true: either the laws of the Union
are beyond the discretion and beyond
the control of the States; or else we have
no constitution of general government,
and are thrust back again to the days of
the Confederation.

Let me here say, sir, that if the gentle-
man's doctrine had been received and acted
upon in New England, in the times of the
embargo and non-intercourse, we should
probably not now have been here. The
government would very likely have gone
to pieces and crumbled into dust. No
stronger case can ever arise than existed
under those laws; no States can ever enter-
tain a clearer conviction than the New
England States then entertained; and if
they had been under the influence of that
heresy of opinion, as I must call it, which
the honorable member espouses, this
Union would, in all probability, have been
scattered to the four winds. I ask the
gentleman, therefore, to apply his princi-
ples to that case; I ask him to come forth
and declare whether, in his opinion, the
New England States would have been
justified in interfering to break up the
embargo system under the conscientious
opinions which they held upon it? Had
they a right to annul that law? Does he
admit or deny? If what is thought pal-
pably unconstitutional in South Carolina
justifies that State in arresting the prog-
ress of the law, tell me whether that
which was thought palpably unconsti-
tutional also in Massachusetts would have
justified her in doing the same thing?
Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not
a foot of ground in the Constitution to
stand on. No public man of reputation
ever advanced it in Massachusetts in the

warmest times, or could maintain himself
upon it there at any time.

I must now beg to ask, sir, Whence is
this supposed right of the States derived?
Where do they find the power to interfere
with the laws of the Union? Sir, the
opinion which the honorable gentleman
maintains is a notion founded on a total
misapprehension, in my judgment, of the
origin of this government, and of the foun-
dation on which it stands. I hold it to be
a popular government, erected by the
people; those who administer it respon-
sible to the people; and itself capable of
being amended and modified, just as the
people may choose it should be. It is as
popular, just as truly emanating from the
people, as the State governments. It is
created for one purpose; the State govern-
ments for another. It has its own powers ;
they have theirs. There is no more
authority with them to arrest the opera-
tion of a law of Congress, than with Con-
gress to arrest the operation of their laws.

We are here to administer a Constitu-
tion emanating immediately from the
people, and trusted by them to our admin-
istration. It is not the creature of the
State governments. It is of no moment
to the argument, that certain acts of the
State Legislatures are necessary to fill our
seats in this body. That is not one of their
original State powers, a part of the sov-
ereignty of the State. It is a duty which
the people, by the Constitution itself,
have imposed on the State Legislatures,
and which they might have left to be
performed elsewhere, if they had seen fit.
So they have left the choice of president
with electors; but all this does not affect
the proposition that this whole govern-
ment, president, Senate, and House of
Representatives, is a popular government.
It leaves it still all its popular character.
The governor of a State (in some of the
States) is chosen, not directly by the
people, but by those who are chosen by the
people, for the purpose of performing,
among other duties, that of electing a
governor. Is the government of the State,
on that account, not a popular govern-
ment? This government, sii\ is the inde-

396

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

pendent offspring of the popular will.
It is not the creature of State Legisla-
tures; nay, more, if the. whole truth must
be told, the people brought it into exis-
tence, established it, and have hitherto
supported it, for the very purpose, among
others, of imposing certain salutary re-
straints on State sovereignties. The
States can not now make war; they can
not contract alliances; they can not make,
each for itself, separate regulations of
commerce; they can not lay imposts;
they can not coin money. If this Con-
stitution, sir, be the creature of State
Legislatures, it must be admitted that it
has obtained a strange control over the
volitions of its creators.

To avoid all possibility of being mis-
understood, allow me to repeat again, in
the fullest manner, that I claim no powers
for the government by forced or unfair
construction. I admit that it is a govern-
ment of strictly limited powers of enu-
merated, specified, and particularized
powers, and that whatsoever is not granted
is withheld. But notwithstanding all this,
and however the grant of powers may be
expressed, its limit and extent may yet,
in some cases, admit of doubt; and the
general government would be good for
nothing, it would be incapable of long
existing, if some mode had not been pro-
vided in which those doubts, as they
should arise, might be peaceably, but
authoritatively, solved.

Mr. President, I have thus stated the
reasons of my dissent to the doctrines
which have been advanced and main-
tained. I am conscious of having detained
you and the Senate much too long. I was
drawn into the debate with no previous
deliberation, such as is suited to the discus-
sion of so grave and important a subject.
But it is a subject of which my heart is
full, and I have not been willing to sup-
press the utterance of its spontaneous
sentiments. I can not, even now, persuade
myself to relinquish it, without expressing
once more my deep conviction that, since
it respects nothing less than the Union of
the States, it is of most vital and essential
importance to the public happiness.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to
have kept steadily in view the prosperity
and honor of the whole country, and the
preservation of our federal Union. It is
to that Union we owe our safety at home,
and our consideration and dignity abroad.
It is to that Union that we are chiefly
indebted for whatever makes us most
proud of our country. That Union we
reached only by the discipline of our vir-
tues in the severe school of adversity.
It had its origin in the necessities of dis-
ordered finance, prostrate commerce, and
ruined credit. Under its benign in-
fluences, these great interests immediately
awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth
with newness of life. Every year of its
duration has teemed with fresh proofs of
its utility and its blessings; and although
our territory has stretched out wider and
wider, and our population spread farther
and farther, they have not outrun its
protection or its benefits. It has been to
us all a copious fountain of national,
social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look
beyond the Union, to see what might
lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I
have not coolly weighed the chances of
preserving liberty when the bonds that
unite us together shall be broken asunder.
I have not accustomed myself to hang
over the precipice of disunion, to sec
whether, with my short sight, I can fathom
the depth of the abyss below; nor could I
regard him as a safe counselor in the
affairs of this government, whose thoughts
should be mainly bent on considering, not
how the Union may be best preserved, but
how tolerable might be the condition of the
people when it should be broken up and
destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high,
exciting, gratifying prospects spread out
before us, for us and our children. Be-
yond that I seek not to penetrate the veil.
God grant that, in my day, at least, that
curtain may not rise! God grant that
on my vision never may be opened what
lies behind! When my eyes shall be
turned to behold for the last time the
sun in heaven, may I not see him shining

ORATIONS

397

on the broken and dishonored fragments
of a once glorious Union; on States dis-
severed, discordant, belligerent; on a land
rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may
be, in fraternal blood! Let their last
feeble and lingering glance rather behold
the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now
known and honored throughout the
earth, still full high advanced, its arms
and trophies streaming in their original
luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor
a single star obscured, bearing for its
motto no such miserable interrogatory
as, "What is all this worth?" nor those
other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty
first and Union afterward"; but every-
where, spread ah 1 over in characters of
living light, blazing on all its ample folds,
as they float over the sea and over the
land, and in every wind under the whole
heavens, that other sentiment, dear to
every true American heart Liberty and
Union, now and for ever, one and insep-
arable!

(1830)

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD
MACAULAY (1800-1859)

ON THE REFORM BILL

IT is a circumstance, sir, of happy
augury for the motion before the House,
that almost all those who have opposed
it have declared themselves hostile on
principle to parliamentary reform. Two
members, I think, have confessed that,
though they disapprove of the plan now
submitted to us, they are forced to admit
the necessity of a change in the represen-
tative system. Yet even those gentlemen
have used, as far as I have observed, no
arguments which would not apply as
strongly to the most moderate change as
to that which has been proposed by his
majesty's government.

The honorable baronet who has just
sat down [Sir Robert Peel] has told us
that the ministers have attempted to unite
two inconsistent principles in one abor-
tive measure. Those were his very words.
He thinks, if I understand him rightly,

that we ought either to leave the repre-
sentative system such as it is, or to make
it perfectly symmetrical. I think, sir,
that the ministers would have acted un-
wisely if they had taken either course.
Their principle is plain, rational, and con-
sistent. It is this: to admit the middle
class to a large and direct share in the
representation, without any violent shock
to the institutions of our country. [Hear !
hear!] I understand those cheers; but
surely the gentlemen who utter them will
allow that the change which will be made
in our institutions by this bill is far less
violent than that which, according to the
honorable baronet, ought to be made if
we make any reform at all. I praise the
ministers for not attempting, at the pres-
ent time, to make the representation uni-
form. I praise them for not effacing the
old distinction between the towns and the
counties, and for not assigning members to
districts, according to the American prac-
tise, by the Rule of Three. The govern*
ment has, in my opinion, done all that was
necessary for the removal of a great prac-
tical evil, and no more than was necessary.

I consider this, sir, as a practical ques-
tion. I rest my opinion on no general
theory of government. I distrust all
general theories of government. I will
not positively say that there is any form
of polity which may not, in some con
ceivable circumstances, be the best pos-
sible. I believe that there are societies
in which every man may safely be ad-
mitted to vote. [Hear! hear!] Gentle-
men may cheer, but such is my opinion.
I say, sir, that there are countries in which
the condition of the laboring classes is
such that they may safely be entrusted
with the right of electing members of the
legislature. If the laborers of England
were in that state in which I, from my soul,
wish to see them; if employment were
always plentiful, wages always high, food
always cheap; if a large family were con-
sidered not as an encumbrance but as a
blessing, the principal objections to univer-
sal suffrage would, I think, be removed.

Universal suffrage exists in the United
States without producing any very fright-

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ful consequences; and I do not believe
that the people of those States, or of any
part of the world, are in any good quality
naturally superior to our own countrymen.
But, unhappily, the laboring classes in
England, and in all old countries, are
occasionally in a state of great distress.
Some of the causes of this distress are, I
fear, beyond the control of the govern-
ment. We know what effect distress pro-
duces, even on people more intelligent
than the great body of the laboring
classes can possibly be. We know that it
makes even wise men irritable, unreason-
able, credulous, eager for immediate relief,
heedless of remote consequences. There
is no quackery in medicine, religion, or
politics, which may not impose even on a
powerful mind, when that mind has been
disordered by pain or fear. It is therefore
no reflection on the poorer class of English-
men, who are not, and who can not in the
nature of things be, highly educated, to
say that distress produces on them its
natural effects, those effects which it
would produce on the Americans, or on
any other people; that it blinds their
judgment, that it inflames their passions,
that it makes them prone to believe those
who flatter them, and to distrust those
who would serve them. For the sake,
therefore, of the whole society for the
sake of the laboring classes themselves I
hold it to be clearly expedient that, in a
country like this, the right of suffrage
should depend on a pecuniary qualifica-
tion.

But, sir, every argument which would
mduce me to oppose universal suffrage
induces me to support the plan which is
now before us. I am opposed to universal
suffrage, because I think that it would
produce a destructive revolution. I sup-
port this plan, because I am sure that it is
our best security against a revolution.
The noble paymaster of the forces hinted,
delicately indeed and remotely, at this
subject. He spoke of the danger of dis-
appointing the expectations of the nation ;
and for this he was charged with threaten-
ing the House. Sir, in the year 1817,
the late Lord Londonderry proposed a

suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.
On that occasion he told the House that,
unless the measures which he recom-
mended were adopted, the public peace
could not be preserved. Was he accused
of threatening the House? Again, in the
year 1819, he proposed the laws known by
the name of the Six Acts. He then told
the House that, unless the executive
power were reinforced, all the institutions
of the country would be overturned by
popular violence. Was he then accused of
threatening the House? Will any gentle-
man say that it is parliamentary and deco-
rous to urge the danger arising from popular
discontent as an argument for severity;
but that it is unparliamentary and indeco-
rous to urge that same danger as an argu-
ment for conciliation?

I, sir, do entertain great apprehension
for the fate of my country; I do in my
conscience believe that, unless the plan
proposed, or some similar plan, be speed-
ily adopted, great and terrible calamities
will befall us. Entertaining this opinion,
I think myself bound to state it, not as a
threat, but as a reason. I support this
bill because it will improve our institu-
tions; but I support it also because it
tends to preserve them.

If it be said that there is an evil in
change as change, I answer that there is
also an evil in discontent as discontent.
This, indeed, is the strongest part of our
case. It is said that the system works
well. I deny it. I deny that a system
works well which the people regard with
aversion. We may say here that it is a
good system and a perfect system. But
if any man were to say so to any six hun-
dred and fifty-eight respectable farmers or
shopkeepers, chosen by lot in any part of
England, he would be hooted down and
laughed to scorn. Are these the feelings
with which any part of the government
ought to be regarded? Above all, are these
the feelings with which the popular branch
of the legislature ought to be regarded?

It is almost as essential to the utility
of a House of Commons that it should
possess the confidence of the people, as
that it should deserve that confidence.

ORATIONS

399

Unfortunately, that which is in theory
the popular part of our government, is in
practise the unpopular part. Who wishes
to dethrone the king? Who wishes to
turn the lords out of their House? Here
and there a crazy radical, whom the boys
in the street point at as he walks along.
Who wishes to alter the constitution of this
House? The whole people. It is nat-
ural that it should be so. The House
of Commons is, in the language of Mr.
Burke, a check, not on the people, but for
the people. While that check is efficient,
there is no reason to fear that the king or
the nobles will oppress the people. But
if that check requires checking, how is it to
be checked? If the salt shall lose its
savor, wherewith shall we season it?
The distrust with which the nation re-
gards this House may be unjust. But
what then? Can you remove that dis-
trust? That it exists can not be denied.
That it is an evil can not be denied. That
it is an increasing evil can not be denied.
One gentleman tells us that it has been
produced by the late events in France and
Belgium; another, that it is the effect of
seditious works which have lately been
published. If this feeling be of origin so
recent, I have read history to little purpose.
Sir, this alarming discontent is not the
growth of a day, or of a year. If there be
any symptoms by which it is possible to
distinguish the chronic diseases of the body
politic from its passing inflammations, all
those symptoms exist in the present case.
The taint has been gradually becoming
more extensive and more malignant,
through the whole lifetime of two gene-
rations. We have tried anodynes. We
have tried cruel operations. What are
we to try now? Who flatters himself
that he can turn this feeling back? Does
there remain any argument which escaped
the comprehensive intellect of Mr. Burke,
or the subtlety of Mr. Windham? Does
there remain any species of coercion which
was not tried by Mr. Pitt and by Lord
Londonderry? We have had laws. We
have had blood. New treasons have been
created. The Press has been shackled.
The Habeas Corpus Act has been sus-

pended. Public meetings have been pro-
hibited. The event has proved that these
expedients were mere palh'atives. You arc
at the end of your palliatives. The evil
remains. It is more formidable than ever.
What is to be done?

Under such circumstances, a great plan
of reconciliation, prepared by the ministers
of the Crown, has been brought before us
in a manner which gives additional luster
to a noble name, inseparably associated
during two centuries with the dearest lib-
erties of the English people. I will not
say that this plan is in all its details pre-
cisely such as I might wish it to be; but it
is founded on a great and a sound principle.
It takes away a vast power from a few.
It distributes that power through the
great mass of the middle order. Every
man, therefore, who thinks as I think, is
bound to stand firmly by ministers who
are resolved to stand or fall with this
measure. Were I one of them, I would
sooner, infinitely sooner, fall with such a
measure than stand by any other means
that ever supported a cabinet.

My honorable friend, the member for
the University of Oxford [Sir Robert
Inglis] tells us that if we pass this law
England will soon be a republic. The
reformed House of Commons will, accord-
ing to him, before it has sat ten years,
depose the king and expel the lords from
their House. Sir, if my honorable friend
could prove this, he would have succeeded
in bringing an argument for democracy
infinitely stronger than any that is to be
found in the works of Paine. My honor-
able friend's proposition is in fact this:
that our monarchical and aristocratical
institutions have no hold on the public
mind of England; that these institutions
are regarded with aversion by a decided
majority of the middle class. This, sir,
I say, is plainly deducible from his prop-
osition; for he tells us that the represen-
tatives of the middle class will inevitably
abolish royalty and nobility within ten
years; and there is surely no reason to
think that the representatives of the
middle class will be more inclined to a
democratic revolution than their constitu-

400

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ents. Now, sir, if I were convinced that
the great body of the middle class in Eng-
land look with aversion on monarchy and
aristocracy, I should be forced, much
a^inst my will, to come to this conclusion
that monarchical and aristocratical insti-
tutions are unsuited \o my country.
Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and
useful as I think them, are still valuable
and useful as means and not as ends.
The end of government is the happiness
of the people, and I do not conceive that,
in a country like this, the happiness of the
people can be promoted by a form of
government in which the middle classes
place no confidence, and which exists
only because the middle classes have no
organ by which to make their sentiments
known. But, sir, I am fully convinced
that the middle classes sincerely wish to
uphold the royal prerogatives and the con-
stitutional rights of the peers.

The question of parliamentary reform
is still behind. But signs, of which it is
impossible to misconceive the import, do
most clearly indicate that, unless that
question also be speedily settled, property,
and order, and all the institutions of this
great monarchy, will be exposed to fearful
peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long
versed in high political affairs can not read
these signs? Is it possible that they can
really believe that the representative
system of England, such as it now is, will
last till the year 1860? If not, for what
would they have us wait? Would they
have us wait merely that we may show to
all the world how little we have profited by
our own recent experience?

Would they have us wait, that we may
once again hit the exact point where we
can neither refuse with authority nor con-
cede with grace? Would they have us
wait, that the numbers of the discontented
party may become larger, its demands
higher, its feelings more acrimonious,
its organization more complete? Would
they have us wait till the whole tragi-
comedy of 1827 has been acted over again;
till they have been brought into office by a
cry of "No Reform," to be reformers,
as they were once before brought into

office by a cry of "No Popery," to be
emancipators? Have they obliterated
from their minds gladly, perhaps, would
some among them obliterate from their
minds the transactions of that year?
And have they forgotten all the transac-
tions of the succeeding year? Have they
forgotten how the spirit of liberty in
Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet,
found a vent by forbidden passages?
Have they forgotten how we were forced
to indulge the Catholics in all the license
of rebels, merely because we chose to
withhold from them the liberties of sub-
jects? Do they wait for associations more
formidable than that of the Corn Ex-
change, for contributions larger than the
Rent, for agitators more violent than
those who, three years ago, divided with
the king and the Parliament the sov-
ereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that
last and most dreadful paroxysm of pop-
ular rage, for that last and most cruel test
of military fidelity?

Let them wait, if their past experience
shall induce them to think that any high
honor or any exquisite pleasure is to be
obtained by a policy like this. Let them
wait, if this strange and fearful infatuation
be indeed upon them, that they should
not see with their eyes, or hear with their
ears, or understand with their heart.
But let us know our interest and our duty
better. Turn where we may, within,
around, the voice of great events is pro-
claiming to- us: Reform, that you may
preserve. Now, therefore, while every-
thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to
those who persist in a hopeless struggle
against the spirit of the age; now, while
the crash of the proudest throne of the
continent is still resounding in our ears;
now, while the roof of a British palace
affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled
heir of forty kings; now, while we see on
every side ancient institutions subverted,
and great societies dissolved; now, while
the heart of England is still sound; now,
while old feelings and old associations
retain a power and a charm which may
too soon pass away; now, in this your ac^
cepted time, now, in this your day of sal-

ORATIONS

401

vation, take counsel, not of prejudice,
not of party spirit, not of the ignominious
pride of a fatal consistency, but of history,
of reason, of the ages which are past, of the
signs of this most portentous time.

Pronounce in a manner worthy of the
expectation with which this great debate
has been anticipated, and of the long re-
membrance which it will leave behind.
Renew the youth of the State. Save
property, divided against itself. Save
the multitude, endangered by its own un-
governable passions. Save the aristoc-
racy, endangered by its own unpopular
power. Save the greatest, and fairest,
and most highly civilized community
that ever existed, from calamities which
may in a few days sweep away all the rich
heritage of so many ages of wisdom and
glory. The danger is terrible. The time
is short. If this bill should be rejected, I
pray to God that none of those who concur
in rejecting it may ever remember their
votes with unavailing remorse, amid the
wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the
spoliation of property, and the dissolution
,)f social order.

(1831)

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI (1805-1872)
To THE YOUNG MEN OF ITALY*

WHEN I was commissioned by you,
young men, to proffer in this temple a few
words consecrated to the memory of the
brothers Bandiera, and their fellow mar-
tyrs at Cosenza, I thought some one of
those who heard me might, perhaps, ex-
claim, with noble indignation: "Why
thus lament over the dead? The mar-
tyrs of liberty can be worthily honored
only by winning the battle they began.
Cosenza, the land where they fell, is en-
slaved; Venice, the city of their birth, is
begirt with strangers. Let us emancipate
them; and, until that moment, let no
words pass our lips, save those of war."

But another thought arose, and sug-
gested to me the inquiry, Why have we

Translation reprinted from "The World's Famous Orations,"
by permission of the Funk & Wagnalls Company.

not conquered? Why is it that, while our
countrymen are fighting for independence
in the North, liberty is perishing in the
South? Why is it that a war which
should have sprung to the Alps with the
bound of a lion has dragged itself along for
four months with the slow, uncertain
motion of the scorpion surrounded by a
circle of fire? How has the rapid and
powerful intuition of a people newly arisen
to life been converted into the weary,
helpless effort of a sick man, turning from
side to side?

Ah, had we all arisen strong in the sanc-
tity of the idea for which our martyrs died;
had the holy standard of their faith in-
spired our youth to battle; had we made of
our every thought an action, and of our
every action a thought; had we learned
from them that liberty and independence
are one, we should not now have war, but
victory ! Cosenza would not be compelled
to venerate the memory of her martyrs
in secret, nor Venice be restrained from 1
honoring them with a monument. We,
here gathered together, then might gladly
invoke those sacred names without un-
certainty as to our future destiny or a
cloud of sadness on our brows; and we
might say to those precursor souls: "Re-
joice, for your spirit is incarnate in your
brethren, and they are worthy of you."
Could Attilio and Emilio Bandiera and
their fellow martyrs now rise from the
grave and speak to you, they would,
believe me, address you, though with a
power very different from that which is
given to me, in counsel not unlike that
which I now utter.

Love is the flight of the soul toward God :
toward the great, the sublime, and the
beautiful, which are the shadows of God
upon earth. Love your family; the part-
ner of your life; those around you, ready
to share your joys and sorrows; the dead
who were dear to you, and to whom you
were dear. Love your country. It is
your name, your glory, your sign among
the peoples. Give to it your thought,
your counsel, your blood. You are twenty-
four millions of men, endowed with active
and splendid faculties; with a tradition

402

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

of glory which is the envy of the nations of
Europe. An immense _ future is before
you. Your eyes are raised to the loveliest
heaven, and around you smiles the love-
liest land in Europe. You are encircled
by the Alps and the sea, boundaries marked
out by the finger of God for a people of
giants.

And you must be such, or nothing. Let
not a man of that twenty-four millions
remain excluded from the fraternal bond
which shall join you together; let not a
look be raised to heaven which is not that
of a free man. Love humanity. You
can only ascertain your own mission from
the aim placed by God before humanity
at large. Beyond the Alps, beyond the
sea, are other peoples, now fighting, or
preparing to fight, the holy fight of inde-
pendence, of nationality, of liberty; other
peoples striving by different routes to
reach the same goal. Unite with them
and they will unite with you.

And, young men, love and reverence
the Ideal; that is the country of the spirit,
the city of the soul, in which all are breth-
ren who believe in the inviolability of
thought, and in the dignity of our im-
mortal natures. From that high sphere
spring the principles which alone can re-
deem peoples. Love enthusiasm the
pure dreams of the virgin soul, and the
lofty visions of early youth; for they are
the perfume of Paradise, which the soul
preserves in issuing from the hands of its
Creator. Respect, above all things, your
conscience; have upon your lips the truth
that God has placed in your hearts; and,
while working together in harmony in all
that tends to the emancipation of our soil,
even with those who differ from you, yet
ever bear erect your own banner, and
boldly promulgate your faith.

Such words, young men, would the
martyrs of Cosenza have spoken had they
been living among you. And here, where,
perhaps, invoked by our love, their holy
spirits hover near us, I call upon you to
gather them up in your hearts, and to
make of them a treasure amid the storms
that yet threaten you, but which, with the
name of our martyrs on your lips, and

their faith in your hearts, you will over-
come. God be with you and bless Italy!

(1848)

GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI (1807-1882)
To His SOLDIERS*

WE MUST now consider the period which
is just drawing to a close as almost the last
stage of our national resurrection, and
prepare ourselves to finish worthily the
marvelous design of the elect of twenty
generations, the completion of which Prov-
idence has reserved for this fortunate
age.

Yes, young men, Italy owes to you an
undertaking which has merited the ap-
plause of the universe. You have con-
quered and you will conquer still, because
you are prepared for the tactics that
decide the fate of battles. You are not
unworthy the men who entered the ranks
of a Macedonian phalanx, and who con-
tended not in vain with the proud con-
querors of Asia. To this wonderful page
in our country's history another more
glorious still will be added, and the slave
shall show at last to his free brothers a
sharpened sword forged from the links of
his fetters.

To arms, then, all of you! all of you!
And the oppressors and the mighty shall
disappear like dust. You, too, women,
cast away all the cowards from your
embraces ; they will give you only cowards
for children, and you who are the daugh-
ters of the land of beauty must bear chil-
dren who are noble and brave. Let timid
doctrinaires depart from among us to
carry their servility and their miserable
fears elsewhere. This people is its own
master. It wishes to be the brother of
other peoples, but to look on the insolent
with a proud glance, not to grovel before
them imploring its own freedom. It will
no longer follow in the trail of men whose
hearts are foul. No! No! No!

Providence has presented Italy with
Victor Emmanuel. Every Italian should

Translation reprinted from "The World's Famous Orations,"
by permission of the Funk & Wagnalls Company.

ORATIONS

403

rally round him. By the side of Victor
Emmanuel every quarrel should be for-
gotten, all rancor depart. Once more I
repeat my battle-cry: "To arms, all all
of you!" If March, 1861, does not find
one million of Italians in arms, then alas
for liberty, alas for the life of Italy. Ah,
no, far be from me a thought which I
loathe like poison. March of 1861, or
if need be February, will find us all at our
post Italians of Calatafimi, Palermo,
Ancona, the Volturno, Castelfidardo, and
Isernia, and with us every man of this land
who is not a coward or a slave. Let all
of us rally round the glorious hero of
Palestro and give the last blow to the
crumbling edifice of tyranny. Receive,
then, my gallant young volunteers, at the
honored conclusion of ten battles, one
word of farewell from me.

I utter this word with deepest affec-
tion and from the very bottom of my
heart. To-day I am obliged to retire, but
for a few days only. The hour of battle
will find me with you again, by the side
of the champions of Italian liberty. Let
those only return to their homes who are
called by the imperative duties which they
owe to their families, and those who by
their glorious wounds have deserved the
credit of their country. These, indeed,
will serve Italy in their homes by their
counsel, by the very aspect of the scars
which adorn their youthful brows. Apart
from these, let all others remain to guard
our glorious banners. We shall meet
again before long to march together to the
redemption of our brothers who are still
slaves of the stranger. We shall meet
again before long to march to new tri-
umphs.

(1860)

CAMILLO, COUNT DI CAVOUR

(1810-1861)

ROME AS THE CAPITAL OF UNITED ITALY*

ROME should be the capital of Italy.
Without the acceptance of this premise by

Translation reprinted from "The World's Famous Orations,"
by permission of the Funk & W agnails Company.

Italy and all Europe there can t>e no so-
lution of the Roman question. If any one
could conceive of a united Italy having any
degree of stability, without Rome for its
capital, I would declare the Roman ques-
tion difficult, if not impossible, of solu-
tion. And why have we the right, the
duty of insisting that Rome shall be united
to Italy? Because without Rome as the
capital of Italy, Italy can not exist.
This truth being felt instinctively by all
Italians, and asserted abroad by all who
judge Italian affairs impartially, needs no
demonstration. It is upheld by the judg-
ment of nations.

And yet, gentlemen, this truth is sus-
ceptible of a very simple proof. Italy has
still much to do before it will rest upon a
stable basis; much to do in solving the
grave problems raised by unification;
much to do in overcoming the obstacles
which tune-honored traditions have op-
posed to this great undertaking. And if
this end must be compassed, it is essential
that there shall be no cause of dissidence
or of failure. Until the question of the
capital of Italy is determined, there will
be endless discords among the different
provinces.

It is easy to understand how persons of
good faith, cultured and talented, are now
suggesting, some on historical, others on
artistic grounds, the advisability of estab-
lishing the capital in some other city.
Such a discussion is quite comprehensible
now, but if Italy already had her capital
in Rome, do you think this question would
be even possible? Assuredly not. Even
those who are now opposed to transferring
the capital to Rome, would not dream of
removing it if it were once established
there. Therefore, it is only by proclaim-
ing Rome the capital of Italy that we can
put an end to these dissensions among
ourselves.

I am grieved that men of eminence and
genius, men who have rendered glorious
service to the cause of Italian unity should
drag this question into the field of debate
and discuss it with dare I say it? puer-
ile arguments. The question of the capi-
tal, gentlemen, is not determined by

404

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

climate, or topography, nor even by
strategical considerations. If these things
affected the selection, ~I think I might
safely say that London would not be the
capital of England, nor, perhaps, Paris
of France. The selection of the capital is
determined by great moral reasons. It is
the will of the people that decides a ques-
tion touching them so closely.

In Rome, gentlemen, are united all the
circumstances, whether historic, intellec-
tual, or moral, that should determine the
site of the capital. Rome is the only city
with traditions not purely local. The
entire history of Rome from the time of
Caesar to the present day is the history of a
city whose importance reaches far beyond
her confines; of a city destined to be one
of the capitals of the world. Convinced,
profoundly convinced, of this truth, I feel
constrained to declare it solemnly to you
and to the nation, and I feel bound to
appeal in this matter to the patriotism of
every citizen of Italy, and to the represen-
tatives of her most eminent cities, that dis-
cussions may cease, and that he who rep-
resents the nation before other powers
may be able to proclaim that the necessity
of having Rome as the capital is recog-
nized by all the nation. I think I am
justified in making this appeal even to
those who, for reasons which I respect,
differ from me on this point. Yet more;
I can assume no Spartan indifference in
the matter. I say frankly that it will be
a deep grief to me to tell my native city
that she must renounce resolutely and de-
finitively all hope of being the seat of gov-
ernment.

As far as I am personally concerned, it
is no pleasure to go to Rome. Having
little artistic taste, I feel sure that in the
midst of the splendid monuments of
ancient and modern Rome I shall lament
the plain and unpoetic streets of my native
town. But one thing I can say with confi-
dence: knowing the character of my fellow
citizens; knowing from actual facts how
ready they have always been to make
the greatest sacrifices for the sacred cause
of Italy; knowing their willingness to
make sacrifices when their city was in-

vaded by the enemy, and knowing their
promptness and energy in its defense;
knowing all this, I have no fear that they
will not uphold me when, in their name
and as their deputy, I say that Turin is
ready to make this great sacrifice for the
interests of a united Italy.

I am comforted by the hope I may
even say the certainty that when Italy
shall have established the seat of govern-
ment in the Eternal City, she will not be
ungrateful to this land which was the
cradle of liberty; to this land in which
was sown that germ of independence which
maturing rapidly and branching out, has
now reached forth its tendrils from Sicily
to the Alps. I have said and I repeat:
Rome, and Rome only, should be the
capital of Italy.

But here begin the difficulties. We
must go to Rome, but there are two con-
ditions. We must go there in concert
with France, otherwise the union of
Rome with the rest of Italy would be inter-
preted by the great mass of Catholics,
within Italy and without it, as the signal
of the slavery of the Church. We must
go, therefore, to Rome in such a way that
the true independence of the pontiff shall
not be diminished. We must go to Rome,
but the civil power must not extend to
spiritual things. These are the two con-
ditions that must be fulfilled if united
Italy is to exist.

At the risk of being considered Utopian,
I believe that when the proclamation of
the principles which I have just declared,
and when the indorsement of them that you
will give shall become known and con-
sidered at Rome and in the Vatican, I
believe, I say, that those Italian fibers
which the reactionary party has, as yet,
been unable to remove from the heart of
Pius LX, will again vibrate, and that there
will be accomplished the greatest act
that any people have yet performed.
And so it shall be given to the same gene-
ration not only to have restored a nation,
but to have done what is yet greater, yet
more sublime an act of which the in-
fluence is incalculable, and which is to have
reconciled the papacy with the civil power,

ORATIONS

405"

to have made peace between Church and
State, between the spirit of religion and
the great principles of liberty. Yes, I
hope that it will be given us to compass
Jiese two great acts which will most
assuredly carry to the most distant pos-
terity the worthiness of the present gene-
ration of Italians.

(1861)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865)
THE "HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF"

IF WE could first know where we are,
and whither we are tending, we could
better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year since
a policy was initiated with the avowed
object, and confident promise, of putting
an end to slavery agitation. Under the
operation of that policy, that agitation not
only has not ceased, but has constantly
augmented. In my opinion, it will not
cease until a crisis shall have been reached
and passed. "A house divided against
itself can not stand." I believe this gov-
ernment can not endure permanently half
slave and half free. I do not expect
the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect
the house to fall; but I do expect that it
will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing, or all the other. Either
the opponents of slavery will arrest the
further spread of it, and place it where the
public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction;
or its advocates will push it forward till it
shall become alike lawful in all the States,
old as well as new, North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condi-
tion? Let any one who doubts carefully
contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination-piece of machinery, so
to speak compounded of the Nebraska
doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.

Put this and that together, and we have
another nice little niche, which we may,
ere long, see filled with another Supreme
Court decision, declaring that the Con-
stitution of the United States does not

permit a State to exclude slavery from its
limits. And this may especially be ex-
pected if the doctrine of "care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up,"
shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently
to give promise that such a decision can
be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now
lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.
Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is
probably coming, and will soon be upon
us, unless the power of the present po-
litical dynasty shall be met and over-
thrown. We shall lie down pleasantly
dreaming that the people of Missouri are
on the verge of making their State free,
and we shall awake to the reality, instead,
that the Supreme Court has made Illi-
nois a slave State. To meet and over-
throw that dynasty is the work before
all those who would prevent that consum-
mation. That is what we have to do.
How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly
to their own friends, and yet whisper to us
softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest
instrument there is with which to effect
that object. They wish us to infer all,
from the fact that he now has a little quar-
rel with the present head of the dynasty;
and that he has regularly voted with us
on a single point, upon which he and we
have never differed. They remind us that
he is a great man and that the largest of
us are very small ones. Let this be
granted. "But a living dog is better
than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if
not a dead lion, for this work, is at
least a caged and toothless one.

How can he oppose the advance of
slavery? He does not care anything
about it. His avowed mission is impress-
ing the "public heart" to care nothing
about it. A leading Douglas Demo-
cratic newspaper thinks Douglas's su-
perior talent will be needed to resist the
revival of the African slave-trade. Does
Douglas believe an effort to revive that
trade is approaching? He has not said
so. Does he really think so? But if it is,
how can he resist it? For years he has
labored to prove it a sacred right of

406

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

white men to take negro slaves into the
new Territories. Can he possibly show
that it is less a sacred right to buy them
where they can be bought cheapest?
And unquestionably they can be bought
cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.

He has done all in his power to reduce
the whole question of slavery to one of a
mere right of property; and as such, how
can he oppose the foreign slave-trade?
How can he refuse that trade in that
"property" shall be "perfectly free,"
unless he does it as a protection to the
home production? And as the home pro-
ducers will probably not ask the protec-
tion, he will be wholly without a ground
of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that
a man may rightfully be wiser to-day
than he was yesterday that he may
rightfully change when he finds himself
wrong. But can we, for that reason run
ahead, and infer that he will make any
particular change, of which he himself has
given no intimation? Can we safely
base our action upon any such vague infer-
ence? Now, as ever, I wish not to mis-
represent Judge Douglas's position, ques-
tion his motives, or do aught that can be
personally offensive to him. Whenever,
if ever, he and we can come together on
principle, so that our cause may have
assistance from his great ability, I hope
to have interposed no adventitious ob-
stacle. But, clearly, he is not now with
us he does not pretend to be, he does
not promise ever to be.

Our cause, then, must be entrusted to,
and conducted by, its own undoubted
friends those whose hands are free,
whose hearts are in the work who do
care for the result. Two years ago the
Republicans of the nation mustered over
thirteen hundred thousand strong. We
did this under the single impulse of resis-
tance to a common danger. With every ex-
ternal circumstance against us, of strange,
discordant, and even hostile elements, we
gathered from the four winds, and formed
and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud,
and pampered enemy. Did we brave all

then, to falter now? now, when that
same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and
belligerent! The result is not doubtful.
We shall not fail if we stand firm, we
shall not fail. Wise counsels may accele-
rate, or mistakes delay it ; but, sooner or
later, the victory is sure to come.

(1858)

THE SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG

FOURSCORE and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil
war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come
to dedicate a portion of that field as a
final resting-place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might
five. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedi-
cate we can not consecrate we can
not hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here thus far so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom and
that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.

(1863?

ORATIONS

407

THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Ax THIS second appearing to take the
oath of the presidential office, there is
less occasion for an extended address
than there was at first. Then a state-
ment, somewhat in detail, of a course to
be pursued seemed very fitting and proper.
Now, at the expiration of four years, dur-
ing which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point
and phase of the great contest which still
absorbs the attention and engrosses the
energies of the nation, little that is new
could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which
all else chiefly depends, is as well known
to the public as to myself, and it is, I
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encour-
aging to all. With high hope for the
future, no prediction in regard to it is
ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this
four years ago, all thoughts were anx-
iously directed to an impending civil
war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid
it. While the inaugural address was
being delivered from this place, devoted
altogether to saving the Union without
war, insurgent agents were hi the city
seeking to destroy it without war seeking
to dissolve the Union and divide the
effects by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war, but one of them would
make war rather than let the nation sur-
vive, and the other would accept war
rather than let it perish, and the war
came. One-eighth of the whole popula-
tion were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized
in the Southern part of it.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this
interest was somehow the cause of the
war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and
extend this interest was the object for
which the insurgents would rend the
Union by war, while the government
claimed no right to do more than to re-
strict the Territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the
magnitude or the duration which it has

already attained. Neither anticipated
that the cause of the conflict might cease
when, or even before the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same
Bible and pray to the same God, and each
invokes His aid against the other. It may
seem strange that any men should dare to
ask a just God's assistance hi wringing
their bread from the sweat of other men's
faces, but let us judge not, that we be not
judged. The prayer of both could not be
answered. That of neither has been
answered fully. The Almighty has His
own purposes. "Woe unto the world
because of offenses, for it must needs be
that offenses come; but woe to that man
by whom the offense cometh!"

If we shall suppose that American
slavery is one of those offenses which, hi
the providence of God, must needs come,
but which having continued through His
appointed tune, He now wills to remove,
and that He gives to both North and
South this terrible war as the woe due to
those by whom the offense came, shall we
discern there any departure from those
divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,
that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills
that it continue until all the wealth piled
by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and
until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with
the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said, that the
judgments of the Lord are true and right-
eous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity
for all, with firmness in the right as God
gives us to see the right, let us finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nation's
wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and
his orphans, to do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and a lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations.

(1865)

ESSAYS
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-1592)

Montaigne is the most friendly and companionable of essayists. A wise skeptic who studied and
wrote about himself in order to know about human nature, he represents the serenity, the toleration,
and the joy in an active but contented existence which was the great lesson of the Humanism growing
out of the Renaissance.

The following selection is based on Florio's translation (1603) but somewhat modernized in diction
and idiom. It has been prepared by Percy Hazen Houston.

OF REPENTANCE

OTHERS form man; I report him, repre-
senting a particular one [Montaigne him-
self] fashioned badly enough, whom, were I
to fashion anew, I should make far other
than what he is; but now it cannot be
helped. Now though the lines of my por-
trait of ttimes change and vary, yet the like-
ness is not wholly lost, for the world all runs
on wheels; all things move therein without
ceasing; the whole earth, even the rocks
of Caucasus and the Pyramids of Egypt,
both because all things move and change
both with the general motion of the whole
and their own peculiar moving. Constancy
itself is but a languishing and wavering
dance. I cannot fix upon my object
(myself); it moves troubled and reeling
as in a drunken dream; I take it at the
point at which it is at the instant when I
concern myself with it; I do not paint its
essential nature but a passing phase; not
a passage from one age to another, or, as
they say, from seven years to seven, but
from day to day, from minute to minute
my account of myself must accommodate
itself to the hour in which I write; I may
presently change, not only in outward
fortune but in outlook and intention. It
is but a standard for comparing many
and variable accidents and irresolute
imaginings and sometimes, as it happens,
contradictory to one another. It may
be I am then another self or I apprehend
subjects by other circumstances and con-
siderations; so that I may perhaps often

contradict myself, but the truth never.
Could my soul find a resting place, I
would not merely make trial of it but
would make a final resolution; but it is
ever in apprenticeship and on trial.

I propose to describe a life ordinary
and without luster; it is all one: all moral
philosophy may be applied to a common
and private life as well as to one of richer
material; every man bears in himself the
entire form of human condition. Other
authors communicate with the world by
some special and unusual mark; I, the first,
just as an ordinary man, as Michel de
Montaigne, not as a grammarian or a
poet or a lawyer. If the world complains
that I speak too much of myself, I com-
plain that it thinks no more of itself.
But is it reasonable that, being so private
in my way of living, I should recommend
myself to the public knowledge? And
is it also reasonable that I should produce
for the benefit of the world, where fashion
and art have such credit and authority,
the raw and simple effects of nature.,
and of a nature still weak enough? To
write books without learning and without
art, is it not making a wall without stone
or some similar thing? The fancies of
music are conducted by art; mine by
chance. Yet I have this according to
rule, that never man handled subject
better known and understood than I do
this I have undertaken, and that in this
I am the most cunning man alive.

Secondly, no man ever penetrated moie
deeply into his matter, nor more distinctly

408

ESSAYS

409

sifted the parts and sequences of it, nor
ever more exactly and fully arrived at the
end he proposed to himself. To perfect
it, I have need of nothing but faithfulness,
which is for this work as pure and sincere
as may be found. I speak truth, not so
much as I would, but as much as I dare;
and I dare the more the more I grow in
years, for custom seems to permit old age
more liberty to babble, and indiscretion to
talk of oneself. It cannot happen here
as I often see it elsewhere, that the crafts-
man and his work contradict one another.
Can a man of so sober and honest con-
versation write so foolishly? Are such
learned writings come from a man of so
weak conversation? He who talks but
ordinarily well and writes excellently
may be said to have borrowed his capacity,
not derived it from himself. A skilful
man is not skilful in all things; but a
sufficient man is sufficient everywhere,
even in his own ignorance. Here my
book and I march together and keep one
pace. With respect to other men's writ-
ing, men may commend or censure the
work without reference to the workman,
but not here; who touches the one touches
the other. He who shall judge of it
without knowing the author shall wrong
himself more than me, he who does know
it gives me all the satisfaction I desire.
Happy beyond my deserts if I obtain only
so much of the public approval, that I may
cause men of understanding to think I had
been able to profit by knowledge if I had
it; and that I deserved to be assisted by
a better memory.

Please pardon here what I often repeat,
that I rarely repent, and that my con-
science is contented with itself, not as the
conscience of an angel, or that of a horse,
but as the conscience of a man. Always
adding this clause, not one of ceremony
but of true and real submission: that I
speak inquiringly and doubtingly, purely
and simply referring myself, from reso-
lution, unto common and lawful opin-
ions. I do not teach, I but report.

No vice is absolutely a vice which does
not offend, and which sound judgment
does not accuse: for there is in it so mani-

fest a deformity and inconvenience that
perchance they are in the right who say
that it is chiefly begotten by stupidity
and brought forth by ignorance, so hard
is it to imagine that one should know it
without hating it. Malice sucks up the
greatest part of her own renown and so
poisons herself. Vice leaves remorse in
the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which
is always scratching and tearing itself;
for reason effaces all other griefs and
sorrows, but engenders those of repen-
tance, which is so much the more grievous,
by reason that it springs from within, as
the cold and heat of fevers are sharper
than those that only strike upon the outer
skin. I account vices (but each according
to its measure) not only those which
reason and nature condemn, but those
also which the opinion of men, though
false and erroneous, has made such, if
they are confirmed by law and custom.

In like manner, there is no virtue which
does not gladden a well-bred nature.
There is an indescribable self -congratula-
tion in well-doing that gives us an inward
satisfaction, and a generous boldness that
accompanies a good conscience. A mind
daringly vicious may perhaps furnish
itself with security, but it cannot supply
itself with this delight and satisfaction.
It is no small pleasure to feel oneself pre-
served from the contagion of an age so
infected as ours, and to say to himself :
"Whoever enters and sees into my soul
would not find me guilty either of the
affliction or ruin of anyone, nor of envy
or revenge, nor of public offense against
the laws, nor of innovation or sedition,
nor failure of my word; and though the
license of the time permits and teaches
everyone to do so, yet I could never be
induced to touch the goods or dive into
the purse of any Frenchman, and have
always lived on what was my own, in
war as well as in peace; nor did I ever
make use of any poor man's labor with-
out paying him his hire." These evi-
dences of a good conscience are very
pleasing, and this natural rejoicing is a
great benefit to us, and the only reward
which never fails.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

To base the recompense of virtuous
actions upon the approbation of others is
too uncertain and unsafe a foundation,
especially in so corrupt and ignorant an
age as this, in which the good opinion of
the vulgar is injurious. Whom do you
trust to show you what is commendable?
God keep me from being an honest man,
according to the description I daily see
made of honor, each one from himself
as model. Quae fuerant vitia, mores
sunt: "What before were vices are now
good manners." (Seneca, Ep. 39.)
Some of my friends have at times schooled
and scolded me with great plainness,
either of their own will or invited by me
by way of friendly advice, which to a well-
composed mind surpasses both in profit
and hi kindness all other offices of friend-
ship. Such have I ever entertained with
open arms both of courtesy and acknowl-
edgment. But now to speak truly, I
have often found so much false measure
both in their reproaches and in their
praises, that I would not have been farther
wrong to have done ill than to have done
well according to their notions. Such as
we are especially, who live a private life
not exposed to any gaze but our own,
ought in our hearts to establish a touch-
stone, and there to touch our deeds and
try our actions, and according to that
sometimes to encourage and sometimes to
correct ourselves. I have my own laws
and my own tribunal to judge me, and I
address myself to these more than any-
where else. I do indeed restrain my ac-
tions with respect to others, but I extend
them according to my own rule alone.
None but yourself knows rightly if you
are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and de-
vout. Others do not see you, and only
guess at you by uncertain conjectures,
and do not so much see your nature as
your art. Rely not then upon their
opinion, but hold to your own. Tuo tibi
judicio est utendum. Virtutis et vitiorum
grave ipsius conscientiae pondus est; qua
sublata jacent omnia: "You must use your
own judgment. The weight of the very
conscience of vice and virtues is heavy:
take that away and all is done."

One may disown and retract the vices
that surprise us, and to which we are
hurried by passions; but those which by
long habit are rooted in a strong and vig-
orous will are not subject to contradic-
tion. Repentance is but a denying of the
will, and an opposition to cur fancies which
lead us which way they please.

Quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero

fuit?
Vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt

genae?

"Why was not in a youth same mind as

now?
Or why bears not this mind a youthful

brow? " (Horace, Od. IV, 10,7.)

That is an exquisite life which keeps
due order even in private. Everyone
may play the juggler, and represent an
honest man upon the stage; but within,
and in his own bosom, where all things
are lawful and where all things are con-
cealed, to keep a due rule or formal de-
corum, that's the point. The next degree
is to be so in his own home, and in his
ordinary actions, whereof we give ac-
count to nobody, wherein is no study and
no art. And therefore Bias, setting forth
the excellent state of a private family,
says: of which the master is the same
within as he is outwardly, for fear of the
laws and regard for what men will say ! *
And it was a worthy saying of Julius
Drusus to those workmen who for three
thousand crowns offered so to reform his
house that his neighbors should no longer
look into it: "I will give you six thou-
sand to make it so that everyone may see
into every room." The custom of Agesi-
laus is remembered with honor, who in
his travels was wont to take up his lodg-
ing in churches, that the people and the
gods themselves might pry into his pri-
vate actions. Some man may have been
a miracle to the world, in whom neither
his wife nor his servants ever noted any-
thing remarkable. "No man is a hero
to his valet. No man has been a prophet,
not merely in his own house but in his

Plutarch, "Banquet of the Seven Sages."

ESSAYS

411

own country," is the experience of his-
tories. So also is it in things of little
account, for in the low example the image
of a greater is seen.

People escort a public man to his very
doors in state; with his robe he puts off his
part, falling so much the lower by how
much higher he had mounted. Within him-
self all is turbulent and base. And though
order and formality should be discovered
there, a lively and impartial judgment is
required to perceive it in these low and
private actions; considering that order is
but a dull, sombre virtue. To win a
battle, conduct an embassy, govern a
people, are noble and worthy actions; to
reprove, laugh, pay, hate, and gently and
justly converse with one's own family
and with one's self; not to relent, not to
give oneself the lie, are things more rare,
more difficult, and less remarkable.

Wherefore retired lives, whatever may
be said, undergo duties of as great or
greater difficulty than others do; and pri-
vate men, says Aristotle, serve virtue
more painfully and more highly attend
her than do those in authority. We pre-
pare ourselves for eminent occasions
more for glory than for conscience. The
shortest way to arrive at glory would be
to do that for conscience which we do for
glory. And it appears that the virtue of
Alexander was less vigorous in his great
theater than that of Socrates hi his mean
and obscure employment. I can easily
conceive Socrates in the place of Alex-
ander, but Alexander in the place of Soc-
rates I cannot. If any ask the one what
he can do, he will answer, " Conquer the
world;" let the same question be put to
the other, he will say, "Conduct my life
conformably to its natural condition;"
a science much more generous, more im-
portant, and more lawful.

The virtue of the soul consists not in
flying high, but in marching orderly; its
grandeur does not exercise itself in gran-
deur, but in things of low estate. As
they who judge and try us inwardly
take no great account of the luster of
our public actions, and see they are but
streaks and rays of clear water surging

from a slimy and muddy bottom; so
those who judge us by this gay outward
appearance conclude the same of our
inward constitution, and cannot couple
common faculties like their own to other
faculties which astonish them, so far are
they above their level.

There is no man (if he listen to himself)
who does not discover in himself a pe-
culiar and governing form of his own, a
swaying form which wrestles against the
tempest of passions that are contrary
to it. For my part, I am seldom agitated
by a shock; I usually find myself in my
place, as sluggish and unwieldy bodies do;
if I am not near at hand, I am never far
off; my dissipations do not carry me t far,
and there is nothing about me strange
or extreme; yet I have strong appetites.

The true condemnation, and one that
touches the common practice of men, is
that their very retreat is full of filth and
corruption; the idea of their amendment
blurred; their repentance sick and faulty,
nearly as much as their sin. Some,
either from having been linked to vice
by a natural propensity, or long practice,
have lost all sense of its ugliness, others
(of which rank am I) find vice burdensome,
but they counterbalance it with pleasure
on some other occasion and suffer or lend
themselves to it for. a certain price, but
basely and viciously. Yet there might,
perhaps, be so much more of one than the
other that with justice the pleasure might
counterbalance the sin as we say of profit
and loss, not only if accidental, and arising
out of sin, as in thefts, but in the very
exercise of it, where the temptation is
violent, and, it is said, sometimes not to
be overcome.

There are some sins that are impet-
uous, prompt, and sudden; let us leave con-
sideration of them. But those other sins
so often repeated, determined, and care-
fully considered, whether sins of tempera-
ment or sins of profession and vocation,
I cannot conceive how they should be so
long settled in the same resolution,
unless the reason and conscience of him
who has them be inwardly and constantly
willing. And the repentance he boasts

412

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

to be inspired with all of a sudden, is
hard for me to imagine or conceive. I
am not of Pythagoras' sect, holding that
men receive a new soul when they repair
to the images of the gods to receive oracles,
unless it is meant that they take a strange
and new one, lent them for the occasion;
our own showing so little sign of purifi-
cation and cleanness, worthy of that
office. They again act quite contrary
to the principles of the Stoics which com-
mand us to correct the imperfections and
vices we find in ourselves, but forbid us
therefore to disturb the repose of our
souls. They make us believe they feel
great remorse, and are inwardly much dis-
pleased with sin; but of amendment,
correction, or ceasing to sin, they show no
sign. Surely there can be no perfect
health where the disease is not perfectly
removed. Were repentance put into the
balance, it would weigh down sin. I
find no quality so easy to counterfeit
as devotion; if one does not conform his
life to it, its essence is not easily dis-
covered but is concealed, and its appear-
ance easy and ostentatious.

For my part, I may in general wish to
be other than I am; I may condemn and
dislike my whole form; I may pray God
to grant me an undefiled reformation
and pardon my natural weakness, but I
ought not to call this repentance any
more than in being dissatisfied with being
neither an angel nor Cato. My actions
are squared to what I am, and confirmed
by my condition. I cannot do better;
and repentance does not properly concern
what is not in our power; sorrow does. I
may imagine an infinite number of nat-
ures more elevated than mine, yet I do
not for that improve my faculties, any
more than my arm grows stronger or my
mind more vigorous by conceiving those
of another to be so. If to suppose and
wish a nobler way of acting than ours
might produce a repentance of our own,
we should then repent of our most inno-
cent actions; for since we judge that in a
more excellent nature they had been
directed with greater perfection and dig-
nity, we would that ours were so. When

in old age I reflect upon the behavior
of my youth, I find that commonly
(according to my own opinion) I managed
with equal order in both. This is all
that my resistance is able to accomplish.
I do not flatter myself; in like circum-
stances I should always be the same. It
is not a spot, but a whole dye, that stains
me. I acknowledge no repentance that
is superficial, mean, and ceremonious.
It must touch me on all sides before I
can term it repentance. It must pinch
my entrails and afflict them as deeply
and thoroughly as God himself beholds
me.

If I fail in business and success favor
the side I refused, there is no remedy:
I do not blame myself, I accuse my
fortune, and not my work; this cannot
be called repentance. So, too, I abomi-
nate that accidental repentance which old
age brings with it. He who in ancient
times said he was beholden to years
because they had rid him of voluptuous-
ness, was not of my opinion. I shall
never thank impotency for any good
it may do me: Nee tarn aversa unquam
videbitur ab opere suo providentia, ui
debilitas inter optima inventa sit: "Nor
can Providence ever be seen so averse
to her own work that debility should
be ranked among the best things."
(Quintilian.) Our appetites are rare in
old age; a profound satiety seizes us after
the deed has been committed; in this I see
no conscience. Fretting care and weak-
ness imprint in us an effeminate and
drowsy virtue.

We must not allow ourselves so fully
to be carried away by changes of nature
as to corrupt or adulterate our judgment
by them. Youth and pleasure have not
hitherto prevailed so much over me, but
I could always, even in my pleasures, dis-
cern the ugly face of sin; nor can the
distaste which years bring on me prevent
me from seeing sensuality where there is
vice. Now that I am no longer a part
of it, I judge as well of these things as if
I were. I who lively and attentively ex-
amine my reason, find it to be the same
that possessed me in my most dissolute

ESSAYS

and licentious age; unless, perhaps, that
it is weaker and enfeebled through the
passage of years; and I find that the
pleasure it refuses me on account of my
bodily health it would not at all deny me
in time of youth for the sake of the health
of my soul. I do not consider it more
valiant for not being able to combat. My
temptations are so broken and mortified
that they are not worth its opposition;
holding but my hand before me, I repel
them. Should any one but present the
old desires before it, I fear it would have
less power of resistance than before. I
see in it by itself no increase of judgment
nor access of brightness; what it now
condemns it did then. Wherefore, if
there is any amendment, it is but dis-
eased. Oh miserable kind of remedy to
owe one's health to one's disease! It is
not through ill fortune but through good
fortune that our judgment aids us to live
rightly. Crosses and afflictions make me
do nothing but curse them. They are for
people who cannot be awakened but by
the whip ; my reason is freer in prosperity,
and much more distracted and tormented
to digest pains than pleasures, and I see
much clearer in fair weather. Health
admonishes me more cheerfully, and to
better purpose, than sickness. I did all
that lay in me to reform and regulate
myself in my pleasures, at a time when I
had health and vigor to enjoy them;
I should be vexed and ashamed that the
misery and misfortune of my old age
could exceed the health, attention, and
vigor of my youth; and that I should be
esteemed, not for what I have been, but
for what I have ceased to be.

In my opinion, it is the happy living,
not the happy dying, that makes man's
happiness in this world. I have not pre-
posterously busied myself to tie the tail
of a philosopher to the head and body of
a rake; nor would I have the paltry re-
mainder of life disavow and belie the
fairest, soundest, and longest part of my
life; I would present myself uniformly
throughout. Were I to live again it
should be as I have already lived. I
neither deplore what is past nor dread

what is to come; and if I am not deceived,
I am the same within that I am without.
It is one of my chief obligations to for-
tune, that the course of my bodily growth
has been carried on according to the
seasons. I have seen the leaves, the
blossoms, and the fruit; and now see the
withering; happily because naturally. I
bear my present infirmities the more
gently because they are in season, and
because they make me with greater
pleasure remember the long happiness
of my former life. In like manner my
wisdom may have been just the same in
both ages, but it was more active and of
better grace while fresh, jolly, and full
of spirit than now that it is worn, decrepit,
and peevish.

I therefore renounce these casual and
dolorous reformations. God must touch
our hearts; our consciences must amend
of themselves, by the aid of our reason,
and not by the decay of our appetites.
Voluptuousness in itself is neither pale
nor discolored to be discerned by dim
and troubled eyes.

We ought to love temperance and chast-
ity for themselves, and for God's com-
mand, who hath ordained them unto us.
But that which we are reduced to by
catarrhs, and for which I am indebted
to dyspepsia, is neither temperance nor
chastity. A man cannot boast that he
despises and resists pleasure if he cannot
see it, if he knows not what it is, and can-
not perceive its graces, its force, and its
most alluring beauties; I know both the
one and the other, and can the better say it.
But, I think, our souls, in old age, are
subject to more troublesome maladies
and imperfections than in youth. I
said so when young, when my beardless
chin reproached me; and I say it again
now when my gray beard gives me au-
thority. We call the petulance of our
tempers and the disrelish of present things
wisdom; but, in truth, we do not abandon
vices so much as change them, and in my
opinion for the worse. Besides a silly
and ruinous pride, impertinent gossip-
ing, wayward and unsociable fitsof temper,
superstition, and a ridiculous desire of

414

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

riches, when the use of them is well-nigh
lost, I find there (in cM age) more envy,
injustice, and malice. It sets more wrink-
les in our minds than in our foreheads;
and souls are never, or rarely, seen, which
in growing old do not taste sour and musty.
Man moves altogether toward his per-
fection and his decrease. Consider but
the wisdom of Socrates and some of the
circumstances of his condemnation. I
daresay he in some sort purposely con-
tributed to it, seeing that, at the age of
seventy years, he might fear to suffer
the benumbing of his spirit's richest pace,
and the dimming of his accustomed

brightness. What strange metamor-
phoses have I seen every day make in
many of my acquaintance? It is a potent
malady which naturally and impercep-
tibly steals into us; there is required a
great provision of study and precaution
to evade the imperfections it loads upon
us; or at least to weaken their further
progress. I find that notwithstanding
all my intrenchments, by little and little
it gains on me; I hold out as long as I
can, but I do not know to what at last it
will reduce me. Happen what happen
will, I am content the world should know
from what height I tumbled.

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

Bacon, who himself possessed one of the finest intellects in history, at last set free the minds of men
from the thralldom of mediaeval philosophy and was perhaps the chief instrument in inaugurating mod-
ern scientific experiment. The "Essays" were composed by a man of great affairs who had observed and
reflected profoundly and who embodied these reflections in his notebook.

I. OF TRUTH

"WHAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate;
and would not stay for an answer. Cer-
tainly there be that delight in giddiness,
and count it a bondage to fix a belief,
affecting free-will in thinking, as well as
in acting. And though the sects of phi-
losophers of that kind be gone, yet there
remain certain discoursing wits which
are of the same veins, though there be not
so much blood in them as was in those of
the ancients. But it is not only the dif-
ficulty and labor which men take in find-
ing out of truth; nor again, that when it is
found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts,
that doth bring lies in favor: but a natural
though corrupt love of the lie itself. One
of the later school of the Grecians exam-
ineth the matter, and is at a stand to
think what should be in it, that men
should love lies: where neither they make
for pleasure, as with poets; nor for ad-
vantage, as with the merchant; but for
the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this
same truth is a naked and open daylight,
that doth not show the masques, and
mummeries, and triumphs of the world
half so stately and daintily as candle-

lights. Truth may perhaps come to the
price of a pearl, that showeth best by
day; but it will not rise to the price of a
diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best
in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth
ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt
that if there were taken out of men's
minds vain opinions, flattering hopes,
false valuations, imaginations as one
would, and the like, but it would leave the
minds of a number of men poor shrunken
things, full of melancholy and indisposi-
tion, and unpleasing to themselves? One
of the fathers, in great severity, called
poesy vinum daemonum [devils' wine],
because it filleth the imagination, and yet
it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it
is not the lie that passeth through the
mind, but the lie that sinketh in and set-
tleth in it that doth the hurt, such as we
spake of before. But howsoever these
things are thus in men's depraved judg-
ments and affections, yet truth, which
only doth judge itself, teacheth that the
inquiry of truth, which is the love-making,
or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth,
which is the presence of it; and the belief
of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the
sovereign good of human nature. The

ESSAYS

first creature of God, in the works of the
days, was the light of the sense; the last
was the light of reason; and his Sabbath
work, ever since, is the illumination of his
spirit. First he breathed light upon the
face of the matter, or chaos; then he
breathed light into the face of man; and
still he breatheth and inspireth light into
the face of his chosen. The poet, that
beautified the sect, that was otherwise
inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently
well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the
shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea;
a pleasure to stand in the window of a
castle, and to see a battle, and the ad-
ventures thereof below; but no pleasure
is comparable to the standing upon the
vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be
commanded, and where the air is always
clear and serene), and to see the errors,
and wanderings, and mists, and tempests,
in the vale below;" so always that this
prospect be with pity, and not with
swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven
upon earth to have a man's mind move
in charity, rest in providence, and turn
upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philo-
sophical truth to the truth of civil busi-
ness, it will be acknowledged, even by
those that practice it not, that clear and
round dealing is the honor of man's
nature, and that mixture of falsehood is
like alloy in coin of gold and silver,
which may make the metal work the
better, but it embaseth it; for these wind-
ing and crooked courses are the goings
of the serpent, which goeth basely upon
the belly, and not upon the feet. There
is no vice that doth so cover a man with
shame as to be found false and per-
fidious; and therefore Montaigne saith
prettily, when he inquired the reason
why the word of the h'e should be such
a disgrace, and such an odious charge,
"If it be well weighed, to say that a man
lieth, is as much as to say that he is
brave towards God, and a coward to-
wards man." For a lie faces God, and
shrinks from man. Surely the wicked-
ness of falsehood and breach of faith
cannot possibly be so highly expressed as

in that it shall be the last peal to call the
judgments of God upon the generations
of men: it being foretold, that when Christ
cometh, "he shall not find faith upon the
earth."

V. OF ADVERSITY

IT WAS a high speech of Seneca, after
the manner of the Stoics, that "the good
things which belong to prosperity are to
be wished, but the good things that be-
long to adversity are to be admired."
Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, ad-
versarum mirabilia. Certainly if mira-
cles be the command over Nature, they
appear most in adversity. It is yet a
higher speech of his than the other,
much too high for a heathen, "It is true
greatness to have in one the frailty of
a man and the security of a God" (Vere
magnum, habere Jragilitatem hominis, se-
curitatem Dei). This would have done
better in poesy, where transcendencies
are more allowed. And the poets, in-
deed, have been busy with it; for it is in
effect the thing which is figured in that
strange fiction of the ancient poets which
seemeth not to be without mystery; nay,
and to have some approach to the state
of a Christian: that Hercules, when he
went to unbind Prometheus, by whom
human nature is represented, sailed the
length of the great ocean in an earthen
pot or pitcher; lively describing Chris-
tian resolution that saileth in the frail
bark of the flesh through the waves of
the world. But to speak in a mean, the
virtue of prosperity is temperance, the
virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in
morals is the more heroical virtue. Pros-
perity is the blessing of the Old Testa-
ment, adversity is the blessing of the New,
which carrieth the greater benediction and
the clearer revelation of God's favor.
Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you
listen to David's harp you shall hear as
many hearse-like airs as carols. And the
pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored
more in describing the afflictions of Job
than the felicities of Solomon. Pros-
perity is not without many fears and dis-

4 z6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tastes, and adversity is not without com-
forts and hopes. We see in needleworks
and embroideries it is "more pleasing to
have a lively work upon a sad and solemn
ground than to have a dark and melan-
choly work upon a lightsome ground.
Judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the
heart by the pleasure of the eye. Cer-
tainly virtue is like precious odors, most
fragrant when they are incensed or crushed;
for prosperity doth best discover vice,
but adversity doth best discover virtue.

XXXIV. OF RICHES

I CANNOT call riches better than the
baggage of virtue. The Roman word is
better, impedimenta, for as the baggage
is to an army so is riches to virtue. It
cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it
hindereth the march, yea, and the care
of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the
victory. Of great riches there is no real
use, except it be in the distribution; the
rest is but conceit. So saith Solomon,
"Where much is, there are many to con-
sume it; and what hath the owner but
the sight of it with his eyes?" The
personal fruition in any man cannot
reach to feel great riches; there is a cus-
tody of them, or a power of dole and
donative of them, or a fame of them, but
no solid use to the owner. Do you not
see what feigned prices are set upon
little stones and rarities? And what
works of ostentation are undertaken, be-
cause there might seem to be some use
of great riches? But then you will say,
they may be of use, to buy men out of
dangers or troubles. As Solomon saith,
"Riches are as a stronghold in the im-
agination of the rich man." But this is
excellently expressed, that it is in im-
agination, and not always in fact. For
certainly great riches have sold more
men than they have bought out. Seek
not proud riches, but such as thou mayest
get justly, use soberly, distribute cheer-
fully, and leave contentedly. Yet have no
abstract or friarly contempt of them, but
distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rab-
irius Posthumus, In studio rei amplifican-

dae, apparebat, non avaritiae praedam,
sed instrumentum bonitati quaeri. [In his
efforts to increase his wealth, it was clear
that he did not seek a prey for avarice
but an instrument for doing good.]
Hearken also to Solomon, and beware of
hasty gathering of riches: Qui festinat ad
divitias, non erit insons. [He that maketh
haste to be rich shall not be innocent.]
The poets feign that when Plutus (which
is riches) is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and
goes slowly, but when he is sent from
Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot; mean-
ing that riches gotten by good means and
just labor pace slowly, but when they
come by the death of others (as by the
course of inheritance, testaments, and the
like), they come tumbling upon a man:
but it might be applied likewise to Pluto
taking him for the devil; for when riches
come from the devil (as by fraud, and
oppression, and unjust means) they come
upon speed. The ways to enrich are
many, and most of them foul; parsimony
is one of the best, and yet is not innocent,
for it withholdeth men from works of lib-
erality and charity. The improvement
of the ground is the most natural obtain-
ing of riches, for it is our great mother's
blessing, the earth's; but it is slow: and
yet, where men of great wealth do stoop
to husbandry, it multiplieth riches ex-
ceedingly. I knew a nobleman in Eng-
land that had the greatest audits of any
man in my time, a great grazier, a
great sheep master, a great timber man,
a great collier, a great corn master, a
great lead man, and so of iron and a
number of the like points of husbandry;
so as the earth seemed a sea to him in
respect of the perpetual importation.
It was truly observed by one, "That him-
self came very hardly to a little riches,
and very easily to great riches;" for
when a man's stock is come to that, that
he can expect the prime of markets, and
overcome those bargains, which for their
greatness are few men's money, and be
partner in the industries of younger men,
he cannot but increase mainly. The
gains of ordinary trades and vocations
are honest, and furthered by two things

ESSAYS

chiefly: by diligence, and by a good name
for good and fair dealing; but the gains
of bargains are of a more doubtful nature,
when men shall wait upon others' neces-
sity; broke by servants, and instruments
to draw them on ; put off others cunningly
that would be better chapmen, and the
like practices, which are crafty and
naught. As for the chopping of bargains,
when a man buys not to hold, but to sell
over again, that commonly grindeth
double, both upon the seller and upon the
buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, if
the hands be well chosen that are trusted.
Usury is the certainest means of gain,
though one of the worst, as that whereby
a man doth eat his bread in su&ori vultus
alieni [in the sweat of another man's
brow]; and besides, doth plough upon
Sundays. But yet certain though it be,
it hath flaws, for that the scriveners and
brokers do value unsound men, to serve
their own turn. The fortune in being
the first in an invention, or in a privilege,
doth cause sometimes a wonderful over-
growth in riches, as it was with the first
sugar-man in the Canaries. Therefore,
if a man can play the true logician, to have
as well judgment as invention, he may do
great matters, especially if the times be
fit. He that resteth upon gains certain
shall hardly grow to great riches. And
he that puts all upon adventures, doth
oftentimes break, and come to poverty:
it is good therefore to guard adventures
with certainties that may uphold losses.
Monopolies, and co-emption of wares for
resale, where they are not restrained, are
great means to enrich, especially if the
party have intelligence what things are
like to come into request, and so store
himself beforehand. Riches gotten by
service, though it be of the best rise, yet
when they are gotten by flattery, feeding
humors, and other servile conditions, they
may be placed amongst the worst. As
for fishing for testaments and executor-
ships, as Tacitus saith of Seneca, Testa-
menta et orbos tanquam indagine capi [he
took in bequests and wardships as with a
net]; it is yet worse, by how much men
submit themselves to meaner persons than

in service. Believe not much them that
seem to despise riches, for they despise
them that despair of them, and none
worse when they come to them. Be not
penny- wise; riches have wings, and some-
times they fly away of themselves, some-
times they must be set flying to bring in
more. Men leave their riches either to
their kindred, or to the public; and mod-
erate portions prosper best in both. A
great estate left to an heir is as a lure to all
the birds of prey round about to seize on
him, if he be not the better stablished in
years and judgments. Likewise glorious
gifts and foundations are like sacrifices
without salt, and but the painted sepul-
chers of alms, which soon will putrefy
and corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure
not thine advancements by quantity,
but frame them by measure: and defer
not charities till death; for, certainly, if a
man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is
rather liberal of another man's than of his
own.

XLII. OF YOUTH AND AGE

A MAN that is young in years may be
old in hours if he have lost no time.
But that happeneth rarely. Generally
youth is like the first cogitations, not so
wise as the second. For there is youth
in thoughts as well as hi ages. And yet
the invention of young men is more lively
than that of old; and imaginations stream
into their minds, better and, as it were,
more divinely. Natures that have much
heat, and great and violent desires and
perturbations, are not ripe for action till
they have passed the meridian of their
years, as it was with Julius Caesar and
Septimius Severus, of the latter of whom
it is said, Juventutem egit erroribus, into
furoribus plenam [he spent a youth full of
errors, and even of acts of madness].
And yet he was the ablest emperor almost
of all the list. But reposed natures may
do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus
Caesar, Cosmos, Duke of Florence, Gas-
ton de Fois, and others. On the other
side, heat and vivacity hi age is an excel-
lent composition for business. Young

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

men are fitter to invent than to judge,
fitter for execution than for counsel, and
fitter for new projects than for settled busi-
ness. For the experience of age, in
things that fall within the compass of it,
directeth them ; but in new things abuseth
them. The errors of young men are the
ruin of business; but the errors of aged
men amount but to this, that more might
have been done, or sooner. Young men,
in the conduct and manage of actions,
embrace more than they can hold; stir
more than they can quiet; fly to the end,
without consideration of the means and
degrees; pursue some few principles,
which they have chanced upon, absurdly;
care not to innovate, which draws un-
known inconveniences; use extreme rem-
edies at first; and, that which doubleth
all errors, will not acknowledge or retract
them, like an unready horse, that will
neither stop nor turn. Men of age object
too much, consult too long, adventure too
little, repent too soon, and seldom drive
business home to the full period, but con-
tent themselves with a mediocrity of suc-
cess. Certainly it is good to compound
employments of both, for that will be good
for the present, because the virtues of
either age may correct the defects of both;
' and good for succession, that young men
may be learners, while men in age are
actors; and, lastly, good for extern ac-
cidents, because authority followeth old
men, and favor and popularity youth.
But for the moral part perhaps youth
will have the preeminence, as age hath
for the politic. A certain rabbin upon
the text, "Your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream
dreams," inferreth that young men are
admitted nearer to God than old, be-
cause vision is a clearer revelation than
a dream. And certainly the more a man
drinketh of the world the more it in-
toxicateth; and age doth profit rather in
the powers of understanding than in the
virtues of the will and affections. There
be some have an over-early ripeness in
their years, which fadeth betimes; these
are, first, such as have brittle wits, the
edge whereof is soon turned such as was

Hermogenes, the rhetorician, whose books
are exceeding subtle, who afterwards
waxed stupid. A second sort is of those
that have some natural dispositions,
which have better grace hi youth than in
age, such as is a fluent and luxuriant
speech, which becomes youth well, but
not age; so Tully saith of Hortensius,
Idem manebal, nequc idem decebat. [He
continued the same, when it was no longer
becoming.] The third is of such as take
too high a strain at the first, and are mag-
nanimous more than tract of years can up-
hold; as was Scipio Africanus, of whom
Livy saith in effect, Ultima primis cede-
bant. [His end fell below his beginning.]

XL VII. OF NEGOTIATING

IT is generally better to deal by speech
than by letter, and by the mediation of
a third than by a man's self. Letters
are good, when a man would draw an
answer by letter back again; or when it
may serve for a man's justification after-
wards to produce his own letter; or where
it may be danger to be interrupted, or
heard by pieces. To deal in person is
good, when a man's face breedeth regard,
as commonly with inferiors; or in tender
cases, where a man's eye upon the coun-
tenance of him with whom he speaketh
may give him a direction how far to go;
and generally, where a man will reserve
to himself liberty, either to disavow or to
expound. In choice of instruments, it is
better to choose men of a plainer sort,
that are like to do that that is committed
to them, and to report back again faith-
fully the success, than those that are cun-
ning to contrive out of other men's busi-
ness somewhat to grace themselves, and
will help the matter in report, for satis-
faction sake. Use also such persons as
affect the business wherein they are em-
ployed, for that quickeneth much; and
such as are fit for the matter, as bold men
for expostulation, fair-spoken men for
persuasion, crafty men for inquiry and
observation, forward and absurd men for
business that doth not well bear out itself.
Use also such as have been lucky, and pre-

ESSAYS

419

vailed before in things wherein you
have employed them; for that breeds
confidence, and they will strive to main-
tain their prescription.

It is better to sound a person with whom
one deals, afar off, than to fall upon the
point at first, except you mean to surprise
him by some short question. It is better
dealing with men in appetite, than with
those that are where they would be. If a
man deal with another upon conditions,
the start or first performance is all; which
a man cannot reasonably demand, except
either the nature of the thing be such
which must go before; or else a man can
persuade the other party, that he shall
still need him in some other thing; or else
that he be counted the honester man.
All practice is to discover, or to work.
Men discover themselves in trust, in
passion, at unawares; and of necessity,
when they would have somewhat done,
and cannot find an apt pretext. If you
would work any man, you must either
know his nature and fashions, and so
lead him, or his ends, and so persuade
him, or his weakness and disadvantages,
and so awe him, or those that have in-
terest in him, and so govern him. In
dealing with cunning persons, we must
ever consider their ends to interpret
their speeches, and it is good to say
little to them, and that which they least
look for. In all negotiations of difficulty
a man may not look to sow and reap at
once, but must prepare business, and so
ripen it by degrees.

L. OF STUDIES

STUDIES serve for delight, for orna-
ment, and for ability. Their chief use
for delight is in privateness and retiring;
for ornament is in discourse; and for
ability is in the judgment and disposition
of business. For expert men can exe-
cute, and perhaps judge of particulars,
one by one; but the general counsels and
the plots and marshalling of affairs
come best from those that are learned.
To spend too much tune in studies is
sloth; to use them too much for orna-

ment is affectation; to make judgment
wholly by their rules is the humor of a
scholar. They perfect nature, and are
perfected by experience. For natural
abilities are like natural plants, that need
pruning by study; and studies themselves
do give forth directions too much at
large, except they be bounded in by ex-
perience. Crafty men contemn studies,
simple men admire them, and wise men
use them. For they teach not their own
use; but that is a wisdom without them,
and above them, won by observation.
Read not to contradict and confute; nor
to believe and take for granted; nor to
find talk and discourse; but to weigh and
consider. Some books are to be tasted,
others to be swallowed, and some few to
be chewed and digested that is, some
books are to be read only in parts, others
to be read, but not curiously, and some
few to be read wholly, and with diligence
and attention. Some books also may be
read by deputy, and extracts made of
them by others; but that would be only
in the less important arguments and the
meaner sort of books; else distilled books
are like common distilled water, flashy
things. Reading maketh a full man,
conference a ready man, and writing an
exact man. And therefore if a man
write little he had need have a great
memory; if he confer little he had need
have a present wit; and if he read little
he had need have much cunning to seem
to know that he doth not. Histories
make men wise, poets witty, the mathe-
matics subtle, natural philosophy deep,
moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to
contend, Abeunt sludia in mores [Studies
develop into habits]. Nay, there is no
stond or impediment in the wit but may
be wrought out by fit studies, like as
diseases of the body may have appropriate
exercises. Bowling is good for the stone
and reins, shooting for the lungs and
breast, gentle walking for the stomach,
riding for the head, and the like. So if a
man's wit be wandering, let him study the
mathematics, for in demonstrations, if his
wit be called away never so little, he must
begin again; if his wit be not apt to dis-

420

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tinguish or find differences, let him study
the schoolmen, for they are cymini sec-
tores [hair-splitters]; if he be not apt to
beat over matters and to call up one thing

to prove and illustrate another, let him
study the lawyer's cases. So every defect
of the mind may have a special receipt.

(1625)

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

Swift became the greatest of English prose satirists. He was a man who saw too deeply into the
springs of human selfishness and evil to be able to gain a truly just view of human life. Possessed of a
powerful pen, he was unsparing in his exposure of human frailty. "The Tale of a Tub," "The Battle
of the Books," and "Gulliver's Travels," are his most famous satires. The following essays are cele-
brated for their trenchant attack upon the inhumanity and hypocrisy of man, being in their nature
masterpieces of irony.

AN ARGUMENT

To prove that the abolishing of Christianity
in England may, as things now stand, be at-
tended with some inconveniences, and perhaps
not produce those many good effects proposed
thereby.

I AM very sensible what a weakness and
presumption it is, to reason against the
general humor and disposition of the
world. I remember it was with great
justice, and a due regard to the freedom
both of the public and the press, for-
bidden upon several penalties to write, or
discourse, or lay wages against the Union,
even before it was confirmed by parlia-
ment, because that was looked upon as a
design to oppose the current of the people,
which, besides the folly of it, is a manifest
breach of the fundamental law that makes
this majority of opinion the voice of God.
In like manner, and for the very same
reasons, it may perhaps be neither safe nor
prudent to argue against the abolishing of
Christianity, at a juncture when all par-
ties appear so unanimously determined
upon the point, as we cannot but allow
from their actions, their discourses and
their writings. However, I know not how,
whether from the affectation of singularity,
or the perverseness of human nature, but
so it unhappily falls out, that I cannot be
entirely of this opinion. Nay, though I
were sure an order were issued for my
immediate prosecution by the Attorney-
General, I should still confess that in the
present posture of our affairs at home or
abroad, I do not yet see the absolute ne-
cessity of extirpating the Christian religion
from among us.

This perhaps may appear too great a
paradox even for our wise and paradoxical
age to endure; therefore I shall handle
it with all tenderness, and with the utmost
deference to that great and profound ma-
jority which is of another sentiment.

And yet the curious may please to ob-
serve, how much the genius of a nation is
liable to alter in half an age. I have heard
it affirmed for certain by some very old
people, that the contrary opinion was
even in their memories as much in vogue
as the other is now; and that a project
for the abolishing of Christianity would
then have appeared as singular, and been
thought as absurd, as it would be at this
time to write or discourse in its defence.

Therefore I freely own that all appear-
ances are against me. The system of the
Gospel, after the fate of other systems,
is generally antiquated and exploded;
and the mass or body of the common
people, among whom it seems to have
had its latest credit, are now grown as
much ashamed of it as their betters;
opinions, like fashions, always descending
from those of quality to the middle sort,
and thence to the vulgar, where at length
they are dropped and vanish.

But here I would not be mistaken, and
must therefore be so bold as to borrow a
distinction from the writers on the other
side, when they make a difference betwixt
nominal and real Trinitarians. I hope
no reader imagines me so weak to stand
up in the defense of real Christianity, such
as used in primitive times (if we may
believe the authors of those ages) to have
an influence upon men's belief and actions;

ESSAYS

421

to offer at the restoring of that would
indeed be a wild project; it would be to
dig up foundations; to destroy at one blow
all the wit, and half the learning of the
kingdom; to break the entire frame and
constitution of things; to ruin trade, ex-
tinguish arts and sciences with the pro-
fessors of them; in short, to turn our
courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts;
and would be full as absurd as the proposal
of Horace, where he advises the Romans
all in a body to leave their city, and seek a
new seat in some remote part of the world,
by way of cure for the corruption of their
manners.

Therefore I think this caution was in
itself altogether unnecessary (which I
have inserted only to prevent all pos-
sibility of cavilling), since every candid
reader will easily understand my discourse
to be intended only in defense of nominal
Christianity; the other having been for
some time wholly laid aside by general
consent, as utterly inconsistent with our
present schemes of wealth and power.

But why we should therefore cast off
the name and title of Christians, although
the general opinion and resolution be so
violent for it, I confess I cannot (with
submission) apprehend, nor is the conse-
quence necessary. However, since the
undertakers propose such wonderful ad-
vantages to the nation by this project,
and advance many plausible objections
against the system of Christianity, I shall
briefly consider the strength of both,
fairly allow them their greatest weight,
and offer such answers as I think most
reasonable. After which I will beg leave
to show what inconveniences may pos-
sibly happen by such an innovation, in the
present posture of our affairs.

First, One great advantage proposed
by the abolishing of Christianity is, that
it would very much enlarge and estab-
lish liberty of conscience, that great bul-
wark of our nation, and of the Protestant
Religion, which is still too much limited
by priestcraft, notwithstanding all the
good intentions of the legislature, as we
have lately found by a severe instance.
For it is confidently reported, that two

young gentlemen of real hopes, bright wit,
and profound judgment, who upon a
thorough examination of causes and effects,
and by the mere force of natural abilities,
without the least tincture of learning,
having made a discovery, that there was
no God, and generously communicating
their thoughts for the good of the public,
were sometime ago, by an unparalleled
severity, and upon I know not what
obsolete law, broke for blasphemy. And
as it has been wisely observed, if persecu-
tion once begins, no man alive knows how
far it may reach, or where it will end.

In answer to all which, with deference
to wiser judgments, I think this rather
shows the necessity of a nominal religion
among us. Great wits love to be free with
the highest objects; and if they cannot
be allowed a God to revile or renounce,
they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the
government, and reflect upon the ministry ;
which I am sure few will deny to be of
much more pernicious consequence, ac-
cording to the saying of Tiberius, deorum
offensa diis curce. As to the particular
fact related, I think it is not fair to argue
from one instance, perhaps another can-
not be produced; yet (to the comfort of all
those who may be apprehensive of per-
secution) blasphemy we know is freely
spoke a million of tunes in every coffee-
house and tavern, or wherever else good
company meet. It must be allowed
indeed, that to break an Engh'sh free-
born officer only for blasphemy, was, to
speak the gentlest of such an action, a
very high strain of absolute power. Little
can be said in excuse for the general;
perhaps he was afraid it might give of-
fense to the allies, among whom, for aught
we know, it may be the custom of the
country to believe a God. But if he
argued, as some have done, upon a mis-
taken principle, that an officer who is
guilty of speaking blasphemy, may some
time or other proceed so far as to raise a
mutiny, the consequence is by no means
to be admitted; for, surely the commander
of an English army is likely to be but ill
obeyed, whose soldiers fear and reverence
him as little as they do a Deity.

422

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

It is further objected against the Gospel
System, that it obliges men to the belief
of things too difficult for Freethinkers,
and such]who have shaken off the prej-
udices that usually cling to a confined
education. To which I answer, that
men should be cautious how they raise
objections which reflect upon the wisdom
of the nation. Is not everybody freely
allowed to believe whatever he pleases,
and to publish his belief to the world
whenever he thinks fit, especially if it
serves to strengthen the party which is
in the right? Would any indifferent for-
eigner, who should read the trumpery
lately written by Asgil, Tindal, Toland,
Coward, and forty more, imagine the
Gospel to be our rule of faith, and con-
firmed by parliaments? Does any man
either believe, or say he believes, or desire
to have it thought that he says he be-
lieves, one syllable of the matter? And
is any man worse received upon that score,
or does he find his want of nominal faith
a disadvantage to him in the pursuit of any
civil or military employment? What if
there be an old dormant statute or two
against him, are they not now obsolete,
to a degree, that Empson and Dudley
themselves if they were now alive, would
find it impossible to put them in execution?

It is likewise urged, that there are, by
computation, in this kingdom, above ten
thousand parsons, whose revenues, added
to those of my lords the bishops, would
suffice to maintain at least two hundred
young gentlemen of wit and pleasure,
and free-thinking, enemies to priestcraft,
narrow principles, pedantry, and prej-
udices; who might be an ornament
to the Court and Town: and then, again,
so great a number of able [bodied] divines
might be a recruit to our fleet and armies.
This indeed appears to be a consideration
of some weight; but then, on the other
side, several things deserve to be con-
sidered likewise; as, first, whether it may
not be thought necessary that in certain
tracts of country, like what we call par-
ishes, there shall be one man at least of
abilities to read and write. Then it
seems a wrong computation, that the

revenues of the Church throughout this
island would be large enough to maintain
two hundred young gentlemen, or even
half that number, after the present refined
way of living; that is, to allow each of
them such a rent as, in the modern form
of speech, would make them easy. But
still there is in this project a greater mis-
chief behind; and we ought to beware of
the woman's folly, who killed the hen
that every morning laid her a golden egg.
For pray what would become of the race
of men in the next age, if we had nothing
to trust to beside the scrofulous, con-
sumptive productions furnished by our
men of wit and pleasure, when, having
squandered away their vigor, health,
and estates, they are forced by some dis-
agreeable marriage to piece up their
broken fortunes, and entail rottenness
and politeness on their posterity? Now,
here are ten thousand persons reduced by
the wise regulations of Henry VIII., to
the necessity of a low diet, and moderate
exercise, who are the only great restorers
of our breed, without which the nation
would in an age or two become one great
hospital.

Another advantage proposed by the
abolishing of Christianity, is the clear
gain of one day in seven, which is now
entirely lost, and consequently the king-
dom one seventh less considerable in
trade, business, and pleasure; besides
the loss to the public of so many stately
structures now in the hands of the Clergy,
which might be converted into play-
houses, exchanges, market-houses, com-
mon dormitories, and other public edifices.

I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word,
if I call this a perfect cavil. I readily own
there has been an old custom time out of
mind, for people to assemble in the churches
every Sunday, and that shops are still
frequently shut, in order as it is con-
ceived, to preserve the memory of that
ancient practice, but how this can prove
a hindrance to business or pleasure, is
hard to imagine. What if the men of
pleasure are forced one day in the week,
to game at home instead of the chocolate-
houses? Are not the taverns and coffee-

ESSAYS

423

houses open? Can there be a more con-
venient season for taking a dose of physic?
Is not that the chief day for traders to
sum up the accounts of the week, and for
lawyers to prepare their briefs? But I
would fain know how it can be pretended
that the churches are misapplied. Where
are more appointments and rendezvouses
of gallantry? Where more care to appear
in the foremost box with greater advantage
of dress? Where more meetings for busi-
ness? Where more bargains driven of all
sorts? And where so many conveniences
or enticements to sleep?

There is one advantage greater than any
of the foregoing, proposed by the abolish-
ing of Christianity: that it will utterly ex-
tinguish parties among us, by removing
those factious distinctions of High and
Low Church, of Whig and Tory, Presby-
terian and Church of England, which are
now so many mutual clogs upon public
proceedings, and are apt to prefer the
gratifying themselves, or depressing their
adversaries, before the most important
interest of the State.

I confess, if it were certain that so great
an advantage would redound to the nation
by this expedient, I would submit and be
silent; but will any man say, that if the
words, whoring, drinking, cheating, lying,
stealing, were by act of parliament ejected
out of the English tongue and dictionaries,
we should all awake next morning chaste
and temperate, honest and just, and
lovers of truth? Is this a fair conse-
quence? Or, if the physicians would
forbid us to pronounce the words pox,
gout, rheumatism, and stone, would that
expedient serve like so many talismans to
destroy the diseases themselves? Are
party and faction rooted in men's hearts
no deeper than phrases borrowed from
religion, or founded upon no firmer prin-
ciples? And is our language so poor that
we cannot find other terms to express
them? Are envy, pride, avarice, and
ambition such ill nomenclators, that they
cannot furnish appellations for their
owners? Will not heydukes and mama-
lukes, mandarins and patshaws, or any
other words formed at pleasure, serve to

distinguish those who are in the ministry
from others who would be in it if they
could? What, for instance, is easier than
to vary the form of speech, and instead
of the word church, make it a question in
politics, whether the monument be in
danger? Because religion was nearest at
hand to furnish a few convenient phrases,
is our invention so barren, we can find no
other? Suppose, for argument sake, that
the Tories favored Margarita, the Whigs,
Mrs. Tofts, and the Trimmers, Valentini,
would not Margaritians, Toftians, and
Valentinians be very tolerable marks of
distinction? The Prasini and Veniti, two
most virulent factions in Italy, began
(if I remember right) by a distinction of
colors in ribbons, which we might do with
as good a grace about the dignity of the
blue and the green, and would serve as
properly to divide the Court, the Parlia-
ment, and the Kingdom between them, as
any terms of art whatsoever, borrowed
from religion. And therefore I think,
there is little force in this objection
against Christianity, or prospect of so
great an advantage as is proposed in the
abolishing of it.

'T is again objected, as a very absurd,
ridiculous custom, that a set of men should
be suffered, much less employed and hired,
to bawl one day in seven against the law-
fulness of those methods most in use
towards the pursuit of greatness, riches,
and pleasure,which are the constant prac-
tice of all men alive on the other six.
But this objection is, I think, a little
unworthy so refined an age as ours. Let
us argue this matter calmly. I appeal
to the breast of any polite free-thinker
whether in the pursuit of gratifying a
predominant passion, he hath not always
felt a wonderful incitement, by reflecting
it was a thing forbidden; and therefore
we see, in order to cultivate this taste,
the wisdom of the nation hath taken
special care, that the ladies should be
furnished with prohibited silks, and the
men with prohibited wine. And indeed
it were to be wished that some other
prohibitions were promoted, in order to
improve the pleasures of the town: which,

424

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

for want of such expedients, begin al-
ready, as I am told, to flag and grow lan-
guid, giving way daily to cruel inroads
from the spleen.

'T is likewise proposed as a great advan-
tage to the public, that if we once dis-
card the system of the Gospel, all religion
will of course be banished forever; and
consequently along with it those grievous
prejudices of education, which, under
the names of virtue, conscience, honor,
justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb
the peace of human minds, and the no-
tions whereof are so hard to be eradicated
by right reason or free-thinking, some-
times during the whole course of our
lives.

Here first, I observe how difficult it is
to get rid of a phrase which the world
has once grown fond of, though the occa-
sion that first produced it, be entirely
taken away. For some years past, if a
man had but an ill-favored nose, the deep
thinkers of the age would some way or
other contrive to impute the cause to the
prejudice of his education. From this
fountain were said to be derived all our
foolish notions of justice, piety, love of
our country; all our opinions of God or a
future state, heaven, hell, and the like;
and there might formerly perhaps have
been some pretense for this charge. But
so effectual care has been taken to remove
those prejudices, by an entire change in the
methods of education, that (with honor
I mention it to our polite innovators) the
young gentlemen who are now on the
scene, seem to have not the least tincture
of those infusions, or string of those weeds;
and, by consequence, the reason for
abolishing nominal Christianity upon that
pretext, is wholly ceased.

For the rest, it may perhaps admit a con-
troversy, whether the banishing all no-
tions of religion whatsoever, would be
convenient for the vulgar. Not that I
am in the least of opinion with those who
hold religion to have been the invention
of politicians, to keep the lower part of
the world hi awe by the fear of invisible
powers; unless mankind were then very
different from what it is now; for I look

upon the mass or body of our people here
in England, to be as free thinkers, that is to
say, as staunch unbelievers, as any of the
highest rank. But I conceive some scat-
tered notions about a superior power to be
of singular use for the common people, as
furnishing excellent materials to keep
children quiet when they grow peevish,
and providing topics of amusement in a
tedious winter-night.
Lastly, 't is proposed as a singular
advantage, that the abolishing of Chris-
tianity will very much contribute to the
uniting of Protestants, by enlarging the
terms of communion so as to take in all
sorts of Dissenters, who are now shut oul
of the pale upon account of a few cere-
monies which all sides confess to be things
indifferent. That this alone will effec-
tually answer the great ends of a scheme for
comprehension, by opening a large noble
gate, at which all bodies may enter;
whereas the chaffering with Dissenters,
and dodging about this or t'other ceremony,
is but like opening a few wickets, and
leaving them at jar, by which no more
than one can get in at a time, and that,
not without stooping, and sideling, and
squeezing his body.

To all this I answer, that there is one
darling inclination of mankind, which
usually affects to be a retainer to religion,
though she be neither its parent, its god-
mother, or its friend. I mean the spirit
of opposition, that lived long before
Christianity, and can easily subsist with-
out it. Let us, for instance, examine
wherein the opposition of sectaries among
us consists. We shall find Christianity
to have no share in it at all. Does the
Gospel anywhere prescribe a starched,
squeezed countenance, a stiff, formal gait,
a singularity of manners and habit, or any
affected modes of speech different from
the reasonable part of mankind? Yet, if
Christianity did not lend its name to
stand in the gap, and to employ or divert
these humors, they must of necessity be
spent in contraventions to the laws of the
land, and disturbance of the public peace.
There is a portion of enthusiasm assigned
to every nation, which, if it hath not

ESSAYS

425

proper objects to work on, will burst out,
and set all into a flame. If the quiet of a
State can be bought by only flinging men
a few ceremonies to devour, it is a pur-
chase no wise man would refuse. Let
the mastiffs amuse themselves about a
sheep's skin stuffed with hay, provided it
will keep them from worrying the flock.
The institution of convents abroad seems
in one point a strain of great wisdom,
there being few irregularities in human
passions which may not have recourse to
vent themselves in some of those orders
which are so many retreats for the specula-
tive, the melancholy, the proud, the silent,
the politic, and the morose, to spend them-
selves, and evaporate the noxious parti-
cles; for each of whom we in this island are
forced to provide a several sect of religion,
to keep them quiet: and whenever Chris-
tianity shall be abolished, the legislature
must find some other expedient to employ
and entertain them. For what imports
it how large a gate you open, if there will be
always left a number who place a pride
and a merit in not coming in?

Having thus considered the most im-
portant objections against Christianity,
and the chief advantages proposed by the
abolishing thereof, I shall now, with equal
deference and submission to wiser judg-
ments, as before, proceed to mention a
few inconveniences that may happen if the
Gospel should be repealed; which perhaps
the projectors may not have sufficiently
considered.

And first, I am very sensible how much
the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt
to murmur, and be choqued at the sight
of so many draggled-tailed parsons that
happen to fall in their way, and offend
their eyes; but at the same time, these
wise reformers do not consider what an
advantage and felicity it is for great wits
to be always provided with objects of
scorn and contempt, in order to exercise
and improve their talents, and divert their
spleen from falling on each other, or on
themselves, especially when all this may
be done without the least imaginable
danger to their persons.

And to urge another argument of a

parallel nature: if Christianity were once
abolished, how could the free thinkers,
the strong reasoners, and the men of pro-
found learning be able to find another
subject so calculated in all points whereon
to display their abilities? What wonder-
ful productions of wit should we be de-
prived of, from those whose genius by
continual practice, hath been wholly
turned upon raillery and invectives against
religion, and would therefore never be
able to shine or distinguish themselves
upon any other subject! We are daily
complaining of the great decline of wit
among us, and would we take away the
greatest, perhaps the only topic we have
left? Who would ever have suspected
Asgil for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher,
if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity
had not been at hand to provide them with
materials? What other subject through
all art or nature could have produced
Tindal for a profound author, or furnished
him with readers? It is the wise choice
of the subject that alone adorns and dis-
tinguishes the writer. For had a hun-
dred such pens as these been employed on
the side of religion, they would have im-
mediately sunk into silence and oblivion.
Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or
my fears altogether imaginary, that the
abolishing of Christianity may perhaps
bring the Church into danger, or at least
put the Senate to the trouble of another
securing vote. I desire I may not be mis-
taken; I am far from presuming to affirm
or think that the Church is in danger at
present, or as things now stand; but we
know not how soon it may be so when the
Christian religion is repealed. As plaus-
ible as this project seems, there may a
dangerous design lurk under it. Nothing
can be more notorious than that the
Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Anti-Trini-
tarians, and other sub-divisions of Free-
thinkers, are persons of little zeal for the
present ecclesiastical establishment: their
declared opinion is for repealing the Sac-
ramental Test; they are very indifferent
with regard to ceremonies; nor do they
hold the Jus Divinum of Episcopacy:
therefore this may be intended as one

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

politic step toward altering the constitu-
tion of the Church established, and setting
up Presbytery in the stead, which I leave
to be further considered by those at the
helm.

In the last place, I think nothing can
be more plain, than that by this expedient
we shall run into the evil we chiefly pre-
tend to avoid; and that the abolishment
of the Christian religion will be the readi-
est course we can take to introduce Popery.
And I am the more inclined to this
opinion because we know it has been
the constant practice of the Jesuits to
send over emissaries, with instructions
to personate themselves members of the
several prevailing sects among us. So
it is recorded that they have at sundry
times appeared in the guise of Presby-
terians, Anabaptists, Independents, and
Quakers, according as any of these were
most in credit; so, since the fashion hath
been taken up of exploding religion, the
Popish missionaries have not been want-
ing to mix with the Free-thinkers; among
whom Toland, the great oracle of the Anti-
Christians, is an Irish priest, the son of an
Irish priest; and the most learned and
ingenious author of a book called the
"Rights of the Christian Church," was hi
a proper juncture reconciled to the Rom-
ish faith, whose true son, as appears by a
hundred passages in his treatise, he still
continues. Perhaps I could add some
others to the number: but the fact is
beyond dispute, and the reasoning they
proceed by is right: for supposing Chris-
tianity to be extinguished, the people will
never be at ease till they find out some
other method of worship, which will as
infallibly produce superstition as this will
end in Popery.

And therefore, if, notwithstanding all
I have said, it still be thought necessary to
have a Bill brought in for repealing Chris-
tianity, I would humbly offer an amend-
ment, that instead of the word Chris-
tianity may be put religion in general,
which I conceive will much better answer
all the good ends proposed by the pro-
jectors of it. For as long as we leave in
being a God and His providence, with

all the necessary consequences which cu-
rious and inquisitive men will be apt to
draw from such premises, we do not strike
at the root of the evil, though we should
ever so effectually annihilate the present
scheme of the Gospel; for of what use is
freedom of thought if it will not produce
freedom of action, which is the sole end,
how remote soever in appearance, of all
objections against Christianity? and there-
fore, the free thinkers consider it as a sort
of edifice, wherein all the parts have such
a mutual dependence on each other, that
if you happen to pull out one single nail,
the whole fabric must fall to the ground.
This was happily expressed by him who
had heard of a text brought for proof of
the Trinity, which in an ancient manu-
script was differently read; he thereupon
immediately took the hint, and by a
sudden deduction of a long Sorites, most
logically concluded: "Why, if it be as
you say, I may safely drink on, and defy
the parson." From which, and many
the like instances easy to be produced, I
think nothing can be more manifest than
that the quarrel is not against any par-
ticular points of hard digestion in the
Christian system, but against religion in
general, which, by laying restraints on
human nature, is supposed the great
enemy to the freedom of thought and
action.

Upon the whole, if it shall still be
thought for the benefit of Church and
State that Christianity be abolished, I con-
ceive, however, it may be more conve-
nient to defer the execution to a time of
peace, and not venture in this conjuncture
to disoblige our allies, who, as it falls out,
are all Christians, and many of them,
by the prejudices of their education, so
bigoted, as to place a sort of pride in the
appellation. If, upon being rejected by
them, we are to trust to an alliance with
the Turk, we shall find ourselves much
deceived; for, as he is too remote, and
generally engaged in war with the Per-
sian emperor, so his people would be more
scandalized at our infidelity than our
Christian neighbors. For they are not
only strict observers of religious worship,

ESSAYS

427

but what is worse, believe a God; which
is more than required of us, even while we
preserve the name of Christians.

To conclude: whatever some may think
of the great advantages to trade by this
favorite scheme, I do very much appre-
hend that in six months' time after the
Act is passed for the extirpation of the
Gospel, the Bank and East-India Stock
may fall at least one per cent. And since
that is fifty times more than ever the wis-
dom of our age thought fit to venture for
the preservation of Christianity, there is
no reason we should be at so great a loss,
merely for the sake of destroying it.

(1708)

A MODEST PROPOSAL

For preventing the children of poor people in
Ireland from being a burden to their parents
or country, and for making them beneficial to
the public.

IT is a melancholy object to those who
walk through this great town or travel
in the country, when they see the streets,
the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with
beggars of the female sex, followed by
three, four, or six children, all in rags
and importuning every passenger for an
alms. These mothers, instead of being
able to work for their honest livelihood,
are forced to employ all their time hi
strolling to beg sustenance for their help-
less infants: who as they grow up either
turn thieves for want of work, or leave
their dear native country to fight for the
pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to
the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that
this prodigious number of children in the
arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of
their mothers, and frequently of their
fathers, is in the present deplorable state
of the kingdom a very great additional
grievance; and, therefore, whoever could
find out a fair, cheap, and easy method
of making these children sound, useful
members of the commonwealth, would
deserve so well of the public as to have
his statue set up for a preserver of the
nation.

But my intention is very far from be-
ing confined to provide only for the chil-
dren of professed beggars; it is of a much
greater extent, and shall take in the whole
number of infants at a certain age who
are born of parents in effect as little able
to support them as those who demand
our charity in the streets.

As to my own part, having turned my
thoughts for many years upon this im-
portant subject, and maturely weighed
the several schemes of other projectors,
I have always found them grossly mis-
taken in the computation. It is true, a
child just dropped from its dam may be
supported by her milk for a solar year,
with little other nourishment; at most
not above the value of two shillings, which
the mother may certainly get, or the value
in scraps, by her lawful occupation of
begging; and it is exactly at one year
old that I propose to provide for them
hi such a manner as instead of being a
charge upon their parents or the parish,
or wanting food and raiment for the rest
of their lives, they shall on the contrary
contribute to the feeding, and partly to
the clothing, of many thousands.

There is likewise another great ad-
vantage in my scheme, that it will pre-
vent those voluntary abortions, and that
horrid practice of women murdering
their bastard children, alas! too frequent
among us! sacrificing the poor innocent
babes I doubt more to avoid the expense
than the shame, which would move tears
and pity in the most savage and inhuman
breast.

The number of souls in this kingdom
being usually reckoned one million and
a half, of these I calculate there may be
about two hundred thousand couple
whose wives are breeders; from which
number I subtract thirty thousand couples
who are able to maintain their own chil-
dren, although I apprehend there cannot
be so many, under the present distresses
of the kingdom; but this being granted,
there will remain an hundred and seventy
thousand breeders. I again subtract
fifty thousand for those women who mis-
carry, or whose children die by accident or

428

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

disease within the year. There only re-
mains one hundred and twenty thousand
children of poor parents annually born.
The question therefore is, how this num-
ber shall be reared and provided for,
which, as I have already said, under the
present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto
proposed. For we can neither employ
them in handicraft or agriculture; we
neither build houses (I mean in the
country) nor cultivate land: they can
very seldom pick up a livelihood by steal-
ing, till they arrive at six years old, except
where they are of towardly parts, although
I confess they learn the rudiments much
earlier, during which time, they can how-
ever be properly looked upon only as
probationers, as I have been informed by
a principal gentleman in the county of
Cavan, who protested to me that he never
knew above one or two instances under
the age of six even in a part of the king-
dom so renowned for the quickest pro-
ficiency in that art.

I am assured by our merchants, that a
boy or a girl before twelve years old is
no salable commodity; and even when
they come to this age they will not yield
above three pounds, or three pounds and
half-a-crown at most on the exchange;
which cannot turn to account either to
the parents or kingdom, the charge of
nutriment and rags having been at least
four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose
my own thoughts, which I hope will not
be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing
American of my acquaintance in London,
that a young healthy child well nursed
is at a year old a most delicious, nourish-
ing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no
doubt that it will equally serve in a
fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to pub-
lic consideration that of the hundred
and twenty thousand children already
computed, twenty thousand may be
reserved. . . . The remaining hun-
dred thousand may, at a year old, be

offered in the sale to the persons of
quality and fortune through the kingdom;
always advising the mother to let them
suck plentifully in the last month, so as
to render them plump and fat for a good
table. A child will make two dishes at
an entertainment for friends; and when
the family dines alone, the fore or hind
quarter will make a reasonable dish, and
seasoned with a little pepper or salt will
be very good boiled on the fourth day,
especially hi winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a
child just born will weigh twelve pounds,
and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed,
increaseth to twenty-eight pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat
dear, and therefore very proper for land-
lords, who, as they have already devoured
most of the parents, seem to have the best
title to the children.

I have already computed the charge of
nursing a beggar's child (in which list
I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-
fifths of the farmers) to be about two
shilling per annum, rags included; and
I believe no gentleman would repine to
give ten shillings for the carcass of a
good fat child, which, as I have said,
will make four dishes of excellent nutri-
tive meat, when he hath only some par-
ticular friend or his own family to dine
with him. Thus the squire will learn to
be a good landlord, and grow popular
among his tenants; the mother will have
eight shillings net profit, and be fit for
work till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must
confess the times require) may flay the
carcass; the skin of which artificially
dressed will make admirable gloves for
ladies, and summer boots for fine gentle-
men.

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may
be appointed for this purpose in the most
convenient parts of it, and butchers we
may be assured will not be wanting; al-
though I rather recommend buying the
children alive than dressing them hot
from the knife as we do roasting pigs.

ESSAYS

429

A. very worthy person, a true lover of
his country, and whose virtues I highly
esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing
on this matter to offer a refinement upon
my scheme. He said that many gentle-
men of this kingdom, having of late de-
stroyed their deer, he conceived that the
want of venison might be well supplied
by the bodies of young lads and maidens,
not exceeding fourteen years of age nor
under twelve; so great a number of both
sexes in every country being now ready
to starve for want of work and service;
and these to be disposed of by their par-
ents, if alive, or otherwise by their near-
est relations. But with due deference to
so excellent a friend and so deserving a
patriot, I cannot be altogether in his
sentiments; for as to the males, my
American acquaintance assured me, from
frequent experience, that their flesh was
generally tough and lean, like that of our
school-boys by continual exercise, and
their taste disagreeable; and to fatten
them would not answer the charge.
Then as to the female, it would, I think,
with humble submission be a loss to the
public, because they soon would become
breeders themselves; and besides, it is not
improbable that some scrupulous people
might be apt to censure such a practice
(although indeed very unjustly), as a
little bordering upon cruelty; which, I
confess, hath always been with me the
strongest objection against any project,
however so well intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he
confessed that this expedient was put
into his head by the famous Psalmanazar,
a native of the island Formosa, who came
from thence to London above twenty
years ago, and in conversation told my
friend, that in his country when any
young person happened to be put to death,
the executioner sold the carcass to per-
sons of quality as a prime dainty; and
that in his time the body of a plump
girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an
attempt to poison the emperor, was sold
to his imperial majesty's prime minister
of state, and other great mandarins of
the court, in joints from the gibbet,

at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed
can I deny, that if the same use were
made of several plump young girls hi
this town, who without one single groat
to their fortunes cannot stir abroad
without a chair, and appear at playhouse
and assemblies hi foreign fineries which
they never will pay for, the kingdom
would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit
are in great concern about that vast
number of poor people, who are aged,
diseased, or maimed, and I have been
desired to employ my thoughts what
course may be taken to ease the nation
of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am
not in the least pain upon that matter,
because it is very well known that they
are every day dying and rotting by cold
and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast
as can be reasonably expected. And as
to the young laborers, they are now in as
hopeful a condition; they cannot get
work, and consequently pine away for
want of nourishment, to a degree that if
at any time they are accidentally hired
to common labor, they have not strength
to perform it; and thus the country and
themselves are happily delivered from the
evils to come.

I have too long digressed, and therefore
shall return to my subject. I think the
advantages by the proposal which I have
made are obvious and many, as well as
of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed,
it would greatly lessen the number of
papists, with whom we are yearly over-
run, being the principal breeders of the
nation as well as our most dangerous
enemies; and who stay at home on pur-
pose with a design to deliver the king-
dom to the pretender, hoping to take their
advantage by the absence of so many
good protestants, who have chosen rather
to leave their country than stay at home
and pay tithes against their conscience
to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have
something valuable of their own, which
by law may be made liable to distress
and help to pay their landlord's rent,

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

their corn and cattle being "already seized,
and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of
an hundred thousand children, from two
years old and upward, cannot be com-
puted at less than ten shillings a-piece
per annum, the nation's stock will be
thereby increased fifty thousand pounds
per annum, beside the profit of a new
dish introduced to the tables of all gentle-
men of fortune in the kingdom who have
any refinement in taste. And the money
will circulate among ourselves, the goods
being entirely of our own growth and
manufacture.

Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside
the gain of eight shillings sterling per
annum by the sale of their children, will
be rid of the charge of maintaining them
after the first year.

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring
great custom to taverns; where the vint-
ners will certainly be so prudent as to
procure the best receipts for dressing it
to perfection, and consequently have
their houses frequented by all the fine
gentlemen, who justly value themselves
upon their knowledge in good eating:
and a skilful cook, who understands how
to oblige his guests, will contrive to make
it as expensive as they please.

Sixthly, This would be a great induce-
ment to marriage, which all wise nations
have either encouraged by rewards or
enforced by laws and penalties. It would
increase the care and tenderness of
mothers toward their children, when
they were sure of a settlement for life
to the poor babes, provided in some sort
by the public, to their annual profit in-
stead of expense. We should see an
honest emulation among the married
women, which of them could bring the
fattest child to the market

Many other advantages might be enu-
merated. For instance, the addition of
some thousand carcasses in our exporta-
tion of barreled beef, the propagation of
swine's flesh, and improvement in the art
of making good bacon, so much wanted
among us by the great destruction of pigs,
too frequent at our tables; which are no

way comparable in taste or magnificence
to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which
roasted whole will make a considerable
figure at a lord mayor's feast or any other
public entertainment. But this and many
others I omit, being studious of brevity.

Supposing that one thousand families
in this city would be constant customers
for infants' flesh, beside others who might
have it at merry-meetings, particularly
weddings and christenings, I compute that
Dublin would take off annually about
twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest
of the kingdom (where probably they will
be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining
eighty thousand.

I can think of no one objection that
will possibly be raised against this pro-
posal, unless it should be urged that the
number of people will be thereby much
lessened in the kingdom. This I freely
own, and was indeed one principal de-
sign in offering it to the world. I desire
the reader will observe, that I calculate
my remedy for this one individual king-
dom of Ireland and for no other that evei
was, is, or I think ever can be upon earth.
Therefore let no man talk to me of other
expedients: of taxing our absentees at
five shillings a pound; of using neither
clothes nor household furniture except
what is of our own growth and manu-
facture; of utterly rejecting the materials
and instruments that promote foreign
luxury; of curing the expensiveness of
pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our
women; of introducing a vein of parsi-
mony, prudence, and temperance; of
learning to love our country, wherein we
differ even from Laplanders and the
inhabitants of Topinamboo; of quitting
our animosities and factions, nor act any
longer like the Jews, who were murdering
one another at the very moment their city
was taken; of being a little cautious not
to sell our country and conscience for
nothing; of teaching landlords to have
at least one degree of mercy toward their
tenants; lastly, of putting a spirit of
honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-
keepers; who, if a resolution could now
be taken to buy only our native goods,

ESSAYS

would immediately unite to cheat and
exact upon us in the price, the measure,
and the goodness, nor could ever yet be
brought to make one fair proposal of just
dealing, though often and earnestly in-
vited to it.

Therefore I repeat, let no man talk
to me of these and the like expedients, till
he hath at least some glimpse of hope that
there will be ever some hearty and sincere
attempt to put them in practice.

But as to myself, having been wearied
out for many years with offering vain,
idle, visionary thoughts, and at length
utterly despairing of success I fortunately
fell upon this proposal; which, as it is
wholly new, so it hath something solid
and real, of no expense and little trouble,
full in our own power, and whereby we
can incur no danger in disobliging Eng-
land. For this kind of commodity will
not bear exportation, the flesh being of
too tender a consistence to admit a long
continuance in salt, although perhaps I
could name a country which would be
glad to eat up our whole nation without
it.

After all, I am not so violently bent
upon my own opinion as to reject any
offer proposed by wise men, which shall
be found equally innocent, cheap, easy,
and effectual. But before something of
that kind shall be advanced in contradic-
tion to my scheme, and offering a better,
I desire the author or authors will be
pleased maturely to consider two points.
First, as things now stand, how they will
be able to find food and raiment for an
hundred thousand useless mouths and

backs. And secondly, there being a
round million of creatures in human
figure throughout this kingdom, whose
whole subsistence put into a common
stock would leave them in debt two mil-
lions of pounds sterling, adding those who
are beggars by profession to the bulk of
farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with
their wives and children who are beggars
in effect: I desire those politicians who
dislike my overture, and may perhaps be
so bold as to attempt an answer, that
they will first ask the parents of these
mortals, whether they would not at this
day think it a great happiness to have
been sold for food at a year old in the
manner I prescribe, and thereby have
avoided such a perpetual scene of mis-
fortunes as they have since gone through
by the oppression of landlords, the im-
possibility of paying rent without money
or trade, the want of common sustenance,
with neither house nor clothes to cover
them from the inclemencies of the weather,
and the most inevitable prospect of en-
tailing the like or greater miseries upon
their breed forever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart,
that I have not the least personal interest
in endeavoring to promote this necessary
work, having no other motive than the
public good of my country, by advancing
our trade, providing for infants, reliev-
ing the poor, and giving some pleasure
to the rich. I have no children by which
I can propose to get a single penny; the
youngest being nine years old, and my
wife past child-bearing.

(1729)

43 2

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

Wit! *rk pcrindirals, the Taller (1709-1711), and the Spectator (1711-1712), the familiar essay
became fixed in English literature as one of the principal types. The essayists who accomplished this
result were Swift's friends, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. Avowedly writing to edify their readers,
they nevertheless captivated the town. Though moralists, they were yet wits and men of the world.

Addison is of the two the more polished and brilliant in style. This essay gives in his own words
his purpose in the Spectator papers.

THE OBJECT OF THE SPECTATOR

Non aliter quant qui adverso vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit: si brachia forte remisit,
Atque ilium in prceceps prono rapit alveus amni.

VIRG.

So the boat's brawny crew the current stem,
And, slow advancing, struggle with the stieam:
But if they slack their hands, or cease to strive,
Then down the flood with headlong haste they drive.

DRYDEN.

IT is with much satisfaction that I hear
this great city inquiring day by day after
these my papers, and receiving my morn-
ing lectures with a becoming seriousness
and attention. My publisher tells me
that there are already three thousand of
them distributed every day; so that if I
allow twenty readers to every paper,
which I look upon as a modest computa-
tion, I may reckon about threescore
thousand disciples in London and West-
minster, who I hope will take care to dis-
tinguish themselves from the thoughtless
herd of their ignorant and unattentive
brethren. Since I have raised to myself
so great an audience, I shall spare no
pains to make their instruction agreeable,
and their diversion useful. For which
reasons I shall endeavor to enliven mo-
rality with wit, and to temper wit with
morality, that my readers may, if possible,
both ways find their account in the specula-
tion of the day. And to the end that their
virtue and discretion may not be short,
transient, intermitting starts of thought, I
have resolved to refresh their memories
from day to day, till I have recovered them
out of that desperate state of vice and
folly into which the age is fallen. The
mind that lies fallow but a single day,
sprouts up in follies that are only to be
killed by a constant and assiduous culture.
It was said of Socrates that he brought
philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit

among men; and I shall be ambitious to
have it said of me, that I have brought
philosophy out of closets and libraries,
schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs
and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in
coffee-houses.

I -would, therefore, in a very particular
manner, recommend these my speculation?
to all well-regulated families, that set
apart an hour in every morning for tea
and bread and butter; and would earnestly
advise them for their good, to order this
paper to be punctually served up, and to
be looked upon as a part of the tea-
equipage.

Sir Francis Bacon observes, that a well
written book, compared with its rivals
and antagonists, is like Moses's serpent,
that immediately swallowed up and de-
voured those of the Egyptians. I shall
not be so vain as to think, that where the
Spectator appears, the other public prints
will vanish; but shall leave it to my read-
er's consideration, whether it is not much
better to be let into the knowledge of
one's self, than to hear what passes in
Muscovy or Poland; and to amuse our-
selves with such writings as tend to the
wearing out of ignorance, passion, and
prejudice, than such as naturally conduce
to inflame hatreds, and make enmities
irreconcilable.

In the next place, I would recommend
this paper to the daily perusal of those
gentlemen whom I cannot but consider
as my good brothers and allies, I mean the
fraternity of spectators, who live in the
world without having anything to do in it;
and either by the affluence of their fortunes,
or laziness of their dispositions, have no
other business with the rest of mankind
but to look upon them. Under this class
of men are comprehended all contem
plative tradesmen, titular physicians, Fel-

ESSAYS

433

lows of the Royal Society, Templars
that are not given to be contentious, and
statesmen that are out of business; La
short, every one that considers the
world as a theater, and desires to form a
right judgment of those who are the actors
on it.

There is another set of men that I must
likewise lay a claim to, whom I have lately
called the blanks of society, as being alto-
gether unfurnished with ideas, till the busi-
ness and conversation of the day has sup-
plied them. I have often considered these
poor souls with an eye of great commisera-
tion, when I have heard them asking the
first man they have met with, whether
there was any news stirring, and, by that
means, gathering together materials for
thinking. These needy persons do not
know what to talk of till about twelve
o'clock hi the morning; for, by that time,
they are pretty good judges of the weather,
know which way the wind sits, and
whether the Dutch mail be come in. As
they lie at the mercy of the first man they
meet, and are grave or impertinent all
the day long, according to the notions
which they have imbibed in the morning,
I would earnestly entreat them not to stir
out of their chambers till they have read
this paper, and do promise them that I will
daily instil into them such sound and whole-
some sentiments, as shall have a good
effect on their conversation for the ensuing
twelve hours.

But there are none to whom this paper
will be more useful than to the female
world. I have often thought there has
not been sufficient pains taken hi finding
out proper employments and diversions
for the fair ones. Their amusements
seem contrived for them, rather as they
are women, than as they are reasonable
creatures, and are more adapted to the
sex than to the species. The toilet is
their great scene of business, and the right
adjusting of their hair the principal em-
ployment of their lives. The sorting of a
suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good
morning's work; and if they make an
excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so
ieat a fatigue makes them unfit for any-

thing else all the day after. Their more
serious occupations are sewing and em-
broidery, and their greatest drudgery the
preparation of jellies and sweet-meats.
This I say, is the state of ordinary women ;
though I know there are multitudes of
those of a more elevated life and conver-
sation, that move in an exalted sphere of
knowledge and virtue, that join all the
beauties of the mind to the ornaments of
dress, and inspire a kind of awe and re-
spect, as well as love, into their male be-
holders. I hope to increase the number of
these by publishing this daily paper,
which I shall always endeavor to make an
innocent, if not an improving entertain-
ment, and by that means at least divert
the minds of my female readers from
greater trifles. At the same time, as I
would fain give some finishing touches to
those which are already the most beautiful
pieces in human nature, I shall endeavor
to point out all those imperfections that
are the blemishes, as well as those virtues
which are the embellishments of the sex.
In the meanwhile I hope these my gentle
readers, who have so much time on their
hands, will not grudge throwing away a
quarter of an hour in a day on this paper,
since they may do it without any hin-
drance to business.

I know several of my friends and well-
wishers are in great pain for me, lest I
should not be able to keep up the spirit of
a paper which I oblige myself to furnish
every day; but to make them easy hi this
particular, I will promise them faith-
fully to give it over as soon as I grow dull.
This I know will be a matter of great
raillery to the small wits; who will fre-
quently put me in mind of my promise,
desire me to keep my word, assure me
that it is high time to give over, with
many other little pleasantries of the like
nature, which men of a little smart gen-
ius cannot forbear throwing out against
their best friends, when they have such
a handle given them of being witty. But
let them remember that I do hereby
enter my caveat against this piece of
raillery.

(1711)

434

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

THOUGHTS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Pallida mors ctquo pulsat pede pauperum tabcrnas

Rrgumque turres. beat* sexti,
Vita summa brevis spcm nos vetat inchoare longam.

Jam tc piemet nox, fabukeque manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonic HOR.

With equal fool, rich friend, impartial fate
Knocks at the cottage, and the palace gate:

Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years:

Night soon will seize, and you must quickly go
To story'd ghosts, and Pluto's house below.

CREECH.

WHEN I am in a serious humor, I very
often walk by myself in Westminster
Abbey; where the gloominess of the place,
and the use to which it is applied, with the
solemnity of the building, and the condi-
tion of the people who lie in it, are apt to
fill the mind with a kind of melancholy,
or rather thoughtfulness, that is not dis-
agreeable. I yesterday passed a whole
afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters,
and the church, amusing myself with the
tombstones and inscriptions that I met
with in those several regions of the dead.
Most of them recorded nothing else of the
buried person, but that he was born upon
one day, and died upon another: the whole
history of his life being comprehended in
those two circumstances, that are com-
mon to all mankind. I could not but
look upon these registers of existence,
whether of brass or marble, as a land of
satire upon the departed persons; who had
left no other memorial of them but that
they were born and that they died. They
put me in mind of several persons men-
tioned in the battles of heroic poems, who
have sounding names given them, for no
other reason but that they may be killed,
and are celebrated for nothing but being
knocked on the head. The life of these
men is finely described in holy writ by
"the path of an arrow," which is immed-
iately closed up and lost.

Upon my going into the church, I enter-
tained myself with the digging of a grave;
and saw in every shovelful of it that was
thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull
intermixed with a kind of fresh moulder-
ing earth, that some time or other had a

place in the composition of a human
body. Upon this I began to consider
with myself what innumerable multitudes
of people lay confused together under the
pavement of that ancient cathedral;
how men and women, friends and ene-
mies, priests and soldiers, monks and preb-
endaries, were crumbled amongst one
another, and blended together in the same
common mass; how beauty, strength, and
youth, with old age, weakness, and de-
formity, lay undistinguished in the same
promiscuous heap of matter.

After having thus surveyed this great
magazine of mortality, as it were in the
lump, I examined it more particularly
by the accounts which I found on several
of the monuments which are raised in
every quarter of that ancient fabric.
Some of them were covered with saucy
extravagant epitaphs, that, if it were pos-
sible for the dead person to be acquainted
with them, he would blush at the praises
which his friends have bestowed upon him.
There are others so excessively modest,
that they deliver the character of the
person departed in Greek or Hebrew,
and by that means are not understood
once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical
quarter, I found there were poets who had
no monuments, and monuments which
had no poets. I observed indeed, that the
present war had filled the church with
many of these uninhabited monuments,
which had been erected to the memory of
persons whose bodies were perhaps buried
in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom
of the ocean.

I could not but be very much delighted
with several modern epitaphs, which are
written with great elegance of expression
and justness of thought, and therefore do
honor to the living as well as to the dead.
As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an
idea of the ignorance or the politeness of
a nation, from the turn of their public
monuments and inscriptions, they should
be submitted to the perusal of men of
learning and genius, before they are put
in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's mon-
ument has very often given me great
offense: instead of the brave rough Eng-

ESSAYS

435

lish Admiral, which was the distinguishing
character of that plain gallant man, he is
represented on his tomb by the figure of
a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and re-
posing himself upon velvet cushions under
a canopy of state. The inscription is
answerable to the monument; for instead
of celebrating the many remarkable ac-
tions he had performed in the service of his
country, it acquaints us only with the
manner of his death, in which it was im-
possible for him to reap any honor. The
Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for
want of genius, show an infinitely greater
taste of antiquity and politeness in their
buildings and works of this nature, than
what we meet with in those of our own
country. The monuments of their ad-
mirals, which have been erected at the
public expense, represent them like them-
selves; and are adorned with rostral crowns
and naval ornaments, with beautiful fes-
toons of seaweed, shells, and coral.

But to return to our subject. I have
left the repository of our English kings for
the contemplation of another day, when
I shall find my mind disposed for so ser-
ious an amusement. I know that enter-
tainments of this nature are apt to raise
dark and dismal thoughts in timorous
minds and gloomy imaginations; but for
my own part, though I am always ser-
ious, I do not know what it is to be mel-
ancholy; and can therefore take a view
of nature in her deep and solemn scenes,
with the same pleasure as in her most gay
and delightful ones. By this means I can
improve myself with those objects which
others consider with terror. When I
look upon the tombs of the great, every
emotion of envy dies in me; when I read
the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inor-
dinate desire goes out; when I meet with
the grief of parents upon a tombstone,
my heart melts with compassion; when I
see the tomb of the parents themselves, I
consider the vanity of grieving for those
whom we must quickly follow; when I see
kings lying by those who deposed them,
when I consider rival wits placed side by
side, or the holy men that divided the
world with their contests and disputes, I

reflect with sorrow and astonishment on
the little competitions, factions, and de-
bates of mankind. When I read the several
dates on the tombs, of some that died yes-
terday, and some six hundred years ago,
I consider that great day when we shall
all of us be contemporaries, and make our
appearance together. (1711)

THE FINE LADY'S JOURNAL

. . . M odo vlr, modo famina. Vrnc.
Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman.

THE journal with which I presented my
reader on Tuesday last, has brought me
in several letters, with accounts of many
private lives cast into that form. I have
the Rake's Journal, the Sot's Journal,
and among several others a very curious
piece, entitled "The Journal of a Mo-
hock." By these instances I find that
the intention of my last Tuesday's paper
has been mistaken by many of my read-
ers. I did not design so much to expose
vice as idleness, and aimed at those per-
sons who pass away their time rather in
trifle and impertinence, than in crimes
and immoralities. Offenses of this latter
kind are not to be dallied with, or treated
in so ludicrous a manner. In short, my
journal only holds up folly to the light,
and shows the disagreeableness of such
actions as are indifferent in themselves,
and blamable only as they proceed from
creatures endowed with reason.

My following correspondent, who calls
herself Clarinda, is such a journalist as I
require: she seems by her letter to be
placed in a modish state of indifference
between vice and virtue, and to be sus-
ceptible of either, were there proper
pains taken with her. Had her journal
been filled with gallantries, or such occur-
rences as had shown her wholly divested
of her natural innocence, notwithstanding
it might have been more pleasing to -the
generality of readers, I should not have
published it; but as it is only the picture
of a life filled with a fashionable kind of
gaiety and laziness, I shall set down five
days of it, as I have received it from the
hand of my fair correspondent.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Dear Mr. Spectator,

You having set your readers an exer-
cise in one of your last week's papers,
I have performed mine according to your
orders, and herewith s^nd it you enclosed.
You must know, Mr. Spectator, that I am
a maiden lady of a good fortune, who have
had several matches offered me for these
ten years last past, and have at present
warm applications made to me by a very
pretty fellow. As I am at my own dis-
posal, I come up to town every winter,
and pass my time in it after the manner
you will find in the following journal,
which I begun to write upon the very day
after your Spectator upon that subject.

Tuesday night. Could not go to sleep
till one in the morning for thinking of my
journal.

Wednesday. From eight till ten.
Drank two dishes of chocolate in bed, and
fell asleep after them.

From ten to eleven. Eat a slice of
bread and butter, drank a dish of bohea,
read the Spectator.

From eleven to one. At my toilette,
tried a new head. Gave orders for Veny
to be combed and washed. Mem. I look
best in blue.

From one till half an hour after two.
Drove to the Change. Cheapened a
couple of fans.

Till four. At dinner. Mem. Mr.
Froth passed by in his new liveries.

From four to six. Dressed, paid a visit
to old Lady Blithe and her sister, having
before heard they were gone out of town
that day.

From six to eleven. At Basset. Mem.
Never set again upon the ace of diamonds.

Thursday. From eleven at night to
eight in the morning. Dreamed that I
punted to Mr. Froth.

From eight to ten. Chocolate. Read
two acts in Aurengzebe a-bed.

From ten to eleven. Tea-table. Read
the playbills. Received a letter from Mr.
Froth. Mem. Locked it up in my strong
box.

Rest of the morning. Fontange, the
tire- woman, her account of my Lady
Blithe's wash. Broke a tooth in my little

tortoise shell comb. Sent Frank to know
how my Lady Hectic rested after her
monkey's leaping out at window. Looked
pale. Fontange tells me my glass is not
true. Dressed by three.

From three to four. Dinner cold before
I sat down.

From four to eleven. Saw company,
Mr. Froth's opinion of Milton. Hia
account of the Mohocks. His fancy for
a pin-cushion. Picture in the lid of his
snuff-box. Old Lady Faddle promises
me her woman to cut my hair. Lost five
guineas at crimp.

Twelve o'clock at night. Went to bed.

Friday. Eight in the morning. A-bed.
Read over all Mr. Froth's letters.

Ten o'clock. Staid within all day, not
at home.

From ten to twelve. In conference
with my mantua-maker. Sorted a suit
of ribbons. Broke my blue china cup.

From twelve to one. Shut myself up
in my chamber, practised Lady Betty
Modely's skuttle.

One in the afternoon. Called for my
flowered handkerchief. Worked half a
violet-leaf in it. Eyes ached and head
out of order. Threw by my work, and
read over the remaining part of Aureng-
zebe.

From three to four. Dined.

From four to twelve. Changed my
mind, dressed, went abroad, and played
at crimp till midnight. Found Mrs. Spite-
ly at home. Conversation: Mrs. Bril-
liant's necklace false stones. Old Lady
Loveday going to be married to a young
fellow that is not worth a groat. Miss
Prue gone into the country. Tom Town-
ley has red hair. Mem. Mrs. Spitely
whispered in my ear that she had some-
thing to tell me about Mr. Froth, I am
sure it is not true.

Between twelve and one. Dreamed
that Mr. Froth lay at my feet, and called
me Indamora.

Saturday. Rose at eight o'clock in the
morning. Sat down to my toilette.

From eight to nine. Shifted a patch
for half an hour before I could determine
it. Fixed it above my left eyebrow.

ESSAYS

437

From nine to twelve. Drank my tea.
and dressed.

From twelve to two. At chapel. A
great deal of good company. Mem.
The third air in the new opera. Lady
Blithe dressed frightfully.

From three to four. Dined. Miss
Kitty called upon me to go to the opera,
before I was risen from table.

From dinner to six. Drank tea.
Turned off a footman for being rude to
Veny.

Six o'clock. Went to the opera. I did
not see Mr. Froth till the beginning of the
second act. Mr. Froth talked to a gentle-
man in a black wig. Bowed to a lady hi
the front box. Mr. Froth and his friend
clapped Nicolini hi the third act. Mr.
Froth cried out Ancora. Mr. Froth led
me to my chair. I think he squeezed my
hand.

Eleven at night. Went to bed. Mel-
ancholy dreams. Methought Nicolini said
he was Mr. Froth.

Sunday. Indisposed.

Monday. Eight o'clock. Waked by
Miss Kitty. Aurengzebe lay upon the
chair by me. Kitty repeated without
book the eight best lines in the play.
Went in our mobs to the dumb man ac-
cording to appointment. Told me that
my lover's name began with a G. Mem.
The conjurer was within a letter of Mr.
Froth's name, &c.

Upon looking back into this my journal,
I find that I am at a loss to know whether
I pass my time well or ill; and indeed
never thought of considering how I did

it before I perused your speculation upon
that subject. I scarce find a single action
in these five days that I can thoroughly
approve of, except the working upon the
violet-leaf, which I am resolved to finish
the first day I am at leisure. As for Mr.
Froth and Veny, I did not think they took
up so much of my time and thoughts as I
find they do upon my journal. The
latter of them I will turn off, if you insist
upon it; and if Mr. Froth does not bring
matters to a conclusion very suddenly, I
will not let my hie run away in a dream.
Your humble servant,

Clarinda.

To resume one of the morals of my first
paper, and to confirm Clarinda in her good
inclinations, I would have her consider
what a pretty figure she would make
among posterity, were the history of her
whole life published like these five days
of it. I shall conclude my paper with an
epitaph written by an uncertain author
on Sir Philip Sidney's sister, a lady who
seems to have been of a temper very much
different from that of Clarinda. The
last thought of it is so very noble, that I
dare say my reader will pardon me the
quotation.

ON THE COUNTESS DOWAGER OF PEMBROKE

Underneath this marble hearse

Lies the subject of all verse,

Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:

Death, ere thou hast kitt'd another,

Fair and learned and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thtt. (1712)

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

Burke, though an Irishman, stands as the greatest political thinker who has written in the English
language. Deeply rooted in the past and reverencing all that England had attained during a thousand
years of growth, he feared revolution and innovation and strove to uphold the traditional order. He
opposed the French Revolution as a tearing of the delicate fabric of a great civilization and the building
of a new structure upon a foundation of sand, yet, because he believed in human rights, in opposition to
all forms of tyranny, he took the part of the American rebels and championed the cause of voiceless
India against the misrule of Warren Hastings. For him the cause of India became the cause of hu-
i philosophy, setting forth the principles of justice, true liberty, and free govern-
ment, is of supreme importance to us as we struggle up through the trying period of reconstruction
after the war and seek to establish stable foundations for the democracy of the future. Withal, these
reflections are clothed in a style of unsurpassed richness and power.

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN
FRANCE

THE REAL RIGHTS OF MEN

FAR am I from denying in theory, full
as far is my heart from withholding in
practice, (if I were of power to give or to
withhold,) the real rights of men. In
denying their false claims of right, I do
not mean to injure those which are real,
and are such as their pretended rights
would totally destroy. If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the
advantages for which it is made become his
right. It is an institution of beneficence;
and law itself is only beneficence acting
by a rule. Men have a right to live by
that rule; they have a right to do justice,
as between their fellows, whether then*
fellows are in public function or in ordi-
nary occupation. They have a right to
the fruits of their industry; and to the
means of making their industry fruitful.
They have a right to the acquisitions of
their parents; to the nourishment and
improvement of their offspring; to in-
struction in life, and to consolation in
death. Whatever each man can separately
do, without trespassing upon others, he
has a right to do for himself; and he has a
right to a fair portion of all which society,
with all its combinations of skill and force,
can do in his favor. In this partnership
all men have equal rights; but not to
equal things. He that has but five shil-
lings in the partnership, has as good a right
to it, as he that has five hundred pounds
has to his larger proportion. But he has
not a right to an equal dividend hi the

product of the joint stock; and as to the
share of power, authority, and direction
which each individual ought to have in
the management of the state, that I must
deny to be amongst the direct original
rights of man in civil society; for I have
in my contemplation the civil social man,
and no other. It is a thing to be settled
by convention.

If civil society be the offspring of con-
vention, that convention must be its law.
That convention must limit and modify
all the descriptions of constitution which
are formed under it. Every sort of leg-
islative, judicial, or executory power are
its creatures. They can have no being
in any other state of things; and how can
any man claim under the conventions of
civil society, rights which do not so much
as suppose its existence ? rights whick are
absolutely repugnant to it? One of the
first motives to civil society, and which
becomes one of its fundamental rules, is,
that no man should be judge in his own
cause. By this each person has at once
divested himself of the first fundamental
right of uncovenanted man, that is, to
judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause. He abdicates all right to be his
own governor. He inclusively, in a great
measure, abandons the right of self-
defense, the first law of nature. Men
cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and
of a civil state together. That he may
obtain justice, he gives up his right of
determining what it is in points the most
essential to him. That he may secure
some liberty, he makes a surrender in
trust of the whole of it.

ESSAYS

439

Government is not made in virtue of
natural rights, which may and do exist
in total independence of it; and exist hi
much greater clearness, and in a much
greater degree of abstract perfection; but
their abstract perfection is their practical
defect. By having a right to everything
they want everything. Government is a
contrivance of human wisdom to provide
for human wants. Men have a right that
these wants should be provided for by
this wisdom. Among these wants is to
be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.
Society requires not only that the pas-
sions of individuals should be subjected,
but that even hi the mass and body, as
well as in the individuals, the inclinations
of men should frequently be thwarted,
their will controlled, and their passions
brought into subjection. This can only
be done by a power out of themselves; and
not, in the exercise of its function, sub-
ject to that will and to those passions
which it is its office to bridle and subdue.
In this sense the restraints on men, as well
as their liberties, are to be reckoned
amongst their rights. But as the liber-
ties and the restrictions vary with times
and Circumstances, and admit of infinite
modifications, they cannot be settled upon
any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish
as to discuss them upon that principle.

The moment you abate anything from
the full rights of men, each to govern him-
self, and suffer any artificial, positive
limitation upon those rights, from that
moment the whole organization of govern-
ment becomes a consideration of conven-
ience. This it is which makes the con-
stitution of a state, and the due distribu-
tion of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It re-
quires a deep knowledge of human nature
and human necessities, and of the things
which facilitate or obstruct the various
ends, which are to be pursued by the mech-
anism of civil institutions. The state
is to have recruits to its strength, and
reanedies to its distempers. What is
the use of discussing a man's abstract
reht to food or medicine? The ques-

tion is upon the method of procuring and
administering them. In that deliberation
I shall always advise to call in the aid of
the farmer and the physician, rather than
the professor of metaphysics.

The science of constructing a common-
wealth, or renovating it, or reforming it,
is, like every other experimental science,
not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a
short experience that can instruct us in
that practical science; because the real
effects of moral causes are not always
immediate; but that which in the first
instance is prejudicial may be excellent in
its remoter operation; and its excellence
may arise even from the ill effects it pro-
duces in the beginning. The reverse also
happens: and very plausible schemes,
with very pleasing commencements, have
often shameful and lamentable conclusions.
In states there are often some obscure and
almost latent causes, things which appear
at first view of little moment, on which a
very great part of its prosperity or adver-
sity may most essentially depend. The
science of government being therefore so
practical in itself, and intended for such
practical purposes, a matter which re-
quires experience, and even more exper-
ience than any person can gain in his
whole life, however sagacious and observ-
ing he may be, it is with infinite caution
that any man ought to venture upon pull-
ing down an edifice, which has answered
in any tolerable degree for ages the com-
mon purposes of society, or on building it
up again, without having models and pat-
terns of approved utility before his eyes.

These metaphysic rights entering into
common life, like rays of light which pierce
into a dense medium, are, by the laws of
nature, refracted from their straight line.
Indeed in the gross and complicated mass
of human passions and concerns, the prim-
itive rights of men undergo such a variety
of refractions and reflections, that it be-
comes absurd to talk of them as if they
continued in the simplicity of their original
direction. The nature of man is intri-
cate; the objects of society are of ths
greatest possible complexity : and therefore
no simple disposition or direction of power

440

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

can be suitable either to man's nature, or
to the quality of his affairs. When I
hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed
at and boasted of in any new political
constitutions, I am at no loss to decide
that the artificers are grossly ignorant of
their trade, or totally negligent of their
duty. The simple governments are fun-
damentally defective, to say no worse of
them. If you were to contemplate society
in but one point of view, all these simple
modes of polity are infinitely captivating.
In effect each would answer its single end
much more perfectly than the more com-
plex is able to attain all its complex pur-
poses. But it is better that the whole
should be imperfectly and anomalously
answered than that, while some parts are
provided for with great exactness, others
might be totally neglected, or perhaps
materially injured, by the over-care of a
favorite member.

The pretended rights of these theorists
are all extremes: and in proportion as they
are metaphysically true, they are morally
and politically false. The rights of men
are in a sort of middle, incapable of defini-
tion, but not impossible to be discerned.
The rights of men in governments are
their advantages; and these are often in
balances between differences of good; in
compromises sometimes between good and
evil, and sometimes between evil and evil.
Political reason is a computing principle;
adding, subtracting, multiplying, and
dividing, morally and not metaphysically,
or mathematically, true moral denomi-
nations.

By these theorists the right of the people
is almost always sophistically confounded
with their power. The body of the com-
munity, whenever it can come to act, can
meet with no effectual resistance; but till
power and right are the same, the whole
body of them has no right inconsistent
with virtue, and the first of all virtues,
prudence. Men have no right to what
is not reasonable, and to what is not for
their benefit; for though a pleasant writer
said, Liceat perire poetis, when one of them,
in cold blood, is said to have leaped into
the flames of a volcanic revolution,

Ardentem frigidus jEtnam insiluit, I con-
sider such a frolic rather as an unjustifi-
able poetic license, than as one of the
franchises of Parnassus; and whether he
were poet, or divine, or politician, that
chose to exercise this kind of right, I thin).
that more wise, because more charitable
thoughts would urge me rather to save
the man, than to preserve his brazen
slippers as the monuments of his folly.

CHURCH AND STATE

FIRST, I beg leave to speak of our church
establishment, which is the first of our prej-
udices, not a prejudice destitute of reason,
but involving in it profound and extensive
wisdom. I speak of it first. It is first,
and last, and midst in our minds. For,
taking ground on that religious system,
of which we are now in possession, we
continue to act on the early received and
uniformly continued sense of mankind.
That sense not only, like a wise architect,
hath built up the august fabric of states,
but like a provident proprietor, to preserve
the structure from profanation and ruin,
as a sacred temple purged from all the im-
purities of fraud, and violence, and injus-
tice, and tyranny, hath solemnly and for-
ever consecrated the commonwealth, and
all that officiate in it. This consecration
is made, that all who administer in the
government of men, in which they stand
in the person of God himself, should have
high and worthy notions of their function
and destination ; that their hope should be
full of immortality; that they should not
look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor
to the temporary and transient praise of
the vulgar, but to a solid, permanent exis-
tence, in the permanent part of their
nature, and to a permanent fame and
glory, in the example they leave as a rich
inheritance to the world.

Such sublime principles ought to be in-
fused into persons of exalted situations;
and religious establishments provided, that
may continually revive and enforce them.
Every sort of moral, every sort of civil,
every sort of politic institution, aiding the
rational and natural ties that connect the

ESSAYS

441

human understanding and affections to the
divine, are not more than necessary, in
order to build up that wonderful structure,
Man; whose prerogative it is, to be in a
great degree a creature of his own making;
and who, when made as he ought to be
made, is destined to hold no trivial place
in the creation. But whenever man is put
over men, as the better nature ought ever
to preside, in that case more particularly,
he should as nearly as possible be approx-
imated to his perfection.

The consecration of the state, by a state
religious establishment, is necessary also
to operate with a wholesome awe upon free
citizens; because, in order to secure their
freedom, they must enjoy some deter-
minate portion of power. To them there-
fore a religion connected with the state,
and with their duty towards it, becomes
even more necessary than in such societies,
where the people, by the terms of their
subjection, are confined to private senti-
ments, and the management of their
own family concerns. All persons pos-
sessing any portion of power ought to be
strongly and awfully impressed with an
idea that they act in trust: and that they
are to account for their conduct in that
trust to the one great Master, Author,
and Founder of society.

This principle ought even to be more
strongly impressed upon the minds of those
who compose the collective sovereignty,
than upon those of single princes. With-
out instruments, these princes can do noth-
ing. Whoever uses instruments, in find-
ing helps, finds also impediments. Their
power is therefore by no means complete;
nor are they safe in extreme abuse. Such
persons, however elevated by flattery,
arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sen-
sible, that, whether covered or not by
positive law, in some way or other they are
accountable even here for the abuse of
their trust. If they are not cut off by a
rebellion of their people, they may be
strangled by the very janissaries kept for
their security against all other rebellion.
Thus we have seen the king of France
sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay.
But where popular authority is absolute

and unrestrained, the people have an
infinitely greater, because a far better
founded, confidence in their own power.
They are themselves, in a great measure,
their own instruments. They are nearer
to their objects. Besides, they are less
under responsibility to one of the greatest
controlling powers on earth, the sense of
fame and estimation. The share of in-
famy, that is likely to fall to the lot of each
individual in public acts, is small indeed;
the operation of opinion being in the in-
verse ratio to the number of those who
abuse power. Their own approbation of
their own acts has to them the appearance
of a public judgment in their favor. A
perfect democracy is therefore the most
shameless thing in the world. As it is the
most shameless, it is also the most fearless.
No man apprehends in his person that he
can be made subject to punishment.
Certainly the people at large never ought:
for as all punishments are for example
towards the conservation of the people
at large, the people at large can never be-
come the subject of punishment by any
human hand. It is therefore of infinite
importance that they should not be suf-
fered to imagine that their will, any more
than that of kings, is the standard of right
and wrong. They ought to be persuaded
that they are full as little entitled, and
far less qualified with safety to themselves-
to use any arbitrary power whatsoever;
that therefore they are not, under a false
show of liberty, but in truth, to exercise
an unnatural, inverted dominion, tyran-
nically to exact, from those who officiate
in the state, not an entire devotion to
their interest, which is their right, but an
abject submission to their occasional will;
extinguishing thereby, in all those who
serve them, all moral principle, all sense
of dignity, all use of judgment, and all
consistency of character; whilst by the
very same process they give themselves
up a proper, suitable, but a most contemp-
tible prey to the servile ambition of pop-
ular sycophants, or courtly flatterers.

When the people have emptied them-
selves of all the lust of selfish will, which
without religion it is utterly impossible

442

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

they ever should, when they are conscious
that they exercise, and exercise perhaps
in a higher link of the order of delegation,
the power, which to be legitimate must be
according to that eternal, immutable law
in which will and reason are the same, they
will be more careful how they place power
in base and incapable hands. In their
nomination to office, they will not appoint
to the exercise of authority, as to a pitiful
job, but as to a holy function; not accord-
ing to their sordid, selfish interest, nor to
their wanton caprice, nor to their arbi-
trary will; but they will confer that power
(which any man may well tremble to give
or to receive) on those only, in whom they
may discern that predominant propor-
tion of active virtue, and wisdom, taken
together and fitted to the charge, such, as
in the great and inevitable mixed mass of
human imperfections and infirmities, is
to be found.

When they are habitually convinced
that no evil can be acceptable, either in the
act or the permission, to him whose es-
sence is good, they will be better able to
extirpate out of the minds of all magis-
trates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military,
anything that bears the least resemblance
to a proud and lawless domination.

But one of the first and most leading
principles on which the commonwealth
and the laws are consecrated, is lest the
temporary possessors and life-renters in it,
unmindful of what they have received
from their ancestors, or of what is due their
posterity, should act as if they were the
entire masters ; that they should not think
it among their rights to cut off the entail,
or commit waste on the inheritance, by
destroying at their pleasure the whole
original fabric of their society; hazarding
to leave to those who come after them a
ruin instead of an habitation and teach-
ing these successors as little to respect
their contrivances, as they had them-
selves respected the institutions of their
forefathers. By this unprincipled facility
of changing the state as often, and as
much, and in as many ways, as there are
floating fancies or fashions, the whole
chain and continuity of the common-

wealth would be broken. No one gen-
eration could link with the other. Men
would become little better than the flies
of a summer.

And first of all, the science of juris-
prudence, the pride of the human intel-
lect, which, with all its defects, redun-
dancies, and errors, is the collected reason
of ages, combining the principles of orig-
inal justice with the infinite variety of
human concerns, as a heap of old exploded
errors, would be no longer studied. Per-
sonal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the
certain attendance upon all those who
have never experienced a wisdom greater
than their own) would usurp the tribunal.
Of course no certain laws, establishing in-
variable grounds of hope and fear, would
keep the actions of men in a certain course,
or direct them to a certain end. Nothing
stable in the modes of holding property, or
exercising function, could form a solid
ground on which any parent could specu-
late in the education of his offspring, or in
a choice for their future establishment in
the world. No principles would be early
worked into the habits. As soon as the
most able instructor had completed his
laborious course of instruction, instead of
sending forth his pupil, accomplished in a
virtuous discipline, fitted to procure him
attention and respect, in his place in
society, he would find everything altered;
and that he had turned out a poor creature
to the contempt and derision of the world,
ignorant of the true grounds of estimation.
Who would insure a tender and delicate
sense of honor to beat almost with the first
pulses of the heart, when no man could
know what would be the test of honor
in a nation, continually varying the stand-
ard of its coin? No part of life would
retain its acquisitions. Barbarism with
regard to science and literature, unskill-
fulness with regard to arts and manu-
factures, would infallibly succeed to the
want of a steady education and settled
principle; and thus the commonwealth
itself would in a few generations crumble
away, be disconnected into the dust and
powder of individuality, and at length dis-
perse to all the winds of heaven.

ESSAYS

443

To avoid therefore the evils of incon-
stancy and versatility, ten thousand
times worse than those of obstinacy and
the blindest prejudice, we have conse-
crated the state, that no man should
approach to look into its defects or corrup-
tions but with due caution; that he should
never dream of beginning its reformation
by its subversion ; that he should approach
to the faults of the state as to the wounds
of a father, with pious awe and trembling
solicitude. By this wise prejudice we
are taught to look with horror on those
children of their country, who are prompt
rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces,
and put him into the kettle of magicians,
in hopes that by their poisonous weeds,
and wild incantations, they may regene-
rate the paternal constitution, and reno-
vate their father's life.

Society is indeed a contract. Subor-
dinate contracts for objects of mere occa-
sional interest may be dissolved at pleasure
but the state ought not to be considered
as nothing better than a partnership
agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee,
calico or tobacco, or some other such low
concern, to be taken up for a little tem-
porary interest, and to be dissolved by the
fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on
with other reverence; because it is not a
partnership in things subservient only to
the gross animal existence of a temporary
and perishable nature. It is a partnership
in all science; a partnership in all art; a
partnership in every virtue, and in all per-
fection. As the ends of such a partner-
ship cannot be obtained in many gene-
rations, it becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between
those who are living, those who are dead,
and those who are to be born. Each con-
tract of each particular state is but a clause
in the great primaeval contract of eternal
society, linking the lower with the higher
natures, connecting the visible and in-
visible world, according to a fixed com-
pact sanctioned by the inviolable oath
which holds all physical and all moral
natures, each in their appointed place.
This law is not subject to the will of those,
who by an obligation above them, and

infinitely superior, are bound to submit
their will to that law. The municipal
corporations of that universal kingdom
are not morally at liberty at their pleasure,
and on their speculations of a contingent
improvement, wholly to separate and tear
asunder the bands of their subordinate
community, and to dissolve it into an
unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of
elementary principles. It is the first and
supreme necessity only, a necessity that
is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity
paramount to deliberation, that admits no
discussion, and demands no evidence,
which alone can justify a resort to anarchy.
This necessity is no exception to the rule;
because this necessity itself is a part too
of that moral and physical disposition of
things, to which man must be obedient
by consent or force: but if that which is
only submission to necessity should be
made the object of choice, the law is
broken, nature is disobeyed, and the re-
bellious are outlawed, cast forth, and
exiled, from this world of reason, and
order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful
penitence, into the antagonist world of
madness, discord, vice, confusion, and
unavailing sorrow.

These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, 1
think, long will be, the sentiments of not
the least learned and reflecting part of this
kingdom. They, who are included in
this description, form their opinions on
such grounds as such persons ought to
form them. The less inquiring receive
them from an authority, which those
whom Providence dooms to live on trust
need not be ashamed to rely on. These
two sorts of men move in the same direc-
tion, though in a different place. They
both move with the order of the universe.
They all know or feel this great ancient
truth: Quod illi principi et prcepolenti
Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil
eorum qua quidem fiant in terris acceptius
quam concilia et coetus hominum jure
sociati qwR civitates appellantur . They
take this tenet of the head and heart, not
from the great name which it immediately
bears, nor from the greater from whence it
is derived; but from that which alone can

444

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

give true weight and sanction to any
learned opinion, the common nature and
common relation of men. Persuaded that
all things ought to be done with reference,
and referring all to the point of reference
to which all should be directed, they think
themselves bound, not only as individuals
in the sanctuary of the heart, or as con-
gregated in that personal capacity, to
renew the memory of their high origin
and cast; but also in their corporate
character to perform their national hom-
age to the institutes, and author, and pro-
tector of civil society; without which civil
society man could not by any possibility
arrive at the perfection of which his nature
is capable, nor even make a remote and
faint approach to it. They conceive that
He who gave our nature to be perfected by
our virtue, willed also the necessary means
of its perfection He willed therefore the
state He willed its connection with the
source and original archetype of all per-
fection. They who are convinced of this
will, which is the law of laws, and the
sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it
reprehensible that this our corporate
fealty and homage, that this our recogni-
tion of a signiory paramount, I had almost
said this oblation of the state itself, as a
worthy offering on the high altar of uni-
versal praise, should be performed as all
public, solemn acts are performed, in
buildings, in music, in decoration, in
speech, in the dignity of persons, according
to the customs of mankind, taught by their
nature; this is, with modest splendor and
unassuming state, with mild majesty and
sober pomp. For those purposes they
think some part of the wealth of the coun-
try is as usefully employed as it can be in
fomenting the luxury of individuals. It
is the public ornament. It is the public
consolation. It nourishes the public hope.
The poorest man finds his own impor-
tance and dignity in it, whilst the wealth
and pride of individuals at every mo-
ment makes the man of humble rank and
fortune sensible of his inferiority, and de-
grades and vilifies his condition. It is for
the man in humble life, and to raise his
nature, and to put him in mind of a state in

which the privileges of opulence willi
cease, when he will be equal by nature,
and may be more than equal by virtue,
that this portion of the general wealth
of his country is employed and sanctified.'

CONSERVATIVE REFORM

AT ONCE to preserve and to reform is
quite another thing. When the useful
parts of an old establishment are kept,
and what is superadded is to be fitted to
what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady,
persevering attention, various powers of
comparison and combination, and the
resources of an understanding fruitful in
expedients, are to be exercised; they are
to be exercised in a continued conflict
with the combined force of opposite vices,
with the obstinacy that rejects all im-
provement, and the levity that is fatigued
and disgusted with everything of which it
is in possession. But you may object
"A process of this kind is slow. It is not
fit for an assembly, which glories in per-
forming in a few months the work of ages.
Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might
take up many years." Without_question
itjnight; and it ought. IFls one of tHe
excellencies of a method in which time is
amongst the assistants, that its operation
is slow, and in some cases almost imper-
ceptible. If circumspection and caution
are a part of wisdom, when we work only
upon inanimate matter, surely they be-
come a part of duty too, when the subject
of our demolition and construction is not
brick and timber, but sentient beings, by
the sudden alteration of whose state, con-
dition, and habits, multitudes may be
rendered miserable. But it seems as if
it were the prevalent opinion in Paris,
that an unfeeling heart, and an undoubt-
ing confidence, are the sole qualifications
for a perfect legislator. Far different are
my ideas of that high office. The true
lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sen-
sibility. He ought to love and respect
his kinds, and to fear himself. It may be
allowed to his temperament to catch his
ultimate object with an intuitive glance;
but his movements towards it ought to be

ESSAYS

445

deliberate. Political arrangement, as it
is a work for social ends, is to be only
wrought by social means. There mind
must conspire with mind. Time is re-
quired to produce that union of minds
which alone can produce all the good we
aim at. Our patience will achieve more
than our force. If I might venture to
appeal to what is so much out of fashion in
Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell
you, that in my course I have known, and,
according to my measure, have co-
operated with great men; and I have never
yet seen any plan which has not been
mended by the observations of those who
were much inferior in understanding to
the person who took the lead in the busi-
ness. By a slow but well-sustained prog-
ress, the effect of each step is watched;
the good or ill success of the first gives
light to us in the second; and so, from light
to light, we are conducted with safety
through the whole series. We see that the
parts of the system do not clash. The
evils latent hi the most promising contri-
vances are provided for as they arise.
One advantage is as little as possible sacri-
ficed to another. We compensate, we
reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to
unite into a consistent whole the various
anomalies and contending principles that
are found in the minds and affairs of men.
From hence arises, not an excellence in
simplicity, but one far superior, an excel-
lence in composition. Where the great
interests of mankind are concerned
through a long succession of generations,
that succession ought to be admitted into
some share in the councils which are so
deeply to affect them. If justice requires
this, the work itself requires the aid of
more minds than one age can furnish.
It is from this view of things that the best
legislators have been often satisfied with
the establishment of some sure, solid, and
ruling principle in government; a power
like that which some of the philosophers
have called a plastic nature; and having
fixed the principle, they have left it after-
wards to its own operation.

To proceed in this manner, that is, to
proceed with a presiding principle, and a

prolific energy, is with me the criterion of
profound wisdom. What your politi-
cians think the marks of a bold, hardy
genius, are only proofs of a deplorable
want of ability. By their violent haste
and their defiance of the process of nature,
theyare delivered over blindly to everypro-
jector and adventurer, to every alchemist
and empiric. They despair of turning to
account anything that is common. Diet
is nothing in their system of remedy.
The worst of it is, that this their despair
of curing common distempers by regular
methods, arises not only from defect of
comprehension, but, I fear, from some
malignity of disposition. Your legislators
seem to have taken their opinions of all
professions, ranks, and offices, from the
declamations and buffooneries of satirists;
who would themselves be astonished if
they were held to the letter of their own
descriptions. By listening only to these,
your leaders regard all things only on the
side of their vices and faults, and view
those vices and faults under every color
of exaggeration. It is undoubtedly true,
though it may seem paradoxical; but in
general, those who are habitually em-
ployed in finding and displaying faults,
are unqualified for the work of reformation :
because their minds are not only unfur-
nished with patterns of the fair and good,
but by habit they come to take no delight
in the contemplation of those things. By
hating vices too much, they come to love
men too little. It is therefore not wonder-
ful, that they should be indisposed and
unable to serve them. From hence arises
the complexional disposition of some of
your guides to pull everything in pieces.
At this malicious game they display the
whole of their quadrimanous activity.
As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent
writers, brought forth purely as a sport
of fancy, to try their talents, to rouse
attention and excite surprise, are taken up
by these gentlemen, not in the spirit of
the original authors, as means of cultivat-
ing their taste and improving their style.
These paradoxes become with them se-
rious grounds of action, upon which they
proceed in regulating the most important

446

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously
describes Cato as endeavoring to act, in
the commonwealth, upon the school
paradoxes, which exercised the wits of the
junior students in the Stoic philosophy.
If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen
copy after him in the manner of some per-
sons who lived about his time pede nudo
Catonem. Mr. Hume told me that he had
from Rousseau himself the secret of his
principles of composition. That acute
though eccentric observer had perceived,
that to strike and interest the public,
the marvellous must be produced; that the
marvellous of the heathen mythology
had long since lost its effects; that giants,
magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance
which succeeded, had exhausted the por-
tion of credulity which belonged to their
age; that now nothing was left to the writer
but that species of the marvellous which
might still be produced, and with as great
an effect as ever, though in another way;
that is, the marvellous in life, in manners,
in characters, and hi extraordinary situa-
tions, J giving rise to new and unlooked-
for strokes in politics and morals. I I be-
lieve, that were Rousseau alive, and in
one of his lucid intervals, he would be
shocked at the practical frenzy of his
scholars, who, in their paradoxes, are servile
imitators; and even in their incredulity
discover an implicit faith.

TRUE LIBERTY

THE effects of the incapacity shown by
the popular leaders in all the great mem-
bers of the commonwealth are to be cov-
ered with the "all-atoning name" of liberty.
In some people I see great liberty indeed;
in many, if not in the most, an oppressive,
degrading servitude. But what is liberty
without wisdom, and without virtue?
It is the greatest of all possible evils;
for it is folly, vice, and madness, without
tuition or restraint. Those who know
what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to
see it disgraced by incapable heads, on
account of their having high-sounding
words in their mouths. Grand, swelling
sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not

despise. They warm the heart; they en-
large and liberalize our minds; they ani-
mate our courage in a time of conflict.
Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of
Lucan and Corneille with pleasure.
Neither do I wholly condemn the little
arts and devices of popularity. They
facilitate the carrying of many points of
moment; they keep the people together;
they refresh the mind in its exertions; and
they diffuse occasional gaiety over the
severe brow of moral freedom. Every
politician ought to sacrifice to the graces;
and to join compliance with reason. But
in such an undertaking as that in France,
all these subsidiary sentiments and arti-
fices are of little avail. To make a govern-
ment requires no great prudence. Settle
the seat of power; teach obedience: and
the work is done. To give freedom is
still more easy. It is not necessary to
guide; it only requires to let go the rein.
But to form a free government; that is, to
temper together these opposite elements
of liberty and restraint in one consistent
work, requires much thought, deep reflec-
tion, a sagacious, powerful, and combin-
ing mind. This I do not find in those who
take the lead in the National Assembly.
Perhaps they are not so miserably defi-
cient as they appear. I rather believe it.
It would put them below the common level
of human understanding. But when the
leaders choose to make themselves bidders
at an auction of popularity, their talents,
in the construction of the state, will be of
no service. They will become flatterers
instead of legislators; the instruments,
not the guides, of the people. If any of
them should happen to propose a scheme
of liberty, soberly limited, and defined
with proper qualifications, he will be im-
mediately outbid by his competitors, who
will produce something more splendidly
popular. Suspicions will be raised of his
fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be
stigmatized as the virtue of cowards;
and compromise as the prudence of trait-
ors; until, in hopes of preserving the
credit which may enable him to temper,
and moderate, on some occasions, the
popular leader is obliged to become active

ESSAYS

447

in propagating doctrines, and establishing
powers, that will afterwards defeat any
sober purpose at which he ultimately
might have aimed.

But am I so unreasonable as to see
nothing at all that deserves commenda-
tion in the indefatigable labors of this
Assembly? I do not deny that, among
an infinite number of acts of violence and
folly, some good may have been done.
They who destroy everything certainly
will remove some grievance. They who
make everything new, have a chance that
they may establish something beneficial.
To give them credit for what they have
done hi virtue of the authority they have
usurped, or which can excuse them in the
crimes by which that authority has been
acquired, it must appear, that the same
things could not have been accomplished
without producing such a revolution.
Most assuredly they might; because al-
most every one of the regulations made
by them, which is not very equivocal,
was either in the cession of the king, vol-
untarily made at the meeting of the states,
or in the concurrent instructions to the
orders. Some usages have been abolished
on just grounds; but they were such, that if
they had stood as they were to all eternity,
they would little detract from the happi-
ness and prosperity of any state. The
improvements of the National Assembly
are superficial, their errors fundamental.

Whatever they are, I wish my country-
men rather to recommend to our neigh-
bors the example of the British constitu-
tion, than to take models from them for
the improvement of our own. In the
former they have got an invaluable
treasure. They are not, I think, without
some causes of apprehension and com-
plaint; but these they do not owe to their
constitution, but to their own conduct. I
think our happy situation owing to our
constitution ; but owing to the whole of it,
and not to any part singly; owing in a
great measure to what we have left stand-
ing in our several reviews and reforma-
tions, as well as to what we have altered
or superadded. Our people will find em-
ployment enough for a truly patriotic,

free, and independent spirit, in guarding
what they possess from violation. I
would not exclude alteration neither; but
even when I changed, it should be to pre-
serve. I should be led to my remedy by a
great grievance. In what I did, I should
follow the example of our ancestors. I
would make the reparation as nearly as
possible in the style of the building. A
politic caution, a guarded circumspection,
a moral rather than a complexional
timidity, were among the ruling principles
of our forefathers in their most decided
conduct. Not being illuminated with
the light of which the gentlemen of France
tell us they have got so abundant a share,
they acted under a strong impression of the
ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He
that had made them thus fallible, re-
warded them for having in their conduct
attended to their nature. Let us imitate
their caution, if we wish to deserve their
fortune, or to retain their bequests. Let
us add, if we please, but let us preserve
what they have left: and standing on the
firm ground of the British constitution,
let us be satisfied to admire, rather than
attempt to follow in their desperate
flights, the aeronauts of France.
I have told you candidly my sentiments.
I think they are not likely to alter yours.
I do not know that they ought. You are
young; you cannot guide, but must follow
the fortune of your country. But, here-
after they may be of some use to you, in
some future form which your common-
wealth may take. In the present it can
hardly remain; but before its final settle-
ment it may be obliged to pass, as one of
our poets says, "through great varieties
of untried being," and in all its transmi-
grations to be purified by fire and blood.
I have little to recommend my opinions
but long observation and much impar-
tiality. They come from one who has
been no tool of power, no flatterer of
greatness; and who in his last acts does
not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
They come from one, almost the whole of
whose public exertion has been a struggle
for the liberty of others, from one in
whose breast no anger durable or vehe-

443

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ment has ever been kindled, but by what
he considered as tyranny; and who snatches
from his share in the endeavors which
are used by good men to discredit opulent
oppression, the hours he has employed on
your affairs; and who in so doing per-
suades himself he has not departed from
his usual office; they come from one who
desires honors, distinctions, and emolu-
ments, but little; and who expects them
not at all; who has no contempt for fame,

and no fear of obloquy; who shuns con-
tention, though he will hazard an opin-
ion; from one who wishes to preserve
consistency, but who would preserve con-
sistency by varying his means to secure
the unity of his end; and, when the equi-
poise of the vessel in which he sails may be
endangered by overloading it upon one
side, is desirous of carrying the small
weight of his reasons to that which may
preserve its equipoise. (1790)

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

IBs essays and letters reveal Lamb himself, perhaps the most engaging personality in all English
literature. He is always good company, delighting the reader whom he seems to nudge with his
elbow by shrewd remarks upon life and people, by fine humor, and by a sort of sly, surprising drollery.

FROM "ESSAYS OF ELIA"
POOR RELATIONS

A POOR Relation is the most irrele-
vant thing in nature, a piece of
impertinent correspondency, an odious
approximation, a haunting conscience,
a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the
noontide of our prosperity, an unwel-
come remembrancer, a perpetually re-
curring mortification, a drain on your
purse, a more intolerable dun upon your
pride, a drawback upon success, a re-
buke to your rising, a stain in your
blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon, a
rent in your garment, a death's head
at your banquet, Agathocles' pot,
a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at
your door, a lion in your path, a frog
in your chamber, a fly in your ointment,
a mote in your eye, a triumph to your
enemy, an apology to your friends, the
one thing not needful, the hail in harvest,
the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

He is known by his knock. Your heart

telleth you "That is Mr. ." A rap,

between familiarity and respect; that
demands, and, at the same time, seems
to despair of, entertainment. He entereth
smiling and embarrassed. He holdeth
out his hand to you to shake, and draw-
eth it back again. He casually looketh
in about dinner-time when the table is
full. He offereth to go away, seeing you

have company, but is induced to stay. He
filleth a chair, and your visitor's two
children are accommodated at a side
table. He never cometh upon open days,
when your wife says with some compla-
cency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. - will
drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-
days and professeth he is fortunate to
have stumbled upon one. He declareth
against fish, the turbot being small yet
suffereth himself to be importuned into a
slice against his first resolution. He
sticketh by the port yet will be prevailed
upon to empty the remainder glass of
claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He
is a puzzle to the servants, who are fear-
ful of being too obsequious, or not civil
enough, to him. The guests think "they
have seen him before." Everyone specu-
lateth upon his condition; and the most
part take him to be a tide waiter. He
calleth you by your Christian name, to
imply that his other is the same with your
own. He is too familiar by hah", yet you
wish he had less diffidence. With half the
familiarity he might pass for a casual de-
pendent; with more boldness he would be
in no danger of being taken for what he is.
He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh
on him more state than befits a client.
He is a worse guest than a country tenant,
inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent
yet 't is odds, from his garb and demeanor,
that your guests take him for one. He is

ESSAYS

449

asked to make one at the whist table; re-
fuseth on the score of poverty, and resents
being left out. When the company break
up he proffereth to go for a coach and
Jets the servant go. He recollects your
grandfather ; and will thrust in some mean
and quite unimportant anecdote of the
family. He knew it when it was not quite
so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it
now." He reviveth past situations to
institute what he calleth favorable com-
parisons. With a reflecting sort of con-
gratulation, he will inquire the price of
your furniture: and insults you with a
special commendation of your window-
curtains. He is of opinion that the urn
is the more elegant shape, but, after all,
there was something more comfortable
about the old tea-kettle which you must
remember. He dare say you must find
a great convenience in having a carriage
of your own, and appealeth to your lady
if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had
your arms done on vellum yet; and did
not know, till lately, that such-and-such
had been the crest of the family. His
memory is unseasonable; his compliments
perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay per-
tinacious; and when he goeth away, you
dismiss his chair into a corner, as pre-
cipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid
of two nuisances.

There is a worse evil under the sun, and
that is a female Poor Relation. You
may do something with the other; you
may pass him off tolerably well; but
your indigent she-relative is hopeless.
"He is an old humorist," you may say,
"and affects to go threadbare. His cir-
cumstances are better than folks would
take them to be. You are fond of having
a Character at your table, and truly he is
one." But in the indications of female
poverty there can be no disguise. No
woman dresses below herself from caprice.
The truth must out without shuffling.

"She is plainly related to the L s; or

what does she at their house?" She is,
in all probability, your wife's cousin.
Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the
case. Her garb is something between a
gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former

evidently predominates. She is moe*
provokingly humble, and ostentatiously
sensible to her inferiority. He may
require to be repressed sometimes
aliquando sufflaminandus erat but there
is no raising her. You send her soup at
dinner, and she begs to be helped

after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the

honor of taking wine with her; she hesitates
between Port and Madeira, and chooses
the former because he does. She calls
the servant Sir; and insists on not trou-
bling him to hold her plate. The house-
keeper patronizes her. The children's
governess takes upon her to correct her,
when she has mistaken the piano for
harpsichord.

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a
noticeable instance of the disadvantages
to which this chimerical notion of affinity
constituting a claim to an acqttaintance,
may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A
little foolish blood is all that is betwixt
him and a lady with a great estate. His
stars are perpetually crossed by the malig-
nant maternity of an old woman, who
persists in calling him "her son Dick."
But she has wherewithal in the end to
recompense his indignities, and float him
again upon the brilliant surface, under
which it had been her seeming business
and pleasure all along to sink him. All
men, besides, are not of Dick's tempera-
ment. I knew an Amlet in real life,
who wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank

indeed. Poor W was of my own

standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a
youth of promise. If he had a blemish,
it was too much pride; but its quality
was inoffensive; it was not of that sort
which hardens the heart, and serves to
keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought
to ward off derogation from itself. It
was the principle of self-respect carried
as far as it could go, without infringing
upon that respect, which he would have
every one else equally maintain for him-
self. He would have you to think alike
with him on this topic. Many a quarrel
have I had with him, when we were rather
older boys, and our tallness made us more
obnoxious to observation in the blue

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

clothes, because I would not thread the
alleys and blind ways of the town with
him to elude notice, when we have been
out together on a holiday hi the streets
of this sneering and prying metropolis.
W - went, sore with these notions, to
Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness
of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy
of a humble introduction, wrought in
him a passionate devotion to the place,
with a profound aversion to the society.
The servitor's gown (worse than his
school array) clung to him with Nessian
venom. He thought himself ridiculous in
a garb, under which Latimer must have
walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein
of no discommendable vanity. In the
depths of college shades, or hi his lonely
chamber, the poor student shrunk from
observation. He found shelter among
books, which insult not; and studies,
that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom
cared for looking out beyond his domains.
The healing influence of studious pursuits
was upon him, to soothe and to abstract.
He was almost a healthy man; when the
waywardness of his fate broke out against
him with a second and worse malignity.
The father of W had hitherto exer-
cised the humble profession of house-
painter at N , near Oxford. A sup-
posed interest with some of the heads of
colleges had now induced him to take up
his abode in that city, with the hope of
being employed upon some public works
which were talked of. From that mo-
ment I read in the countenance of the
young man, the determination which at
length tore him from academical pursuits
for ever. To a person unacquainted with
our Universities, the distance between the
gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are
called the trading part of the latter
especially is carried to an excess that
would appear harsh and incredible. The

temperament of W 's father was

diametrically the reverse of his own. Old
W was a little, busy, cringing trades-
man, who, with his son upon his arm,
would stand bowing and scraping, cap in

hand, to anything that wore the semblance
of a gown insensible to the winks and
opener remonstrances of the young man,
to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in
standing, perhaps, he was thus obse-
quiously and gratuitously ducking. Such
a state of things could not last. W
must change the air of Oxford or be suf-
focated. He chose the former; and let the
sturdy moralist, who strains the point of
the filial duties as high as they can bear,
censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate

the struggle. I stood with W , the

last afternoon I ever saw him, under the
eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in
the fine lane leading from the High Street

to the back of college, here W

kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful,
and more reconciled. I ventured to
rally him finding him in a better mood
upon a representation of the Artist Evan-
gelist, which the old man, whose affairs
were beginning to flourish, had caused to
be set up in a splendid sort of frame over
his really handsome shop, either as a
token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude

to his saint. W looked up at the

Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted
sign and fled." A letter on his father's
table the next morning, announced that
he had accepted a commission hi a regi-
ment about to embark for Portugal. He
was among the first who perished before
the walls of St. Sebastian.

I do not know how, upon a subject
which I began with treating half seriously,
I should have fallen upon a recital so
eminently painful; but this theme of poor
relationship is replete with so much
matter for tragic as well as comic associa-
tions, that it is difficult to keep the ac-
count distinct without blending. The
earliest impressions which I received on
this matter, are certainly not attended
with anything painful, or very humiliat-
ing, in the recalling. At my father's
table (no very splendid one) was to be
found, every Saturday, the mysterious
figure of an aged gentleman, clothed hi
neat black, of a sad yet comely appear-
ance. His deportment was of the essence
of gravity; his words few or none; and I

ESSAYS

was not to make a noise in his presence.
I had little inclination to have done so
for my cue was to admire in silence. A
particular elbow chair was appropriated
to him, which was in no case to be violated.
A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which
appeared on no other occasion, distin-
guished the days of his coming. I used
to think him a prodigiously rich man.
All I could make out of him was, that he
and my father had been schoolfellows a
world ago at Lincoln, and that he came
from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be
a place where all the money we 3 coined
and I thought he was the owner of all that
money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined
themselves about his presence. He seemed
above human infirmities and passions.
A sort of melancholy grandeur invested
him. From some inexplicable doom I
fancied him obliged to go about in an
eternal suit of mourning; a captive a
stately being, let out of the Tower on
Saturdays. Often have I wondered at
the temerity of my father, who, in spite
of an habitual general respect which we all
in common manifested towards him, would
venture now and then to stand up against
him in some argument, touching their
youthful days. The houses of the ancient
city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my
readers know) between the dwellers on
the hill, and in the valley. This marked
distinction formed an obvious division
between the boys who lived above (how-
ever brought together in a common school)
and the boys whose paternal residence
was on the plain; a sufficient cause of
hostility in the code of these young Gro-
tiuses. My father had been a leading
Mountaineer; and would still maintain
the general superiority, in skill and hardi-
hood, of the Above Boys (his own faction)
over the Below Boys (so were they called),
of which party his contemporary had been
a chieftain. Many and hot were the skir-
mishes on this topic the only one upon
which the old gentleman was ever brought
out and bad blood bred; even sometimes
almost to the recommencement (so I
expected) of actual hostilities. But my
father, who scorned to insist upon advan-

tages, generally contrived to turn the con-
versation upon some adroit by-commen-
dation of the old Minster; in the general
preference of which, before all other
cathedrals hi the island, the dweller on the
hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a
conciliating level, and lay down their
less important differences. Once only I
saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and
I remembered with anguish the thought
that came over me: "Perhaps he will
never come here again." He had been
pressed to take another plate of the viand,
which I have already mentioned as the in-
dispensable concomitant of his visits.
He had refused with a resistance amount-
ing to rigor, when my aunt an old Lin-
colnian, but who had something of this
hi common with my cousin Bridget, that
she would sometimes press civility out of
season uttered the following memorable
application "Do take another slice, Mr.
Billet, for you do not get pudding every
day." The old gentleman said nothing
at the tune but he took occasion hi the
course of the evening, when some argu-
ment had intervened between them to
utter with an emphasis which chilled the
company, and which chills me now as I
write it "Woman, you are superan-
nuated." John Billet did not survive
long, after the digesting of this affront;
but he survived long enough to assure me
that peace was actually restored! and, if I
remember aright, another pudding was
discreetly substituted hi the place of that
which had occasioned the offense. He
died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he
had long held, what he accounted, a com-
fortable independence; and with five
pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny,
which were found in his escritoire after
his decease, left the world, blessing God
that he had enough to bury him, and that
he had never been obliged to any man for
a sixpence. This was a Poor Relation.

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

THE custom of saying grace at meals
had, probably, its origin in the early tunes
of the world, and the hunter-state of man

452

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

when dinners were precarious things, and
a full meal was something more than a
common blessing; when a belly-full was a
windfall, and looked like a special provi-
dence. In the shouts and triumphal
songs with which, after a season of sharp
abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or
goat's flesh would naturally be ushered
home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the
modern grace. It is not otherwise easy
to be understood, why the blessing of
food the act of eating should have
had a particular expression of thanks-
giving annexed to it, distinct from that
implied and silent gratitude with which
we are expected to enter upon the enjoy-
ment of the many other various gifts and
good things of existence. , , .

I own that I am disposed to say grace
upon twenty other occasions in the course
of the day besides my dinner. I want a
form for setting out upon a pleasant walk,
for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly
meeting, or a solved problem. Why
have we none for books, those spiritual
repasts a grace before Milton a grace
before Shakespeare a devotional exer-
cise proper to be said before reading the
Fairy Queen? but, the received ritual
having prescribed these forms to the soli-
tary ceremony of manducation, I shall
confine my observations to the experience
which I have had of the grace, properly
so called; commending my new scheme
for extension to a niche in the grand philo-
sophical, poetical, and perchance in
part heretical, liturgy, now compiling
by my friend Homo Humanus, for the
use of a certain snug congregation of
Utopian Rabelsesian Christians, no matter
where assembled.

The form then of the benediction before
eating has its beauty at a poor man's
table, or at the simple and unpro vocative
repasts of children. It is here that the
grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The
indigent man, who hardly knows whether
he shall have a meal the next day or not,
sits down to his fare with a present sense
of the blessing which can be but feebly
acted by the rich, into whose minds the con-
ception of wanting a dinner could never,

but by some extreme theory, have entered.
The proper end of food the animal
sustenance is barely contemplated by
them. The poor man's bread is his daily
bread, literally his bread for the day.
Their courses are perennial.

Again, the plainest diet seems the fit-
test to be preceded by the grace. That
which is least stimulative to appetite,
leaves the mind most freed for foreign
considerations. A man may feel thankful,
heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mut-
ton with turnips, and have leisure to
reflect upon the ordinance and institution
of eating; when he shall confess a pertur-
bation of mind, inconsistent with the pur-
poses of the grace, at the presence of veni-
son or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus
hospes) at rich men's tables, with the
savory soup and messes steaming up the
nostrils, and moistening the lips of the
guests with desire and a distracted choice,
I have felt the introduction of that cere-
mony to be unseasonable. With the
ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems
impertinent to interpose a religious senti-
ment. It is a confusion of purpose to
mutter out praises from a mouth that
waters. The heats of epicurism put out
the gentle flame of devotion. The in-
cense which rises round is pagan, and the
belly-god intercepts it for his own. The
very excess of the provision beyond the
needs, takes away all sense of proportion
between the end and means. The giver
is veiled by his gifts. You are startled
at the injustice of returning thanks for
what? for having too much, while so
many starve. It is to praise the Gods
amiss.

I have observed this awkwardness felt,
scarce consciously perhaps, by the good
man who says the grace. I have seen it in
clergymen and others a sort of shame a
sense of the co-presence of circumstances
which unhallow the blessing. After a
devotional tone put on for a few seconds,
how rapidly the speaker will fall into his
common voice, helping himself or his
neighbor, as if to get rid of some uneasy
sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the
good man was a hypocrite, or was not

ESSAYS

453

most conscientious in the discharge of
the duty; but he felt in his inmost
mind the incompatibility of the scene
and the viands before him with the
exercise of a calm and rational grati-
tude.

I hear somebody exclaim, Would you
have Christians sit down at table, like
hogs to their troughs, without remember-
ing the Giver? no I would have them
sit down as Christians, remembering the
Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their
appetites must run riot, and they must
pamper themselves with delicacies for
which east and west are ransacked, I
would have them postpone their bene-
diction to a fitter season, when appetite
is laid; when the still small voice can be
heard, and the reason of the grace re-
turns with temperate diet and restricted
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no
proper occasions for thanksgiving. When
Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he
kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature
better, when he put into the mouth of
Celseno any thing but a blessing. We
may be gratefully sensible of the delicious-
ness of some kinds of food beyond others,
though that is a meaner and inferior
gratitude: but the proper object of the
grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily
bread, not delicacies; the means of life,
and not the means of pampering the car-
cass. With what frame or composure, I
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce
his benediction at some great Hall feast,
when he knows that his last concluding
pious word and that, in all probability,
the sacred name which he preaches is
but the signal for so many impatient harp-
ies to commence their foul orgies, with as
little sense of true thankfulness (which
is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl!
It is well if the good man himself does
not feel his devotions a little clouded,
those foggy sensuous steams mingling
with and polluting the pure altar sacri-
fice.

The severest satire upon full tables and
surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in
the "Paradise Regained," provides for a
temptation in the wilderness:

A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought
these cates would go down without the
recommendatory preface of a benediction.
They are like to be short graces where the
devil plays the host. I am afraid the
poet wants his usual decorum in this
place. Was he thinking of the old Roman
luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge?
This was a temptation fitter for a Hefio-
gabalus. The whole banquet is too civic
and culinary, and the accompaniments
altogether a profanation of that deep,
abstracted, holy scene. The mighty artil-
lery of sauces, which the cook-fiend con-
jures up, is out of proportion to the simple
wants and plain hunger of the guest. He
that disturbed him in his dreams, from
his dreams might have been taught better.
To the temperate fantasies of the fam-
ished Son of God, what sort of feasts pre-
sented themselves? He dreamed indeed,

As appetite is wont to dream,

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.

But what meats?

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what

they brought;

He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than
these temperate dreams of the divine
Hungerer. To which of these two vis-
ionary banquets, think you, would the
introduction of what is called the grace
have been most fitting and pertinent?
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces;

454

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

but practically I own that (before meat
especially) they seem to involve something
awkward and unseasonable. Our appe-
tites, of one or another kind, are excellent
spurs to our reason, which might other-
wise but feebly set about the great end
of preserving and continuing the species.
They are fit blessings to be contemplated
at a distance with a becoming gratitude:
but the moment of appetite (the judicious
reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps,
the least fit season for that exercise. The
Quakers who go about their business, of
every description, with more calmness
than we, have more title to the use of these
benedictory prefaces. I have always ad-
mired their silent grace, and the more be-
cause I have observed their applications
to the meat and drink following to be less
passionate and sensual than ours. They
are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a
people. They eat, as a horse bolts his
chopt hay, with indifference, calmness,
and cleanly circumstances. They neither
grease nor slop themselves. When I see a
citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot
imagine it a surplice.

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess
I am not indifferent to the kinds of it,
Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh
were not made to be received with dis-
passionate services. I hate a man who
swallows it, affecting not to know what he
is eating. I suspect his taste in higher
matters. I shrink instinctively from one
who professes to like minced veal. There
is a physiognomical character in the tastes

for food. C holds that a man cannot

have a pure mind who refuses apple-
dumplings. I am not certain but he is
right. With the decay of my first inno-
cence, I confess a less and less relish daily
for these innocuous cates. The whole
vegetable tribe have lost their gust with
me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still
seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am
impatient and querulous under culinary
disappointments, as to come home at the
dinner hour, for instance, expecting some
savory mess, and to find one quite taste-
less and sapidless. Butter ill melted
that commonest of kitchen failures puts

me beside my tenor. The author of the
"Rambler" used to make inarticulate ani-
mal noises over a favorite food. Was this
the music quite proper to be preceded by
the grace? or would the pious man have
done better to postpone his devotions to a
season when the blessing might be con-
templated with less perturbation? I quar-
rel with no man's tastes, nor would set
my thin face against those excellent things,
in their way, jollity and feasting. But as
these exercises, however laudable, have
little in them of grace or gracefulness, a
man should be sure, before he ventures so
to grace them, that while he is pretending
his devotions otherwise, he is not secretly
kissing his hand to some great fish his
Dagon with a special consecration of no
ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces
are the sweet preluding strains to the ban-
quets of angels and children: to the roots
and severer repasts of the Chartreuse:
to the slender, but not slenderly acknowl-
edged, refection of the poor and humble
man: but at the heaped-up boards of the
pampered and the luxurious they become
of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned
to the occasion, methinks, than the noise
of those better befitting organs would be,
which children hear tales of, at Hog's
Norton. We sit too long at our meals,
or are too curious in the study of them, or
too disordered in our application to them,
or engross too great a portion of these good
things (which should be common) to our
share, to be able with any grace to say
grace. To be thankful for what we grasp
exceeding our proportion is to add hypoc-
risy to injustice. A lurking sense of this
truth is what makes the performance of
this duty so cold and spiritless a service at
most tables. In houses where the grace
is as indispensable as the napkin, who has
not seen that never settled question arise,
as to who shall say it; while the good man
of the house and the visitor clergyman, or
some other guest belike of next authority
from years or gravity, shall be bandying
about the office between them as a matter
of compliment, each of them not unwilling
to shift the awkward burthen of an equivo-
cal duty from his own shoulders?

ESSAYS

455

I once drank tea in company with two
Methodist divines of different persuasions,
whom it was my fortune to introduce to
each other for the first tune that evening.
Before the first cup was handed round,
one of these reverend gentlemen put it to
the other, with all due solemnity, whether
he chose to say any thing. It seems it is
the custom with some sectaries to put up
a short prayer before this meal also. His
reverend brother did not at first quite
apprehend him, but upon an explanation,
with little less importance he made answer,
that it was not a custom known in his
church: in which courteous evasion the
other acquiescing for good manners' sake,
or in compliance with a weak brother,
the supplementary or tea-grace was waived
altogether. With what spirit might not
Lucian have painted two priests, of his
religion, playing into each other's hands
the compliment of performing or omit-
ting a sacrifice, the hungry God mean-
time, doubtful of his incense, with expec-
tant nostrils hovering over the two
flamens, and (as between two stools)
going away in the end without his supper.

A short form upon these occasions is felt
to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid,
cannot escape the charge of impertinence.
I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic
conciseness with which that equivocal
wag (but my pleasant school-fellow)
C. V. L., when importuned for a
grace, used to inquire, first slily leering
down the table, "Is there no clergyman
here?" significantly adding, "Thank
G ." Nor do I think our old form at
school quite pertinent, where we were
used to preface our bald bread and cheese
suppers with a preamble, connecting with
that humble blessing a recognition of
benefits the most awful and overwhelm-
ing to the imagination which religion has
to offer. Non tune illis erat locus. I re-
member we were put to it to reconcile
the phrase "good creatures," upon which
the blessing rested, with the fare set
before us, wilfully understanding that
expression in a low and animal sense,
till some one recalled a legend, which told
how in the golden days of Christ's, the

young Hospitallers were wont to have
smoking joints of roast meat upon their
nightly boards, till some pious benefactor,
commiserating the decencies, rather than
the palates, of the children, commuted
our flesh for garments, and gave us
horresco referens trowsers instead of mut-
ton.

THE CONVALESCENT

A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition
which, under the name of a nervous fever,
has made a prisoner of me for some weeks
past, and is but slowly leaving me, ha?
reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting
upon any topic foreign to itself. Ex-
pect no healthy conclusions from me this
month, reader; I can offer you only sick
men's dreams.

And truly the whole state of sickness is
such; for what else is it but a magnificent
dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw
daylight curtains about him; and, shut-
ting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion
of all the works which are going on under
it? To become insensible to all the opera-
tions of life, except the beatings of one
feeble pulse?

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-
bed. How the patient lords it there; what
caprices he acts without control! how
king-like he sways his pillow tumbling,
and tossing, and shifting, and lowering,
and thumping, and flatting, and molding
it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his
throbbing temples.

He changes sides oftener than a poli-
tician. Now he lies full length, then half
length, obliquely, transversely, head and
feet quite across the bed; and none ac-
cuses him of tergiversation. Within the
four curtains he is absolute. They are
his Mare Clausum.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions
of a man's self to himself! he is his own
exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is
inculcated upon him as his only duty.
'Tis the Two Tables of Law to him. He
has nothing to think of but how to get
well. What passes out of doors, or within
them, so he hear not the jarring of them,
affects him not.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

A little while ago he was greatly con-
cerned in the event of a lawsuit, which
was to be the making or the marring of
his dearest friend. He was to be seen
trudging about upon this man's errand
to fifty quarters of the town at once, jog-
ging this witness, refreshing that solicitor.
The cause was to come on yesterday. He
is absolutely as indifferent to the decis-
ion as if it were a question to be tried at
Pekin. Peradventure from some whis-
pering going on about the house, not in-
tended for his hearing, he picks up enough
to make him understand that things went
cross-grained in the court yesterday, and
his friend is ruined. But the word
"friend," and the word "ruin," disturb
him no more than so much jargon. He is
not to think of anything but how to get
better.

What a world of foreign cares are
merged in that absorbing consideration!

He has put on the strong armor of sick-
ness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of
suffering; he keeps his sympathy, like
some curious vintage, under trusty lock
and key, for his own use only.

He lies pitying himself, honing and
moaning to himself; he yearneth over him-
self; his bowels are even melted within
him, to think what he suffers; he is not
ashamed to weep over himself.

He is forever plotting how to do some
good to himself; studying little stratagems
and artificial alleviations.

He makes the most of himself; dividing
himself, by an allowable fiction, into as
many distinct individuals as he hath
sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes
he meditates, as of a thing apart from him,
upon his poor aching head, and that dull
pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it
all the past night like a log, or palpable
substance of pain, not to be removed
without opening the very skull, as it
seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities
his long, clammy, attenuated fingers.
He compassionates himself all over; and
his bed is a very discipline of humanity,
and tender heart.

He is his own sympathizer; and instinc-
tively feels that none can so well perform

that office for him. He cares for few
spectators to his tragedy. Only that
punctual face of the old nurse pleases him,
that announces his broths and his cordials.
He likes it because it is so unmoved, and
because he can pour forth his feverish
ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to
his bed-post.

To the world's business he is dead. He
understands not what the callings and
occupations of mortals are; only he has a
glimmering conceit of some such thing,
when the doctor makes his daily call;
and even in the lines on that busy face
he reads no multiplicity of patients, but
solely conceives of himself as the sick man.
To what other uneasy couch the good
man is hastening when he slips out of his
chamber, folding up his thin douceur so
carefully, for fear of rustling is no spec-
ulation which he can at present entertain.
He thinks only of the regular return of the
same phenomenon at the same hour to-
morrow.

Household rumors touch him not.
Some faint murmur, indicative of life
going on within the house, soothes him,
while he knows not distinctly what it is.
He is not to know anything, not to think
of anything. Servants gliding up or down
the distant staircase, treading as upon
velvet, gently keep his ear awake so long
as he troubles not himself further than
with some feeble guess at their errands.
Exacter knowledge would be a burden to
him; he can just endure the pressure of
conjecture. He opens his eye faintly at
the dull stroke of the muffled knocker,
and closes it again without asking "Who
was it?" He is flattered by a general
notion that inquiries are making after
him, but he cares not to know the name of
the inquirer. In the general stillness and
awful hush of the house he lies in state and
feels his sovereignty.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal pre-
rogatives. Compare the silent tread and
quiet ministry almost by the eye only
with which he is served, with the careless
demeanor, the unceremonious goings in
and out (slapping of doors or leaving them
open), of the very same attendants when

ESSAYS

457

he is getting a little better, and you will
confess that from the bed of sickness
(throne, let me rather call it) to the elbow-
chair of convalescence is a fall from dig-
nity amounting to a deposition.

How convalescence shrinks a man back
co his pristine stature ! Where is now the
space which he occupied so lately, in his
own, in the family's, eye?

The scene of his regalities, his sick room,
which was his presence chamber, where he
lay and acted his despotic fancies, how is
it reduced to a common bedroom! The
trimness of the very bed has something
pretty and unmeaning about it. It is
made every day. How unlike to that
wavy, many furrowed, oceanic surface
which it presented so short a time since,
when to make it was a service not to be
thought of at oftener than three or four
day revolutions, when the patient was
with pain and grief to be lifted for a little
while out of it, to submit to the encroach-
ments of unwelcome neatness and decen-
cies which his shaken frame deprecated;
then to be lifted into it again for another
three or four days' respite, to flounder it
out of shape again, while every fresh fur-
row was an historical record of some shift-
ing posture, some uneasy turning, some
seeking for a little ease, and the shrunken
skin scarce told a truer story than the
crumpled coverlid.

Hushed are those mysterious sighs,
those groans, so much more awful while
we knew not from what caverns of vast
hidden suffering they proceeded. The
Lernean pangs are quenched. The riddle
of sickness is solved, and Philoctetes is
become an ordinary personage.

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's
dream of greatness survives in the still
lingering visitations of the medical at-
tendant. But how is he, too, changed
with everything else? Can this be he,

this man of news, of chat, of anecdote,
of everything but physic; can this be he
who so lately came between the patient
and his cruel enemy as on some solemn
embassy from nature, erecting herself
into a high mediating party? Pshaw!
'tis some old woman.

Farewell with him all that made sickness
pompous, the spell that hushed the house-
hold, the desert-like stillness felt through-
out its inmost chambers, the mute atten-
dance, the inquiry by looks, the still
softer delicacies of self -attention, the sole
and single eye of distemper alonely fixed
upon itself world- thoughts excluded, the
man a world unto himself , his own theater :

What a speck is he dwindled into!

In this flat swamp of convalescence,
left by the ebb of sickness, yet far enough
from the terra firma of established health,
your note, dear Editor, reached me, re-
questing an article. In Articulo Mortis,
thought I; but it is something hard, and
the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved
me. The summons, unseasonable as it
appeared, seemed to link me on again to
the petty businesses of life, which I had
lost sight of, a gentle call to activity
however trivial, a wholesome weaning
from that preposterous dream of self-
absorption, the puffy state of sickness, in
which I confess to have lain so long, insen-
sible to the magazines and monarchies
of the world alike, to its laws and to its
literature. The hypochondriac flatus is
subsiding; the acres which in imagination
I had spread over for the sick man
swells in the sole contemplation of his
single sufferings till he becomes a Tityus
to himself are wasting to a span, and
for the giant of self-importance, which I
was so lately, you have me once again in
my natural pretensions, the lean and
meager figure of your insignificant essayist.

458

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

Schopenhauer was the chief exponent of philosophical pessimism during the nineteenth century.
This translation from the German was made by Mrs. Rudolf Dircks.

ON THINKING FOR ONESELF

THE largest library in disorder is not so
useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the
same way the greatest amount of knowl-
edge, if it has not been worked out in
one's own mind, is of less value than a
much smaller amount that has been fully
considered. For it is only when a man
combines what he knows from all sides,
and compares one truth with another,
that he completely realizes his own knowl-
edge and gets it into his power. A man
can only think over what he knows, there-
fore he should learn something; but a man
only knows what he has pondered.

A man can apply himself of his own
free will to reading and learning, while he
cannot to thinking. Thinking must be
kindled like a fire by a draught and sus-
tained by some kind of interest in the
subject. This interest may be either of a
purely objective nature or it may be
merely subjective. The latter exists in
matters concerning us personally, but
objective interest is only to be found in
heads that think by nature, and to whom
thinking is as natural as breathing; but
they are very rare. This is why there is
so little of it in most men of learning.

The difference between the effect that
thinking for oneself and that reading has
on the mind is incredibly great; hence it is
continually developing that original dif-
ference in minds which induces one man to
think and another to read. Reading
forces thoughts upon the mind which
are as foreign and heterogeneous to the
bent and mood hi which it may be for the
moment, as the seal is to the wax on which
it stamps its imprint. The mind thus
suffers total compulsion from without; it
has first this and first that to think about,
for which it has at the time neither in-
stinct nor liking.

On the other hand, when a man thinks

for himself he follows his own impulse,
which either his external surroundings or
some kind of recollection has determined
at the moment. His visible surroundings
do not leave upon his mind one single
definite thought as reading does, but
merely supply him with material and
occasion to think over what is in keeping
with his nature and present mood. This
is why much reading robs the mind of all
elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under
a continuous, heavy weight. If a man
does not want to think, the safest plan is
to take up a book directly he has a spare
moment.

This practice accounts for the fact that
learning makes most men more stupid
and foolish than they are by nature,
and prevents their writings from being a
success; they remain, as Pope has said,

"For ever reading, never to be read." Dunciad,
iii. 194.

Men of learning are those who have read
the contents of books. Thinkers, gen-
iuses, and those who have enlightened
the world and furthered the race of men,
are those who have made direct use of
the book of the world.

Indeed, it is only a man's own funda-
mental thoughts that have truth and life
in them. For it is these that he really
and completely understands. To read
the thoughts of others is like taking the
remains of some one else's meal, like put-
ting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The thought we read is related to the
thought which rises in us, as the fossilized
impress of a prehistoric plant is to a plant
budding out in spring.

Reading is merely a substitute for one's
own thoughts. A man allows his thoughts
to be put into leading-strings.

Further, many books serve only to show
how many wrong paths there are, and how
widely a man may stray if he allows him-

ESSAYS

459

self to be led by them. But he who is
guided by his genius, that is to say, he who
thinks for himself, who thinks voluntarily
and rightly, possesses the compass where-
with to find the right course. A man,
therefore, should only read when the
source of his own thoughts stagnates;
which is often the case with the best of
minds.

It is sin against the Holy Spirit to
frighten away one's own original thoughts
by taking up a book. It is the same as a
man flying from Nature to look at a mu-
seum of dried plants, or to study a beauti-
ful landscape in copperplate. A man at
times arrives at a truth or an idea after
spending much time in thinking it out for
himself, linking together his various
thoughts, when he might have found the
same thing in a book; it is a hundred
times more valuable if he has acquired it
by thinking it out for himself. For it is
only by his thinking it out for himself
that it enters as an integral part, as a
living member into the whole system of
his thought, and stands in complete
and firm relation with it; that it is funda-
mentally understood with all its conse-
quences, and carries the color, the shade,
the impress of his own way of thinking;
and comes at the very moment, just as the
necessity for it is felt, and stands fast and
cannot be forgotten. This is the perfect
application, nay, interpretation of Goethe's

"Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast
Erwirb es um es zu besitzen."

The man who thinks for himself learns
the authorities for his opinions only later
on, when they serve merely to strengthen
both them and himself; while the book-
philosopher starts from the authorities
and other people's opinions, therefrom
constructing a whole for himself; so that
he resembles an automaton, whose com-
position we do not understand. The
other man, the man who thinks for him-
self, on the other hand, is like a living man
as made by nature. His mind is impreg-
nated from without, which then bears
and brings forth its child. Truth that
has been merely learned adheres to us like

an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen
nose, or at best like one made out of an-
other's flesh; truth which is acquired by
thinking for oneself is like a natural mem-
ber: it alone really belongs to us. Here
we touch upon the difference between the
thinking man and the mere man of learn-
ing. Therefore the intellectual acquire-
ments of the man who thinks for himself
are like a fine painting that stands out full
of life, that has its light and shade correct,
the tone sustained, and perfect harmony
of color. The intellectual attainments of
the merely learned man, on the contrary,
resemble a big palette covered with every
color, at most systematically arranged,
but without harmony, relation, and
meaning.

Reading is thinking with some one else's
head instead of one's own. But to think
for oneself is to endeavor to develop a
coherent whole, a system, even if it is not
a strictly complete one. Nothing is more
harmful than, by dint of continual
reading, to strengthen the current of
other people's thoughts. These thoughts,
springing from different minds, belonging
to different systems, bearing different
colors, never flow together of themselves
into a unity of thought, knowledge, in-
sight, or conviction, but rather cram the
head with a Babylonian confusion of
tongues; consequently the mind becomes
overcharged with them and is deprived
of all clear insight and almost disorganized.
This condition of things may often be dis-
cerned in many men of learning, and it
makes them inferior in sound under-
standing, correct judgment, and practical
tact to many illiterate men, who, by the
aid of experience, conversation, and a
little reading, have acquired a little
knowledge from without and made it
always subordinate to and incorporated
it with their own thoughts.

The scientific thinker also does this to
a much greater extent. Although he
requires much knowledge and must read
a great deal, his mind is nevertheless
strong enough to overcome it all, to assim-
ilate it, to incorporate it with the system of
his thoughts, and to subordinate it to the

460

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

organic relative unity of his insight, which
is vast and evergrowing. By this means
his own thought, like the bass in an organ,
always takes the lead in everything and is
never deadened by other sounds, as is the
case with purely antiquarian minds; where
all sorts of musical passages, as it were,
run into each other, and the fundamental
tone is entirely lost.

The people who have spent their lives
in reading and acquired their wisdom out
of books resemble those who have ac-
quired exact information of a country
from the descriptions of many travellers.
These people can relate a great deal
about many things; but at heart they have
no connected, clear, sound knowledge of
the condition of the country. While
those who have spent their life in thinking
are like the people who have been to that
country themselves; they alone really
know what it is they are saying, know
the subject in its entirety, and are quite
at home in it.

The ordinary book-philosopher stands
in the same relation to a man who thinks
.for himself as an eye-witness does to the
historian; he speaks from his own direct
comprehension of the subject.

Therefore all who think for themselves
hold at bottom much the same views;
when they differ it is because they hold
different points of view, but when these
do not alter the matter they all say
the same thing. They merely express
what they have grasped from an objective
point of view. I have frequently hesi-
tated to give passages to the public be-
cause of their paradoxical nature, and
afterwards to my joyful surprise have
found the same thoughts expressed in the
works of great men of long ago.

The book-philosopher, on the other
hand, relates what one man has said and
another man meant, and what a third
has objected to, and so on. He compares,
weighs, criticizes, and endeavors to get
at the truth of the thing, and in this way
resembles the critical historian. For in-
stance, he will try to find out whether
Leibnitz was not for some time in his life
a follower of Spinoza, etc. The curious

student will find striking examples of what
I mean in Herbart's "Analytical Eluc
dationof Morality and Natural Right,"anfl
in his "Letters on Freedom." It surpris; i
us that such a man should give himself s->
much trouble; for it is evident that if h
had fixed his attention on the matter he
would soon have attained his object by
thinking a little for himself.

But there is a small difficulty to over-
come; a thing of this kind does not depend
upon our own will. One can sit down at
any time and read, but not think. It is
with thoughts as with men: we cannot al-
ways summon them at pleasure, but must
wait until they come. Thought about a
subject must come of its own accord by a
happy and harmonious union of external
motive with mental temper and applica-
tion; and it is precisely that which never
seems to come to these people.

One has an illustration of this in matters
that concern our personal interest. If we
have to come to a decision on a thing of
this kind we cannot sit down at any parti-
cular moment and thrash out the reasons
and arrive at a decision; for often at such
a time our thoughts cannot be fixed, but
will wander off to other things; a dislike
to the subject is sometimes responsible
for this. We should not use force, but
wait until the mood appears of itself; it
frequently comes unexpectedly and even
repeats itself; the different moods which
possess us at the different times throwing
another light on the matter. It is this
long process which is understood by a
ripe resolution. For the task of making
up our mind must be distributed; much
that has been previously overlooked oc-
curs to us; the aversion also disappears,
for, after examining the matter closer, it
seems much more tolerable than it was at
first sight.

And hi theory it is just the same: a man
must wait for the right moment; even the
greatest mind is not always able to think
for itself at all times. Therefore it is
advisable for it to use its spare moments
in reading, which, as has been said, is a
substitute for one's own thought; in this
way material is imported to the mind by

ESSAYS

461

letting another think for us, although it is
alwavs in a way which is different from our
own. For this reason a man should not
read too much, in order that his mind does
not become accustomed to the substitute,
and consequently even forget the matter
in question; that it may not get used to
walking in paths that have already been
trodden, and by following a foreign course
of thought forget its own. Least of all
should a man for the sake of reading en-
tirely withdraw his attention from the
real world: as the impulse and temper
which lead one to think for oneself pro-
ceed oftener from it than from reading;
for it is the visible and real world in its
primitiveness and strength that is the
natural subject of the thinking mind, and
is able more easily than anything else to
rouse it. After these considerations it will
not surprise us to find that the thinking
man can easily be distinguished from the
book-philosopher by his marked earnest-
ness, directness, and originality, the per-
sonal conviction of all his thoughts and
expressions: the book-philosopher, on the
other hand, has everything second-hand;
his ideas are like a collection of old rags
obtained anyhow; he is dull and pointless,
resembling a copy of a copy. His style,
which is full of conventional, nay, vulgar
phrases and current terms, resembles a
small state where there is a circulation of
foreign money because it coins none of its
own.

Mere experience can as little as reading
take the place of thought. Mere empiri-
cism bears the same relation to thinking
as eating to digestion and assimilation.
When experience boasts that it alone, by
its discoveries, has advanced human knowl-
edge, it is as though the mouth boasted
that it was its work alone to maintain the
body.

The works of all really capable minds
are distinguished from all other works
by a character of decision and definite-
ness, and, in consequence, of lucidity and
clearness. This is because minds like
these know definitely and clearly what they
wish to express whether it be in prose,
in verse, or in music. Other minds are

wanting in this decision and clearness,
and therefore may be instantly recognized.

The characteristic sign of a mind of the
highest standard is the directness of its
judgment. Everything it utters is the
result of thinking for itself; this is shown
everywhere in the way it gives expression
to its thoughts. Therefore it is, like a
prince, an imperial director in the realm
of intellect. All other minds are mere
delegates, as may be seen by their style,
which has no stamp of its own.

Hence every true thinker for himself is
so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and
recognizes nobody above him. His judg-
ments, like the decrees of a monarch,
spring from his own sovereign power and
proceed directly from himself. He takes
as little notice of authority as a monarch
does of a command; nothing is valid unless
he has himself authorized it. On the
other hand, those of vulgar minds, whc
are swayed by all kinds of current opin-
ions, authorities, and prejudices, are like
the people which in silence obey the law
and commands.

The people who are so eager and impa-
tient to settle disputed questions, by bring-
ing forward authorities, are really glad
when they can place the understanding
and Insight of some one else in the field in
place of their own, which are deficient.
Their number is legion. For, as Seneca
says, " Unusquisque tnavult credere, quam
judicare"

The weapon they commonly use in their
controversies is that of authorities: they
strike each other with it, and whoever is
drawn into the fray will do well not to de-
fend himself with reason and arguments;
for against a weapon of this kind they are
like horned Siegfrieds, immersed hi a flood
of incapacity for thinking and judging.
They will bring forward their authorities
as an argumentum ad verecundiam and then
cry victoria.

In the realm of reality, however fair,
happy, and pleasant it may prove to be,
we always move controlled by the law of
gravity, which we must be unceasingly
overcoming. While in the realm of
thought we are disembodied spirits, un-

462

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

controlled by the law of gravity and free
from penury.

This is why there is no happiness on
earth like that which at the propitious
moment a fine and fruitful mind finds in
itself.

The presence of a thought is like the
presence of our beloved. We imagine we
shall never forget this thought, and that
this loved one could never be indifferent to
us. But out of sight out of mind! The
finest thought runs the risk of being irre-
vocably forgotten if it is not written down,
and the dear one of being forsaken if we
do not marry her.

There are many thoughts which are
valuable to the man who thinks them;
but out of them only a few which possess
strength to produce either repercussion or
reflex action, that is, to win the reader's
sympathy after they have been written
down. It is what a man has thought
out directly for himself that alone has
true value. Thinkers may be classed as
follows: those who, in the first place, think
for themselves, and those who think
directly for others. The former thinkers
are the genuine, they think for themselves
in both senses of the word; they are the
true philosophers; they alone are in earnest.
Moreover, the enjoyment and happiness
of their existence consist in thinking. The
others are the sophists; they wish to seem,
and seek their happiness in what they
hope to get from other people; their
earnestness consists in this. To which
of these two classes a man belongs is
soon seen by his whole method and man-
ner. Lichtenberg is an example of the
first class, while Herder obviously be-
longs to the second.

When one considers how great and how
close to us the problem of existence is,
this equivocal, tormented, fleeting, dream-
like existence so great and so close that
as soon as one perceives it, it overshadows

and conceals all other problems and aims;
and when one sees how all men with
a few and rare exceptions are not clearly
conscious of the problem, nay, do not
even seem to see it, but trouble themselves
about everything else rather than this,
and live on taking thought only for the
present day and the scarcely longer span
of theu* own personal future, while they
either expressly give the problem up or
are ready to agree with it, by the aid of
some system of popular metaphysics,
and are satisfied with this; when one, I
say, reflects upon this, so may one be
of the opinion that man is a thinking being
only in a very remote sense, and not
feel any special surprise at any trait of
thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather,
that the intellectual outlook of the normal
man indeed surpasses that of the brute,
whose whole existence resembles a con-
tinual present without any conscious-
ness of the future or the past but not
to such an extent as one is wont to sup-
pose.

And corresponding to this, we find in
the conversation of most men that their
thoughts are cut up as small as chaff,
making it impossible for them to spin out
the thread of their discourse to any
length. If this world were peopled by
really thinking beings, noise of every kind
would not be so universally tolerated, as
indeed the most horrible and aimless form
of it is. If Nature had intended man to
think she would not have given him
ears, or, at any rate, she would have
furnished them with airtight flaps like
the bat, which for this reason is to be
envied. But, in truth, man is like the
rest, a poor animal, whose powers are
calculated only to maintain him during
his existence; therefore he requires to
have his ears always open to announce
of themselves, by night as by day, the
approach of the pursuer.

ESSAYS

463

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

Carlyle's fear of a materialized democracy, built on a foundation of industrial science wholly lack-
ing in spiritual values, led him to seek the strong man, or Hero, who might check the fearful waste of
modern life and harmonize the conflicting elements of modern society. In " Past and Present " he en
deavors to paint by way of contrast the ideal monastic community of the Middle Ages and the ugliness
misery, and sordidness of modern industry.

PAST AND PRESENT
BOOK m

CHAPTER X
PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT

ONE thing I do know: Never, on this
Earth, was the relation of man to man
long carried on by Cash-payment alone.
If, at any time, a philosophy of Laissez-
faire, Competition and Supply-and-de-
mand, start up as the exponent of human
relations, expect that it will soon end.

Such philosophies will arise: for man's
philosophies are usually the "supple-
ment of his practice;" some ornamental
Logic-varnish, some outer skin of Ar-
ticulate intelligence, with which he strives
to render his dumb Instinctive Doings
presentable when they are done. Such
philosophies will arise; be preached
as Mammon- Gospels, the ultimate Evan-
gel of the World; be believed with what is
called belief, with much superficial bluster,
and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in
its way; but they are ominous gospels!
They are the sure and even swift, fore-
runner of great changes. Expect that
the old System of Society is done, is dying
and fallen into dotage, when it begins to
rave in that fashion. Most Systems that
I have watched the death of, for the last
three thousand years, have gone just so.
The Ideal, the True and Noble that was
in them having faded out, and nothing
now remaining but naked Egoism, vul-
turous Greediness, they cannot live; they
are bound and inexorably ordained by the
oldest Destinies, Mothers of the Universe,
to die. Curious enough; they thereupon,
as I have pretty generally noticed, devised
some light comfortable kind of "wine-and-
walnuts philosophy" for themselves, this
of Supply-and-demand or another; and

keep saying, during hours of mastication
and rumination, which they call hours
of meditation: "Soul, take thy ease; it
is all well that thou art a vulture-soul;"
and pangs of dissolution come upon
them, oftenest before they are aware!

Cash-payment never was, or could ex-
cept for a few years be, the union-bond
of man to man. Cash never yet paid
one man fully his deserts to another; nor
could it, nor can it, now or henceforth
to the end of the world. I invite his
Grace of Castle-Rackrent to reflect on
this; does he think that a Land Aris-
tocracy when it becomes a Land Auction-
eership can have long to live? Or that
Sliding-scales will increase the vital
stamina of it? The indomitable Plug-
son too, of the respected Firm of Plug-
son, Hunks and Company, in St. Dolly
Undershot, is invited to reflect on this;
for to him also it will be new, perhaps
even newer. Bookkeeping by double
entry is admirable, and records several
things in an exact manner. But the
Mother-Destinies also keep their Tablets;
in Heaven's Chancery also there goes on
a recording; and things, as my Moslem
friends say, are "written on the iron
leaf."

Your Grace and Plugson, it is like, go
to Church occasionally: did you never in
vacant moments, with perhaps a dull par-
son droning to you, glance into your
New Testament, and the cash-account
stated four times over, by a kind of quad-
ruple entry, in the four Gospels there?
I consider that a cash-account, and bal-
ance-statement of work done and wages
paid, worth attending to. Precisely such,
though on a smaller scale, go on at all
moments under this Sun; and the state-
ment and balance of them in the Plugson
Ledgers and on the Tablets of Heaven's

464

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Chancery are discrepant exceedingly;
which ought really to teach, and to have
long since taught, an indomitable common-
sense Plugson of Undershot, much more
an unattackable wwcommon-sense Grace
of Rackrent, a thing or two! In brief,
we shall have to dismiss the Cash- Gospel
rigorously into its own place: we shall have
to know, on the threshold, that either
there is some infinitely deeper Gospel,
subsidiary, explanatory and daily and
hourly corrective, to the Cash one; or
else that the Cash one itself and all
others are fast traveling!

For all human things do require to
have an Ideal in them; to have some
Soul in them, as we said, were it only
to keep the Body unputrefied. And
\wonderful it is to see how the Ideal or
Soul, place it in what ugliest Body you
may, will irradiate said Body with its
own nobleness; will gradually, inces-
santly, mold, modify, new-form or re-
form said ugliest Body, and make it at
last beautiful, and to a certain degree
divine! Oh, if you could dethrone that
Brute-god Mammon, and put a Spirit-god
in his place! One way or other, he must
and will have to be dethroned.

Fighting, for example, as I often say
to myself, Fighting with steel murder-
tools is surely a much uglier operation
than Working, take it how you will.
Yet even of Fighting, in religious Ab-
bot Samson's days, see what a Feudal-
ism there had grown, a "glorious Chiv-
alry," much besung down to the present
day. Was not that one of the "impos-
siblest" things? Under the sky is no
uglier spectacle than two men with
clenched teeth, and hell-fire eyes, hack-
ing one another's flesh, converting pre-
cious living bodies, and priceless liv-
ing souls, into nameless masses of pu-
trescence, useful only for turnip-manure.
How did a Chivalry ever come out of
that; how anything that was not hideous,
scandalous, infernal? It will be a question
worth considering by and by.
il I remark, for the present, only two
''things: first, that the Fighting itself was

not, as we rashly suppose it, a Fighting
without cause, but more or less with
cause. Man is created to fight; he is
perhaps best of all definable as a born
soldier; his life "a battle and a march,"
under the right Gjeneral. It is forever
indispensable for a man to fight: now
with Necessity, with Barrenness, Scar-
city, with Puddles, Bogs, tangled For-
ests, unkempt Cotton; now also with
the hallucinations of his poor fellow
Men. Hallucinatory visions rise in the
head of my poor fellow man; make him
claim over me rights which are not his.
All fighting, as we noticed long ago,
is the dusty conflict of strengths, each
thinking itself the strongest, or, in other
words, the justest; of Mights which
do in the long-run, and forever will in
this just Universe in the long-run, mean
Rights. In conflict the perishable part
of them, beaten sufficiently, flies off into
dust; this process ended, appears the im-
perishable, the true and exact.

And now let us remark a second thing:
how, in these baleful operations, a noble
devout-hearted Chevalier will comport
himself, and an ignoble godless Bucanier
and Chactaw Indian. Victory is the aim
of each. But deep in the heart of the
noble man it lies forever legible, that
as an Invisible Just God made him, so
will and must God's Justice and this only,
were it never so invisible, ultimately
prosper in all controversies and enter-
prises and battles whatsoever. What an
Influence; ever-present, like a Soul in
the rudest Caliban of a body; like a ray
of Heaven, and illuminative creative
Fiat-Lux, in the wastest terrestrial Chaos !
Blessed divine Influence, traceable even
in the horror of Battlefields and gar-
ments rolled in blood: how it ennobles
even the Battlefield; and, in place of a
Chactaw Massacre, makes it a Field of
Honor! A Battlefield too, is great. Con-
sidered well, it is a kind of Quintessence
of Labor; Labor distilled into its utmost
concentration; the significance of years
of it compressed into an hour. Here too
thou shalt be strong, and not in muscle
only, if thou wouldst prevail. Here too

ESSAYS

465

thou shalt be strong of heart, noble of
soul; thou shalt dread no pain or death,
thou shalt not love ease or life; in rage,
thou shalt remember mercy, justice;
thou shalt be a Knight and not a Chactaw,
if thou wouldst prevail! It is the rule of
all battles, against hallucinating fellow
Men, against unkempt Cotton,, or what-
soever battles they may be, which a man
in this world has to fight.

Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian
Seas with blood, piles his decks with
plunder; approves himself the expertest
Seaman, the daringest Seafighter: but
he gains no lasting victory, lasting victory
is not possible for him. Not, had he
fleets larger than the combined British
Navy all united with him in bucaniering.
He, once for all, cannot prosper in his
duel. He strikes down his man: yes;
but his man, or his man's representative,
has no notion to He struck down; neither,
though slain ten times, will he keep so
lying; nor has the Universe any notion
to keep him so lying! On the Contrary,
the Universe and he have, at all moments,
all manner of motives to start up again,
and desperately fight again. Your Na-
poleon is flung out, at last, to St. Helena;
the latter end of him sternly compen-
sating the beginning. The Bucanier
strikes down a man, a hundred or a mil-
lion men: but what profits it? He has
one enemy never to be struck down; nay
two enemies: Mankind and the Maker of
Men. On the great scale or on the
small, in fighting of men or fighting of
difficulties, I will not embark my venture
with Howel Davies: it is not the Buca-
nier, it is the Hero only that can gain
victory, that can do more than seem to
succeed. These things will deserve medi-
tating; for they apply to all battle and
soldiership, all struggle and effort what-
soever in this Fight of Life. It is a poor
Gospel, Cash-Gospel or whatever name
it have, that does not, with clear tone,
uncontradictable, carrying conviction to all
hearts, forever keep men in mind of these
things.

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plug-
son of Undershot has, in a great degree,

forgotten them; as, alas, all the world
has; as, alas, our very Dukes and Soul-
Overseers have, whose special trade it
was to remember them! Hence these
tears. Plugson, who has indomitably
spun Cotton merely to gain thousands
of pounds, I have to call as yet a Buc-
anier and Chactaw; till there come
something better, still more indomitable
from him. His hundred Thousand-pound
Notes, if there be nothing other, are to
me but as the hundred Scalps in a Chac-
taw wigwam. The blind Plugson: he
was a Captain of Industry, born member
of the Ultimate genuine Aristocracy of
this Universe, could he have known it!
These thousand men that span and toiled
round him, they were a regiment whom
he had enlisted, man by man; to make
war on a very genuine enemy: Bareness
of back, and disobedient Cotton-fiber,
which will not, unless forced to it, con-
sent to cover bare backs. Here is a most
genuine enemy; over whom all creatures
will wish him victory. He enlisted his
thousand men; said to them, "Come,
brothers, let us have a dash at Cotton!"
They follow with cheerful shout; they
gain such a victory over Cotton as the
Earth has to admire and clap hands at:
but, alas, it is yet only of the Bucanier
or Chactaw sort, as good as no victory!
Foolish Plugson of St. Dolly Undershot:
does he hope to become illustrious by
hanging up the scalps in his wigwam, the
hundred thousands at his banker's, and
saying, Behold my scalps? Why, Plug-
son, even thy own host is all in mutiny:
Cotton is conquered; but the "bare
backs" are worse covered than ever!
Indomitable Plugson, thou must cease to
be a Chactaw; thou and others; thou thy-
self, if no other!

Did William the Norman Bastard,
or any of his Taillefers, Ironcutters, man-
age so? Ironcutter, at the end of the cam-
paign, did not turn-off his thousand
fighters, but said to them: "Noble
fighters, this is the land we have gained;
be I Lord in it, what we will call Law-
ward, maintainer and keeper of Heaven's
Laws: be I Law-ward, or in brief ortho-

466

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

epy Lord in it, and be ye Loyal Men
around me in it; and we will stand by
one another, as soldiers round a captain,
for again we shall have need of one
another!" Plugson, bucanier-like, says
to them: "Noble spinners, this is the
Hundred Thousand we have gained,
wherein I mean to dwell and plant vine-
yards; the hundred thousand is mine, the
three and sixpence daily was yours: adieu,
noble spinners; drink my health with
this groat each, which I give you over and
above!" The entirely unjust Captain of
Industry, say I; not Chevalier, but Buc-
anier! "Commercial Law" does indeed
acquit him; asks, with wide eyes, What
else? So too Howel Davies asks, Was it
not according to the strictest Bucanier
Custom? Did I depart in any jot or
tittle from the Laws of the Bucaniers?

After all, money, as they say, is mi-
raculous. Plugson wanted victory; as
Chevaliers and Bucaniers, and all men
alike do. He found money recognized,
by the whole world with one assent, as
the true symbol, exact equivalent and
synonym of victory; and here we have
him, a grimbrowed, indomitable Bucanier,
coming home to us with a "victory,"
which the whole world is ceasing to clap
hands at! The whole world, taught
somewhat impressively, is beginning to
recognize that such victory is but half
a victory; and that now, if it please
the Powers, we must have the other
half!

Money is miraculous. What miracu-
lous facilities has it yielded, will it yield
us; but also what never-imagined con-
fusions, obscurations has it brought in;
down almost to total extinction of the
moral-sense in large masses of mankind!
"Protection of property," of what is
"mine," means with most men protection
of money, the thing which, had I a
thousand padlocks over it, is least of all
mine; is, in a manner, scarcely worth
calling mine! The symbol shall be held
sacred, defended everywhere with tip-
staves, ropes, and gibbets; the thing sig-
nified shall be composedly cast to the
dogs. A human being who has worked

with human beings clears all scores with
them, cuts himself with triumphant com-
pleteness forever loose from them, by
paying down certain shillings and pounds.
Was it not the wages, I promised you?
There they are, to the last sixpence,
according to the Laws of the Bucaniers!
Yes, indeed; and, at such times, it
becomes imperatively necessary to ask all
persons, bucaniers and others, Whether
these same respectable Laws of the
Bucaniers are written on God's eternal
Heavens at all, on the inner Heart of
Man at all; or on the respectable Buca-
nier Logbook merely, for the convenience
of bucaniering merely? What a ques-
tion; whereat Westminster Hall shud-
ders to its driest parchment; and on the
dead wigs each particular horsehair stands
on end!

The Laws of Laissez-faire, O West-
minster, the laws of industrial Captain
and industrial Soldier, how much more
of idle Captain and industrial Soldier,
will need to be remodeled, and modified,
and rectified in a hundred and a hundred
ways, and not in the Sliding-scale di-
rection, but in the totally opposite one!
With two million industrial Soldiers al-
ready sitting in Bastilles, and five mil-
lion pining on potatoes, methinks West-
minster cannot begin too soon! A man
has other obligations laid on him, in
God's Universe, than the payment of
cash: these also Westminster, if it will
continue to exist and have board-wages,
must contrive to take some charge of:
by Westminster or by another, they
must and will be taken charge of; be,
with whatever difficulty, got articulated,
got enforced, and to a certain approxi-
mate extent put in practice. And, as
I say, it cannot be too soon! For Mam-
monism, left to itself, has become Midas-
eared; and with all its gold mountains,
sits starving for want of bread: and
Dilettantism with its partridge-nets, in
this extremely earnest Universe of ours,
is playing somewhat too high a game.
"A man by the very look of him promises
so much": yes; and by the rent-roll of him
does he promise nothing?

ESSAYS

467

Alas, what a business will this be,
which our Continental friends, groping
this long while somewhat absurdly about
it and about it, call "Organization of
Labor"; which must be taken out of the
hand of absurd windy persons, and put
into the hands of wise, laborious, modest
and valiant men, to begin with it straight-
way; to proceed with it, and succeed in
it more and more, if Europe, at any rate
if England, is to continue habitable much
longer. Looking at the kind of most
noble Corn-Law Dukes or Practical Duces
we have, and also of right reverend Soul-
Overseers, Christian Spiritual Duces "on
a minimum of four thousand five hundred,"
one's hopes are a little chilled. Courage,
nevertheless; there are many brave men in
England! My indomitable Plugson,
nay is there not even in thee some hope?
Thou art hitherto a Bucanier, as it was
written and prescribed for thee by an
evil world: but in that grim brow, in that
indomitable heart which can conquer
Cotton, do there not perhaps lie other ten-
times nobler conquests?

CHAPTER XI
LABOR

FOR there is a perennial nobleness, and
even sacredness, in Work. Were he
never so benighted, forgetful of his high
calling, there is always hope in a man that
actually and earnestly works: in Idleness
alone is there perpetual despair. Work,
never so Mammonish, mean, is in com-
munication with Nature; the real desire
to get Work done will itself lead one more
and more to truth, to Nature's appoint-
ments and regulations, which are truth.

The latest Gospel in this world is,
Know thy work and do it. "Know thy
self": long enough has that poor "self"
of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never
get to "know" it, I believe! Think it not
thy business, this of knowing thyself;
thou art an unknowable individual: know
what thou canst work at; and work at it,
like a Hercules! That will be thy better
plan.

It has been written, "an endless signifi-

cance lies in Work"; a man perfects him-
self by working. Foul jungles are cleared
away, fair seedfields rise instead, and
stately cities; and withal the man him-
self first ceases to be a jungle and foul
unwholesome desert thereby. Consider
how, even in the meanest sorts of Labor,
the whole soul of a man is composed into
a kind of real harmony, the instant he
sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire,
Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair
itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguer-
ing the soul of the poor dayworker, as of
every man: but he bends himself with free
valor against his task, and all these are
stilled, all these shrink murmuring far
off into their caves. The man is now a
man. The blessed glow of Labor in him,
is it not as purifying fire, wherein all
poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke
itself there is made bright blessed flame!
Destiny, on the whole, has no other
way of cultivating us. A formless Chaos,
once set it revolving, grows round and
ever rounder; ranges itself, by mere force
of gravity, into strata, spherical courses;
is no longer a Chaos, but a round com-
pacted World. What would become of
the Earth, did she cease to revolve? In
the poor old Earth, so long as she re-
volves, all inequalities, irregularities dis-
perse themselves; all irregularities are
incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou
looked on the Potter's wheel, one of the
venerablest objects; old as the Prophet
Ezechiel and far older? Rude lumps of
clay, how they spin themselves up, by
mere quick whirling, into beautiful cir-
cular dishes. And fancy the most assidu-
ous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced
to make dishes or rather amorphous
botches, by mere kneading and baking!
Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a
human soul that would rest and lie at
ease, that would not work and spin! Of
an idle unrevolving man the kindest
Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter
without wheel, can bake and knead noth-
ing other than a botch; let her spend on
him what expensive coloring, what gild-
ing and enameling she will, he is but a
botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging,

468

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cor-
nered, amorphous botch, a mere enam-
eled vessel of dishonor! Let the idle
think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work;
let him ask no other blessedness. He
has a work, a life-purpose; he has found
it, and will follow it! How, as a free-
flowing channel, dug and torn by noble
force through the sour mud-swamp of
one's existence, like an ever-deepening
river there, it runs and flows; draining
off the sour festering water, gradually
from the root of the remotest grass-
blade; making, instead of pestilential
swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its
clear-flowing stream. How blessed for
the meadow itself, let the stream and its
value be great or small! Labor is Life:
from the inmost heart of the Worker
rises his god-given Force, the sacred celes-
tial Life-essence breathed into him by
Almighty God; from his inmost heart
awakens him to all nobleness, to all
knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much
else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowl-
edge? The knowledge that will hold good
in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature
herself accredits that, says Yea to that.
Properly thou hast no other knowledge
but what thou hast got by working: the
the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowl-
edge; a thing to be argued of in schools,
a thing floating in the clouds, in endless,
logic-vortices, till we try it and fix it.
"Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended
by Action alone."

And again, hast thou valued Patience,
Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light;
readiness to own thyself mistaken, to
do better next time? All these, all
virtues, in wrestling with the dim brute
Powers of Fact, in ordering of thy fel-
lows in such wrestle, there and elsewhere
not at all, thou wilt continually learn.
Set down a brave Sir Christopher in the
middle of black ruined Stone-heaps, of
foolish unarchitectural Bishops, redtape
Officials, idle Nell-Gwyn Defenders of the
Faith; and see whether he will ever raise
a Paul's Cathedral out of all that, yea or

no! Rough, rude, contradictory are all
things and persons, from the mutinous
masons and Irish hodmen, up to the idle
Nell-Gwyn Defenders, to blustering red-
tape Officials, foolish unarchitectural Bish-
ops. All these things and persons are
there not for Christopher's sake and his
Cathedral's; they are there for their own
sake mainly! Christopher will have to
conquer and constrain all these, if he
be able. All these are against him.
Equitable Nature herself, who carries her
mathematics and architectonics not on the
face of her, but deep in the hidden heart
of her, Nature herself is but partially for
him; will be wholly against him, if he con-
strain her not ! His very money, where is it
to come from? The pious munificence of
England lies far-scattered, distant, un-
able to speak, and say, "I am here";
must be spoken to before it can speak.
Pious munificence, and all help, is so
silent, invisible like the gods; impedi-
ment, contradictions manifold are so
loud and near! O brave Sir Christopher,
trust thou in those notwithstanding, and
front all these; understand all these; by
valiant patience, noble effort, insight, by
man's-strength, vanquish and compel all
these, and, on the whole, strike down
victoriously the last topstone of that Paul's
Edifice; thy monument for certain cen-
turies, the stamp "Great Man" impressed
very legibly on Portland-stone there!

Yes, all manner of help, and pious re-
sponse from Men or Nature, is always
what we call silent; cannot speak or come
to light, till it be seen, till it be spoken
to. Every noble work is at first "im-
possible." In very truth, for every noble
work the possibilities will lie diffused
through Immensity; inarticulate, undis-
coverable except to faith. Like Gideon
thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the
door of thy tent; see whether under the
wide arch of Heaven there be any bounte-
ous moisture, or none. Thy heart and
life-purpose shall be as a miraculous
Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal
to Heaven: and from the kind Immensi-
ties, what from the poor unkind Localities
and town and country Parishes there

ESSAYS

469

never could, blessed dew-moisture to suf-
fice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature: work
is of a brave nature; which it is the aim
of all religion to be. All work of man
is as the swimmer's: a waste ocean threat-
ens to devour him; if he front it not
bravely, it will keep its word. By inces-
sant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke
and buffet of it, behold how it loyally
supports him, bears him as its conqueror
along. "It is so," says Goethe, "with all
things that man undertakes in this
world."

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king,
Columbus, my hero, royalest Sea-king of
all! it is no friendly environment this of
thine, in the waste deep waters; around
thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind
thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the
unpenetrated veil of Night. Brother,
these wild water-mountains, bounding
from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I
am told), are not entirely there on thy
behalf! Meseems they have other work
than floating thee forward: and the
huge Winds, that sweep from Ursa Major
to the Tropics and Equators, dancing
their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of
Chaos and Immensity, they care little
about filling rightly or filling wrongly the
small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this
cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art not
among articulate-speaking friends, my
brother; thou art among immeasurable
dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide
as the world here. Secret, far off, in-
visible to all hearts but thine, there lies
a help in them: see how thou wilt get at
that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the
mad Southwester spend itself, saving thy-
self by dextrous science of defense, the
while: valiantly, with swift decision, wilt
'thou strike in, when the favoring East,
the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of men
thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, de-
spondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage:
thou wilt swallow down complaint, unrea-
son, weariness, weakness of others and
thyself; how much wilt thou swallow
down! There shall be a depth of Silence
in thee, deeper than this Sea, which is

but ten miles deep: a Silence unsound-
able; known to God only. Thou shalt be
a Great Man. Yes, my World-Soldier,
thou of the World Marine-service, thou
wilt have to be greater than this tumul-
tuous unmeasured World here round thee
is; thou, in thy strong soul, as with
wrestler's arms, shalt embrace it, harness
it down; and make it bear thee on, to
new Americas, or whither God wills!

CHAPTER xm

DEMOCRACY

IF THE Serene Highnesses and Majesties
do not take note of that, then, as I per-
ceive, that will take note of itself! The
time for levity, insincerity, and idle
babble and play-acting, in all kinds, is
gone by; it is a serious, grave time. Old
long-vexed questions, not yet solved in
logical words or parliamentary laws, are
fast solving themselves in facts, some-,
what unblessed to behold! This largest 1
of questions, this question of Work and
Wages, which ought, had we heeded
Heaven's voice, to have begun two gene-
rations ago or more, cannot be delayed
longer without hearing Earth's voice.
"Labor" will verily need to be somewhat
"organized," as they say, God knows
with what difficulty. Man will actually
need to have his debts and earnings a
little better paid by man: which, let
Parliaments speak of them or be silent
of them, are eternally his due from man,
and cannot, without penalty and at length
not without death-penalty, be withheld.
How much ought to cease among us
straightway; how much ought to begin
straightway, while the hours yet are!

Truly they are strange results to which
this of leaving all to "Cash"; of quietly
shutting-up the God's Temple, and grad-
ually opening wide-open the Mammon's
Temple, with "Laissez-faire, and Every
man for himself," have led us in these
days! We have Upper, speaking Classes,
who indeed do "speak" as never man
spake before; the withered flimsiness, the
godless baseness and barrenness of whose
Speech might of itself indicate what kind

470

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

of Doing and practical Governing went
on under it! For speech is the gaseous
element out of which most kinds of Prac-
tice and Performance, especially all kinds
of moral Performance, condense them-
selves, and take shape; as the one is, so
will the other be. Descending, accord-
ingly, into the Dumb Class in its Stock-
port Cellars and Poor-Law Bastilles, have
we not to announce that they also are
hitherto unexampled in the History of
Adam's Posterity?

Life was never a May-game for men:
in all times the lot of the dumb millions
bora to toil was defaced with manifold
sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens,
avoidable and unavoidable; not play at
all, but hard work that made the sinews
sore and the heart sore. As bond-slaves,
vttlani, bordarii, sochemanni, nay indeed
as dukes, earls and kings, men were often-
times made weary of their life; and had to
say, in the sweat of their brow and of their
soul, Behold, it is not sport, it is grim
earnest, and our back can bear no more!
Who knows not what massacrings and
harryings there have been; grinding, long-
continuing, unbearable injustices, till the
heart had to rise in madness, and some
"Eu Sachsen, nimith euer sachses, You
Saxons, out with your gully-knives, then!"
You Saxons, some "arrestment," partial
"arrestment of the Knaves and Dastards"
has become indispensable! The page of
Dryasdust is heavy with such details.

And yet I will venture to believe that in
no time, since the beginnings of Society,
was the lot of those same dumb millions
of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is
even in the days now passing over us.
It is not to die, or even to die of hunger,
that makes a man wretched; many men
have died; all men must die, the last
exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain.
But it is to live miserable we know not
why; to work sore and yet gain noth-
ing; to be heart- worn, weary, yet isolated,
unrelated, girt-iri with a cold universal
Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our
life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, In-
finite Injustice, as in the accursed iron
belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and re-

mains forever intolerable to all men
whom God has made. Do we wonder at
French Revolutions, Chartisms, Revolts
of Three Days? The times, if we will
consider them, are really unexampled.

Never before did I hear of an Irish
Widow reduced to "prove her sisterhood
by dying of typhus-fever and infecting
seventeen persons," saying in such un-
deniable way, "You see I was your
sister!" Sisterhood, brotherhood, was
often forgotten; but not till the rise of
these ultimate Mammon and Shotbelt
Gospels did I ever see it so expressly
denied. If no pious Lord or Law-ward
would remember it, always some pious
Lady ("Hlaf-dig," Benefactress, "Loaf-
giveress," they say she is, blessings on
her beautiful heart!) was there, with mild
mother- voice and hand, to remember it;
some pious thoughtful Elder, what we
now call "Prester," Presbyter or "Priest,"
was there to put all men in mind of it,
in the name of the God who had made all.

Not even in Black Dahomey was it
ever, I think, forgotten to the typhus-
fever length. Mungo Park, resourceless,
had sunk down to die under the Negro
Village-Tree, a horrible White object
in the eyes of all. But in the poor Black
Woman and her daughter who stood
aghast at him, whose earthly wealth and
funded capital consisted of one small
Calabash of rice, there lived a heart
richer than Laissez-faire: they, with a
royal munificence, boiled their rice for
him; they sang all night to him, spinning
assiduous on their cotton distaffs, as he
lay to sleep: "Let us pity the poor white
man; no mother has he to fetch him milk,
no sister to grind him corn!" Thou poor
black Noble One, thou Lady too: did
not a God make thee too; was there not
in thee too something of a God!

Gurth, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon,
has been greatly pitied by Dryasdust and
others. Gurth, with the brass collar
round his neck, tending Cedric's pigs in
the glades of the wood, is not what I call
an exemplar of human felicity: but
Gurth, with the sky above him, with the

ESSAYS

free air and tinted boscage and umbrage
round him, and in him at least the cer-
tainty of supper and social lodging when
he came home; Gurth to me seems happy,
in comparison with many a Lancashire
and Buckinghamshire man of these days,
not born thrall of anybody! Gurth's
brass collar did not gall him: Cedric de-
served to be his master. The pigs were
Cedric's, but Gurth too would get his par-
ings of them. Gurth had the inexpress-
ible satisfaction of feeling himself related
indissolubly, though in a rude brass-collar
way, to his fellow-mortals in this Earth.
He had superiors, inferiors, equals.
Gurth is now "emancipated" long since;
has what we call "Liberty." Liberty, I
(Tarn told, is a divine thing. Liberty when
it becomes the "Liberty to die by starva-
tion" is not so divine!

Liberty? The true liberty of a man,
you would say, consisted in his finding
out, or being forced to find out the right
path, and to walk thereon. To learn, or
to be taught, what work he actually was
able for; and then by permission, per-
suasion, and even compulsion, to set
about doing of the same! That is his
true blessedness, honor, "liberty" and
maximum of wellbeing: if liberty be not
that, I for one have small care about
liberty. You do not allow a palpable
madman to leap over precipices; you
violate his liberty, you that are wise; and
keep him, were it in strait-waistcoats,
away from the precipices! Every stupid,
every cowardly and foolish man is but
a less palpable madman: his true liberty
were that a wiser man, that any and
every wiser man, could, by brass collars,
or in whatever milder or sharper way,
lay hold of him when he was going wrong,
and order and compel him to go a little
righter. O, if thou really art my Senior,
Seigneur, my Elder, Presbyter or Priest,
if thou art in very deed my Wiser, may a
beneficent instinct lead and impel thee
to "conquer" me, to command me! If
thou do know better than I what is good
and right, I conjure thee in the name of
God, force me to do it; were it by never
such brass collars, whips and handcuffs,

leave me not to walk over precipices!
That I have been called, by all the News-
papers, a "free man" will avail me little,
if my pilgrimage have ended in death and
wreck. O that the Newspaper had called
me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased
their sweet voices to name me, and I had
attained not death, but life! Liberty re-
quires new definitions.

A conscious abhorrence and intolerance
of Folly, of Baseness, Stupidity, Pol-
troonery and all that brood of things,
dwells deep in some men: still deeper in
others an wwconscious abhorrence and in-
tolerance, clothed moreover by the be-
neficent Supreme Powers in what stout
appetites, energies, egoisms so-called, are
suitable to it; these latter are your
Conquerors, Romans, Normans, Russians,
Indo-English; Founders of what we call
Aristocracies. Which indeed have they
not the most "divine right" to found;
being themselves very truly "Apta-roc,
BRAVEST, BEST; and conquering generally
a confused rabble of WORST, or at lowest,
clearly enough, of WORSE? I think their
divine right, tried, with affirmatory ver-
dict, in the greatest Law-Court known
to me, was good! A class of men who
are dreadfully exclaimed against by
Dryasdust; of whom nevertheless be-
neficent Nature has oftentimes had need;
and may, alas, again have need.

When, across the hundredfold poor
scepticisms, trivialisms and constitutional
cobwebberies of Dryasdust, you catch any
glimpse of a William the Conqueror, a
Tancred of Hauteville or such like, do
you not discern veritably some rude out-
line of a true God-made King; whom not
the Champion of England cased in tin,
but all Nature and the Universe were
calling to the throne? It is absolutely
necessary that he get thither. Nature
does not mean her poor Saxon children to
perish, of obesity, stupor or other malady,
as yet: a stern Ruler and Line of Rulers
therefore is called in, a stern but most
beneficent perpetual House-Surgeon is by
Nature herself called in, and even the
appropriate fees are provided for him!
Dryasdust talks lamentably about Here-

472

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ward and the Fen Counties; fate of Earl
Waltheof; Yorkshire and the North re-
duced to ashes: all which is undoubtedly
lamentable. But even Dryasdust ap-
prises me of one fact: "A child, in this
William's reign, might have carried a
purse of gold from end to end of Eng-
land." My erudite friend, it is a fact
which outweighs a thousand! Sweep
away thy constitutional, sentimental and
other cobwebberies; look eye to eye, if
thou still have any eye, in the face of this
big burly William Bastard: thou wilt see
a fellow of most flashing discernment,
of most strong lion-heart; in whom, as
it were, within a frame of oak and iron,
the gods have planted the soul of "a
man of genius"! Dost thou call that
nothing? I call it an immense thing!
Rage enough was in this Willelmus
Conquaestor, rage enough for his occa-
sions; and yet the essential element of
him, as of all such men, is not scorching
fire, but shining illuminative light. Fire
and light are strangely interchangeable;
nay, at bottom, I have found them differ-
ent forms of the same most godlike
"elementary substance" in our world: a
thing worth stating in these days. The
essential element of this Conquaestor is,
first of all, the most sun-eyed perception
of what is really what on this God's
Earth; which, thou wilt find, does mean
at bottom "Justice," and "Virtues" not a
few: Conformity to what the Maker
has seen good to make; that, I sup-
pose, will mean Justice and a Virtue or
two?

Dost thou think Willelmus Conquaestor
would have tolerated ten years' jargon,
one hour's jargon, on the propriety of
killing Cotton-manufactures by partridge
Corn-Laws? I fancy, this was not the
man to knock out of his night's rest with
nothing but a noisy bedlamism in your
mouth! "Assist us still better to bush
the partridges; strangle Plugson who
spins the shirts? "Par la Splendeur de

Dieti!" Dost thou think Willelmus

Conquaestor, in this new time, with
Steamengine Captains of Industry on one
hand of him, and Joe-Manton Captains

of Idleness on the other, would have
doubted which was really the BEST;
which did deserve strangling, and which
not?

I have a certain indestructible regard
for Willelmus Conquaestor. A resident
House-surgeon, provided by Nature for
her beloved English People, and even fur-
nished with the requisite fees, as I said;
for he by no means felt himself doing
Nature's work, this Willelmus, but his
own work exclusively! And his own
work withal it was; informed "par la
Splendeur de Dieu" I say, it is neces-
sary to get the work out of such a man,
however harsh that be! When a world,
not yet doomed for death, is rushing
down to ever-deeper Baseness and Confu-
sion, it is a dire necessity of Nature's to
bring in her ARISTOCRACIES, her BEST,
even by forcible methods. When their
descendants or representatives cease en-
tirely to be the Best, Nature's poor world
will very soon rush down again to Base-
ness; and it becomes a dire necessity of
nature's to cast them out. Hence French
Revolutions, Five-point Charters, Democ-
racies, and a mournful list of Etceteras,
in these our afflicted times.

To what extent Democracy has now
reached, how it advances irresistible with
ominous, ever-increasing speed, he that
will open his eyes on any province of
human affairs may discern. Democracy
is everywhere the inexorable demand of
these ages, swiftly fulfilling itself. From
the thunder of Napoleon battles, to the
jabbering of Open-vestry in St. Mary
Axe, all things announce Democracy.
A distinguished man, whom some of my
readers will hear again with pleasure,
thus writes to me what in these days he
notes from the Wahngasse of Weissnicht-
wo, where our London fashions seem to
be in full vogue. Let us hear the Herr
Teufelsdrockh again, were it but the
smallest word !

I "Democracy, which means despair of
^finding any Heroes to govern you, and
contented putting-up with the want of
them, alas, thou too, mein Lieber, seest
well how close it is of kin to Atheism^

ESSAYS

473

and other sad Isms: he who discovers
no God whatever, how shall he discover
Heroes, the visible Temples of God?
Strange enough meanwhile it is, to ob-
serve with what thoughtlessness, here in
our rigidly Conservative Country, men
rush into Democracy with full cry. Be-
yond doubt, his Excellenz the Titular-
Herr Ritter Kauderwalsch von Pferde-
fuss-Quacksalber, he our distinguished
Conservative Premier himself, and all
but the thicker-headed of his Party, dis-
cern Democracy to be inevitable as death,
and are even desperate of delaying it
much!

r "You cannot walk the streets without
beholding Democracy announce itself:
the very Tailor has become, if not prop-
Verly Sansculottic, which to him would be
ruinous, yet a Tailor unconsciously sym-
bolizing, and prophesying with his scis-
sors, the reign of Equality. What now is
our fashionable coat? A thing of super-
finest texture, of deeply meditated cut;
with Malines-lace cuffs; quilted with
gold; so that a man can carry, without
difficulty, an estate of land on his back?
Keineswegs, By no manner of means!
The Sumptuary Laws have fallen into
such a state of desuetude as was never
before seen. Our fashionable coat is an
amphibium between barn-sack and dray-
man's doublet. The cloth of it is studi-
ously coarse; the color a speckled soot-
black or rust-brown gray; the nearest
approach to a Peasant's. And for shape,
thou shouldst see it! The last con-
summation of the year now passing over
us is definable as Three Bags; a big bag
for the body, two small bags for the arms,
and by way of collar a hem! The first
Antique Cheruscan who, of feltcloth or
bear's-hide, with bone or metal needle,
set about making himself a coat, before
Tailors had yet awakened out of Noth-
ing, did not he make it even so? A
loose wide poke for body, with two holes
to let out the arms; this was his original
coat: to which holes it was soon visible
that two small loose pokes, or sleeves,
easily appended, would be an improve-
ment.

"Thus has the Tailor-art, so to *peak,
overset itself, like most other things;
changed its center -of -gravity; whirled
suddenly over from zenith to nadir. 1
Your Stulz, with huge somerset, vaults
from his high shopboard down to the
depths of primal savagery, carrying
much along with him! For I will invite
thee to reflect that the Tailor, as top-
most ultimate froth of Human Society,
is indeed swift-passing, evanescent, slip-
pery to decipher; yet significant of much,
nay of all. Topmost evanescent froth, he
is churned-up from the very lees, and
from all intermediate regions of the
liquor. The general outcome he, visible
to the eye, of what men aimed to do, and
were obliged and enabled to do, in this
one public department of symbolizing
themselves to each other by covering of
their skins. A smack of all Human Life
lies in the Tailor: its wild struggles to-
wards beauty, dignity, freedom, victory;
and how, hemmed-in by Sedan and Hud-
dersfield, by Nescience, Dulness, Pruri-
ence, and other sad necessities and laws
of Nature, it has attained just to this:
Gray savagery of Three Sacks with a
hem!

"When the very Tailor verges towards
Sansculottism, is it not ominous? The
last Divinity of poor mankind dethron-
ing himself; sinking his taper too, flame
downmost, like the Genius of Sleep or of
Death; admonitory that Tailor time shall
be no more! For, little as one could
advise Sumptuary Laws at the present
epoch, yet nothing is clearer than that
where ranks do actually exist, strict di-
vision of costumes will also be enforced;
that if we ever have a new Hierarchy
and Aristocracy, acknowledged veritably
as such, for which I daily pray Heaven,
the Tailor will reawaken; and be, by
volunteering and appointment, con-
sciously and unconsciously, a safeguard
of that same." Certain farther observa-
tions, from the same invaluable pen, on
our never-ending changes of mode, our
"perpetual nomadic and even ape-like
appetite for change and mere change"
in all the equipments of our existence,

474

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

and the "fatal revolutionary character"
thereby manifested, we suppress for the
present. It may be admitted that De-
mocracy, in all meanings of the word, is
in full cajeer; irresistible by any Ritter
Kauderwalsch or other Son of Adam, as
times go. "Liberty" is a thing men are
determined to have.

But truly, as I had to remark in the
mean while, "the liberty of not being
oppressed by your fellow man" is an
indispensable, yet one of the most insig-
nificant fractional parts of Human Lib-
erty. No man oppresses thee, can bid
thee fetch or carry, come or go, without
reason shown. True; from all men thou
art emancipated: but from Thyself ajid
from the Devil ? No man, wiser, un-
wiser, can make thee come or go: but
thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy
false appetites for Money, Windsor
Georges and suchlike? No man op-
presses thee, free and independent
Franchiser: but does not this stupid
Porter-pot oppress thee? No Son of
Adam can bid thee come or go; but this
absurd Pot of Heavy-wet, this can and
does! Thou art the thrall not of Cedric
the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appe-
tites and this scoured dish of liquor.
And thou pratest of thy "liberty"?
Thou entire blockhead!

Heavy- wet and gin: alas, these are not
the only kinds of thraldom. Thou who
walkest in a vain show, looking out with
ornamental dilettante sniff and serene
supremacy at all Life and all Death; and
amblest jauntily; perking up thy poor
talk into crotchets, thy poor conduct into
fatuous somnambulisms; and art as an
"enchanted Ape" under God's sky, where
thou mightest have been a man, had
proper School-masters and Conquerors,
and Constables with cat-o'-nine tails,
been vouchsafed thee; dost thou call that
"liberty"? Or your unreposing Mam-
mon-worshipper again, driven, as if by
Galvanisms, by Devils and Fixed-Ideas,
who rises early and sits late, chasing
the impossible; straining every faculty
to "fill himself with the east wind,"-
how merciful were it, could you, by mild

persuasion, or by the severest tyranny
so-called, check him in his mad path, and
turn him into a wiser one! All pain-
ful tyranny, in that case again, were but
mild "surgery"; the pain of it cheap
as health and life, instead of galvanism
and fixed-idea, are cheap at any price.

Sure enough, of all paths a man could
strike into, there is, at any given mo-
ment, a best path for every man; a thing
which, here and now, it were of all things
wisest for him to do; which could he be
but led or driven to do, he were then doing
"like a man," as we phrase it; all men
and gods agreeing with him, the whole
Universe virtually exclaiming Well-done
to him! His success, in such case, were
complete; his felicity a maximum. This
path, to find this path and walk in it, is
the one thing needful for him. Whatso-
ever forwards him in that, let it come to
him even in the shape of blows and spurn-
ings, is liberty: whatsoever hinders him,
were it wardmotes, open-vestries, poll-
booths, tremendous cheers, rivers of
heavy-wet, is slavery.

The notion that a man's liberty con-
sists in giving his vote at election-hust-
ings, and saying, "Behold, now I too have
my twenty-thousandth part of a Talker
in our National Palaver; will not all the
gods be good to me?" is one of the
pleasantest! Nature nevertheless is kind
at present; and puts it into the heads of
many, almost of all. The liberty espe-
cially which has to purchase itself by social
isolation, and each man standing separate
from the other, having "no business with
him" but a cash-account: this is such a
liberty as the Earth seldom saw; as the
Earth will not long put up with, recom-
mend it how you may. This liberty turns
out, before it have long continued in
action, with all men flinging up their caps
round it, to be, for the Working Millions
a liberty to die by want of food; for the
Idle Thousands and Units, alas, a still
more fatal liberty to live in want of
work; to have no earnest duty to do in
this God's-World any more. What be-
comes of a man in such predicament?
Earth's Laws are silent; and Heaven's

ESSAYS

475

speak in a voice which is not heard.
KD work, and the ineradicable need of
work give rise to new very wondrous
life philosophies, new very wondrous life
practices! Dilettantism, Pococurantism,
Beau-Brummelism, with perhaps an oc-
casional, half-mad, protesting burst of
Byronism, establish themselves: at the
end of a certain period, if you go back
to "the Dead Sea," there is, say our
Moslem friends, a very strange " Sabbath-
day" transacting itself there! Brethren
we know but imperfectly yet, after ages
of Constitutional Government, what Lib-
erty and Slavery are.
/ Democracy, the chase of Liberty in that
direction, shall go its full course; un-
restrainable by him of Pferdefuss-Quack-
salber, or any of his household. The
Toiling Millions of Mankind, in most
vital need and passionate instinctive de-
sire of Guidance, shall cast away False-
Guidance; and hope, for an hour, that
No-Guidance will suffice them: but it can
be for an hour only. The smallest item
of human Slavery is the oppression of
man by his Mock-Superiors; the palpa-
blest, but I say at bottom the smallest.
fLet him shake-off such oppression, trample
it indignantly under his feet; I blame him
not, I pity and commend him.l But op-
pression by your Mock Superiors well
shaken off, the grand problem yet re-
mains to solve: j/That of finding govern-
ment by your Real-Superiors!! Alas, how
shall we ever learn the solution of that-
benighted, bewildered, sniffing, sneering,
godforgetting unfortunates as we are?
It is a work for centuries; to be taught
us by tribulations, confusions, insurrec-
tions, obstructions; who knows if not by
conflagration and despair! It is a les-
son inclusive of all other lessons; the
hardest of all lessons to learn.

One thing I do know: those Apes,
chattering on the branches by the Dead
Sea, never got it learned; but chatter
there to this day. To them no Moses
need come a second tune; a thousand
Moseses would be but so many painted
Phantasms, interesting Fellow-Apes of
new strange aspect, whom they would

"invite to dinner," be glad to meet with
in lion-soirees. To them the voice of
Prophecy, of heavenly monition, is quite
ended. They chatter there, all Heaven
shut to them, to the end of the world.
The unfortunates! Oh, what is dying of
hunger, with honest tools in your hand,
with a manful purpose in your heart, and
much real labor lying round you done,
in comparison? .You honestly quit your
tools; quit a most muddy confused coil
of sore work, short rations, of sorrows,
dispiritments and contradictions, having
now honestly done with it all; and
await, not entirely in a distracted manner,
what the Supreme Powers, and the Si-
lences and the Eternities may have to
say to you.

A second thing I know: This lesson
will have to be learned, under penal-
ties! England will either learn it, or
England also will cease to exist among
Nations. England will either learn to
reverence its Heroes, and discriminate
them from its Sham-Heroes and Valets
and gaslighted Histrios; and to prize
them as the audible God's-voice, amid all
inane jargons and temporary market-
cries, and say to them with heart-loyalty,
"Be ye King and Priest, and Gospel and
Guidance for us:" or else England will
continue to worship new and ever-new
forms of Quackhood, and so, with what
resiliences and reboundings matters little,
go down to the Father of Quacks! Can
I dread such things of England?
Wretched, thick-eyed, gross-hearted mor-
tals, why will ye worship lies, and " Stuffed
Clothes-suits, created by the ninth-
parts of men!" It is not your purses
that suffer; your farm-rents, your com-
merces, your mill-revenues, loud as ye
lament over these; no, it is not these
alone, but a far deeper than these: it is
your souls that lie dead, crushed down
under despicable Nightmares, Atheisms,
Brain-fumes; and are not souls at all,
but mere succedanea for salt to keep your
bodies and their appetites from putrefy-
ing! Your cotton-spinning and thrice-
miraculous mechanism, what is this too,
by itself, but a larger land of Animalism?

47 6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Spiders can spin, Beavers can build and
show contrivance; the Ant lays-up ac-
cumulation of capital, and has, for aught
I know, a Bank of Antland. If there is
no soul in man higher than all that, did
it reach to sailing on the cloud-rack and
spinning seasand; then I say, man is but
an animal, a more cunning kind of brute:
he has no soul, but only a succedaneum

for salt. Whereupon, seeing himself to
be truly of the beasts that perish, he
ought to admit it, I think; and also
straightway universally to kill himself;
and so, in a manlike manner at least
end, and wave these brute-worlds hrs
dignified farewell!

(1843)

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Emerson's service to American culture in freeing it from bondage to Europe cannot be over-
estimated. His counsel to the young thinker to rely upon his own genius, to cast off the shackles of
convention, to stand forth before the world as a courageous thinker, has exercised a profound influence
upon our lives. And back of his message remains one of the sweetest and most human of personalities,
one of the purest and most spiritual figures who have taken their place in the great world of letters.
"Self- Reliance" is one of the essays that give his message of spiritual freedom to struggling man. The
first half of the essay is given.

SELF-RELIANCE

I READ the other day some verses written
by an eminent painter which were original
and not conventional. Always the soul
hears an admonition in such lines, let the
subject be what it may. The sentiment
they instill is of more value than any
thought they may contain. To believe
your own thought, to believe that what is
true for you in your private heart is true
for all men, that is genius. Speak
your latent conviction, and it shall be the
universal sense; for always the inmost
becomes the outmost and our first
thought is rendered back to us by the
trumpets of the Last Judgment. Famil-
iar as the voice of the mind is to each,
the highest merit we ascribe to Moses,
Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught
books and traditions, and spoke not what
men, but what they thought. A man
should learn to detect and watch that
gleam of light which flashes across his
mind from within, more than the luster of
the firmament of bards and sages. Yet
he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of
genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts; they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty. Great works
of art have no more affecting lesson for us
than this. They teach us to abide by

our spontaneous impression with good-
humored inflexibility then most when the
whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Else to-morrow a stranger will say with
masterly good sense precisely what we
have thought and felt all the time, and we
shall be forced to take with shame our
own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that
envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide;
that he must take himself for better for
worse as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of
nourishing corn can come to him but
through his toil bestowed on that plot of
ground which is given to him to till. The
power which resides in him is new in
nature, and none but he knows what that
is which he can do, nor does he know until
he has tried. Not for nothing one face,
one character, one fact, makes much im-
pression on him, and another none. It is
not without preestablished harmony, this
sculpture in the memory. The eye was
placed where one ray should fall, that
it might testify of that particular ray.
Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable
of his confession. We but half express
ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine
idea which each of us represents. It may
be safely trusted as proportionate and of
good issues, so it be faithfully imparted,

ESSAYS

477

but God will not have his work made mani-
fest by cowards. It needs a divine
man to exhibit anything divine. A man
is relieved and gay when he has put his
heart into his work and done his best;
but what he has said or done otherwise
shall give him no peace. It is a deliver-
ance which does not deliver. In the at-
tempt his genius deserts him; no muse
befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to
that iron string. Accept the place the
divine providence has found for you, the
society of your contemporaries, the con-
nection of events. Great men have
always done so, and confided themselves
childlike to the genius of their age, be-
traying their perception that the Eternal
was stirring at their heart, working
through their hands, predominating in all
their being. And we are now men, and
must accept in the highest mind the same
transcendent destiny; and not pinched hi a
corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolu-
tion, but redeemers and benefactors, pious
aspirants to be noble clay under the Al-
mighty effort, let us advance on Chaos
and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on
this text in the face and behavior of chil-
dren, babes, and even brutes. That di-
vided and rebel mind, that distrust of a
sentiment because our arithmetic has
computed the strength and means op-
posed to our purpose, these have not.
Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet
unconquered, and when we look hi their
faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy con-
forms to nobody; all conform to it; so
that one babe commonly makes four or
five out of the adults who prattle and play
to it. So God has armed youth and pu-
berty and manhood no less with its own
piquancy and charm, and made it envi-
able and gracious and its claims not to be
put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not
think the youth has no force, because he
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in
the next room who spoke so clear and em-
phatic? Good Heaven! it is he! it is that
very lump of bashfulness and phlegm
which for weeks has done nothing but eat

when you were by, and now rolls out these
words like bell-strokes. It seems he
knows how to speak to his contemporaries.
Bashful or bold then, he will know how to
make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure
of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a
lord to do or say aught to conciliate one,
is the healthy attitude of human nature.
How is a boy the master of society!
independent, irresponsible, looking out
from his corner on such people and facts
as pass by, he tries and sentences them on
their merits, in the swift, summary way
of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly,
eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers him-
self never about consequences, about
interests; he gives an independent, gen-
uine verdict. You must court him;
he does not court you. But the man is as
it were clapped into jail by his conscious-
ness. As soon as he has once acted or
spoken with eclat he is a committed person,
watched by the sympathy or the hatred
of hundreds, whose affections must now
enter into his account. There is no Lethe
for this. Ah, that he could pass again
into his neutral, godlike independence!
Who can thus lose all pledge and, having
observed, observe again from the same
unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaf-
frighted innocence, must always be for-
midable, must always engage the poet's
and the man's regards. Of such an im-
mortal youth the force would be felt. He
would utter opinions on all passing affairs,
which being seen to be not private but
necessary, would sink like darts into the
ear of men and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in
solitude, but they grow faint and inaud-
ible as we enter into the world. Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the
manhood of every one of its members.
Society is a joint-stock company, in which
the members agree, for the better securing
of his bread to each shareholder, to sur-
render the liberty and culture of the eater.
The virtue in most request is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not
realities and creators, but names and
customs.

478

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Whoso would be a man, must be a non-
conformist. He who would gather im-
mortal palms must not be hindered
by the name of goodness, but must ex-
plore if it be goodness. Nothing is at
last sacred but the integrity of our own
mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you
shall have the suffrage of the world. I
remember an answer which when quite
young I was prompted to make to a val-
ued adviser who was wont to importune
me with the dear old doctrines of the
church. On my saying, What have I to
do with the sacredness of traditions, if I
live wholly from within? my friend sug-
gested, "But these impulses may be
from below, not from above." I replied,
"They do not seem to me to be such; but
if I am the devil's child, I will live then
from the devil." No law can be sacred
to me but that of my nature. Good and
bad are but names very readily transfer-
able to that or this; the only right is what
is after my constitution; the only wrong
what is against it. A man is to carry
himself in the presence of all opposition as
if every thing were titular and ephemeral
but he. I am ashamed to think how easily
we capitulate to badges and names, to
large societies and dead institutions.
Every decent and well-spoken individual
affects and sways me more than is right.
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak
the rude truth in all ways. If malice
and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy,
shall that pass? If an angry bigot as-
sumes this bountiful cause of Abolition,
and comes to me with his last news from
Barbadoes, why should I not say to him,
"Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chop-
per; be good-natured and modest; have
that grace; and never varnish your hard,
uncharitable ambition with this incredible
tenderness for black folk a thousand miles
off. Thy love afar is spite at home."
Rough and graceless would be such greet-
ing, but truth is handsomer than the affec-
tation of love. Your goodness must have
some edge to it, else it is none. The
doctrine of hatred must be preached, as
the counteraction of the doctrine of love,
when that pules and whines. I shun

father and mother and wife and brother
when my genius calls me. I would write
on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.
I hope it is somewhat better than whim
at last, but we cannot spend the day in
explanation. Expect me not to show
cause why I seek or why I exclude com-
pany. Then, again, do not tell me, as a
good man did to-day, of my obligation to
put all poor men in good situations. Are
they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar,
the dime, tne cent I give to such men as
do not belong to me and to whom I do
not belong. There is a class of persons to
whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought
and sold; for them I will go to prison if
need be; but your miscellaneous popular
charities; the education at college of
fools; the building of meeting-houses to
the vain end to which many now stand;
alms to sots, and the thousandfold Relief
Societies; though I confess with shame I
sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it
is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by I
shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate,
rather the exception than the rule. There
is the man and his virtues. Men do what
is called a good action, as some piece of
courage or charity, much as they would
pay a fine in expiation of daily non-ap-
pearance on parade. Theur works are
done as an apology or extenuation of their
living in the world, as invalids and the
insane pay a high board. Their virtues
are penances. I do not wish to expiate,
but to live. My life is not an apology,
but a life. It is for itself and not for a
spectacle. I much prefer that it should be
of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal,
than that it should be glittering and un-
steady. I wish it to be sound and sweet,
and not to need diet and bleeding. My
life should be unique; it should be an
alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I
ask primary evidence that you are a man,
and refuse this appeal from the man to his
actions. I know that for myself it makes
no diff erence whether I do or forbear those
actions which are reckoned excellent. I
cannot consent to pay for a privilege where

ESSAYS

479

I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as
my gifts may be, I actually am, and do
not need for my own assurance or the assur-
ance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me,
not what the people think. This rule,
equally arduous in actual and in intellec-
tual life, may serve for the whole distinc-
tion between greatness and meanness. It
is the harder because you will always
find those who think they know what is
your duty better than you know it. It is
easy in the world to live after the world's
opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after
our own; but the great man is he who in
the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect
sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages
that have become dead to you is that it
scatters your force. It loses your time
and blurs the impression of your character.
If you maintain a dead church, contribute
to a dead Bible Society, vote with a great
party either for the Government or against
it, spread your table like base house-
keepers, under all these screens I have
difficulty to detect the precise man you are.
And of course so much force is withdrawn
from your proper life. But do your
thing, and 1 shall know you. Do your
work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
A man must consider what a blindman's-
buff is this game of conformity. If I know
your sect I anticipate your argument. I
hear a preacher announce for his text
and topic the expediency of one of the
institutions of his church. Do I not
know beforehand that not possibly can he
say a new and spontaneous word? Do I
not know that with all this ostentation of
examining the grounds of the institution
he will do no such thing? Do I not know
that he is pledged to himself not to look
but at one side, the permitted side, not as
a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
retained attorney, and these airs of the
bench are the emptiest affectation. Well,
most men have bound their eyes with one
or another handkerchief, and attached
themselves to some one of these commun-
ities of opinion. This conformity makes
them not false in a few particulars, authors

of a few lies, but false in all particulars.
Their every truth is not quite true. Their
two is not the real two, their four not the
real four: so that every word they say
chagrins us and we know not where to
begin to set them right. Meantime
nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-
uniform of the party to which we adhere.
We come to wear one cut of face and figure,
and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine
expression. There is a mortifying expe-
rience in particular, which does not fail to
wreak itself also in the general history; I
mean "the foolish face of praise," the
forced smile which we put on in company
where we do not feel at ease, in answer to
conversation which does not interest us.
The muscles, not spontaneously moved
but moved by a low usurping wilfulness,
grow tight about the outline of the face,
and make the most disagreeable sensa-
tion; a sensation of rebuke and warning
which no brave young man will suffer
twice.

For non-conformity the world whips
you with its displeasure. And therefore
a man must know how to estimate a sour
face. The bystanders look askance on
him in the public street or in the friend's
parlor. If this aversation had its origin
in contempt and resistance like his own he
might well go home with a sad counte-
nance; but the sour faces of the multitude,
like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,
disguise no god, but are put on and off
as the wind blows and a newspaper
directs. Yet is the discontent of the mul-
titude more formidable than that of the
senate and the college. It is easy enough
for a firm man who knows the world to
brook the rage of the cultivated classes.
Their rage is decorous and prudent, for
they are timid, as being very vulnerable
themselves. But when to their feminine
rage the indignation of the people is
added, when the ignorant and the poor
are aroused, when the unintelligent brute
force that lies at the bottom of society
is made to growl and mow, it needs the
habit of magnanimity and religion to treat
it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from

480

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

self-trust is our consistency; a reverence
for our past act or word because the eyes
of others have no other data for computing
our orbit than our past acts, and we are
loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head
over your shoulder? Why drag about this
monstrous corpse of your memory, lest
you contradict somewhat you have stated
in this or that public place? Suppose
you should contradict yourself; what then?
It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to
rely on your memory alone, scarcely even
in acts of pure memory, but to bring the
past for judgment into the thousand-
eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
Trust your emotion. In your metaphys-
ics you have denied personality to the
Deity, yet when the devout motions of
the soul come, yield to them heart and life,
though they should clothe God with shape
and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph
his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds, adored by little statesmen
and philosophers and divines. With con-
sistency a great soul has simply nothing to
do. He may as well concern himself
with his shadow on the wall. Out upon
your guarded lips! Sew them up with
packthread, do. Else if you would be a
man speak what you think to-day in
words as hard as cannon balls, and to-
morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in
hard words again, though it contradict
every thing you said to-day. Ah, then,
exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure
to be misunderstood! Misunderstood!
It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then
to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus,
and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo,
and Newton, and every pure and wise
spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is
to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature.
All the sallies of his will are rounded in by
the law of his being, as the inequalities
of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant
in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it
matter how you gauge and try him. A
character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian

stanza; read it forward, backward, or
across, it still spells the same thing. In
this pleasing contrite wood-life which
God allows me, let me record day by day
my honest thought without prospect or
retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will
be found symmetrical, though I mean it
not and see it not. My book should smell
of pines and resound with the hum of
insects. The swallow over my window
should interweave that thread or straw
he carries in his bill into my web also.
We pass for what we are. Character
teaches above our wills. Men imagine
that they communicate their virtue or vice
only by overt actions, and do not see that
virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Fear never but you shall be consistent
in whatever variety of actions, so they
be each honest and natural in their hour.
For of one will, the actions will be har-
monious, however unlike they seem.
These varieties are lost sight of when seen
at a little distance, at a little height of
thought. One tendency unites them all.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag
line of a hundred tacks. This is only mi-
croscopic criticism. See the line from a suf-
ficient distance, and it straightens itself
to the average tendency. Your genuine
action will explain itself and will explain
your other genuine actions. Your con-
formity explains nothing. Act singly,
and what you have already done singly
will justify you now. Greatness always
appeals to the future. If I can be great
enough now to do right and scorn eyes, I
must have done so much right before as to
defend me now. Be it how it will, do
right now. Always scorn appearances
and you always may. The force of char-
acter is cumulative. All the foregone days
of virtue work their health into this.
What makes the majesty of the heroes of
the senate and the field, which so fills the
imagination? The consciousness of a
train of great days and victories behind.
There they all stand and shed an united
light on the advancing actor. He is at-
tended as by a visible escort of angels to
every man's eye. That is it which throws
thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity

ESSAYS

481

into Washington's port, and America
into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to
us because it is no ephemeris. It is always
ancient virtue. We worship it to-day
because it is not of to-day. We love it
and pay it homage because it is not a trap
for our love and homage, but is self-
dependent, self-derived, and therefore
of an old immaculate pedigree, even if
shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the
last of conformity and consistency. Let
the words be gazetted and ridiculous hence-
forward. Instead of the gong for dinner,
let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.
Let us bow and apologize never more.
A great man is coming to eat at my house.
I do not wish to please him; I wish that he
should wish to please me. I will stand
here for humanity, and though I would
make it kind, I would make it true.
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth
mediocrity and squalid contentment of
the times, and hurl in the face of custom
and trade and office, the fact which is the
upshot of all history, that there is a great
responsible Thinker and Actor moving
wherever moves a man; that a true man
belongs to no other time or place, but is the
center of things. Where he is, there is
nature. He measures you and all men and
all events. You are constrained to ac-
cept his standard. Ordinarily, every body
in society reminds us of somewhat else,
or of some other person. Character,
reality, reminds you of nothing else; it
takes place of the whole creation. The
man must be so much that he must
make all circumstances indifferent put all
means into the shade. This all great men
are and do. Every true man is a cause, a
country, and an age; requires infinite
spaces and numbers and time fully to ac-
complish his thought; and posterity
seem to follow his steps as a procession.
A man Caesar is born, and for ages after
we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born,
and millions of minds so grow and cleave
to his genius that he is confounded with
virtue and the possible of man. An in-
stitution is the lengthened shadow of one
man: as, the Reformation, of Luther;

Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley;
Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton
called "the height of Rome;" and all his-
tory resolves itself very easily into the biog-
raphy of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and
keep things under his feet. Let him not
peep or steal, or skulk up and down
with the air of a charity-bov. a bastard,
or an interloper in the world which exists
for him. But the man in the street,
finding no worth in himself which cor-
responds to the force which built a tower or
sculptured a marble god, feels poor when
he looks on these. To him a palace, a
statue, or a costly book has an alien and
forbidding air, much like a gay equipage,
and seems to say like that, " Who are you,
sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for
his notice, petitioners to his faculties
that they will come out and take posses-
sion. The picture waits for my verdict;
it is not to command me, but I am to
settle its claim to praise. That popular
fable of the sot who was picked up dead
drunk in the street, carried to the duke's
house, washed and dressed and laid in the
duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated
with all obsequious ceremony h'ke the
duke, and assured that he had been in-
sane owes its popularity to the fact that
it symbolizes so well the state of man,
who is in the world a sort of sot, but now
and then wakes up, exercises his reason
and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and syco-
phantic. In history our imagination makes
fools of us, plays us false. Kingdom
and lordship, power and estate, are a
gaudier vocabulary than private John
and Edward in a small house and common
day's work: but the things of life are the
same to both: the sum total of both is the
same. Why all this deference to Alfred
and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose
they were virtuous; did they wear out
virtue? As great a stake depends on your
private act to-day as followed their public
and renowned steps. When private men
shall act with original views, the luster
will be transferred from the actions of
kings to those of gentlemen.

482

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The world has indeed been instructed by
its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes
of nations. It has been taught by this
colossal symbol the mutual reverence that
is due from man to man. The joyful loy-
alty with which men have everywhere
suffered the king, the noble, or the great
proprietor to walk among them by a law
of his own, :n?.ke his own scale of men and
things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits
not with money but with honor, and repre-
sent the Law in his person, was the hiero-
glyphic by which they obscurely signified
their consciousness of their own right and
comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action
exerts is explained when we inquire the
reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee?
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a
universal reliance may be grounded?
What is the nature and power of that
science-baffling star, without parallax,
without calculable elements, which shoots
a ray of beauty even into trivial and im-
pure actions, if the least mark of inde-
pendence appear? The inquiry leads us
to that source, at once the essence of
genius, the essence of virtue, and the
essence of life, which we call Spontaneity
or Instinct. We denote this primary
wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teach-
ings are tuitions. In that deep force, the
last fact behind which analysis cannot go,
all things find their common origin. For
the sense of being which in calm hours
rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not
diverse from things, from space, from light,
from time, from man, but one with them
and proceedeth obviously from the same
source whence their life and being also pro-
ceedeth. We first share the life by which
things exist and afterward see them as
appearances in nature and forget that we
have shared their cause. Here is the
fountain of action and the fountain of
thought. Here are the lungs of that in-
spiration which giveth man wisdom, of
that inspiration of man which cannot be
denied without impiety and atheism.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence,
which makes us organs of its activity and
receivers of its truth. When we discern

justice, when we discern truth, we do
nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage
to its beams. If we ask whence this
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that
causes all metaphysics, all philosophy
is at fault. Its presence or its absence is
all we can affirm. Every man discerns
between the voluntary acts of his mind
and his involuntary perceptions. And to
his involuntary perceptions he knows a
perfect respect is due. He may err in
the expression of them, but he knows that
these things are so, like day and night,
not to be disputed. All my wilful actions
and acquisitions are but roving; the most
trivial reverie, the faintest native emotion,
are domestic and divine. Thoughtless
people contradict as readily the statement
of perceptions as of opinions, or rather
much more readily; for they do not dis-
tinguish between perception and notion.
They fancy that I choose to see this or
that thing. But perception is not whim-
sical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my chil-
dren will see it after me, and in course of
time all mankind, although it may
chance that no one has seen it before me.
For my perception of it is as much a fact
as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine
spirit are so pure that it is profane to
seek to interpose helps. It must be that
when God speaketh he should communi-
cate, not one thing, but all things; should
fill the world with his voice; should scatter
forth light, nature, time, souls, from the
center of the present thought; and new
date and new create the whole. When-
ever a mind is simple and receives a divine
wisdom, then old things pass away,
means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it
lives now, and absorbs past and future
into the present hour. All things are
made sacred by relation to it, one thing
as much as another. All things are dis-
solved to their center by their cause, and
in the universal miracle petty and par-
ticular miracles disappear. This is and
must be. If therefore a man claims to
know and speak of God and carries you
backward to the phraseology of some old
moldered nation in another country, in an-

ESSAYS

483

other world, believe him not. Is the
acorn better than the oak which is its
fulness and completion? Is the parent
better than the child into whom he has
cast his ripened being? Whence then this
worship of the past? The centuries are
conspirators against the sanity and maj-
esty of the soul. Time and space are
but physiological colors which the eye
maketh, but the soul is light; where it is,
is day; where it was, is night; and history
is an impertinence and an injury if it be
any thing more than a cheerful apologue
or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no
longer upright; he dares not say "I think,"
"I am," but quotes some saint or sage.
He is ashamed before the blade of grass
or the blowing rose. These roses under
my window make no reference to former
roses or to better ones; they are for what
they are; they exist with God to-day.
There is no time to them. There is
simply the rose; it is perfect in every
moment of its existence. Before a leaf-
bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the
full-blown flower there is no more; in the
leafless root there is no less. Its nature is
satisfied and it satisfies nature in all mo-
ments alike. There is no time to it.
But man postpones or remembers; he
does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless
of the riches that surround him, stands
on tiptoe to foresee the future. He can-
not be happy and strong until he too
lives with nature in the present, above
tune.

This should be plain enough. Yet see
what strong intellects dare not yet hear
God himself unless he speak the phrase-
ology of I know not what David, or Jere-
miah, or Paul. We shall not always set
so great a price on a few texts, on a few
lives. We are like children who repeat
by rote the sentences of grandames and
tutors, and, as they grow older, of the
men of talents and character they chance
to see, painfully recollecting the exact

words they spoke; afterward, when they
come into the point of view which those
had who uttered these sayings, they under-
stand them and are willing to let the words
go; for at any time they can use words as
good when occasion comes. So was it with
us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we live
truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for
the strong man to be strong, as it is for the
weak to be weak. When we have new
perception, we shall gladly disburden the
memory of its hoarded treasures as old
rubbish. When a man lives with God, his
voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this
subject remains unsaid; probably cannot
be said; for all that we say is the far off
remembering of the intuition: That
thought, by what I can now nearest ap-
proach to say it, is this: When good is
near you, when you have hie in yourself,
it is not by any known or appointed way;
you shall not discern the foot-prints of any
other; you shall not see the face of man;
you shall not hear any name; the way,
the thought, the good, shall be wholly
strange and new. It shall exclude all
other being. You take the way from
man, not to man. All persons that ever
existed are its fugitive ministers. There
shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are
alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There
is somewhat low even in hope. We are
then in vision. There is nothing that can
be called gratitude, nor properly joy.
The soul is raised over passion. It seeth
identity and eternal causation. It is a
perceiving that Truth and Right are.
Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of
the knowing that all things go well. Vast
spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the
South Sea; vast intervals of time, years,
centuries, are of no account. This which
I think and feel underlay that former state
of life and circumstances, as it does under-
lie my present and will always all cir-
cumstances, and what is called Hie and
what is called death.

484

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-1869)

Sainte-Beuve, who possessed one of the most wide-ranging minds produced during the nineteenth
century, was perhaps the most representative French critic of the period. Every Monday for nearly
twenty years he contributed a paper on some subject connected with literature to a literary journal, and
these "Monday Chats," collected in twenty-eight volumes, cover nearly the whole field of French
literature and much foreign material. "A Naturalist of the human mind," he called himself, and it is
in literary portraiture that he performed his most memorable work. In the following essay the author
discusses in his charming fashion the grounds of literary taste.

Translation by Elizabeth Lee.

WHAT Is A CLASSIC?

A DELICATE question, to which somewhat
diverse solutions might be given accord-
ing to times and seasons. An intelli-
gent man suggests it to me, and I intend
to try, if not to solve it, at least to exam-
ine and discuss it face to face with my
readers, were it only to persuade them to
answer it for themselves, and, if I can, to
make their opinion and mine on the point
clear. And why, in criticism, should we
not, from time to time, venture to treat
some of those subjects which are not per-
sonal, in which we no longer speak of
some one but of some thing? Our
neighbors, the English, have well suc-
ceeded in making of it a special division of
literature under the modest title of
"Essays." It is true that in writing of
such subjects, always slightly abstract
and moral, it is advisable to speak of
them in a season of quiet, to make sure of
our own attention and of that of others, to
seize one of those moments of calm mod-
eration and leisure seldom granted our
amiable France; even when she is desir-
ous of being wise and is not making revolu-
tions, her brilliant genius can scarcely
tolerate them.

A classic, according to the usual defini-
tion, is an old author canonized by admira-
tion, and an authority in his particular
style. The word classic was first used in
this sense by the Romans. With them
not all the citizens of the different classes
were properly called classici, but only
those of the chief class, those who pos-
sessed an income of a certain fixed sum.
Those who possessed a smaller income
were described by the term infra classem,
below the preeminent class. The word

classicus was used in a figurative sense by
Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers:
a writer of worth and distinction, classicus
assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of ac-
count, has real property, and is not lost
in the proletariate crowd. Such an ex-
pression implies an age sufficiently ad-
vanced to have already made some sort of
valuation and classification of literature.

At first the only true classics for the
moderns were the ancients. The Greeks,
by peculiar good fortune and natural
enlightenment of mind, had no classics
but themselves. They were at first the
only classical authors for the Romans, who
strove and contrived to imitate them.
After the great periods of Roman litera-
ture, after Cicero and Virgil, the Romans
in their turn had their classics, who be-
come almost exclusively the classical
authors of the centuries which followed.
The middle ages, which were less ignorant
of Latin antiquity than is believed, but
which lacked proportion and taste, con-
fused the ranks and orders. Ovid was
placed above Homer, and Boetius seemed
a classic equal to Plato. The revival
of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries helped to bring this long chaos
to order, and then only was admiration
rightly proportioned. Thenceforth the
true classical authors of Greek and Latin
antiquity stood out in a luminous back-
ground, and were harmoniously grouped
on their two heights.

Meanwhile modern literatures were
born, and some of the more precocious,
like the Italian, already possessed the
style of antiquity. Dante appeared, and,
from the very first, posterity greeted him
as a classic. Italian poetry has since
shrunk into far narrower bounds; but,

ESSAYS

485

wnenever it desired to do so, it always
found again and preserved the impulse
and echo of its lofty origin. It is no in-
different matter for a poetry to derive
its point of departure and classical source
in high places; for example, to spring
from Dante rather than to issue labor-
iously from Malherbe.

Modern Italy had her classical authors,
and Spain had every right to believe that
she also had hers at a time when France
was yet seeking hers. A few talented
writers endowed with originality and
exceptional animation, a few brilliant
efforts, isolated, without following, inter-
rupted and recommenced, did not suffice
to endow a nation with a solid and impos-
ing basis of literary wealth. The idea of
a classic implies something that has
continuance and consistence, and which
produces unity and tradition, fashions
and transmits itself, and endures. It was
only after the glorious years of Louis XIV.
that the nation felt with tremor and pride
that such good fortune had happened to
her. Every voice informed Louis XIV.
of it with flattery, exaggeration, and em-
phasis, yet with a certain sentiment of
truth. Then arose a singular and striking
contradiction: those men of whom Per-
rault was the chief, the men who were most
smitten with the marvels of the age of
Louis the Great, who even went the length
of sacrificing the ancients to the moderns,
aimed at exalting and canonizing even
those whom they regarded as inveterate
opponents and adversaries. Boileau
avenged and angrily upheld the ancients
against Perrault, who extolled the moderns
that is to say, Corneille, Moliere, Pascal,
and the eminent men of his age, Boileau,
one of the first, included. Kindly La
Fontaine, taking part in the dispute in
behalf of the learned Huet, did not per-
ceive that, in spite of his defects, he was hi
his turn on the point of being held as a
classic himself.

Example is the best definition. From
the time France possessed her age of
Louis XIV. and could contemplate it at
a little distance, she knew, better than
by any arguments, what to be classical

meant. The eighteenth century, even in
its medley of things, strengthened this
idea through some fine works, due to its
four great men. Read Voltaire's "Age of
Louis XIV," Montesquieu's "Greatness
and FaU of the Romans;" Buffon's "Epochs
of Nature," the beautiful pages of reverie
and natural description of Rousseau's
"Savoyard Vicar," and say if the eighteenth
century, in these memorable works, did
not understand how to reconcile tradition
with freedom of development and inde-
pendence. But at the beginning of the
present century and under the Empire, in
sight of the first attempts of a decidedly
new and somewhat adventurous litera-
ture, the idea of a classic in a few resisting
minds, more sorrowful than severe, was
strangely narrowed and contracted. The
first Dictionary of the Academy (1694)
merely defined a classical author as "a
much-approved ancient writer, who is an
authority as regards the subject he treats."
The Dictionary of the Academy of 1835
narrows that definition still more, and
gives precision and even limit to its rather
vague form. It describes classical authors
as those "who have become models in any
language whatever," and in all the articles
which follow, the expressions, models,
fixed rules for composition and style,
strict rules of art to which men must con-
form, continually recur. That definition
of classic was evidently made by the
respectable Academicians, our pre-
decessors, in face and sight of what was
then called romantic that is to say in
sight of the enemy. It seems to me time
to renounce those timid and restrictive
definitions and to free our mind of them.

A true classic, as I should like to hear
it defined, is an author who has enriched
the human mind, increased its treasure,
and caused it to advance a step; who has
discovered some moral and not equivocal
truth, or revealed some eternal passion in
that heart where all seemed known and dis-
covered; who has expressed his thought,
observation, or invention, in no matter
what form, only provided it be broad and
great, refined and sensible, sane and beauti-
ful in itself; who has spoken to all in his

4 86

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

own peculiar style, a style which is found
to be also that of the whole world, a style
new without neologism, new and old,
easily contemporary with all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have
been revolutionary; it may at least have
seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and
subverted whatever prevented the res-
toration of the balance of order and
beauty.

If it is desired, names may be applied
to this definition which I wish to make pur-
posely majestic and fluctuating, or in a
word, all-embracing. I should first put
there Corneille of the "Polyeucte,"
"China," and "Horaces." I should put
Moliere there, the fullest and most com-
plete poetic genius we have ever had in
France. Goethe, the king of critics, said :

" Moliere is so great that he astonishes
us afresh every time we read him. He is
a man apart; his plays border on the
tragic, and no one has the courage to try
and imitate him. His 'Avare/ where vice
destroys all affection between father and
son, is one of the most sublime works, and
dramatic in the highest degree. In a
drama every action ought to be important
in itself, and to lead to an action greater
still. In this respect 'Tartuffe' is a model.
What a piece of exposition the first scene
is! From the beginning everything has
an important meaning, and causes some-
thing much more important to be foreseen.
The exposition in a certain play of Lessing
that might be mentioned is very fine, but
the world only sees that of 'Tartuff e' once.
It is the finest of the kind we possess.
Every year I read a play of Moliere, just
as from time to time I contemplate some
engraving after the great Italian masters."

I do not conceal from myself that the
definition of the classic I have just given
somewhat exceeds the notion usually
ascribed to the term. - It should, above all,
include conditions of uniformity, wisdom,
moderation, and reason, which dominate
and contain all the others. Having to
praise M. Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat
said "If he derives purity of taste, pro-
priety of terms, variety of expression, atten-
tive care in suiting the diction to the

thought, from our classics, he owes to him-
self alone the distinctive character he
gives it all." It is here evident that the
part allotted to classical qualities seems
mostly to depend on harmony and nuances
of expression, on graceful and temper-
ate style: such is also the most general
opinion. In this sense the preeminent
classics would be writers of a middling
order, exact, sensible, elegant, always clear,
yet of noble feeling and airily veiled
strength. Marie- Joseph Chenier has de-
scribed the poetics of those temperate and
accomplished writers in lines where he
shows himself their happy disciple:

"It is good sense, reason which does all,
virtue, genius, soul, talent, and taste.
What is virtue? reason put in practice;
talent? reason expressed with brilliance;
soul? reason delicately put forth; and
genius is sublime reason."

While writing those lines he was evi-
dently thinking of Pope, Boileau, and
Horace, the master of them all. The
peculiar characteristic of the theory which
subordinated imagination and feeling it-
self to reason, of which Scaliger perhaps
gave the first sign among the moderns, is,
properly speaking, the Latin theory, and
for a long time it was also by preference
the French theory. If it is used ap-
positely, if the term reason is not abused,
that theory possesses some truth; but it is
evident that it is abused, and that if, for
instance, reason can be confounded with
poetic genius and make one with it in a
moral epistle, it cannot be the same thing
as the genius, so varied and so diversely
creative in its expression of the passions,
of the drama or the epic. Where will you
find reason in the fourth book of the
"^Eneid" and the transports of Dido? Be
that as it may, the spirit which prompted
the theory, caused writers who ruled their
inspiration, rather than those who aban-
doned themselves to it, to be placed in the
first rank of classics; to put Virgil there
more surely than Homer, Racine in pref-
erence to Corneille. The masterpiece to
which the theory likes to point, which in
fact brings together all conditions of pru-
dence, strength, tempered boldness, moral

ESSAYS

487

elevation, and grandeur, is "Athalie."
Turenne in his two last campaigns and
Racine in "Athalie" are the great examples
of what wise and prudent men are capable
of when they reach the maturity of their
genius and attain their supremest boldness.

Buff on, in his Discourse on Style, in-
sisting on the unity of design, arrange-
ment, and execution, which are the stamps
of true classical works, said: "Every
subject is one, and however vast it is, it can
be comprised in a single treatise. Inter-
ruptions, pauses, sub-divisions should
only be used when many subjects are
treated, when, having to speak of great,
intricate, and dissimilar things, the march
of genius is interrupted by the multiplicity
of obstacles, and contracted by the ne-
cessity of circumstances: otherwise, far
from making a work more solid, a great
number of divisions destroys the unity
of its parts; the book appears clearer to
the view, but the author's design remains
obscure." And he continues his criti-
cism, having in view Montesquieu's
"Spirit of Laws," an excellent book at bot-
tom, but sub-divided: the famous author,
worn out before the end, was unable to
infuse inspiration into all his ideas, and to
arrange all his matter. However, I can
scarcely believe that Buff on was not also
thinking, by way of contrast, of Bossuet's
"Discourse on Universal History," a sub-
ject vast indeed, and yet of such an unity
that the great orator was able to com-
prise it in a single treatise. When
we open the first edition, that of
1681, before the division into chap-
ters, which was introduced later, passed
from the margin into the text, everything
is developed in a single series, almost in
one breath. It might be said that the
orator has here acted like the nature of
which Buff on speaks, that "he has worked
on an eternal plan from which he has no-
where departed," so deeply does he seem
to have entered into the familiar counsels
and designs of providence.

Are "Athalie" and the "Discourse on
Universal History" the greatest master-
pieces that the strict classical theory can
present to its friends as well as to its

enemies? In spite of the admirable sim-
plicity and dignity in the achievement of
such unique productions, we should like,
nevertheless, in the interests of art, to
expand that theory a little, and to show
that it is possible to enlarge it without
relaxing the tension. Goethe, whom I like
to quote on such a subject, said:

"I call the classical healthy, and the
romantic sickly. In my opinion the
Nibelungen song is as much a classic as
Homer. Both are healthy and vigorous.
The works of the day are romantic, not
because they are new, but because they are
weak, ailing, or sickly. Ancient works
are classical not because they are old, but
because they are powerful, fresh, and
healthy. If we regarded romantic and
classical from those two points of view
we should soon all agree."

Indeed, before determining and fixing
opinions on that matter, I should like
every unbiased mind to take a voyage
round the world and devote itself to a
survey of different literatures in their
primitive vigor and infinite variety.
What would be seen? Chief of all a
Homer, the father of the classical world,
less a single distinct individual than the
vast living expression of a whole epoch
and a semi-barbarous civilization. In
order to make him a true classic, it was
necessary to attribute to him later a design,
a plan, literary invention, qualities of
atticism and urbanity of which he had
certainly never dreamed in the luxuriant
development of his natural inspirations.
And who appear by his side? August,
venerable ancients, the ^Eschyluses and
the Sophocles, mutilated, it is true, and
only there to present us with a debris of
themselves, the survivors of many others
as worthy, doubtless, as they to survive,
but who have succumbed to the injuries
of time. This thought alone would teach
a man of impartial mind not to look upon
the whole of even classical literatures
with a too narrow and restricted view; he
would learn that the exact and well-pro-
portioned order which has since so largely
prevailed in our admiration of the past was
only the outcome of artificial circumstances.

488

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

And in reaching the modern world,
how would it be? The greatest names to
be seen at the beginning of literatures are
those which disturb and run counter to
certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful
and appropriate in poetry. For example,
is Shakespeare a classic? Yes, now, for
England and the world; but in the time
of Pope he was not considered so. Pope
and his friends were the only preeminent
classics; directly after their death they
seemed so for ever. At the present tune
they are still classics, as they deserve to
be, but they are only of the second order,
and are for ever subordinated and rele-
gated to their rightful place by him who
has again come to his own on the height
of the horizon.

It is not, however, for me to speak ill
of Pope or his great disciples, above all,
when they possess pathos and naturalness
like Goldsmith: after the greatest they
are perhaps the most agreeable writers
and the poets best fitted to add charm to
life. Once when Lord Bolingbroke was
writing to Swift, Pope added a post-
script, in which he said "I think some
advantage would result to our age, if we
three spent three years together." Men
who, without boasting, have the right to
say such things must never be spoken of
lightly: the fortunate ages, when men of
talent could propose such things, then no
chimera, are rather to be envied. The
ages called by the name of Louis XIV. or
of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate
sense of the word, the only true classical
ages, those which offer protection and a
favorable climate to real talent. We
know only too well how in our untram-
melled times, through the instability and
storminess of the age, talents are lost and
dissipated. Nevertheless, let us acknowl-
edge our age's part and superiority in
greatness. True and sovereign genius
triumphs over the very difficulties that
cause others to fail: Dante, Shakespeare,
and Milton were able to attain their
height and produce their imperishable
works in spite of obstacles, hardships, and
tempests. Byron's opinion of Pope has
been much discussed, and the explana-

tion of it sought in the kind of contradic-
tion by which the singer of "Don Juan" and
"Childe Harold" extolled the purely clas-
sical school and pronounced it the only
good one, while himself acting so differently.
Goethe spoke the truth on that point
when he remarked that Byron, great by
the flow and source of poetry, feared that
Shakespeare was more powerful than him-
self in the creation and realization of his
characters. "He would have liked to
deny it; the elevation so free from egoism
irritated him; he felt when near it that he
could not display himself at ease. He
never denied Pope, because he did not
fear him; he knew that Pope was only a
low wall by his side."

If, as Byron desired, Pope's school had
kept the supremacy and a sort of honorary
empire in the past, Byron would have been
the first and only poet in his particular
style: the height of Pope's wall shuts out
Shakespeare's great figure from sight,
whereas when Shakespeare reigns and
rules hi all his greatness, Byron is only
second.

In France there was no great classic
before the age of Louis XIV.; the Dantes
and Shakespeares, the early authorities to
whom, in times of emancipation, men
sooner or later return, were wanting,
There were mere sketches of great poets,
like Mathurin Regnier, like Rabelais,
without any ideal, without the depth of
emotion and the seriousness which can-
onizes. Montaigne was a kind of pre-
mature classic, of the family of Horace ; but
for want of worthy surroundings, like a
spoiled child, he gave himself up to the
unbridled fancies of his style and humor.
Hence it happened that France, less than
any other nation, found in her old authors
a right to demand vehemently at a certain
time literary liberty and freedom, and
that it was more difficult for her, in en-
franchising herself, to remain classical.
However, with Moliere and La Fontaine
among her classics of the great period,
nothing could justly be refused to those
who possessed courage and ability.

The important point now seems to me
to be to uphold, while extending, the idea

ESSAYS

489

and belief. There is no receipt for making
classics; this point should be clearly rec-
ognized. To believe that an author will
become a classic by imitating certain
qualities of purity, moderation, accuracy,
\nd elegance, independently of the style
and inspiration, is to believe that after
Racine the father there is a place for
Racine the son; dull and estimable rdle,
the worst in poetry. Further, it is haz-
ardous to take too quickly and without
opposition the place of a classic in the
sight of one's contemporaries; in that
case there is a good chance of not retaining
the position with posterity. Fontanes
in his day was regarded by his friends as a
pure classic; see how at twenty-five years'
distance his star has set. How many
of these precocious classics are there who
do not endure, and who are so only for a
while! We turn round -one morning and
are surprised not to find them standing
behind us. Madame de Sevigne would
wittily say they possessed but an evan-
escent color. With regard to classics, the
least expected prove the best and greatest;
seek them rather in the vigorous genius
born immortal and flourishing for ever.
Apparently the least classical of the four
great poets of the age of Louis XIV. was
Moliere; he was then applauded far more
than he was esteemed; men took delight
in him without understanding his worth.
After him, La Fontaine seemed the least
classical: observe after two centuries
what is the result for both. Far above
Boileau, even above Racine, are they not
now unanimously considered to possess
in the highest degree the characteristics
of an all-embracing morality?

Meanwhile there is no question of sacri-
ficing or depreciating anything. I be-
lieve the temple of taste is to be rebuilt;
but its reconstruction is merely a matter of
enlargement, so that it may become the
home of all noble human beings, of all who
have permanently increased the sum of
the mind's delights and possessions. As
for me, who cannot, obviously, in any
degree pretend to be the architect or de-
signer of such a temple, I shall confine
myself to expressing a few earnest wishes,

to submit, as it were, my designs for the
edifice. Above all I should desire not to
exclude any one among the worthy, each
should be in his place there, from Shake-
speare, the freest of creative geniuses, and
the greatest of classics without knowing it,
to Andrieux, the last of classics in little.
"There is more than one chamber hi the
mansions of my Father;" that should be
as true of the kingdom of the beautiful
here below, as of the kingdom of Heaven.
Homer, as always and everywhere, should
be first, likest a god; but behind him, like
the processsion of the three wise kings
of the East, would be seen the three great
poets, the three Homers, so long ignored
by us, who wrote epics for the use of the
old peoples of Asia, the poets Valmiki,
Vyasa of the Hindoos, and Firdousi of
the Persians: in the domain of taste it is
well to know that such men exist, and not
to divide the human race. Our homage
paid to what is recognized as soon as per-
ceived, we must not stray further; the eye
should delight in a thousand pleasing or
majestic spectacles, should rejoice in a
thousand varied and surprising combina-
tions, whose apparent confusion would
never be without concord and harmony.
The oldest of the wise men and poets,
those who put human morality into max-
ims, and those who in simple fashion sung
it, would converse together in rare and
gentle speech, and would not be surprised
at understanding each other's meaning
at the very first word. Solon, Hesiod,
Theognis, Job, Solomon, and why not
Confucius, would welcome the cleverest
moderns, La Rochefoucauld and La Bru-
yere, who, when listening to them, would
say "they knew all that we know, and in
repeating life's experiences, we have dis-
covered nothing." On the hill, most
easily discernible, and of most accessible
ascent, Virgil, surrounded by Menander,
Tibullus, Terence, Fenelon, would occupy
himself in discoursing with them with
great charm and divine enchantment:
his gentle countenance would shine with
an inner light, and be tinged with modesty;
as on the day when entering the theater
at Rome, just as they finished reciting his

490

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

verses, he saw the people rise with an
unanimous movement and pay to him the
same homage as to Augustus. Not far
from him, regretting the separation from
so dear a friend, Horace, in his turn,
would preside (as far as so accomplished
and wise a poet could preside) over the
group of poets of social life who could talk
although they sang, Pope, Boileau, the
one become less irritable, the other less
faultfinding. Montaigne, a true poet,
would be among them, and would give
the finishing touch that should deprive
that delightful corner of the air of a lit-
erary school. There would La Fontaine
forget himself, and becoming less volatile
would wander no more. Voltaire would
be attracted by it, but while finding pleas-
ure in it would not have patience to re-
main. A little lower down, on the same
hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple
bearing, looking in no way like a general,
but rather resembling a priest of the
Muses, would be seen gathering round him
the Attics of every tongue and of every
nation, the Addisons, Pellissons, Vau-
venargues all who feel the value of an
easy persuasiveness, an exquisite sim-
plicity, and a gentle negligence mingled
with ornament. In the center of the
place, in the portico of the principal tem-
ple (for there would be several in the en-
closure), three great men would like to
meet often, and when they were together,
no fourth, however great, would dream of
joining their discourse or their silence.
In them would be seen beauty, propor-
tion in greatness, and that perfect har-
mony which appears but once in the full
youth of the world. Their three names
have become the ideal of art Plato, Soph-
ocles, and Demosthenes. Those demi-
gods honored, we see a numerous and fa-
miliar company of choice spirits who follow,
the Cervantes and Molieres, practical
painters of life, indulgent friends who are
still the first of benefactors, who laughingly
embrace all mankind, turn man's experi-
ence to gaiety, and know the powerful
workings of a sensible, hearty, and legiti-
mate joy. I do not wish to make this de-
scription, which if complete would 611 a vol-

ume, any longer. In the middle ages, be<
lieve me, Dante would occupy the sacred
heights: at the feet of the singer of Para-
dise all Italy would be spread out like a
garden; Boccaccio and Ariosto would
there disport themselves, and Tasso would
find again the orange groves of Sorrento.
Usually a corner would be reserved for
each of the various nations, but the
authors would take delight in leaving it,
and in their travels would recognize,
where we should least expect it, brothers
or masters. Lucretius, for example, would
enjoy discussing the origin of the world
and the reducing of chaos to order with
Milton. But both arguing from their own
point of view, they would only agree as re-
gards divine pictures of poetry and nature.

Such are our classics; each individual
imagination may finish the sketch and
choose the group preferred. For it is nec-
essary to make a choice, and the first con-
dition of taste, after obtaining knowledge
of all, lies not in continual travel, but in
rest and cessation from wandering. Noth-
ing blunts and destroys taste so much as
endless journeyings; the poetic spirit is
not the Wandering Jew. However, when
I speak of resting and making choice,
my meaning is not that we are to imitate
those who charm us most among our
masters in the past. Let us be content to
know them, to penetrate them, to admire
them; but let us, the late-comers, endeavor
to be ourselves. Let us have the sin-
cerity and naturalness of our own
thoughts, of our own feelings; so much is
always possible. To that let us add what
is more difficult, elevation, an aim, if
possible, towards an exalted goal; and
while speaking our own language, and sub-
mitting to the conditions of the times in
which we live, whence we derive our
strength and our defects, let us ask from
time to tune, our brows lifted towards
the heights and our eyes fixed on the
group of honored mortals: what would they
say of us?

But why speak always of authors and
writings? Maybe an age is coming when
there will be no more writing. Happy
those who read and read again, those who

ESSAYS

491

in their reading can follow their unre-
strained inclination! There comes a time
in life when, all our journeys over, our
experiences ended, there is no enjoyment
more delightful than to study and thor-
oughly examine the things we know, to
take pleasure in what we feel, and in seeing
and seeing again the people we love:
the pure joys of our maturity. Then
it is that the word classic takes its true
meaning, and is denned for every man of
taste by an irresistible choice. Then
taste is formed, it is shaped and definite;
then good sense, if we are to possess it at
all, is perfected in us. We have neither
more tune for experiments, nor a desire
to go forth in search of pastures new.
We cling to our friends, to those proved
by a long intercourse. Old wine, old
books, old friends. We say to ourselves
with Voltaire in these delightful lines:

"Let us enjoy, let us write, let us live, my
dear Horace! . . . I have lived longer
than you: my verse will not last so long.
But on the brink of the tomb I shall make
it my chief care to follow the lessons of
your philosophy to despise death in en-
joying life to read your writings full of
charm and good sense as we drink an
old wine which revives our senses."

In fact, be it Horace or another who is
the author preferred, who reflects our
thoughts hi all the wealth of their maturity,
of ^ some one of those excellent and antique
minds shall we request an interview at
every moment; of some one of them shall
we ask a friendship which never deceives,
which could not fail us; to some one of
them shall we appeal for that sensation of
serenity and amenity (we have often need
of it) which reconciles us with mankind
and with ourselves.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

Poe, besides being a poet and story writer of the first rank in American literature, was also,
thanks to his intense intellect and a strong bent for analytical reasoning, a critic. In the following
essay we have a good example of his original and constructive criticism. Principles here announced in
relation to "The Raven" may be recognized as guiding Poe in the composition of his most famous
stories.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION

CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying
before me, alluding to an examination
I once made of the mechanism of "Bar-
naby Rudge," says: "By the way, are
you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb
Williams' backwards? He first involved
his hero in a web of difficulties, forming
the second volume, and then, for the first,
cast about him for some mode of account-
ing for what had been done."

I cannot think this the precise mode of
procedure on the part of Godwin, and
indeed what he acknowledges, is not alto-
gether in accordance with Mr. Dickens's
idea, but the author of " Caleb Williams"
was too good an artist not to perceive the
advantage derivable from at least a some-
what similar process. Nothing is more
clear than that every plot, worth the
name, must be elaborated to its denoue-

ment before anything be attempted with
the pen. It is only with the denouement
constantly in view that we can give a plot
its indispensable air of consequence, or
causation, by making the incidents, and
especially the tone at all points, tend to
the development of the intention.

There is a radical error, I think, in the
usual mode of constructing a story.
Either history affords a thesis, or one is
suggested by an incident of the day,
or at best, the author sets himself to work
in the combination of striking events to
form merely the basis of his narrative,
designing, generally, to fill in with de-
scription, dialogue, or autorial comment,
whatever crevices of fact, or action, may,
from page to page, render themselves
apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consider-
ation of an e/ect. Keeping originality
always in view, for he is false to himself

49 2

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

who ventures to dispense with so obvious
and so easily attainable a source of interest,
I say to myself, in the first place, "Of
the innumerable effects, or impressions,
of which the heart, the intellect, or (more
generally) the soul is susceptible, what one
shall I, on the present occasion, select?"
Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly
a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be
best wrought by incident or tone,
whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar
tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity
both of incident and tone, afterward
looking about me (or rather within) for
such combinations of event, or tone, as
shall best aid me in the construction of the
effect.

I have often thought how interesting a
magazine paper might be written by any
author who would that is to say, who
could detail, step by step, the processes
by which any one of his compositions at-
.tained its ultimate point of completion.
Why such a paper has never been given to
the world, I am much at a loss to say; but,
perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more
to do with the omission than any one
other cause. Most writers poets in espe-
cial prefer having it understood that
they compose by a species of fine frenzy
an ecstatic intuition and would posi-
tively shudder at letting the public take
a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate
and vacillating crudities of thought at
the true purposes seized only at the last
moment at the innumerable glimpses
of idea that arrived not at the maturity of
full view at the fully matured fancies
discarded in despair as unmanageable
at the cautious selections and rejections
at the painful erasures and interpolations
in a word, at the wheels and pinions
the tackle for scene-shifting the step-
ladders and demon-traps the cock's feath-
ers, the red paint and the black patches,
which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hun-
dred, constitute the properties of the
literary histrio.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the
case is by no means common, in which an
author is at all in condition to retrace the
steps by which his conclusions have been

attained. In general, suggestions, having
arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten
in a similar manner.

For my own part, I have neither sym-
pathy with the repugnance alluded to,
nor at any time the least difficulty in
recalling to mind the progressive steps
of any of my compositions; and, since the
interest of an analysis, or reconstruction,
such as I have considered a desideratum,
is quite independent of any real or fancied
interest in the thing analyzed, it will
not be regarded as a breach of decorum
on my part to show the modus operandi
by which some of my own works were put
together. I select "The Raven," as
most generally known. It is my design
to render it manifest that no one point in
its composition is referable either to acci-
dent or intuition, that the work pro
ceeded, step by step, to its completion,
with the precision and rigid consequence of
a mathematical problem.

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem,
per se, the circumstance or say the ne-
cessity which, in the first place, gave rise
to the intention of composing a poem that
should suit at once the popular and the
critical taste.

We commence, then, with this intention.

The initial consideration was that of
extent. If any literary work is too long
to be read at one sitting, we must be con-
tent to dispense with the immensely im-
portant effect derivable from unity of
impression ; for if two sittings be required,
the affairs of the world interfere, and
everything like totality is at once de-
stroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, no
poet can afford to dispense with anything
that may advance his design, it but re-
mains to be seen whether there is, in
extent, any advantage to counterbalance
the loss of unity which attends it. Here
I say no, at once. What we term a long
poem is, in fact, merely a succession of
brief ones, that is to say, of brief poetical
effects. It is needless to demonstrate
that a poem is such, only inasmuch as
it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul;
and all intense excitements are, through a
psychal necessity, brief. For this reason,

ESSAYS

493

at least one half of the "Paradise Lost"
is essentially prose, a succession of
poetical excitements interspersed, inevit-
ably, with corresponding depressions,
the whole being deprived, through the
extremeness of its length, of the vastly
important artistic element, totality, or
unity, of effect.

It appears evident, then, that there is a
distinct limit, as regards length, to all
works of literary art, the limit of a single
sitting, and that, although in certain
classes of prose composition, such as
"Robinson Crusoe," (demanding no
unity,) this limit may be advantageously
overpassed, it can never properly be over-
passed in a poem. Within this limit,
the extent of a poem may be made to bear
mathematical relation to its merit,
in other words, \o the excitement or ele-
vation, again, in other words, to the
degree of the true poetical effect which
it is capable of inducing; for it is clear
that the brevity must be in direct ratio
of the intensity of the intended effect:
this, with one proviso that a certain
degree of duration is absolutely requisite
for the production of any effect at all.

Holding in view these considerations,
as well as that degree of excitement which
I deemed not above the popular, while
not below the critical, taste, I reached at
once what I conceived the proper length
for my intended poem, a length of about
one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hun-
dred and eight.

My next thought concerned the choice
of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed:
and here I may as well observe that,
throughout the construction, I kept stead-
ily in view the design of rendering the
work universally appreciable. I should
be carried too far out of my immediate
topic were I to demonstrate a point upon
which I have repeatedly insisted, and
which, with the poetical, stands not in the
slightest need of demonstration, the
point, I mean, that Beauty is the sole
legitimate province of the poem. A few
words, however, in elucidation of my real
meaning, which some of my friends have
evinced a disposition to misrepresent.

That pleasure which is at once the most
intense, the most elevating, and the most
pure, is, I believe, found in the contempla-
tion of the beautiful. When, indeed,
men speak of Beauty, they mean, pre-
cisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but
an effect, they refer, in short, just to that
intense and pure elevation of soul not
of intellect, or of heart upon which I
have commented, and which is experi-
ienced in consequence of contemplating
" the beautiful." Now I designate Beauty
as the province of the poem, merely be-
cause it is an obvious rule of Art that
effects should be made to spring from
direct causes, that objects should be
attained through means best adapted for
their attainment, no one as yet having
been weak enough to deny that the pe-
culiar elevation alluded to is most readily
attained in the poem. Now the object,
Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect,
and the object Passion, or the excitement
of the heart, are although attainable to a
certain extent, in poetry, far more readily
attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, de-
mands a precision, and Passion a homeliness
(the truly passionate will comprehend
me) which are absolutely antagonistic to
that Beauty which, I maintain, is the
excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of
the soul. It by no means follows from
anything here said, that passion, or even
truth, may not be introduced, and even
profitably introduced, into a poem,
for they may serve in elucidation, or aid
the general effect, as do discords in music,
by contrast, but the true artist will
always contrive, first, to tone them into
proper subservience to the predominant
ami, and, secondly, to enveil them, as
far as possible, in that Beauty which is the
atmosphere and the essence of the poem.

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province,
my next question referred to the tone of its
highest manifestation, and all expe-
rience has shown that this tone is one of
sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its
supreme development, invariably excites
the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy
is thus the most legitimate of all the
poetical tones.

494

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

The length, the province, and the tone,
being thus determined, I betook myself
to ordinary induction, with the view of
obtaining some artistic piquancy which
might serve me as a keynote in the con-
struction of the poem, some pivot upon
which the whole structure might turn.
In carefully thinking over all the usual
artistic effects, or more properly points
in the theatrical sense, I did not fail to
perceive immediately that no one had
been so universally employed as that of
the refrain. The universality of its em-
ployment sufficed to assure me of its in-
trinsic value, and spared me the neces-
sity of submitting it to analysis. I con-
sidered it, however, with regard to its
susceptibility of improvement, and soon
saw it to be in a primitive condition. As
commonly used, the refrain, or burden,
not only is limited to lyric verse, but de-
pends for its impression upon the force
of monotone both in sound and thought.
The pleasure is deduced solely from the
sense of identity of repetition. I re-
solved to diversify, and so heighten, the
effect, by adhering, in general, to the
monotone of sound, while I continually
varied that of thought: that is to say, I
determined to produce continuously novel
effects, by the variation of the applica-
tion of the refrain, the refrain itself re-
maining, for the most part, unvaried.

These points being settled, I next be-
thought me of the nature of my refrain.
Since its application was to be repeatedly
varied, it was clear that the refrain itself
must be brief, for there would have been
an insurmountable difficulty in frequent
variations of application in any sentence
of length. In proportion to the brevity
of the sentence, would, of course, be the
facility of the variation. This led me at
once to a single word as the best refrain.

The question now arose as to the
character of the word. Having made up
my mind to a refrain, the division of the
poem into stanzas was, of course, a corol-
lary, the refrain forming the close to
each stanza. That such a close, to have
force, must be sonorous and susceptible
of protracted emphasis, admitted no

doubt: and these considerations inev-
itably led me to the long o as the most
sonorous vowel, in connection with r as
the most producible consonant.

The sound of the refrain being thus
determined, it became necessary to select
a word embodying this sound, and at the
same time in the fullest possible keeping
with that melancholy which I had predeter-
mined as the tone of the poem. In such a
search it would have been absolutely im-
possible to overlook the word "Never-
more." In fact, it was the very first
which presented itself.

The next desideratum was a pretext for
the continuous use of the one word
' ' Nevermore. ' ' In observing the difficulty
which I at once found in inventing a suf-
ficiently plausible reason for its continuous
repetition, I did not fail to perceive that
this difficulty arose solely from the pre-
assumption that the word was to be so
continuously or monotonously spoken by a
human being, I did not fail to perceive,
in short, that the difficulty lay in the recon-
ciliation of this monotony with the exer-
cise of reason on the part of the creature
repeating the word. Here, then, imme-
diately arose the idea of a wow-reasoning
creature capable of speech; and, very
naturally, a parrot, in the first instance,
suggested itself, but was superseded forth-
with by a Raven, as equally capable of
speech, and infinitely more in keeping
with the intended tone.

I had now gone so far as the concep-
tion of a Raven the bird of ill omen
monotonously repeating the one word,
"Nevermore," at the conclusion of each
stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone
and in length about one hundred lines.
Now, never losing sight of the object
supremeness, or perfection, at all points, I
asked myself, "Of all melancholy topics,
what, according to the universal under-
standing of mankind, is the most melan-
choly?" Death was the obvious reply.
"And when," I said, "is this most mel-
ancholy of topics most poetical?" From
what I have already explained at some
length, the answer here also is obvious,
"When it most closely allies itself to

ESSAYS

Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful
woman is, unquestionably, the most poeti-
cal topic in the world; and equally is it
beyond doubt that the lips best suited for
such topics are those of a bereaved lover."
I had now to combine the two ideas of
a lover lamenting his deceased mistress
and a Raven continuously repeating the
word "Nevermore." I had to combine
these, bearing hi mind my design of vary-
ing, at every turn, the application of the
word repeated; but the only intelligible
mode of such combination is that of im-
agining the Raven employing the word in
answer to the queries of the lover. And
here it was that I saw at once the oppor-
tunity afforded for the effect on which I
had been depending, that is to say, the
effect of the -variation of application.
I saw that I could make the first query
propounded by the lover the first query
to which the Raven should reply "Never-
more" that I could make this first query
a commonplace one the second less so
the third still less, and so on until at
length the lover, startled from his original
nonchalance by the melancholy character
of the word itself by its frequent repe-
tition and by a consideration of the
ominous reputation of the fowl that ut-
tered it is at length excited to super-
stition, and wildly propounds queries of
a far different character queries whose
solution he has passionately at heart
propounds them half in superstition and
half in that species of despair which de-
lights in self-torture propounds them,
not altogether because he believes hi the
prophetic or demoniac character of the
bird (which, reason assures him, is merely
repeating a lesson learned by rote), but
because he experiences a frenzied pleasure
in so modelling his questions as to receive
from the expected "Nevermore" the most
delicious because the most intolerable of
sorrow. Perceiving the opportunity thus
afforded me or, more strictly, thus
forced upon me hi the progress of the con-
struction I first established hi mind the
climax, or concluding query that query
to which "Nevermore" should be in the
last place an answer that in reply to which

this word "Nevermore" should involve the
utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and
despair.

Here, then, the poem may be said to
have its beginning at the end, where all
works of art should begin, for it was
here, at this point of my preconsiderations,
that I first put pen to paper in the com-
position of the stanza,

"Prophet!" cried I, "thing of evil! prophet still,
if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us by that God
we both adore!

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the dis-
tant Aiden,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels
name Lenore,

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels
name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

I composed this stanza, at this point,
first, that, by establishing the climax, I
might the better vary and graduate, as
regards seriousness and importance, the
preceding queries of the lover; and, sec-
ondly, that I might definitely settle the
rhythm, the meter, and the length and
general arrangement of the stanza, as well
as graduate the stanzas which were to
precede, so that none of them might sur-
pass this in rhythmical effect. Had I
been able, in the subsequent composition,
to construct more vigorous stanzas, I
should, without scruple, have purposely
enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with
the climacteric effect.

And here I may as well say a few words
of the versification. My first object (as
usual) was originality. The extent to
which this has been neglected, in versifi-
cation, is one of the most unaccountable
things in the world. Admitting that
there is little possibility of variety in mere
rhythm, it is still clear that the possible
varieties of meter and stanza are abso-
lutely infinite; and yet, for centuries, no
man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed
to think of doing, an original thing. The
fact is, that originality (unless in minds
of very unusual force) is by no means a
matter, as some suppose, of impulse or
intuition. In general, to be found, it (

496

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

must be elaborately sought, and although
a positive merit of the highest class, de-
mands in its attainment less of invention
than negation.

Of course, I pretend to no originality in
either the rhythm or meter of "The
Raven." The former is trochaic, the
latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating
with heptameter catalectic repeated in
the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminat-
ing with tetrameter catalectic. Less pe-
dantically, the feet employed throughout
(trochees) consist of a long syllable fol-
lowed by a short: the first line of the
stanza consists of eight of these feet,
the second of seven and a half (in effect
two thirds), the third of eight, the fourth
of seven and a half, the fifth the same, the
sixth three and a half. Now, each of
these lines, taken individually, has been
employed before, and what originality
"The Raven" has, is in their combination
into stanza; nothing even remotely ap-
proaching this combination has ever been
attempted. The effect of this originality
of combination is aided by other unusual,
and some altogether novel effects, arising
from an extension of the application of the
principles of rhyme and alliteration.

The next point to be considered was
the mode of bringing together the lover
and the Raven, and the first branch of
this consideration was the locale. For
this the most natural suggestion might
seem to be a forest, or the field; but it has
always appeared to me that a close cir-
cumscription of space is absolutely neces-
sary to the effect of insulated incident:
it has the force of a frame to a picture.
It has an indisputable moral power in
keeping concentrated the attention, and,
of course, must not be confounded with
mere unity of place.

I determined, then, to place the lover
in his chamber, in a chamber rendered
sacred to him by memories of her who had
frequented it. The room is represented
as richly furnished, this in mere pur-
suance of the ideas I have already ex-
plained on the subject of Beauty, as the
sole true poetical thesis.

The locale being thus determined, I

had now to introduce the bird, and the
thought of introducing him through the
window was inevitable. The idea of
making the lover suppose, in the first
instance, that the flapping of the wings
of the bird against the shutter is a "tap-
ping" at the door, originated in a wish to
increase, by prolonging, the reader's
curiosity, and in a desire to admit the
incidental effect arising from the lover's
throwing open the door, finding all dark,
and thence adopting the half-fancy that it
was the spirit of his mistress that knocked.

I made the night tempestuous, first, to
account for the Raven seeking admission;
and secondly, for the effect of contrast
with the (physical) serenity within the
chamber.

I made the bird alight on the bust of
Pallas, also for the effect of contrast be-
tween the marble and the plumage, it
being understood that the bust was abso-
lutely suggested by the bird, the bust of
Pallas being chosen, first, as most in
keeping with the scholarship of the lover;
and, secondly, for the sonorousness of the
word Pallas, itself.

About the middle of the poem, also, I
have availed myself of the force of con-
trast, with the view of deepening the ulti-
mate impression. For example, an air
of the fantastic approaching as nearly to
the ludicrous as was admissible is given
to the Raven's entrance. He comes in
"with many a flirt and flutter."

Not the least obeisance made he, not a moment

stopped or stayed he,
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my

chamber-door.

In the two stanzas which follow, the
design is more obviously carried out:

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into

smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance

it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I

said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly, grim and ancient Raven, wandering from

the nightly shore,
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's

Plutonian shore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

ESSAYS

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear dis-
course so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning little relevancy
bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human
being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his
chamber-door,

Bira or beast upon the sculptured bust above his
chamber-door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

The effect of the denouement being thus
provided for, I immediately drop the
fantastic for a tone of the most profound
seriousness, this tone commencing in
the stanza directly following the one last
quoted, with the fine,

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust,
spoke only, etc.

From this epoch the lover no longer
jests, no longer sees anything even of
the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor.
He speaks of him as a "grim, ungainly,
ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore,"
and feels the "fiery eyes" burning into
his "bosom's core." This revolution of
thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is
intended to induce a similar one on the part
of the reader, to bring the mind into a
proper frame for the denouement, which
is now brought about as rapidly and as
directly as possible.

With the denouement proper with the
Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to the
lover's final demand if he shall meet his
mistress in another world the poem, in
its obvious phase, that of a simple narra-
tive, may be said to have its completion.
So far, everything is within the limits of
the accountable, of the real. A raven,
having learned by rote the single word
"Nevermore," and having escaped from
the custody of its owner, is driven at mid-
night, through the violence of a storm, to
seek admission at a window from which a
light still gleams, the chamber-window
of a student, occupied half in poring over a
volume, half in dreaming of a beloved
mistress deceased. The casement being
thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's
wings, the bird itself perches on the most
convenient seat out of the immediate
teach of the student, who, amused by the

497

incident and the oddity of the visitor's
demeanor, demands of it, in jest and with-
out looking for a reply, its name. The
raven addressed, answers with its cus-
tomary word, "Nevermore," a word
which finds immediate echo in the mel-
ancholy heart of the student, who, giving
utterance aloud to certain thoughts sug-
gested by the occasion, is again startled
by the fowl's repetition of "Nevermore."
The student now guesses the state of the
case, but is impelled, as I have before ex-
plained, by the human thirst for self-
torture, and in part by superstition, to
propound such queries to the bird as will,
bring him, the lover, the most of the lux-
ury of sorrow, through the anticipated
answer, "Nevermore." With the indul-
gence, to the extreme, of this self-torture,
the narration, in what I have termed its
first or obvious phase, has a natural ter-
mination; and so far there has been no
overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however
skilfully, or with however vivid an array
of incident, there is always a certain hard-
ness of nakedness, which repels the artis-
tical eye. Two things are invariably re-
quired: first, some amount of complexity,
or, more properly, adaptation; and, sec-
ondly, some amount of suggestiveness
some undercurrent, however indefinite,
of meaning. It is this latter, in especial,
which imparts to a work of art so much of
that richness (to borrow from colloquy
a forcible term) which we are too fond of
confounding with the ideal. It is the
excess of the suggested meaning it is the
rendering this the upper instead of the
under current of the theme which turns
into prose (and that of the very flattest
kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called
transcendentalists.

Holding these opinions, 1 added the two
concluding stanzas of the poem, their
suggestiveness being thus made to pervade
all the narrative which has preceded them.
The undercurrent of meaning is rendered
first apparent in the lines

"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy
form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermotel"

498

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

It will be observed that the words
"from out my heart" involve the first
metaphorical expression in the poem.
They, with the answer, "Nevermore,"
dispose the mind to seek a moral in all
that has been previously narrated. The
reader begins now to regard the Raven as
emblematical; but it is not until the very
last line of the very last stanza that the
intention of making him emblematical of
Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance
is permitted distinctly to be seen:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is

sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber

door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that

is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his

shadow on the floor,
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating

on the floor

Shall be lifted nevermore.

(1846)

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

Ruskin, with Carlyle, was one of the great preachers to his generation. He began as a critic of art,
producing a profusion of books on English and Italian art, but, believing that great art could be created
only by a right-living and right-believing community, he gave himself during many years to writing and
lecturing to the workingmen of England. Revolting from the ugliness and injustice of modern indus-
trialism, he preached the need of creating other values of duty and health and spiritual life. His most
famous practical social experiment was the Guild of St. George, a mild sort of community living which
is still in existence. The present essay, one of a series of lectures delivered in Dublin in 1868, contains
some of his wisest and most eloquent reflections. The first half only is given.

LIFE AND ITS ARTS

WE HAVE sat at the feet of the poets who
sang of heaven, and they have told us their
dreams. We have listened to the poets
who sang of earth, and they have chanted
to us dirges and words of despair. But
there is one class of men more: men, not
capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow,
but firm of purpose practised in business;
learned in all that can be, (by handling,)
known. Men, whose hearts and hopes
are wholly in this present world, from
whom, therefore, we may surely learn,
at least, how, at present, conveniently to
live in it. What will they say to us, or
show us by example? These kings these
councillors these statesmen and build-
ers of kingdoms these capitalists and
men of business, who weigh the earth,
and the dust of it, in a balance. They
know the world, surely; and what is the
mystery of life to us, is none to them.
They can surely show us how to live,
while we live, and to gather out of the
present world what is best.

I think I can best tell you their answer,
by telling you a dream I had once. For
though I am no poet, I have dreams some-

times: I dreamed I was at a child's
May-day party, in which every means of
entertainment had been provided for
them, by a wise and kind host. It was
in a stately house, with beautiful gardens
attached to it; and the children had been
set free in the rooms and gardens, with no
care whatever but how to pass their
afternoon rejoicingly. They did not,
indeed, know much about what was to
happen next day; and some of them, I
thought, were a little frightened, because
there was a chance of their being sent to a
new school where there were examina-
tions; but they kept the thoughts of that
out of their heads as well as they could,
and resolved to enjoy themselves. The
house, I said, was in a beautiful garden,
and in the garden were all kinds of flowers;
sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth
lawns for play; and pleasant streams and
woods; and rocky places for climbing.
And the children were happy for a little
while, but presently they separated them-
selves into parties; and then each party
declared it would have a piece of the
garden for its own, and that none of the
others should have anything to do with
that piece. Next, they quarrelled vio-

ESSAYS

499

lently which pieces they would have; and
at last the boys took up the thing, as
boys should do, "practically," and fought
in the flower-beds till there was hardly a
flower left standing; then they trampled
down each other's bits of the garden out
of spite; and the girls cried till they could
cry no more; and so they all lay down at
last breathless in the ruin, and waited for
the time when they were to be taken home
in the evening.*

Meanwhile, the children in the house
had been making themselves happy also
in their manner. For them, there had
been provided every kind of in-door
pleasure: there was music for them to
dance to; and the library was open, with
all manner of amusing books; and there
was a museum full of the most curious
shells, and animals, and birds; and there
was a workshop, with lathes and carpen-
ters' tools, for the ingenious boys; and
there were pretty fantastic dresses, for
the girls to dress in; and there were mi-
croscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and whatever
toys a child could fancy; and a table, in
the dining-room, loaded with everything
nice to eat.

But, in the midst of all this, it struck
two or three of the more "practical" chil-
dren, that they would like some of the
brass-headed nails that studded the chairs;
and so they set to work to pull them out.
Presently, the others, who were reading,
or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the
like; and, in a little while, all the chil-
dren, nearly, were spraining their fingers,
in pulling out brass-headed nails. With
all that they could pull out, they were not
satisfied; and then, everybody wanted
some of somebody else's. And at last,
the really practical and sensible ones
declared, that nothing was of any real
consequence, that afternoon, except to get
plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the
books, and the cakes, and the microscopes
were of no use at all in themselves, but
only, if they could be exchanged for nail-
heads. And at last they began to fight

I have sometimes been asked what this means. I in-
tended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for
kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace,
contending for wealth. [Ruskin.]

for nail-heads, as the others fought for the
bits of garden. Only here and there, a
despised one shrank away into a corner,
and tried to get a little quiet with a book,
in the midst of the noise; but all the prac-
tical ones thought of nothing else but
counting nail-heads all the afternoon-
even though they knew they would not be
allowed to carry so much as one brass
knob away with them. But no it was
"who has most nails? I have a hundred,
and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand,
and you have two. I must have as many
as you before I leave the house, or I cannot
possibly go home in peace." At last,
they made so much noise that I awoke,
and thought to myself, "What a false
dream that is, of children!" The child
is the father of the man; and wiser. Chil-
dren never do such foolish things. Only
men do.

But there is yet one last class of persons
to be interrogated. The wise religious
men we have asked in vain; the wise con-
templative men, in vain; the wise worldly
men, in vain. But there is another group
yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty
religion of tragic contemplation of
wrathful and wretched ambition, and dis-
pute for dust, there is yet one great group
of persons, by whom all these disputers
live the persons who have determined, or
have had it by a beneficent Providence
determined for them, that they will do
something useful; that whatever may be
prepared for them hereafter, or happen to
them here, they will, at least, deserve the
food that God gives them by winning it
honorably: and that, however fallen
from the purity, or far from the peace, of
Eden, they will carry out the duty of
human dominion, though they have lost
its felicity; and dress and keep the wilder-
ness, though they no more can dress or
keep the garden.

These, hewers of wood, and drawers
of water, these, bent under burdens, or
torn of scourges these, that dig and
weave that plant and build; workers
in wood, and in marble, and in iron by
whom all food, clothing, habitation,
furniture, and means of delight are pro-

Soo

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

duced, for themselves, and for all men
beside; men, whose deeds are good,
though their words may be few; men,
whose lives are serviceable, be they never
so short, and worthy of honor, be they
never so humble; from these, surely, at
least, we may receive some clear message
of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into
the mystery of life, and of its arts.

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive
a lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather
for that is the deeper truth of the matter
I rejoice to say this message of theirs
can only be received by joining them
not by thinking about them.

You sent for me to talk to you of art;
and I have obeyed you in coming. But
the main thing I have to tell you is,
that art must not be talked about. The
fact that there is talk about it at all, sig-
nifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done.
No true painter ever speaks, or ever has
spoken, much of his art. The greatest
speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no
exception, for he wrote of all that he
could not himself do, and was utterly
silent respecting all that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his
work he becomes speechless about it.
All words become idle to him all theories.

Does a bird need to theorize about build-
ing its nest, or boast of it when built?
All good work is essentially done that way
without hesitation, without difficulty,
without boasting; and in the doers of the
best, there is an inner and involuntary
power which approximates literally to the
instinct of an animal nay, I am certain
that in the most perfect human artists,
reason does not supersede instinct, but is
added to an instinct as much more divine
than that of the lower animals as the hu-
man body is more beautiful than theirs;
that a great singer sings not with less
instinct than the nightingale, but with
more only more various, applicable, and
governable; that a great architect does
not build with less instinct than the beaver
or the bee, but with more with an innate
cunning of proportion that embraces all
beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill
that improvises all construction. But be

that as it may be the instinct less or
more than that of inferior animals like or
unlike theirs, still the human art is depen-
dent on that first, and then upon an
amount of practice, of science, and of
imagination disciplined by thought, which
the true possessor of it knows to be incom-
municable, and the true critic of it, inex-
plicable, except through long process of
laborious years. That journey of life's
conquest, in which hills over hills, and
Alps on Alps arose, and sank, do you
think you can make another trace it pain-
lessly, by talking? Why, you cannot
even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You
can guide us up it, step by step, no other-
wise even so, best silently. You girls,
who have been among the hills, know
how the bad guide chatters and gesticu-
lates, and it is "put your foot here";
and "mind how you balance yourself
there"; but the good guide walks on
quietly, without a word, only with his
eyes on you when need is, and his arm
like an iron bar, if need be.

In that slow way, also, art can be
taught if you have faith in your guide,
and will let his arm be to you as an iron
bar when need is. But in what teacher of
art have you such faith? Certainly not
in me; for, as I told you at first, I know
well enough it is only because you think I
can talk, not because you think I know
my business, that you let me speak to you
at all. If I were to tell you anything that
seemed to you strange, you would not be-
lieve it, and yet it would only be in telling
you strange things that I could be of use
to you. I could be of great use to you
infinite use with brief saying, if you
would believe it; but you would not,
just because the thing that would be of
real use would displease you. You are
all wild, for instance, with admiration of
Gustave Dore. Well, suppose I were to
tell you, in the strongest terms I could use,
that Gustave Dore's art was bad bad,
not in weakness, not in failure, but
bad with dreadful power the power of
the Furies and the Harpies mingled, en-
raging, and polluting; that so long as you
looked at it, no perception of pure or

ESSAYS

beautiful art was possible for you. Sup-
pose I were to tell you that! What
would be the use? Would you look at
Gustave Dore less? Rather, more, I
fancy. On the other hand, I could soon
put you into good humor with me, if I
chose. I know well enough what you
like, and how to praise it to your better
liking. I could talk to you about moon-
light, and twilight, and spring flowers,
and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas
of Raphael how motherly! and the Sib-
yls of Michael Angelo how majestic!
and the Saints of Angelico how pious!
and the Cherubs of Correggio how de-
licious! Old as I am, I could play you a
tune on the harp yet, that you would
dance to. But neither you nor I should
be a bit the better or wiser; or, if we were,
our increased wisdom could be of no prac-
tical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as
regards teachableness, differ from the
sciences also in this, that their power is
founded not merely on facts which can be
communicated, but on dispositions which
require to be created. Art is neither to
be achieved by effort of thinking, nor ex-
plained by accuracy of speaking. It is
the instinctive and necessary result of
power, which can only be developed
through the mind of successive genera-
tions, and which finally bursts into life
under social conditions as slow of growth
as the faculties they regulate. Whole
areas of mighty history are summed, and
the passions of dead myriads are concen-
trated, in the existence of a noble art;
and if that noble art were among us, we
should feel it and rejoice; not caring in the
least to hear lectures on it; and since it is
not among us, be assured we have to go
back to the root of it, or, at least, to the
place where the stock of it is yet alive,
and the branches began to die.

And now, may I have your pardon for
pointing out, partly with reference to
matters which are at this tune of greater
moment than the arts that if we under-
took such recession to the vital germ of
national arts that have decayed, we should
find a more singular arrest of their power
in Ireland than in any other European

country. For in the eighth century Ire-
land possessed a school of art in her manu-
scripts and sculpture, which, in many of
its qualities apparently in all essential
qualities of decorative invention was
quite without rival; seeming as if it might
have advanced to trie highest triumphs in
architecture and in painting. But there
was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which
it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicu-
ousness of pause to which there is no
parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the
progress of European schools from in-
fancy to strength, I chose for the students
of Kensington, in a lecture since published,
two characteristic examples of early art,
of equal skill; but in the one case, skill
which was progressive in the other, skill
which was at pause. In the one case, it
was work receptive of correction hungry
for correction; and in the other, work
which inherently rejected Correction. I
chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an
incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say
that the incorrigible Angel was also an
Irish angel!

And the fatal difference lay wholly in
this. In both pieces of art there was an
equal falling short of the needs of fact;
but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in
the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought
himself all right. The eager Lombardic
sculptor, though firmly insisting on his
childish idea, yet showed in the irregular
broken touches of the features, and the
imperfect struggle for softer lines in the
form, a perception of beauty and law that
he could not render; there was the strain
of effort, under conscious imperfection, in
every line. But the Irish missal-painter
had drawn his angel with no sense of
failure, in happy complacency, and put
red dots into the palms of each hand, and
rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and,
I regret to say, left the mouth out alto-
gether, with perfect satisfaction to himself.

May I without offense ask you to con-
sider whether this mode of arrest in ancient
Irish art may not be indicative of points
of character which even yet, in some
measure, arrest your national power? I
have seen much of Irish character, and

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

have watched it closely, for I have also
much loved it. And I think the form of
failure to which it is most liable is this,
that being generous-hearted, and wholly
intending always to do right, it does not
attend to the external laws of right,
but thinks it must necessarily do right
because it means to do so, and therefore
does wrong without finding it out; and
then, when the consequences of its wrong
come upon it, or upon others connected
with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong
is in any wise of its causing or of its doing,
but flies into wrath, and a strange agony
of desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly
innocent, which leads it farther astray,
until there is nothing that it is not cap-
able of doing with a good conscience.

But mind, I do not mean to say that,
in past or present relations between Ire-
land and England, you have been wrong,
and we right. Far from that, I believe
that in aU great questions of principle,
and in all details of administration of law,
you have been usually right, and we
wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding
you, sometimes in resolute iniquity to you.
Nevertheless, in all disputes between
states, though the strongest is nearly al-
ways mainly in the wrong, the weaker is
often so in a minor degree; and I think
we sometimes admit the possibility of our
being in error, and you never do.

And now, returning to the broader
question, what these arts and labors of
life have to teach us of its mystery, this
is the first of their lessons that the more
beautiful the art, the more it is essen-
tially the work of people who fed them-
selves wrong; who are striving for the f ul-
filment of a law, and the grasp of a love-
liness, which they have not yet attained,
which they feel even farther and farther
from attaining the more they strive for it.
And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work
of people who know also that they are
right. The very sense of inevitable error
from their purpose marks the perfectness
of that purpose, and the continued sense
of failure arises from the continued open-
ing of the eyes more clearly to all the
sacredest laws of truth.

This is one lesson. The second is a
very plain, and greatly precious one:
namely, that whenever the arts and
labors of life are fulfilled in this spirit of
striving against misrule, and doing what-
ever we have to do, honorably and per-
fectly, they invariably bring happiness,
as much as seems possible to the nature
of man. In all other paths by which that
happiness is pursued there is disappoint-
ment, or destruction: for ambition and for
passion there is no rest no fruition;
the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a
darkness greater than their past light;
and the loftiest and purest love too
often does but inflame the cloud of life
with endless fire of pain. But, ascending
from lowest to highest, through every
scale of human industry, that industry
worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the
laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the
mine; ask the patient, delicate-fingered
artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted
worker in bronze, and in marble, and in
the colors of light; and none of these,
who are true workmen, will ever tell you,
that they have found the law of heaven an
unkind one that in the sweat of their
face they should eat bread, till they return
to the ground; nor that they ever found it
an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it
was rendered faithfully to the command
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do
do it with thy might."

These are the two great and constant
lessons which our laborers teach us of the
mystery of life. But there is another,
and a sadder one, which they cannot teach
us, which we must read on their tomb-
stones.

"Do it with thy might." There have
been myriads upon myriads of human
creatures who have obeyed this law
who have put every breath and nerve of
their being into its toil who have devoted
every hour, and exhausted every faculty
who have bequeathed their unaccom-
plished thoughts at death who, being
dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of
memory, and strength of example. And,
at last, what has all this 'Might" of
humanity accomplished, in six thousand;

ESSAYS

503

years of labor and sorrow? What has it
done? Take the three chief occupations
and arts of men, one by one, and count
their achievements. Begin with the first
the lord of them all Agriculture. Six
thousand years have passed since we were
sent to till the ground, from which we
were taken. How much of it is tilled?
How much of that which is, wisely or well?
In the very center and chief garden of
Europe where the two forms of parent
Christianity have had their fortresses
where the noble Catholics of the Forest
Cantons, and the noble Protestants of
the Vaudois valleys, have maintained,
for dateless ages, their faiths and liberties
there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet
run wild in devastation; and the marshes,
which a few hundred men could redeem
with a year's labor, still blast their help-
less inhabitants into fevered idiotism.
That is so, in the center of Europe!
While, on the near coast of Africa, once
the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab
woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her
child, for famine. And, with all the
treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our
own dominion, could not find a few grains
of rice, for a people that asked of us no
more; but stood by, and saw five hun-
dred thousand of them perish of hunger.

Then, after agriculture, the art of kings,
take the next head of human arts weav-
ing; the art of queens, honored of all
noble Heathen women, in the person of
their virgin goddess honored of all He-
brew women, by the word of their wisest
king "She layeth her hands to the spin-
dle, and her hands hold the distaff;
she stretcheth out her hand to the poor.
She is not afraid of the snow for her house-
hold, for all her household are clothed with
scarlet. She maketh herself covering of
tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and
delivereth girdles unto the merchant."
What have we done in all these thousands
of years with this bright art of Greek maid
and Christian matron? Six thousand
years of weaving, and have we learned to
weave? Might not every naked wall
have been purple with tapestry, and every

feeble breast fenced with sweet colors
from the cold? What have we done?
Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist
together some poor covering for our
bodies. We set our streams to work for
us, and choke the air with fire, to turn
our spinning-wheels and, are we yet
clothed ? Are not the streets of the capitals
of Europe foul with the sale of cast clouts
and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of
your sweet children left in wretchedness
of disgrace, while, with better honor,
nature clothes the brood of the bird in its
nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her
den? And does not every winter's snow
robe what you have not robed, and shroud
what you have not shrouded; and every
winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted
souls, to witness against you hereafter,
by the voice of their Christ, "I was
naked, and ye clothed me not"?

Lastly take the Art of Building the
strongest proudest most orderly most
enduring of the arts of man; that of which
the produce is in the surest manner ac-
cumulative, and need not perish, or be re-
placed; but if once well done, will stand
more strongly than the unbalanced rocks
more prevalently than the crumbling hills.
The art which is associated with all civic
pride and sacred principle; with which
men record their power satisfy their
enthusiasm make sure their defense
define and make dear their habitation.
And in six thousand years of building,
what have we done? Of the greater part
of all that skill and strength, no vestige
is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the
fields and impede the streams. But,
from this waste of disorder, and of time,
and of rage, what is left to us? Con-
structive and progressive creatures that
we are, with ruling brains, and forming
hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting
for fame, can we not contend, in comfort,
with the insects of the forest, or, in achieve-
ment, with the worm of the sea? The
white surf rages in vain against the ram-
parts built by poor atoms of scarcely nas-
cent life; but only ridges of formless ruin
mark the places where once dwelt our
noblest multitudes. The ant and the

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

moth have cells for each of their young,
but our little ones lie in festering heaps,
in homes that consume them like graves;
and night by night, from the corners of
our streets, rises up the cry of the home-
less "I was a stranger, and ye took me
not in."

Must it be always thus? Is our life
for ever to be without profit without
possession? Shall the strength of its
generations be as barren as death; or
cast away their labor, as the wild fig-tree
casts her untimely figs? Is it all a dream
then the desire of the eyes and the
pride of life or, if it be, might we not
live in nobler dream than this? The
poets and prophets, the wise men, and the
scribes, though they have told us nothing
about a life to come, have told us much
about the life that is now. They have
had they also, their dreams, and we
have laughed at them. They have
dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they
have dreamed of peace and good- will;
they have dreamed of labor undisap-
pointed, and of rest undisturbed; they
have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and
overflowing in store; they have dreamed
of wisdom in council, and of providence
in law; of gladness of parents, and strength
of children, and glory of gray hairs. And
at these visions of theirs we have mocked,
and held them for idle and vain, unreal
and unaccomplishable. What have we
accomplished with our realities? Is this
what has come of our worldly wisdom,
tried against their folly? this, our mightiest
possible, against their impotent ideal?
or, have we only wandered among the
spectra of a baser felicity, and chased
phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions
of the Almighty; and walked after the
imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of
after the counsels of Eternity, until our
lives not in the likeness of the cloud of
Tieaven, but of the smoke of hell have
become "as a vapor, that appeareth for
a little time, and then vanisheth away"?

Does it vanish then? Are you sure of
that? sure, that the nothingness of the
grave will be a rest from this troubled
nothingness; and that the roiling shadow,

which disquiets itself in vain, cannot
change into the smoke of the torment
that ascends for ever? Will any answer
that they are sure of it, and that there is no
fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor,
whither they go? Be it so: will you not,
then, make as sure of the Life that now is,
as you are of the Death that is to come?
Your hearts are wholly in this world
will you not give them to it wisely, as
well as perfectly? And see, first of all,
that you have hearts, and sound hearts,
too, to give. Because you have no heaven
to look for, is that any reason that you
should remain ignorant of this wonderful
and infinite earth, which is firmly and in-
stantly given you in possession? Al-
though your days are numbered, and the
following darkness sure, is it necessary
that you should share the degradation of
the brute, because you are condemned to
its mortality; or live the life of the moth,
and of the worm, because you are to com-
panion them in the dust? Not so; we
may have but a few thousands of days to
spend, perhaps hundreds only perhaps
tens; nay, the longest of our time and best,
looked back on, will be but as a moment,
as the twinkling of an eye; still we are
men, not insects; we are living spirits, not
passing clouds. "He maketh the winds
His messengers; the momentary fire, His
minister"; and shall we do less than these?
Let us do the work of men while we bear
the form of them; and, as we snatch our
narrow portion of time, out of Eternity,
snatch also our narrow inheritance of
passion out of Immortality even though
our lives be as a vapor, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
But there are some of you who believe
not this who think this cloud of life
has no such close that it is to float, re-
vealed and illumined, upon the floor of
heaven, in the day when He cometh with
clouds, and every eye shall see Him.
Some day, you believe, within these five,
or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us
the judgment will be set, and the books
opened. If that be true, far more than
that must be true. Is there but one day
of judgment? Why, for us every day is a

ESSAYS

505

day of judgment every day is a Dies
Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict
in the flame of its West. Think you that
judgment waits till the doors of the grave
are opened? It waits at the doors of your
houses it waits at the corners of your
streets; we are in the midst of judgment
the insects that we crush are our judges
the moments that we fret away are our
judges the elements that feed us, judge,
as they minister and the pleasures that
deceive us, judge as they indulge. Let us,
for our lives, do the work of Men while we
bear the form of them, if indeed those
lives are Not as a vapor, and do Not
vanish away.

"The work of men" and what is that?
Well, we may any of us know very quickly,
on the condition of being wholly ready to
do it. But many of us are for the most
part thinking, not of what we are to do,
but of what we are to get; and the best of
us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is
a mortal one we want to keep back part
of the price; and we continually talk
of taking up our cross, as if the only harm
in a cross was the weight of it as if it was
only a thing to be carried, instead of to be
crucified upon. "They that are His
have crucified the flesh, with the affec-
tions and lusts." Does that mean, think
you, that in time of national distress, of
religious trial, of crisis for every interest
and hope of humanity none of us will
cease jesting, none cease idling, none put
themselves to any wholesome work, none
take so much as a tag of lace off their foot-
men's coats, to save the world? Or does
it rather mean, that they are ready to
leave houses, lands, and kindreds yes,
and life, if need be? Life! some of us
are ready enough to throw that away, joy-
less as we have made it. But "station
in Life" how many of us are ready to
quit that? Is it not always the great
objection, where there is question of
finding something useful to do "We
cannot leave our stations in Life? "

Those of us who really cannot that is
to say, who can only maintain themselves
by continuing in some business or salaried
office, have already something to do;

and all that they have to see to is, that
they do it honestly and with all their
might. But with most people who .ise
that apology, "remaining in the station
of life to which Providence has called
them" means keeping all the carriages,
and all the footmen and large houses they
can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I
say that if ever Providence did put them
into stations of that sort which is not at
all a matter of certainty Providence is
just now very distinctly calling them out
again. Levi's station in life was the
receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore
of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers
of the High Priest, which "station in
life" each had to leave, with brief notice.

And, whatever our station in life may
be, at this crisis, those of us who mean to
fulfil our duty ought first to live on as
little as we can; and, secondly, to do all
the wholesome work for it we can, and to
spend all we can spare in doing all the
sure good we can.

And sure good is, first in feeding people,
then in dressing people, then in lodging
people, and lastly in rightly pleasing
people, with arts, or sciences, or any
other subject of thought.

I say first in feeding; and, once for all,
do not let yourselves be deceived by any
of the common talk of "indiscriminate
charity." The order to us is not to
feed the deserving hungry, nor the indus-
trious hungry, nor the amiable and well-
intentioned hungry, but simply to feed
the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly
true, that if any man will not work,
neither should he eat think of that,
and every time you sit down to your din-
ner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly,
before you ask a blessing, "How much
work have I done to-day for my dinner? "
But the proper way to enforce that order
on those below you, as well as on your-
selves, is not to leave vagabonds and
honest people to starve together, but very
distinctly to discern and seize your vaga-
bond; and shut your vagabond up out
of honest people's way, and very sternly
then see that, until he has worked, he
does not eat. But the first thing is to be

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

sure you have the food to give; and,
therefore, to enforce the organization
of vast activities in agriculture and in
commerce, for the production of the whole-
somest food, and proper storing and dis-
tribution of it, so that no famine shall
any more be possible among civilized
beings. There is plenty of work in this
business alone, and at once, for any num-
ber of people who like to engage in it.

Secondly, dressing people that is to
say, urging every one within reach of your
influence to be always neat and clean, and
giving them means of being so. In so
far as they absolutely refuse, you must
give up the effort with respect to them,
only taking care that no children within
your sphere of influence shall any more be
brought up with such habits; and that
every person who is willing to dress with
propriety shall have encouragement to do
so. And the first absolutely necessary
step towards this is the gradual adoption
of a consistent dress for different ranks of
persons, so that their rank shall be known
by their dress; and the restriction of the
changes of fashion within certain limits.
All which appears for the present quite
impossible; but it is only so far even dif-
ficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity,
frivolity, and desire to appear what we are
not. And it is not, nor ever shall be,
creed of mine, that these mean and shal-
low vices are unconquerable by Christian
, women.

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which
you may think should have been put first,
but I put it third, because we must feed
and clothe people where we find them, and
lodge them afterwards. And providing
lodgment for them means a great deal of
vigorous legislation, and cutting down of
vested interests that stand in the way,
and after that, or before that, so far as we
can get it, through sanitary and remedial
action in the houses that we have; and
then the building of more, strongly,
beautifully, and in groups of limited extent,
kept in proportion to their streams, and
walled round, so that there may be no
festering and wretched suburb anywhere,
but clean and busy street within, and the

open country without, with a belt of
beautiful garden and orchard round the
walls, so that from any part of the city
perfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight
of far horizon, might be reachable in a few
minutes' walk. This is the final aim;
but in immediate action every minor and
possible good to be instantly done, when,
and as, we can; roofs mended that have
holes in them fences patched that have
gaps in them walls buttressed that tot-
ter and floors propped that shake; clean-
liness and order enforced with our own
hands and eyes, till we are breathless,
every day. And all the fine arts will
healthily follow. I myself have washed
a flight of stone stairs all down, with
bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where
they hadn't washed their stairs since
they first went up them; and I never made
a better sketch than that afternoon.

These, then, are the three first needs of
civilized life; and the law for every Chris-
tian man and woman is, that they shall
be in direct service towards one of these
three needs, as far as is consistent with
their own special occupation, and if they
have no special business, then wholly in
one of these services. And out of such
exertion in plain duty all other good will
come; for in this direct contention with
material evil, you will find out the real
nature of all evil; you will discern by the
various kinds of resistance, what is really
the fault and main antagonism to good;
also you will find the most unexpected
helps and profound lessons given, and
truths will come thus down to us which the
speculation of all our lives would never
have raised us up to. You will find nearly
every educational problem solved, as
soon as you truly want to do something;
everybody will become of use in their own
fittest way, and will learn what is best for
them to know in that use. Competitive
examination will then, and not till then,
be wholesome, because it will be daily,
and calm, and in practice; and on these
familiar arts, and minute, but certain and
serviceable knowledges, will be surely
edified and sustained the greater arts and
splendid theoretical sciences.

ESSAYS

So?

But much more than this. On such
holy and simple practice will be founded,
indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The
greatest of all the mysteries of life, and
the most terrible, is the corruption of
even the sincerest religion, which is not
daily founded on rational, effective, hum-
ble, and helpful action. Helpful action,
observe! for there is just one law, which
obeyed, keeps all religions pure for-
gotten, makes them ail false. When-
ever in any religious faith, dark or bright,
we allow our minds to dwell upon the
points in which we differ from other
people, we are wrong, and in the devil's
power. That is the essence of the Phar-
isee's thankgiving "Lord, I thank Thee
that I am not as other men are." At
every moment of our lives we should be
trying to find out, not in what we differ
with other people, but in what we agree
with them; and the moment we find we can
agree as to anything that should be done,
kind or good (and who but fools couldn't?),
then do it; push at it together; you can't
quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the
moment that even the best men stop
pushing, and begin talking, they mistake
their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over.
I will not speak of the crimes which in
past times have been committed in the
name of Christ, nor of the follies which
are at this hour held to be consistent with
obedience to Him; but I will speak of the
morbid corruption and waste of vital
power in religious sentiment, by which
the pure strength of that which should be
the guiding soul of every nation, the
splendor of its youthful manhood, and
spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted
or cast away. You may see continually
girls who have never been taught to do a
single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot
sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast
an account, nor prepare a medicine,
whose whole life has been passed either in
play or in pride; you will find girls like
these, when they are earnest-hearted,
cast all their innate passion of religious
spirit, which was meant by God to support

them _ through the irksomeness of daily
toil, into grievous and vain meditation
over the meaning of the great Book, of
which no syllable was ever yet to be under-
stood but through a deed fall the instinc-
tive wisdom and mercy of their woman-
hood made vain, and the glory of their
pure consciences warped into fruitless
agony concerning questions which the
laws of common serviceable life would
have either solved for them in an instant,
or kept out of their way. Give such a
girl any true work that will make her
active in the dawn, and weary at night,
with the consciousness that her fellow-
creatures have indeed been the better
for her day, and the powerless sorrow of
her enthusiasm will transform itself into a
majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.

So with our youths. We once taught
them to make Latin verses, and called
them educated; now we teach them to
leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat,
and call them educated. Can they plough,
can they sow, can they plant at the right
time, or build with a steady hand? Is it
the effort of their lives to be chaste,
knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely
in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some,
nay with many, and the strength of Eng-
land is in them, and the hope; but we have
to turn their courage from the toil of war
to the toil of mercy; and their intellect
from dispute of words to discernment of
things; and their knighthood from the
errantry of adventure to the state and
fidelity of a kingly power. And then,
indeed, shall abide, for them, and for us,
an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible
religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more
to be assailed by temptation, no more to
be defended by wrath and by fear; shall
abide with us Hope, no more to be
quenched by the years that overwhelm, or
made ashamed by the shadows that be-
tray: shall abide for us, and with us,
the greatest of these; the abiding will,
the abiding name of our Father. For
the greatest of these is Charity.

(1868)

$o8

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1

Arnold approached the social problem from an angle different from the sermonizing of Carlyle and
Ruskin, finding in the recognition and development of our power to enjoy beauty, our openness to ideas,
and our capacity for social life and manners, as well as in our moral sense, a remedy for the materialism
of our modern epoch. This ideal of the all-round development of the individual he calls culture, and the
terms he chooses to distinguish the two sides of our nature the moral and the intelligent or reasonable
he takes from the two great races of Antiquity which were mainly characterized by these qualities.
To the intensity and the narrowness and the bigotry of Hebraic and democratic England he would oppose
the sweetness and light of the Hellenic world.

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

THE disparagers of culture make its
motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they
make its motive mere exclusiveness and
vanity. The culture which is supposed
to plume itself on a smattering of Greek
and Latin, is a culture which is begotten
by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is
valued either out of sheer vanity and ignor-
ance or else as an engine of social and class
distinction, separating its holder, like a
badge or title, from other people who have
not got it. No serious man would call
this culture, or attach any value to it, as
culture, at all. To find the real ground
for the very different estimate which
serious people will set upon culture, we
must find some motive for culture in the
terms of which may lie a real ambiguity;
and such a motive the word curiosity gives
us.

I have before now pointed out that we
English do not, like the foreigners, use this
word in a good sense as well as in a bad
sense. With us the word is always used
in a somewhat disapproving sense. A
liberal and intelligent eagerness about
the things of the mind may be meant by
a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity,
but with us the word always conveys a
certain notion of frivolous and unedifying
activity. In the Quarterly Review, some
little time ago, was an estimate of the
celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve,
and a very inadequate estimate it in my
judgment was. And its inadequacy con-
sisted chiefly in this: that in our English
way it left out of sight the double sense
really involved in the word curiosity,
thinking enough was said to stamp M.
Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said

that he was impelled in his operations as
a critic by curiosity, and omitting either
to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve him-
self, and many other people with him,
would consider that this was praiseworthy
and not blameworthy, or to point out
why it ought really to be accounted worthy
of blame and not of praise. For as there
is a curiosity about intellectual matter*
which is futile, and merely a disease, so
there is certainly a curiosity, a desire
after the things of the mind simply for
their own sakes and for the pleasure ot
seeing them as they are, which is, in an
intelligent being, natural and laudable.
Nay, and~the very desire to see things as
they are implies a balance and regulation
of mind which is not often attained with-
out fruitful effort, and which is the very
opposite of the blind and diseased impulse
of mind which is what we mean to blame
when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu
says: "The first motive which ought to
impel us to study is the desire to aug-
ment the excellence of our nature, and to
render an intelligent being yet more intelli-
gent." This is the true ground to assign
for the genuine scientific passion, however
manifested, and for culture, viewed simply
as a fruit of this passion; and it is a worthy
ground, even though we let the term
curiosity stand to describe it.

But there is of culture another view,
in which not solely the scientific passion,
the sheer desire to see things as they are,
natural and proper in an intelligent being,
appears as die ground of it. There is a
view in which all the love of our neighbor,
the impulses towards action, help, and
beneficence, the desire for removing hu-
man error, clearing human confusion, and
diminishing human misery, the noble

ESSAYS

509

aspiration to leave the world better and
happier than we found it, motives emi-
nently such as are called social, come in
as part of the grounds of culture, and the
main and preeminent part. Culture is
then properly described not as having its
origin in curiosity, but as having its
origin in the love of perfection; it is a
study of perfection. It moves by the force,
not merely or primarily of the scientific pas-
sion for pure knowledge, but also of the
moral and social passion for doing good.
As, in the first view of it, we took for its
worthy motto Montesquieu's words : "To
render an intelligent being yet more intelli-
gent!" so, in the second view of it, there
is no better motto which it can have than
these words of Bishop Wilson: "To
make reason and the will of God pre-
vail!"

Only, whereas the passion for doing
good is apt to be overhasty in determining
what reason and the will of God say, be-
cause its turn is for acting rather than
thinking and it wants to be beginning to
act; and whereas it is apt to take its own
conceptions, which proceed from its own
state of development and share in all the
imperfections and immaturities of this, for
a basis of action; what distinguishes cul-
ture is, that it is possessed by the scientific
passion as well as by the passion of doing
good; that it demands worthy notions of
reason and the will of God, and does not
readily suffer its own crude conceptions to
substitute themselves for them. And
knowing that no action or institution
can be salutary and stable which is not
based on reason and the will of God, it is
not so bent on acting and instituting, even
with the great aim of diminishing human
error and misery ever before its thoughts,
but that it can remember that acting and
instituting are of little use, unless we know
how and what we ought to act and to
institute.

This culture is more interesting and
more far-reaching than that other, which
is founded solely on the scientific passion
for knowing. But it needs tunes of faith
and ardor, times when the intellectual
horizon is opening and widening all

round us, to flourish in. And is not the
close and bounded intellectual horizon,
within which we have long lived and
moved now lifting up, and are not new
lights finding free passage to shine in upon
us? For a long tune there was no pas-
sage for them to make their way in upon
us, and then it was of no use to think of
adapting the world's action to them.
Where was the hope of making reason
and the will of God prevail among people
who had a routine which they had chris-
tened reason and the will of God, in which
they were inextricably bound, and beyond
which they had no power of looking?
But now the iron force of adhesion to the
old routine, social, political, religious,
has wonderfully yielded; the iron force
of exclusion of all which is new has won-
derfully yielded. The danger now is,
not that people should obstinately refuse
to allow anything but their old routine to
pass for reason and the will of God, but
either that they should allow some nov-
elty or other to pass for these too easily,
or else that they should underrate the
importance of them altogether, and think
it enough to follow action for its own
sake, without troubling themselves to
make reason and the will of God prevail
therein. Now, then, is the moment for
culture to be of service, culture which
believes in making reason and the will of
God prevail, believes in perfection, is the
study and pursuit of perfection, and is no
longer debarred, by a rigid invincible
exclusion of whatever is new, from getting
acceptance for its ideas, simply because
they are new.

The moment this view of culture is
seized, the moment it is regarded not solely
as the endeavor to see things as they are,
to draw towards a knowledge of the uni-
versal order which seems to be intended
and aimed at in the world, and which it is
a man's happiness to go along with or his
misery to go counter to, to learn, in
short, the will of God, the moment, I
say, culture is considered not merely as the
endeavor to see and learn this, but as the
endeavor, also, to make it prevail, the
moral, social, and beneficent character of

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

culture becomes manifest. The mere
endeavor to see and learn the truth for our
own personal satisfaction is indeed a com-
mencement for making it prevail, a pre-
paring the way for this, which always
serves this, and is wrongly, therefore,
stamped with blame absolutely in itself
and not only in its caricature and degen-
eration. But perhaps it has got stamped
with blame, and disparaged with the du-
bious title of curiosity, because in compar-
ison with this wider endeavor of such great
and plain utility it looks selfish, petty,
and unprofitable.

And religion, the greatest and most im-
portant of the efforts by which the human
race has manifested its impulse to per-
fect itself, religion, that voice of the
deepest human experience, does not only
enjoin and sanction the aim which is the
great ami of culture, the aim of setting
ourselves to ascertain what perfection is
and to make it prevail; but also, in deter-
mining generally in what human perfec-
tion consists, religion comes to a conclu-
sion identical with that which culture,
culture seeking the determination of this
question through all the voices of human
experience which have been heard upon it,
of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history,
as well as of religion, in order to give a
greater fullness and certainty to its solu-
tion, likewise reaches. Religion says:
The kingdom of God is within you; and cul-
ture, in like manner, places human per-
fection in an internal condition, in the
growth and predominance of our hu-
manity proper, as distinguished from our
animality. It places it in the ever-increas-
ing efficacy and in the general harmo-
nious expansion of those gifts of thought
and feeling, which make the peculiar
dignity, wealth, and happiness of human
nature. As I have said on a former
occasion: "It is in making endless addi-
tions to itself, in the endless expansion
of its powers, in endless growth in wis-
dom and beauty, that the spirit of the
human race finds its ideal. To reach this
ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and
that is the true value of culture." Not a
having and a resting, but a growing and a

becoming, is the character of perfection
as culture conceives it; and here, too, it
coincides with religion.

And because men are all members of one
great whole, and the sympathy which is in
human nature will not allow one member
to be indifferent to the rest or to have a
perfect welfare Independent of the rest,
the expansion of our humanity, to suit the
idea of perfection which culture forms,
must be a general expansion. Perfection,
as culture conceives it, is not possible
while the individual remains isolated.
The individual is required, under pain of
being stunted and enfeebled in his own
development if he disobeys, to carry
others along with him in his march to-
wards perfection, to be continually doing
all he can to enlarge and increase the
volume of the human stream sweeping
thitherward. And here, once more, cul-
ture lays on us the same obligation as
religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson
has admirably put it, that "to promote
the kingdom of God is to increase and
hasten one's own happiness."

But, finally, perfection, as culture from
a thorough disinterested study of human
nature and human experience learns to
conceive it, is a harmonious expansion
of all the powers which make the beauty
and worth of human nature, and is not
consistent with the over-development of
any one power at the expense of the rest.
Here culture goes beyond religion, as
religion is generally conceived by us.

If culture, then, is a study of perfection,
and of harmonious perfection, general
perfection, and perfection which consists
in becoming something rather than in
having something, in an inward condition
of the mind and spirit, not in an outward
set of circumstances, it is clear that cul-
ture, instead of being the frivolous and
useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr.
Frederic Harrison, and many other Lib-
erals are apt to call it, has a very impor-
tant function to fulfil for mankind. And
this function is particularly important
in our modern world, of which the whole
civilization is, to a much greater degree
than the civilization of Greece and Rome,

ESSAYS

Si*

mechanical and external, and tends con-
stantly to become more so. But above
all in our own country has culture a
weighty part to perform, because here
that mechanical character, which civil-
ization tends to take everywhere, is
shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed
nearly all the characters of perfection,
as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in
this country with some powerful tendency
which thwarts them and sets them at de-
fiance. The idea of perfection as an
inward condition of the mind and spirit is
at variance with the mechanical and
material civilization in esteem with us,
and nowhere, as I have said, so much in
esteem as with us. The idea of per-
fection as a general expansion of the hu-
man family is at variance with our strong
individualism, our hatred of all limits to
the unrestrained swing of the individual's
personality, our maxim of "every man
for himself." Above all, the idea of
perfection as a harmonious expansion of
human nature is at variance with our
want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for
seeing more than one side of a thing, with
our intense energetic absorption in the
particular pursuit we happen to be follow-
ing. So culture has a rough task to
achieve in this country. Its preachers
have, and are likely long to have, a hard
time of it, and they will much oftener be
regarded, for a great while to come, as ele-
gant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends
and benefactors. That, however, will
not prevent their doing in the end good
service if they persevere. And, mean-
while, the mode of action they have to
pursue, and the sort of habits they must
fight against, ought to be made quite
clear for every one to see, who may be
willing to look at the matter attentively
and dispassionately.

Faith in machinery is, I said, our be-
setting danger; often in machinery most
absurdly disproportioned to the end
which this machinery, if it is to do any
good at all, is to serve; but always in ma-
chinery, as if it had a value in and for
itself. What is freedom but machinery?
what is population but machinery? what

is coal but machinery? what are railroads
but machinery? what is wealth but ma-
chinery? what are, even, religious organi-
zations but machinery? Now almost
every voice in England is accustomed to
speak of these things as if they were pre-
cious ends in themselves, and therefore
had some of the characters of perfection
indisputably joined to them. I have
before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock
argument for proving the greatness and
happiness of England as she is, and for
quite stopping the mouths of all gain-
sayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of
reiterating this argument of his, so I do
not know why I should be weary of notic-
ing it. "May not every man in England
say what he likes?" Mr. Roebuck per-
petually asks; and that, he thinks, is
quite sufficient, and when every man may
say what he likes, our aspirations ought to
be satisfied. But the aspirations of cul-
ture, which is the study of perfection,
are not satisfied, unless what men say,
when they may say what they like, is
worth saying, has good in it, and more
good than bad. In the same way the
Times, replying to some foreign stric-
tures on the dress, looks, and behavior of
the English abroad, urges that the Eng-
lish ideal is that every one should be free to
do and to look just as h likes. But cul-
ture irdefitigably tries, not to make
what each raw person may like the rule
by which he fashions himself ; but to draw
ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed
beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and
to get the raw person to like that.

And in the same way with respect to
railroads and coal. Every one must have
observed the strange language current
during the late discussions as to the pos-
sible failures of our supplies of coal. Our
coal, thousands of people were saying, is
the real basis of our national greatness;
if our coal runs short, there is an end of the
greatness of England. But what is great-
ness? culture makes us ask. Greatness
is a spiritual condition worthy to excite
love, interest, and admiration; and the
outward proof of possessing greatness is
that we excite love, interest, and admira-

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

tion. If England were swallowed up by
the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a
hundred years hence, would most excite
the love, interest, and admiration of man-
kind, would most, therefore, show the
evidences of having possessed greatness,
the England of the last twenty years, or
the England of Elizabeth, of a time of
splendid spiritual effort, but when our
coal, and our industrial operations depend-
ing on coal, were very little developed?
Well, then, what an unsound habit of
mind it must be which makes us talk of
things like coal or iron as constituting the
greatness of England, and how salutary a
friend is culture, bent on seeing things as
they are, and thus dissipating delusions
of this kind and fixing standards of per-
fection that are real!

Wealth, again, that end to which our
prodigious works for material advantage
are directed, the commonest of common-
places tells us how men are always apt to
regard wealth as a precious end in itself;
and certainly they have never been so
apt thus to regard it as they are in Eng-
land at the present time. Never did
people believe anything more firmly than
nine Englishmen out of ten at the present
day believe that our greatness and welfare
are proved by our being so very rich.
Now, the use of culture is that it helps
us, by means of its spiritual standard of
perfection, to regard wealth as but ma-
chinery, and not only to say, as a matter
of words that we regard wealth as but
machinery, but really to perceive and feel
that it is so. If it were not for this purg-
ing effect wrought upon our minds by
culture, the whole world, the future as
well as the present, would inevitably be-
long to the Philistines. The people who
believe most that our greatness and wel-
fare are proved by our being very rich,
and who most give their lives and thoughts
to becoming rich, are just the very people
whom we call Philistines. Culture says:
"Consider these people, then, their way
of life, their habits, their manners, the
very tones of their voice; look at them
attentively; observe the literature they
read, the things which give them pleasure,

the words which come forth out of their
mouths, the thoughts which make the
furniture of their minds; would any
amount of wealth be worth having with the
condition that one was to become just
like these people by having it?" And
thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which
is of the highest possible value in stem-
ming the common tide of men's thoughts
in a wealthy and industrial community,
and which saves the future, as one may
hope, from being vulgarized, even if it
cannot save the present.

Population, again, and bodily health
and vigor, are things which are nowhere
treated in such an unintelligent, mislead-
ing, exaggerated way as in England. Both
are really machinery; yet how many people
all around us do we see rest in them and
fail to look beyond them! Why, one has
heard people, fresh from reading certain
articles of the Times on the Registrar-
General's returns of marriages and births
in this country, who would talk of our
large English families in quite a solemn
strain, as if they had something in itself
beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in
them; as if the British Philistine would
have only to present himself before the
Great Judge with his twelve children, in
order to be received among the sheep as a
matter of right!

But bodily health and vigor, it may be
said, are not to be classed with wealth and
population as mere machinery; they have
a more real and essential value. True;
but only as they are more intimately con-
nected with a perfect spiritual condition
than wealth or population are. The mo-
ment we disjoin them from the idea of a
perfect spiritual condition, and pursue
them, as we do pursue them, for their own
sake and as ends in themselves, our wor-
ship of them becomes as mere worship
of machinery, as our worship of wealth or
population, and as unintelligent and vul-
garizing a worship as that is. Everyone
with anything like an adequate idea of
human perfection has distinctly marked
this subordination to higher and spiritual
ends of the cultivation of bodily vigor
and activity. "Bodily exercise profiteth

ESSAYS

513

little; but godliness is profitable unto all
things," says the author of the Epistle
to Timothy. And the utilitarian Frank-
lin says just as explicitly: " Eat and drink
such an exact quantity as suits the consti-
tution of thy body, in reference to the ser-
vices of the mind." But the point of view
of culture, keeping the mark of human per-
fection simply and broadly in view, and
not assigning to this perfection, as religion
or utilitarianism assigns to it, a special
and limited character, this point of view,
I say, of culture is best given by these
wotds of Epictetus: " It isasign of a^uia,"
says he, that is, of a nature not finely
tempered, "to give yourselves up to
things which relate to the body; to make,
for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a
great fuss about eating, a great fuss about
drinking, a great fuss about walking, a
great fuss about riding. All these things
ought to be done merely by the way: the
formation of the spirit and character must
be our real concern." This is admirable;
and, indeed, the Greek word eiiputa, a
finely tempered nature, gives exactly the
notion of perfection as culture brings us
to conceive it: a harmonious perfection, a
perfection in which the characters of
beauty and intelligence are both present,
which unites "the two noblest of things,"
as Swift, who of one of the two, at any
rate, had himself all too little, most happily
calls them in his "Battle of the Books",
"the two noblest of things, sweetness and
light." The eu<puY)<; is the man who tends
towards sweetness and light; the cfyu-Qs on
the other hand, is our Philistine. The im-
mense spiritual significance of the Greeks
is due to their having been inspired with
this central and happy idea of the essen-
tial character of human perfection; and
Mr. B right's misconception of culture,
as a smattering of Greek and Latin,
comes itself, after all, from this wonder-
ful significance of the Greeks having
affected the very machinery of our educa-
tion, and is in itself a kind of homage
to it.

In thus making sweetness and light to
be characters of perfection, culture is of
like spirit with poetry, follows one law

with poetry. Far more than on our free-
dom, our population, and our industrial-
ism, many amongst us rely upon our re-
ligious organizations to save us. I have
called religion a yet more important mani-
festation of human nature than poetry,
because it has worked on a broader scale
for perfection, and with greater masses of
men. But the idea of beauty and of a
human nature perfect on all its sides,
which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a
true and invaluable idea, though it has
not yet had the success that the idea of
conquering the obvious faults of our ani-
mality, and of a human nature perfect on
the moral side, which is the dominant
idea of religion, has been enabled to
have; and it is destined, adding to itself
the religious idea of a devout energy, to
transform and govern the other.

The best art and poetry of the Greeks,
in which religion and poetry are one, in
which the idea of beauty and of a human
nature perfect on all sides adds to itself
a religious and devout energy, and works
in the strength of that, is on this account
of such surpassing interest 'and instruc-
tiveness for us, though it was, as, having
regard to the human race in general, and,
indeed, having regard to the Greeks them-
selves, we must own, a premature at-
tempt, an attempt which for success
needed the moral and religious fiber in
humanity to be more braced and devel-
oped than it had yet been. But Greece
did not err in having the idea of beauty,
harmony, and complete human perfection,
so present and paramount. It is impos-
sible to have this idea too present and
paramount; only, the moral fiber must be
braced too. And we, because we have
braced the moral fiber, are not on that
account in the right way, if at the same
tune the idea of beauty, harmony, and
complete human perfection, is wanting
or misapprehended amongst us; and evi-
dently it is wanting or misapprehended
at present. And when we rely as we do
on our religious organizations, which in
themselves do not and cannot give us this
idea, and think we have done enough if
we make them spread and prevail, then

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

I say, we fall into our common fault of
overvaluing machinery.

Nothing is more common than for peo-
ple to confound the inward peace and sat-
isfaction which follows the subduing of the
obvious faults of our animality with what
I may call absolute inward peace and sat-
isfaction, the peace and satisfaction
which are reached as we draw near to
complete spiritual perfection, and not
merely to moral perfection, or rather to
relative moral perfection. No people in
the world have done more and struggled
more to attain this relative moral per-
fection than our English race has. For no
people in the world has the command to
resist the devil, to overcome the wicked one,
in the nearest and most obvious sense of
those words, had such a pressing force
and reality. And we have had our re-
ward, not only in the great worldly pros-
perity which our obedience to this com-
mand has brought us, but also, and far
more, in great inward peace and satis-
faction. But to me few things are more
pathetic than to see people, on the strength
of the inward peace and satisfaction which
their rudimentary efforts towards per-
fection have brought them, employ, con-
cerning their incomplete perfection and
the religious organizations within which
they have found it, language which
properly applies only to complete per-
fection, and is a far-off echo of the human
soul's prophecy of it. Religion itself, I
need hardly say, supplies them in abun-
dance with this grand language. And very
freely do they use it; yet it is really the
severest possible criticism of such an in-
complete perfection as alone we have yet
reached through our religious organiza-
tions.

The impulse of the English race towards
moral development and self-conquest has
nowhere so powerfully manifested itself
as in Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritan-
ism found so adequate an expression as in
the religious organization of the Independ-
ents. The modern Independents have a
newspaper, the Noncomformist, written
with great sincerity and ability. The
motto, the standard, the profession of

faith which this organ of theirs carries
aloft is: "The Dissidence of Dissent and
the Protestantism of the Protestant reli-
gion." There is sweetness and light, and
an ideal of complete harmonious human
perfection! One need not go to culture
and poetry to find language to judge it.
Religion, with its instinct for perfection
supplies language to judge it, language,
too, which is in our mouths every day.
"Finally, be of one mind, united in feel-
ing," says Sc. Peter. There is an ideal
which judges the Puritan ideal: "The
Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestant-
ism of the Protestant religion!" And
religious organizations like this are wha f .
people believe in, rest in, would give their
lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful
virtue of even the beginnings of perfec-
tion, of having conquered even the plain
faults of our animality, that the religious
organization which has helped us to do it
can seem to us something precious, salu-
tary, and to be propagated, even when it
wears such a brand of imperfection on its
forehead as this. And men have got such
a habit of giving to the language of re-
ligion a special application, of making it a
mere jargon, that for the condemnation
which religion itself passes on the short-
comings of their religious organizations
they have no ear; they are sure to cheat
themselves and to explain this condemna-
tion away. They can only be reached
by the criticism which culture, like poetry,
speaking a language not to be sophisti-
cated, and resolutely testing these organ-
izations by the ideal of a human perfec-
tion complete on all sides, applies to
them.

But men of culture and poetry, it will
be said, are again and again failing, and
failing conspicuously, in the necessary first
stage to a harmonious perfection, in the
subduing of the great obvious faults of
our animality, which it is the glory of these
religious organizations to have helped us
to subdue. True, they do often so fail.
They have often been without the virtues
as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has
been one of their dangers that they so felt
the Puritan's faults that they too much

ESSAYS

neglected the practice of his virtues. I
will not, however, exculpate them at
the Puritan's expense. They have often
failed in morality, and morality is indis-
pensable. And they have been punished
for their failure, as the Puritan has been
rewarded for his performance. They
have been punished wherein they erred;
but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and
light, and a human nature complete on
all its sides, remains the true ideal of per-
fection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of
perfection remains narrow and inadequate,
although for what he did well he has been
richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the
mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers'
voyage, they and their standard of per-
fection are rightly judged when we figure
to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,
souls in whom sweetness and light, and
all that in human nature is most humane,
were eminent, accompanying them on
their voyage, and think what intolerable
company Shakespeare and Virgil would
have found them! In the same way let
us judge the religious organizations which
we see all around us. Do not let us deny
the good and the happiness which they
have accomplished; but do not let us fail
to see clearly that their idea of human per-
fection is narrow and inadequate, and
that the Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion
will never bring humanity to its true goal.
As I said with regard to wealth: Let us
look at the life of those who live in and for
it, so I say with regard to the religious
organizations. Look at the life imaged in
such a newspaper as the Nonconformist
a life of jealousy of the Establishment,
disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chap-
els, sermons; and then think of it as an
ideal of a human life completing itself on all
sides, and aspiring with all its organs
after sweetness, light, and perfection!

Another newspaper, representing, like
the Nonconformist, one of the religious
organizations of this country, was a short
time ago giving an account of the crowd
at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the
vice and hideousness which was to be seen
in that crowd; and then the writer turned

suddenly round upon Professor Huxley,
and asked him how he proposed to cure all
this vice and hideousness without religion.
I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker
this question: and how do you propose to
cure it with such a religion as yours?
How is the ideal of a life so unlovely, so
unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow,
so far removed from a true and satisfying
ideal of human perfection, as is the life of
your religious organization as you your-
self reflect it, to conquer and transform
all this vice and hideousness? Indeed,
the strongest plea for the study of perfec-
tion as pursued by culture, the clearest
proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea
of perfection held by the religious organi-
zations, expressing, as I have said, the
most widespread effort which the human
race has yet made after perfection, is
to be found in the state of our life and so-
ciety with these in possession of it, and
having been in possession of it I know not
how many hundred years. We are all of
us included in some religious organization
or other; we all call ourselves, in the sub-
lime and aspiring language of religion
which I have before noticed, children of
God. Children of God; it is an immense
pretension! and how are we to justify
it? By the works which we do, and the
words which we speak. And the work
which we collective children of God do,
our grand center of Me, our city which
we have builded for us to dwell in, is
London! London, with its unutterable
external hideousness, and with its inter-
nal canker of publice egestas, privatim
opulentia, to use the words which Sallust
puts into Cato's mouth about Rome,
unequalled in the world! The word,
again which we children of God speak, the
voice which most hits our collective
thought, the newspaper with the largest
circulation in England, nay, with the larg-
est circulation in the whole world, is the
Daily Telegraph! I say that when our
religious organizations, which I admit
to express the most considerable effort
after perfection that our race has yet
made, land us in no better result than
this, it is high tune to examine carefully

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

their idea of perfection, to see whether it
does not leave out of account sides and
forces of human nature which we might
turn to great use ; whether it would not be
more operative if it were more complete.
And I say that the English reliance on our
religious organizations and on their ideas
of human perfection just as they stand,
is like our reliance on freedom, on muscu-
lar Christianity, on population, on coal,
on wealth, mere belief in machinery,
and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely
counteracted by culture, bent on seeing
things as they are, and on drawing the
human race onwards to a more complete, a
harmonious perfection.

Culture, however, shows its single-
minded love of perfection, its desire simply
to make reason and the will of God pre-
vail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its
attitude towards all this machinery, even
while it insists that it is machinery. Fa-
natics, seeing the mischief men do them-
selves by their blind belief in some ma-
chinery or other, whether it is wealth
and industrialism, or whether it is the
cultivation of bodily strength and activity,
or whether it is a political organization,
or whether it is a religious organization,
oppose with might and main the tendency
to this or that political and religious or-
ganization, or to games and athletic ex-
ercises, or to wealth and industrialism,
and try violently to stop it. But the
flexibility which sweetness and light give,
and which is one of the rewards of cul-
ture pursued in good faith, enables a
man to see that a tendency may be neces-
sary, and even, as a preparation for some-
thing in the future, salutary, and yet that
the generations or individuals who obey
this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they
fall short of the hope of perfection by
following it; and that its mischiefs are to
be criticised, lest it should take too firm a
hold and last after it has served its pur-
pose.

Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a
speech at Paris, and others have pointed
out the same thing, how necessary is
the present great movement towards
wealth and industrialism, in order to lay

broad foundations of material well-being
for the society of the future. The worst
of these justifications is, that they are
generally addressed to the very people en-
gaged, body and soul, in the movement in
question; at all events, that they are al-
ways seized with the greatest avidity by
these people, and taken by them as quite
justifying their life; and that thus they
tend to harden them in their sins. Now,
culture admits the necessity of the move-
ment towards fortune-making and exag-
gerated industrialism, readily allows that
the future may derive benefit from it;
but insists, at the same time, that the
passing generations of industrialists,
forming, for the most part, the stout main
body of Philistinism, are sacrificed to it.
In the same way, the result of all the games
and sports which occupy the passing gen-
eration of boys and young men may be
the establishment of a better and sounder
physical type for the future to work with.
Culture does not set itself against the
games and sports; it congratulates the
future, and hopes it will make a good use
of its improved physical basis; but it
points out that our passing generation
of boys and young men is, meantime,
sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps neces-
sary to develop the moral fiber of the
English race, Nonconformity to break
the yoke of ecclesiastical domination
over men's minds and to prepare the way
for freedom of thought in the distant fu-
ture; still, culture points out that the
harmonious perfection of generations of
Puritans and Nonconformists have been,
in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of
speech may be necessary for the society of
the future, but the young lions of the
Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are
sacrificed. A voice for every man in his
country's government may be necessary
for the society of the future, but meanwhile
Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacri-
ficed.

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many
faults; and she has heavily paid for them
in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold
upon the modern world. Yet we in Ox-
ford, brought up amidst the beauty and

ESSAYS

sweetness of that beautiful place, have not
failed to seize one truth, the truth that
beauty and sweetness are essential char-
acters of a complete human perfection.
When I insist on this, I am all in the faith
and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly
that this our sentiment for beauty and
sweetness, our sentiment against hideous-
ness and rawness, has been at the bottom
of our attachment to so many beaten
causes, of our opposition to so many tri-
umphant movements. And the senti-
ment is true, and has never been wholly
defeated, and has shown its power even
in its defeat. We have not won our
political battles, we have not carried our
main points, we have not stopped our ad-
versaries' advance, we have not marched
victoriously with the modern world; but
we have told silently upon the mind of the
country, we have prepared currents of
feeling which sap our adversaries' posi-
tion when it seems gained, we have kept
up our own communications with the fu-
ture. Look at the course of the great
movement which shook Oxford to its cen-
ter some thirty years ago! It was di-
rected, as any one who reads Dr. New-
man's "Apology" may see, against what in
one word may be called "Liberalism."
Liberalism prevailed; it was the appointed
force to do the work of the hour; it was
necessary, it was inevitable that it should
prevail. The Oxford movement was
broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered
on every shore:

Quae regie in terns nostri non plena laboris?

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr.
Newman saw it, and as it really broke the
Oxford movement? It was the great
middle-class liberalism, which had for
the cardinal points of its belief the Reform
Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in
politics; in the social sphere, free-trade,
unrestricted competition, and the making
of large industrial fortunes; in the reli-
gious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent
and the Protestantism of the Protestant
religion. I do not say that other and more
intelligent forces than this were not op-
posed to the Oxford movement: but this

was the force which really beat it; this
was the force which Dr. Newman felt
himself fighting with; this was the force
which till only the other day seeded to
be the paramount force in this country,
and to be in possession of the future; this
was the force whose achievements fill
Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admira-
tion, and whose rule he was so horror-
struck to see threatened. And where is
this great force of Philistinism now?
It is thrust into the second rank, it is
become a power of yesterday, it has lost
the future. A new power has suddenly
appeared, a power which it is impossible
yet to judge fully, but which is certainly a
wholly different force from middle-class
liberalism; different in its cardinal points
of belief, different hi its tendencies in every
sphere. It loves and admires neither the
legislation of middle-class Parliaments,
nor the local self-government of middle-
class vestries, nor the unrestricted com-
petition of middle-class industrialists, nor
the dissidence of middle-class Dissent and
the Protestantism of middle-class Pro-
testant religion. I am not now praising
this new force, or saying that its own ideals
are better; all I say, is, that they are wholly
different. And who will estimate how
much the currents of feeling created by
Dr. Newman's movements, the keen de-
sire for beauty and sweetness which it
nourished, the deep aversion it mani-
fested to the hardness and vulgarity of
middle-class liberalism, the strong light it
turned on the hideous and grotesque
illusions of middle-class Protestantism,
who will estimate how much all these
contributed to swell the tide of secret dis-
satisfaction which has mined the ground
under self-confident liberalism of the last
thirty years, and has prepared the way
for its sudden collapse and supersession?
It is in this manner that the sentiment of
Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers,
and in this manner long may it continue
to conquer !

In this manner it works to the same end
as culture, and there is plenty of work for
it yet to do. I have said that the new
and more democratic force which is now

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

superseding our old middle-class liber-
alism cannot yet be rightly judged. It
has its main tendencies still to form. We
hear promises of its giving us adminis-
trative reform, law reform, reform of educa-
tion, and I know not what; but those
promises come rather from its advocates,
wishing to make a good plea for it and to
justify it for superseding middle-class
liberalism, than from clear tendencies
which it has itself yet developed. But
meanwhile it has plenty of well-inten-
tioned friends against whom culture may
with advantage continue to uphold
steadily its ideal of human perfection;
that this is an inward spiritual activity,
having for its characters increased sweet-
ness, increased light, increased life, in-
creased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has
a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-
class liberalism and the world of democ-
racy, but who brings most of his ideas
from the world of middle-class liberalism
in which he was bred, always inclines to
inculcate that faith hi machinery to which,
as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone,
and which has been the bane of middle-
class liberalism. He complains with a
sorrowful indignation of people who "ap-
pear to have no proper estimate of the
value of the franchise"; he leads his dis-
ciples to believe, what the Englishman
is always too ready to believe, that
the having a vote, like the having a
large family, or a large business, or large
muscles, has in itself some edifying and
perfecting effect upon human nature. Or
else he cries out to the democracy,
"the men," as he calls them, "upon whose
shoulders the greatness of England rests,"
he cries out to them: "See what you
have done! I look over this country
and see the cities you have built, the rail-
roads you have made, the manufactures
you have produced, the cargoes which
freight the ships of the greatest mer-
cantile navy the world has ever seen! I
see that you have converted by your
labors what was once a wilderness,
these islands, into a fruitful garden; I
know that you have created this wealth,
and are a nation whose name is a word of

power throughout all the world." Why,
this is just the very style of laudation with
which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe de-
bauches the minds of the middle classes,
and makes such Philistines of them. It is
the same fashion of teaching a man to
value himself not on what he is, not on his
progress in sweetness and light, but on
the number of the railroads he has con-
structed, or the bigness of the tabernacle
he has built. Only the middle classes
are told they have done it all with their
energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the
democracy are told they have done it all
with their hands and sinews. But teach-
ing the democracy to put its trust in
achievements of this kind is merely train-
ing them to be Philistines to take the place
of the Philistines whom they are super-
seding; and they too, like the middle class,
will be encouraged to sit down at the ban-
quet of the future without having on
a wedding garment, and nothing excellent
can then come from them. Those who
know their besetting faults, those who
have watched them and listened to them,
or those who will read the instructive ac-
count recently given of them by one of
themselves, the "Journeyman Engineer,"
will agree that the idea which culture sets
before us of perfection, an increased
spiritual activity, having for its characters
increased sweetness, increased light, in-
creased life, increased sympathy, is an
idea which the new democracy needs
far more than the idea of the blessedness
of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of
its own industrial performances.

Other well-meaning friends of this new
power are for leading it, not in the old ruts
of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways
which are naturally alluring to the feet of
democracy, though in this country they
are novel and untried ways. I may call
them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent
indignation with the past, abstract sys-
tems of renovation applied wholesale, a
new doctrine drawn up in black and
white for elaborating down to the very
smallest details a rational society for the
future, these are the ways of Jacobinism.
Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples

ESSAYS

of Comte, one of them, Mr. Congreve,
is an old friend of mine, and I am glad to
have an opportunity of publicly express-
ing my respect for his talents and char-
acter, are among the friends of demo-
cracy who are for leading it in paths of
this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very
hostile to culture, and from a natural
enough motive; for culture is the eternal
opponent of the two things, which are the
signal marks of Jacobinism, its fierce-
ness, and its addiction to an abstract
system. Culture is always assigning to
system-makers and systems a smaller
share in the bent of human destiny than
their friends like. A current in people's
minds sets towards new ideas; people are
dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of
Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or
any other; and some man, some Bentham
or Comte, who has the real merit of having
early and strongly felt and helped the new
current, but who brings plenty of narrow-
ness and mistakes of his own into his feel-
ing and help of it, is credited with being
the author of the whole current, the fit
person to be entrusted with its regula-
tion and to guide the human race.

The excellent German historian of the
mythology of Rome, Preller, relating the
introduction at Rome under the Tarquins
of the worship of Apollo, the god of light,
healing, and reconciliation, will have us
observe that it was not so much the Tar-
quins who brought to Rome the new wor-
ship of Apollo, as a current in the mind
of the Roman people which set powerfully
at that time towards a new worship of this
kind, and away from the old run of Latin
and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar
way, culture directs our attention to the
natural current there is in human affairs,
and to its continual working, and will not
let us rivet our faith upon any one man
and his doings. It makes us see not only
his good side, but also how much in him
was of necessity limited and transient;
nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of
an increased freedom and of an ampler
future, in so doing.

I remember, when I was under the in-
fluence of a mind to which I feel the great-

est obligations, the mind of a man who
was the very incarnation of sanity and'
clear sense, a man the most considerable,
it seems to me, whom America has yet
produced, Benjamin Franklin, I remem-
ber the relief with which, after long feeling
the sway of Franklin's imperturbable
common-sense, I came upon a project
of his for a new version of the Book of
Job, to replace the old version, the style
of which, says Franklin, has become
obsolete, and thence less agreeable. "I
give," he continues, "a few verses, which
may serve as a sample of the kind of ver-
sion I would recommend." We all recol-
lect the famous verse in our translation:
"Then Satan answered the Lord and said:
'Doth Job fear God for nought? ' " Frank-
lin makes this: "Does your Majesty
imagine that Job's good conduct is the
effect of mere personal attachment and
affection?" I well remember how, when
first I read that, I drew a deep breath of
relief, and said to myself: "After all,
there is a stretch of humanity beyond
Franklin's victorious good sense!" So,
after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as
the renovator of modern society, and
Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as
the rulers of our future, I open the "Deon-
tology." There I read: "While Xeno-
phon was writing his history and Euclid
teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato
were talking nonsense under pretence of
talking wisdom and morality. This mo-
rality of theirs consisted in words; this wis-
dom of theirs was the denial of matters
known to every man's experience." From
the moment of reading that, I am de-
livered from the bondage of Bentham!
the fanaticism of his adherents can touch
me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of
his mind and ideas for supplying the rule
of human society, for perfection.

Culture tends always thus to deal with
the men of a system, of disciples, of a
school; with men like Comte, or the late
Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much
it may find to admire in these personages,
or in some of them, it nevertheless remem-
bers the text : "Be not ye called Rabbi ! "
and it soon passes on from any Rabbi.

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not
want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit
of a future and still unreached perfection;
it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand
for perfection, that they may with the
more authority recast the world; and for
Jacobinism, therefore, culture, eternally
passing onwards and seeking, is an im-
pertinence and an offense. But culture,
just because it resists this tendency of
Jacobinism to impose on us a man with
limitations and errors of his own along
with the true ideas of which he is the organ,
really does the world and Jacobinism itself
a service.

So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred
of the past and of those whom it makes
liable for the sins of the past, cannot away
with the inexhaustible indulgence proper
to culture, the consideration of circum-
stances, the severe judgment of actions
joined to the merciful judgment of per-
sons. "The man of culture is in politics,"
cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the
poorest mortals alive!" Mr. Frederic
Harrison wants to be doing business, and
he complains that the man of culture stops
him with a "turn for small fault-finding,
love of selfish ease, and indecision in
action." Of what use is culture, he asks,
except for "a critic of hew books or a pro-
fessor of belles-lettres?" Why, it is of use
because, in presence of the fierce exaspera-
tion which breathes, or rather, I may say,
hisses through the whole production in
which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that
question, it reminds us that the perfection
of human nature is sweetness and light.
It is of use because, like religion, that
other effort after perfection, it testifies
that, where bitter envying and strife are,
there is confusion and every evil work.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the
pursuit of sweetness and light. He who
works for sweetness and light, works to
make reason and the will of God prevail.
He who works for machinery, he who
works for hatred, works only for confusion.
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture
hates hatred; culture has one great pas-
sion, the passion for sweetness and light.
It has one even yet greater! the passion

for making them prevail. It is not satis-
fied till we all come to a perfect man; it
knows that the sweetness and light of the
few must be imperfect until the raw and
unkindled masses of humanity are touched
with sweetness and light. If I have not
shrunk from saying that we must work for
sweetness and light, so neither have I
shrunk from saying that we must have
a broad basis, must have sweetness and
light for as many as possible. Again and
again I have insisted how those are the
happy moments of humanity, how those
are the marking epochs of a people's life,
how those are the flowering times for liter-
ature and art and all the creative power of
genius, when there is a national glow
of life and thought, when the whole of
society is in the fullest measure permeated
by thought, sensible to beauty, intelli-
gent and alive. Only it must be real
thought and real beauty; real sweetness
and real light. Plenty of people will try
to give the masses, as they call them, an
intellectual food prepared and adapted
in the way they think proper for the
actual condition of the masses. The ordi-
nary popular literature is an example of
this way of working on the masses.
Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate
the masses with the set of ideas and judg-
ments constituting the creed of their own
profession or party. Our religious and
political organizations give an example
of this way of working on the masses. I
condemn neither way; but culture works
differently. It does not try to teach down
to the level of inferior classes; it does not
try to win them for this or that sect of its
own, with ready-made judgments and
watchwords. It seeks to do away with
classes; to make the best that has been
thought and known hi the world current
everywhere; to make all men live in an
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where
they may use ideas, as it uses them itself,
freely, nourished, and not bound by them.
This is the social idea; and the men of
culture are the true apostles of equality.
The great men of culture are those who
have had a passion for diffusing, for mak-
ing prevail, for carrying from one end of

ESSAYS

521

society to the other, the best knowledge,
the best ideas of their time; who have
labored to divest knowledge of all that
was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract,
professional, exclusive; to humanize it,
to make it efficient outside the clique of
the cultivated and learned, yet still re-
maining the best knowledge and thought
of the time, and a true source, therefore,
of sweetness and light. Such a man was
Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of
all his imperfections; and thence the bound-
less emotion and enthusiasm which Abe-
lard excited. Such were Lessing and
Herder in Germany, at the end of the last
century; and their services to Germany
were in this way inestimably precious.
Generations will pass, and literary monu-
ments will accumulate, and works far xcoie
periect than the works of \ssing and
Herder will be produced in Germany; and
yet the names of these two men will fill
a German with a reverence and enthu-
siasm such as the names of the most gifted
masters will hardly awaken. And why?
Because they humanized knowledge; be-
cause they broadened the basis of life
and intelligence; because they worked
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light,
to make reason and the will of God prevail.
With Saint Augustine they said: "Let
us not leave thee alone to make in the
secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst
before the creation of the firmament, the
division of light from darkness; let the
children of thy spirit, placed in their firma-
ment, make their light shine upon the
earth, mark the division of night and day,
and announce the revolution of the times;
for the old order is passed, and the new
arises; the night is spent, the day is come
forth; and thou shalt crown the year with
thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth
laborers into thy harvest sown by other
hands than theirs; when thou shalt send
forth new laborers to new seed-times,
whereof the harvest shall be not yet."

HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM

THIS fundamental ground is our pref-
erence of doing to thinking. Now this

preference is a main element in our nature,
and as we study it we find ourselves
opening up a number of large questions
on every side.

Let me go back for a moment to Bishop
Wilson, who says: "First, never go
against the best light you have; secondly,
take care that your light be not darkness."
We show, as a nation, laudable energy and
persistence in walking according to the
best light we have, but are not quite care-
ful enough, perhaps, to see that our light
be not darkness. This is only another
version of the old story that energy is
our strong point and favorable character-
istic, rather than intelligence. But we
may give to this idea a more general
form still, in which it will have a yet
larger range of application. We may
regard this energy driving at practice,
this paramount sense of the obligation of
duty, self-control, and work, this earnest-
ness in going manfully with the best light
we have, as one force. And we may
regard the intelligence driving at those
ideas which are, after all, the basis of right
practice, the ardent sense for all the new
and changing combinations of them which
man's development brings with it, the
indomitable impulse to know and adjust
them perfectly, as another force. And
these two forces we may regard as in
some sense rivals, rivals not by the ne-
cessity of then* own nature, but as exhib-
ited in man and his history, and rivals
dividing the empire of the world between
them. And to give these forces names
from the two races of men who have sup-
plied the most signal and splendid manifes-
tations of them, we may call them re-
spectively the forces of Hebraism and
Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism,
between these two points of influence
moves our world. At one time it feels
more powerfully the attraction of one of
them, at another time of the other; and it
ought to be, though it never is, evenly
and happily balanced between them.

The final aim of both Hellenism and
Hebraism, as of all great spiritual dis-
ciplines, is no doubt the same: man's
perfection or salvation. The very Ian-

522

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

guage which they both of them use in
schooling us to reach this aim is often
identical. Even when their language
indicates by variation, sometimes a broad
variation, often a but slight and subtle
variation, the different courses of thought
which are uppermost in each discipline,
even then the unity of the final end and
aim is still apparent. To employ the
actual words of that discipline with which
we ourselves are all of us most familiar,
and the words of which, therefore, come
most home to us, that final end and aim is
"that we might be partakers of the divine
nature." These are the words of a He-
brew apostle, but of Hellenism and He-
braism alike this is, I say, the aim. When
the two are confronted, as they very often
are confronted, it is nearly always with
what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the
speaker's whole design is to exalt and
enthrone one of the two, and he uses the
other only as a foil and to enable him the
better to give effect to his purpose. Ob-
viously, with us, it is usually Hellenism
which is thus reduced to minister to the
triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon
on Greece and the Greek spirit by a man
never to be mentioned without interest
and respect, Frederick Robertson, in
which this rhetorical use of Greece and
the Greek spirit, and the inadequate ex-
hibition of them necessarily consequent
upon this, is almost ludicrous,, and would
be censurable if it were not to be explained
by the exigencies of a sermon. On the
other hand, Heinrich Heine, and other
writers of his sort, give us the spectacle
of the tables completely turned, and of
Hebraism brought in just as a foil and
contrast to Hellenism, and to make the
superiority of Hellenism more manifest.
In both these cases there is injustice
and misrepresentation. The aim and
end of both Hebraism and Hellenism, is,
as I have said, one and the same, and this
aim and end is august and admirable.

Still, they pursue this aim by very dif-
ferent courses. The uppermost idea with
Hellenism is to see things as they really
are; the uppermost idea with Hebraism
is conduct and obedience. Nothing can

do away with this ineffaceable difference.
The Greek quarrel with the body and its
desires is, that they hinder right thinking;
the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they
hinder right acting. "He that keepeth
the law, happy is he;" "Blessed is the
man that feareth the Eternal, that delight-
eth greatly in his commandments;"
that is the Hebrew notion of felicity; and,
pursued with passion and tenacity, this
notion would not let the Hebrew rest till,
as is well known, he had at last got out of
the law a network of prescriptions to
enwrap his whole life, to govern every
moment of it, every impulse, every action.
The Greek notion of felicity, on the other
hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words
of a great French moralist: C'est le bon-
heur des hommes, when? when they
abhor that which is evil? no; when they
exercise themselves in the law of the Lord
day and night? no; when they die daily?
no; when they walk about the New
Jerusalem with palms in their hands?
no; but when they think aright, when
their thought hits: quand Us pensent
juste. At the bottom of both the Greek
and the Hebrew notion is the desire,
native in man, for reason and the will of
God, the feeling after the universal order,
in a word, the love of God. But while
Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, cap-
ital intimations of the universal order,
and rivets itself, one may say, with un-
equalled grandeur of earnestness and in-
tensity on the study and observance of
them, the bent of Hellenism is to follow,
with flexible activity, the whole play
of the universal order, to be apprehen-
sive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing
one part to another, to slip away from
resting in this or that intimation of it,
however capital. An unclouded clearness
of mind, an unimpeded play of thought,
is what this bent drives at. The govern-
ing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of
consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness
of conscience.

Christianity changed nothing in this
essential bent of Hebraism to set doing
above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devo-
tion, the following not our own individual

ESSAYS

523

will, but the will of God, obedience, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the
discipline to which we have attached the
general name of Hebraism. Only, as the
old law and the network of prescriptions
with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive-power not driving and
searching enough to produce the result
aimed at, patient continuance in well-
doing, self-conquest, Christianity sub-
stituted for them boundless devotion to
that inspiring and affecting pattern of
self -conquest offered by Jesus Christ;
and by the new motive-power, of which the
essence was this, though the love and
admiration of Christian churches have
for centuries been employed in varying,
amplifying, and adorning the plain de-
scription of it, Christianity, as St. Paul
truly says, "establishes the law," and in
the strength of the ampler power which
she has thus supplied to fulfill it, has ac-
complished the miracles, which we all
see, of her history.

So long as we do not forget that both
Hellenism and Hebraism are profound and
admirable manifestations of man's life,
tendencies, and powers, and that both of
them aim at a like final result, we can
hardly insist too strongly on the divergence
of line and of operation with which they
proceed. It is a divergence so great
that it most truly, as the prophet Zech-
ariah says, "has raised up thy sons, O
Zion, against thy sons, Greece!" The
difference whether it is by doing or by
knowing that we set most store, and the
practical consequences which follow from
this difference, leave their mark on all the
history of our race and of its development.
Language may be abundantly quoted
from both Hellenism and Hebraism to
make it seem that one follows the same
current as the other towards the same goal.
They are, truly, borne towards the same
goal; but the currents which bear them
are infinitely different. It is true, Solo-
mon will praise knowing: "Understand-
ing is a well-spring of life unto him
that hath it." And in the New Testa-
ment, again, Jesus Christ is a "light,"
and "truth makes us free." It is true,

Aristotle will undervalue knowing: "In
what concerns virtue," says he, "three
things are necessary knowledge, delib-
erate will, and perseverance; but, whereas
the two last are all-important, the first
is a matter of little importance." It is
true that with the same impatience with
which St. James enjoins a man to be not
a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,
Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do;
or he taunts us with futility, for being
armed at all points to prove that lying is
wrong, yet all the time continuing to lie.
It is true, Plato, in words which are almost
the words of the New Testament or the
Imitation, calls life a learning to die. But
underneath the superficial agreement the
fundamental divergence still subsists. The
understanding of Solomon is " the walking
in the way of the commandments"; this
is "the way of peace," and it is of this
that blessedness comes. In the New Tes- '
tament, the truth which gives us the peace
of God and makes us free, is the love of
Christ constraining us to crucify, as he
did, and with a like purpose of moral
regeneration, the flesh with its affections
and lusts, and thus establishing as we have
seen, the law. The moral virtues, on the
other hand, are with Aristotle but the
porch and access to the intellectual,
and with these last is blessedness. That
partaking of the divine life, which both
Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said,
fix as their crowning aim, Plato expressly
denies to the man of practical virtue
merely, of self-conquest with any other
motive than that of perfect intellectual
vision. He reserves it for the lover of
pure knowledge, as seeing things as they
really are, the <piXoiia6T)<;.

Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out
of the wants of human nature, and address
themselves to satisfying those wants.
But their methods are so different, they
lay stress on such different points, and
call into being by their respective dis-
ciplines such different activities, that the
face which human nature presents when
it passes from the hands of one of them to
those of the other, is no longer the same.

524

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things
as they are, and by seeing them as they
are to see them in their beauty, is the
simple and attractive ideal which Hel-
lenism holds out before human nature;
and from the simplicity and charm of this
ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the
hands of Hellenism, is invested with a land
of aerial ease, clearness, and radiancy,
they are full of what we call sweetness and
light. Difficulties are kept out of view,
and the beauty and rationalness of the
ideal have all our thoughts. "The best
man is he who most tries to perfect him-
self, and the happiest man is he who most
feels that he is perfecting himself,"
this account of the matter by Socrates,
the true Socrates of the "Memorabilia," has
something so simple, spontaneous, and
unsophisticated about it, that it seems
to fill us with clearness and hope when we
hear it. But there is a saying which I
have heard attributed to Mr. Carlyle
about Socrates, a very happy saying,
whether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not,
which excellently marks the essential
point in which Hebraism differs from
Hellenism. "Socrates," this saying goes,
"is terribly at ease in Zion." Hebraism,
and here is the source of its wonderful
strength, has always been severely pre-
occupied with an awful sense of the im-
possibility of being at ease in Zion; of the
difficulties which oppose themselves to
man's pursuit or attainment of that
perfection of which Socrates talks so hope-
fully, and, as from this point of view one
might almost say, so glibly. It is all very
well to talk of getting rid of one's igno-
rance, of seeing things in their reality,
seeing them in their beauty; but how is
this to be done when there is something
which thwarts and spoils all our efforts?

This something is sin; and the space
which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared
with Hellenism, is indeed prodigious.
This obstacle to perfection fills the whole
scene, and perfection appears remote and
rising away from earth, in the background.
Under the name of sin, the difficulties
of knowing oneself and conquering one-
self which impede man's passage to per-

fection, become, for Hebraism, a positive,
active entity hostile to man, a mysterious
power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other
day, in one of his impressive sermons,
compare to a hideous hunchback seated
on our shoulders, and which it is the main
business of our lives to hate and oppose.
The discipline of the Old Testament may
be summed up as a discipline teaching us
to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline
of the New Testament, as a discipline
teaching us to die to it. As Hellenism
speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things
in their essence and beauty, as a grand
and precious feat for man to achieve, so
Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious
of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a
feat of this kind. It is obvious to what
wide divergence these differing tendencies,
actively followed, must lead. As one
passes and repasses from Hellenism to
Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one
feels inclined to rub one's eyes and ask
oneself whether man is indeed a gentle
and simple being, showing the traces of a
noble and divine nature; or an unhappy
chained captive, laboring with groanings
that cannot be uttered to free himself
from the body of this death.

Apparently it was the Hellenic concep-
tion of human nature which was un-
sound, for the world could not live by it.
Absolutely to call it unsound, however,
is to fall into the common error of its
Hebraizing enemies; but it was unsound
at that particular moment of man's
development, it was premature. The
indispensable basis of conduct and self-
control, the platform upon which alone
the perfection aimed at by Greece can
come into bloom, was not to be reached
by our race so easily; centuries of proba-
tion and discipline were needed to bring
us to it. Therefore the bright promise of
Hellenism faded, and Hebraism ruled the
world. Then was seen that astonishing
spectacle, so well marked by the often-
quoted words of the prophet Zechariah,
when men of all languages and nations
took hold of the skirt of him that was a
Jew, saying: "We will go with you, for we
have heard that God is with you." And the

ESSAYS

525

Hebraism which thus received and ruled
a world all gone out of the way and alto-
gether become unprofitable, was, and
could not but be, the later, the more
spiritual, the more attractive develop-
ment of Hebraism. It was Christianity;
that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-
conquest and rescue from the thrall of
vile affections, not by obedience to the
letter of a law, but by conformity to the
image of self-sacrificing example. To a
world stricken with moral enervation
Christianity offered its spectacle of an
inspired self-sacrifice; to men who re-
fused themselves nothing, it showed one
who refused himself everything; "my
Saviour banished joy!" says George Her-
bert. When the alma Venus, the life-
giving and joy-giving power of nature,
so fondly cherished by the Pagan world,
could not save her followers from self-
dissatisfaction and ennui, the severe
words of the apostle came bracingly and
refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you
with vain words, for because of these
things cometh the wrath of God upon the
children of disobedience." Through age
after age and generation after genera-
tion, our race, or all that part of our race
which was most living and progressive,
was baptized into a death; and endeavored,
by suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin.
Of this endeavor, the animating labors and
afflictions of early Christianity, the touch-
ing asceticism of mediaeval Christianity,
are the great historical manifestations.
Literary monuments of it, each in its own
way incomparable, remain in the Epistles
of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's Confessions,
and in the two original and simplest books
of the Imitation.

Of two disciplines laying their main
stress, the one, on clear intelligence, the
other, on firm obedience; the one, on com-
prehensively knowing the grounds of one's
duty, the other, on diligently practising it;
the one, on taking all possible care (to
use Bishop Wilson's words again) that the
light we have be not darkness, the other,
that according to the best light we have we
diligently walk, the priority naturally be-
longs to that discipline which braces all

man's moral powers, and founds for him
an indispensable basis of character. And,
therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish
people, who were charged with setting
powerfully forth that side of the divine
order to which the words conscience and
self-conquest point, that they were "en-
trusted with the oracles of God"; as it is
justly said of Christianity, which fol-
lowed Judaism and which set forth this
side with a much deeper effectiveness and
a much wider influence, that the wisdom
of the old Pagan world was foolishness
compared to it. No words of devotion
and admiration can be too strong to
render thanks to these beneficent forces
which have so borne forward humanity in
its appointed work of coming to the knowl-
edge and possession of itself; above all, in
those great moments when their action was
the wholesomest and the most necessary.
But the evolution of these forces, sep-
arately and in themselves, is not the whole
evolution of humanity, their single his-
tory is not the whole history of man;
whereas their admirers are always apt to
make it stand for the whole history.
Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither of
them, the law of human development,
as their admirers are prone to make them ;
they are, each of them, contributions to
human development, august contribu-
tions, invaluable contributions; and each
showing itself to us more august, more in-
valuable, more preponderant over the
other, according to the moment in which
we take them and the relation in which we
stand to them. The nations of our
modern world, children of that immense
and salutary movement which broke up
the Pagan world, inevitably stand to
Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it,
and to Hebraism in a relation which mag-
nifies it. They are inevitably prone to take
Hebraism as the law of human develop-
ment, and not as simply a contribution to
it, however precious. And yet the lesson
must perforce be learned, that the human
spirit is wider than the most priceless of the
forces which bear it onward, and that to
the whole development of man Hebraism
itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.

5*6

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (1825-1895)

As Darwin was the painstaking investigator into new fields of scientific inquiry, and thus became the
revealer of the theory of evolution which has so profoundly influenced the life and thought of the world,
so Huxley became the popular disseminator and propagandist of the new science. His literary gift was
of immense service to him in his constant warfare in behalf of the new gospel of science. The following
brief essay explains in his clearest manner what the method of science actually is.

THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC
INVESTIGATION*

THE method of scientific investigation is
nothing but the expression of the neces-
sary mode of working of the human mind.
It is simply the mode at which all phe-
nomena are reasoned about, rendered pre-
cise and exact. There is no more dif-
ference, but there is just the same kind
of difference, between the mental opera-
tions of a man of science and those of an
.ordinary person, as there is between the
operations and methods of a baker or of
a butcher weighing out his goods hi com-
mon scales, and the operations of a chem-
ist in performing a difficult and complex
analysis by means of his balance and
finely graduated weights. It is not that
the action of the scales in the one case,
and the balance in the other, differ in the
principles of their construction or manner
of working; but the beam of one is set on
an infinitely finer axis than the other,
and of course turns by the addition of a
much smaller weight.

You will understand this better, per-
haps, if I give you some familiar example.
You have all heard it repeated, I dare say,
that men of science work by means of in-
duction and deduction, and that by the
help of these operations, they, in a sort
of sense, wring from Nature certain other
things, which are called natural laws, and
causes, and that out of these, by some
cunning skill of their own, they build up
hypotheses and theories. And it is im-
agined by many, that the operations of the
common mind can be by no means com-
pared with these processes, and that they
have to be acquired by a sort of special
apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all

'Reprinted from "Darwiniana" by permission of D. Appleton
and Company, publishers of Huxley's Works.

these large words, you would think that
the mind of a man of science must be con-
stituted differently from that of his fellow
men; but if you will not be frightened by
terms, you will discover that you are quite
wrong, and that all these terrible appara-
tus are being used by yourselves every
day and every hour of your lives.

There is a well-known incident in one
of Moliere's plays, where the author makes
the hero express unbounded delight on
being told that he had been talking prose
during the whole of his life. In the same
way, I trust, that you will take comfort,
and be delighted with yourselves, on the
discovery that you have been acting on the
principles of inductive and deductive phil-
osophy during the same period. Prob-
ably there is not one here who has not in
the course of the day had occasion to set
in motion a complex train of reasoning,
of the very same kind, though differing
of course in degree, as that which a scien-
tific man goes through in tracing the causes
of natural phenomena.

A very trivial circumstance will serve
to exemplify this. Suppose you go into
a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple, 1
you take up one, and, on biting it, you
find it is sour; you look at it, and see thaf
it is hard and green. You take up an-
other one, and that too is hard, green, and
sour. The shopman offers you a third;
but, before biting it, you examine it, and
find that it is hard and green, and you im-
mediately say that you will not have it,
as it must be sour, like those that you have
already tried.

Nothing can be more simple than that,
you think; but if you will take the trouble
to analyze and trace out into its logical
elements what has been done by the
mind, you will be greatly surprised. In
the first place you have performed the

ESSAYS

527

operation of induction. You found that,
in two experiences, hardness and greenness
in apples went together with sourness. It
was so in the first case, and it was con-
firmed by the second. True, it is a very
small basis, but still it is enough to make
an induction from; you generalize the
facts, and you expect to find sourness in
apples where you get hardness and green-
ness. You found upon that a general
law that all hard and green apples are
sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a per-
fect induction. Well, having got your
natural law in this way, when you are
offered another apple which you find is
hard and green, you say, "All hard and
green apples are sour; this apple is hard
and green, therefore this apple is sour."
That train of reasoning is what logicians
call a syllogism, and has all its various
parts and terms, its major premise,
its minor premise and its conclusion.
And, by the help of further reasoning,
which, if drawn out, would have to be
exhibited in two or three other syllogisms,
you arrive at your final determination,
"I will not have that apple." So that,
you see, you have, in the first place,
established a law by induction, and upon
that you have founded a deduction, and
reasoned out the special particular case.
Well now, suppose, having got your con-
clusion of the law, that at some time after-
wards, you are discussing the qualities of
apples with a friend: you will say to him,
"It is a very curious thing, but I find
that all hard and green apples are sour!"
Your friend says to you, " But how do you
know that?" You at once reply, "Oh,
because I have tried them over and over
again, and have always found them to be
Well, if we were talking science

so.

instead of common sense, we should call
that an experimental verification. And,
if still opposed, you go further, and say,
"I have heard from the people in Somer-
setshire and Devonshire, where a large
number of apples are grown, that they
have observed the same thing. It is
also found to be the case in Normandy,
and in North America. In short, I find
it to be the universal experience of man-

kind wherever attention has been di-
rected to the subject." Whereupon, your
friend, unless he is a very unreasonable
man, agrees with you, and is convinced
that you are quite right in the conclusion
you have drawn. He believes, although
perhaps he does not know he believes it,
that the more extensive verifications are,
that the more frequently experiments
have been made, and results of the same
kind arrived at, that the more varied
the conditions under which the same
results are attained, the more certain is
the ultimate conclusion, and he disputes
the question no further. He sees that
the experiment has been tried under all
sorts of conditions, as to time, place,
and people, with the same result; and he
says with you, therefore, that the law you
have laid down must be a good one, and
he must believe it.

In science we do the same thing; the
philosopher exercises precisely the same
faculties, though in a much more delicate
manner. In scientific inquiry it becomes
a matter of duty to expose a supposed law
to every possible kind of verification, and
to take care, moreover, that this is done
intentionally, and not left to a mere acci-
dent, as in the case of the apples. And in
science, as in common life, our confidence
in a law is in exact proportion to the
absence of variation in the result of our
experimental verifications. For instance,
if you let go your grasp of an article
you may have in your hand, it will
immediately fall to the ground. That is
a very common verification of one of the
best established laws of nature that of
gravitation. The method by which men
of science establish the existence of that
law is exactly the same as that by which
we have established the trivial proposi-
tion about the sourness of hard and green
apples. But we believe it in such an
extensive, thorough, and unhesitating
manner because the universal experience
of mankind verifies it, and we can verify
it ourselves at any time; and that is the
strongest possible foundation on which
any natural law can rest.

So much, then by way of proof that

$28

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

the method of establishing laws in science
is exactly the same as that pursued in
common life. Let us now turn to an-
other matter (though really it is but an-
other phase of the same question), and
that is, the method by which, from the
relations of certain phenomena, we prove
that some stand in the position of causes
towards the others.

I want to put the case clearly before you,
and I will therefore show you what I mean
by another familiar example. I will sup-
pose that one of you, on coming down
in the morning to the parlor of your house,
finds that a tea-pot and some spoons
which had been left in the room on the
previous evening are gone, the win-
dow is open, and you observe the mark of
a dirty hand on the window-frame,
and perhaps, in addition to that, you
notice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on
the gravel outside. All these phenom-
ena have struck your attention instantly,
and before two seconds have passed you
say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the
window, entered the room, and run off
with the spoons and the tea-pot!" That
speech is out of your mouth in a moment.
And you will probably add, "I know
there has; I am quite sure of it!" You
mean to say exactly what you know; but in
reality you are giving expression to what
is, in all essential particulars, an hypoth-
esis. You do not know it at all; it is
nothing but an hypothesis rapidly framed
in your own mind. And it is an hypoth-
esis founded on a long train of induc-
tions and deductions.

What are those inductions and deduc-
tions, and how have you got at this hypoth-
esis? You have observed hi the first
place, that the window is open; but by a
train of reasoning involving many induc-
tions and deductions, you have probably
arrived long before at the general law
and a very good one it is that windows
do not open of themselves; and you there-
fore conclude that something has opened
the window. A second general law that
you have arrived at in the same way is,
that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of
a window spontaneously, and you are

satisfied that, as they are not now where
you left them, they have been removed.
In the third place, you look at the marks
on the window-sill, and the shoe-marks
outside, and you say that hi all previous
experience the former kind of mark has
never been produced by anything else but
the hand of a human being; and the same
experience shows that no other animal
but man at present wears shoes with hob-
nails in them such as would produce the
marks in the gravel. I do not know,
even if we could discover any of those
"missing links" that are talked about,
that they would help us to any other con-
clusion ! At any rate the law which states
our present experience is strong enough
for my present purpose. You next reach
the conclusion that, as these kinds of
marks have not been left by any other
animal than man, or are liable to be form-
ed in any other way than a man's
hand and shoe, the marks in question
have been formed by a man in that way.
You have, further, a general law, founded
on observation and experience, and that,
too, is, I am sorry to say, a very univer-
sal and unimpeachable one, that .same
men are thieves; and you assume at once
from all these premises and that is what
constitutes your hypothesis that the
man who made the marks outside and on
the window-sill opened the window, got
into the room, and stole your tea-pot and
spoons. You have now arrived at a vera
causa; you have assumed a cause which,
it is plain, is competent to produce all the
phenomena you have observed. You
can explain all these phenomena only by
the hypothesis of a thief. But that is a
hypothetical conclusion, of the justice of
which you have no absolute proof at all;
it is only rendered highly probable by a
series of inductive and deductive reason-
ings.

I suppose your first action, assuming
that you are a man of ordinary common
sense, and that you have established this
hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will
very likely be to go off for the police, and
set them on the track of the burglar, with
the view to the recovery of your property.

ESSAYS

529

But just as you are starting with this
object, some person comes in, and on
learning what you are about, says, "My
good friend, you are going on a great deal
too fast. How do you know that the
man who really made the marks took the
spoons? It might have been a monkey
that took them, and the man may have
merely looked in afterwards. ' ' You would
probably reply, "Well, that is all very well,
but you see it is contrary to all experience
of the way tea-pots and spoons are ab-
stracted; so that, at any rate, your hypoth-
esis is less probable than mine." While
you are talking the thing over in this way,
another friend arrives, one of the good
kind of people that I was talking of a little
while ago. And he might say, "Oh, my
dear sir, you are certainly going on a great
deal too fast. You are most presumptu-
ous. You admit that all these occur-
rences took place when you were fast
asleep, at a time when you could not pos-
sibly have known anything about what
was taking place. How do you know that
the laws of Nature are not suspended dur-
ing the night? It may be that there has
been some kind of supernatural inter-
ference in this case." In point of fact, he
declares that your hypothesis is one of
which you cannot at all demonstrate
the truth, and that you are by no means
sure that the laws of Nature are the same
when you are asleep as when you are
awake.

Well, now, you cannot at the moment
answer that kind of reasoning. You feel
that your worthy friend has you some-
what at a disadvantage. You will feel
perfectly convinced in your own mind,
however, that you are quite right, and
you say to him, "My good friend, I can
only be guided by the natural probabili-
ties of the case, and if you will be kind
enough to stand aside and permit me to
pass, I will go and fetch the police." Well,
we will suppose that your journey is
successful, and that by good luck you meet
with a policeman; that eventually the
burglar is found with your property on his
person, and the marks correspond to his
hand and to his boots. Probably any

jury would consider those facts a very
good experimental verification of your
hypothesis, touching the cause of the ab-
normal phenomena observed in your
parlor, and would act accordingly.

Now, in this suppositious case, I have
taken phenomena of a very common kind,
in order that you might see what are the
different steps in an ordinary process of
reasoning, if you will only take the trouble
to analyze it carefully. All the operations
I have described, you will see, are involved
in the mind of any man of sense in leading
him to a conclusion as to the course he
should take in order to make good a
robbery and punish the offender. I say
that you are led, in that case, to your con-
clusion by exactly the same tram of reason-
ing as that which a man of science pursues
when he is endeavoring to discover the
origin and laws of the most occult phe-
nomena. The process is, and always must
be, the same; and precisely the same
mode of reasoning was employed by New-
ton and Laplace in their endeavors to dis-
cover and define the causes of the move-
ments of the heavenly bodies, as you, with
your own common sense, would employ to
detect a burglar. The only difference is,
that the nature of the inquiry being more
abstruse, every step has to be most care-
fully watched, so that there may not be a
single crack or flaw in your hypothesis.
A flaw or crack in many of the hypotheses
of daily life may be of little or no moment
as affecting the general correctness of
the conclusions at which we may arrive;
but, in a scientific inquiry, a fallacy, great
or small, is always of importance, and is
sure to be in the long run constantly
productive of mischievous if not fatal re-
sults.

Do not allow yourself to be misled by
the common notion that an hypothesis is
untrustworthy simply because it is an
hypothesis. It is often urged, in respect
to some scientific conclusion, that, after
all, it is only an hypothesis. But what
more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of
the most important affairs of daily life
than hypotheses, and often very ill-
based ones? So that in science, where the

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

evidence of an hypothesis is subjected to
the most rigid examination, we may
rightly pursue the same course. You
may have hypotheses and hypotheses. A
man may say, if he likes, that the moon is
made of green cheese: that is an hypothesis.
But another man who has devoted a
great deal of time and attention to the
subject, and availed himself of the most
powerful telescopes and the results of the
observations of others, declares that in
his opinion it is probably composed of
materials very similar to those of which
our own earth is made up: and that is also
only an hypothesis. But I need not tell
you that there is an enormous difference
in the value of the two hypotheses. That
one which is based on sound scientific
knowledge is sure to have a corresponding
value; and that which is a mere hasty
random guess is likely to have but little

value. Every great step in our progress
in discovering causes has been made in
exactly the same way as that which I
have detailed to you. A person observing
the occurrence of certain facts and phe-
nomena asks, naturally enough, what proc-
ess, what kind of operation known to
occur in Nature applied to the particular
case, will unravel and explain the mystery?
Hence you have the scientific hypothesis;
and its value will be proportionate to the
care and completeness with which its
basis had been tested and verified. It is in
these matters as in the commonest affairs
of practical life: the guess of the fool will
be folly, while the guess of the wise man
will contain wisdom. In all cases, you
see that the value of the result depends on
the patience and faithfulness with which
the investigator applies to his hypothesis
every possible kind of verification.

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

William James, one of America's foremost philosophers, was professor at Harvard University from
1872 until his death. In the following essay Professor James has endeavored to prove that the masculine
virtues of courage, steadfastness, and self-sacrifice, which are fostered by military discipline, are neces-
sary to the welfare of the world, and until we can discover a means by which these qualities are adequately
excited we need not talk about the abolition of the military spirit.

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR*

THE war against war is going to be no
holiday excursion or camping party.
The military feelings are too deeply
grounded to abdicate their place among
our ideals until better substitutes are
offered than the glory and shame that
come to nations as well as to individuals
from the ups and downs of politics and the
vicissitudes of trade. There is something
highly paradoxical in the modern man's
relation to war. Ask all our millions,
north and south, whether they would
vote now (were such a thing possible)
to have our war for the Union expunged
from history, and the record of a peaceful
transition to the present time substituted
for that of its marches and battles, and

First published by the American Association for Inter-
national Conciliation; reprinted here by permission of Long-
mans, Green, and Company, publishers of "Memories and
Studies" by William James, in which this essay is included.

probably hardly a handful of eccentrics
would say yes. Those ancestors, thostf 1
efforts, those memories and legends, are
the most ideal part of what we now own
together, a sacred spiritual possession
worth more than all the blood poured out.
Yet ask those same people whether they
would be willing in cold blood to start
another civil war now to gain another
similar possession, and not one man or
woman would vote for the proposition.
In modern eyes, precious though wars
may be, they must not be waged solely
for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only
when forced upon one, only when an
enemy's injustice leaves us no alternative,
is a war now thought permissible.

It was not thus in ancient times. The
earlier men were hunting men, and to
hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males,
loot the village and possess the females,
was the most profitable, as well as the

ESSAYS

most exciting, way of living. Thus were
the more martial tribes selected, and in
chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and
love of glory came to mingle with the
more fundamental appetite for plunder.

Modern war is so expensive that we
feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder;
but modern man inherits all the innate
pugnacity and all the love of glory of his
ancestors. Showing war's irrationality
and horror is of no effect upon him. The
horrors make the fascination. War is
the strong life; it is life in extremis; war
taxes are the only ones men never hesitate
to pay, as the budgets of all nations show
us.

History is a bath of blood. The Hiad is
one long recital of how Diomedes and
Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector, killed. No
detail of the wounds they made is spared
us, and the Greek mind fed upon the
story. Greek history is a panorama of
jingoism and imperialism war for war's
sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is
horrible reading, because of the irration-
ality of it all save for the purpose of
making "history" and the history is
that of the utter ruin of a civilization in
intellectual respects perhaps the highest
the earth has ever seen.

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride,
gold, women, slaves, excitement, were
their only motives. In the Pelopon-
nesian war, for example, the Athenians
asked the inhabitants of Melos (the island
where the "Venus of Milo" was found),
hitherto neutral, to own their lordship.
The envoys meet, and hold a debate
which Thucydides gives hi full, and
which, for sweet reasonableness of form,
would have satisfied Matthew Arnold.
"The powerful exact what they can,"
said the Athenians, "and the weak grant
what they must." When the Meleans
say that sooner than be slaves they will
appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply:
"Of the gods we believe and of men we
know that, by a law of their nature,
wherever they can rule they will. This
law was not made by us, and we are not
the first to have acted upon it; we did
but inherit it, and we know that you and

all mankind, if you were as strong as we
are, would do as we do. So much for
the gods; we have told you why we expect
to stand as high in their good opinion as
you." Well, the Meleans still refused, and
their town was taken. "The Athenians,"
Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put
to death all who were of military age
and made slaves of the women and
children. They then colonized the island,
sending thither five hundred settlers of
their own."

Alexander's career was piracy pure and
simple, nothing but an orgy of power and
plunder, made romantic by the character
of the hero. There was no rational
principle in it, and the moment he died
his generals and governors attacked one
another. The cruelty of those times is
incredible. When Rome finally con-
quered Greece, Paulus ^Emilius was told
by the Roman Senate to reward his sol-
diers for their toil by "giving" them the
old kingdom of Epirus. They sacked
seventy cities and carried off a hundred
and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves.
How many they killed I know not ; but in
Etolia they killed all the senators, five
hundred and fifty in number. Brutus
was "the noblest Roman of them all,"
but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve
of Philippi he similarly promises to give
them the cities of Sparta and Thessalonica
to ravage, if they win the fight.

Such was the gory nurse that trained
societies to cohesiveness. We inherit
the warlike type; and for most of the
capacities of heroism that the human race
is full of we have to thank this cruel
history. Dead men tell no tales, and if
there were any tribes of other type than
this they have left no survivors. Our
ancestors have bred pugnacity into our
bone and marrow, and thousands of years
of peace won't breed it out of us. The
popular imagination fairly fattens on the
thought of wars. Let public opinion
once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no
ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war
both governments began with bluff, but
couldn't stay there, the military tension
was too much for them. In 1898 our

532

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

people had read the word WAR in letters
three inches high for three months in
every newspaper. The pliant politician
McKinley was swept away by their eager-
ness, and our squalid war with Spain be-
came a necessity.

At the present day, civilized opinion is a
curious mental mixture. The military
instinct and ideals are as strong as ever,
but are confronted by reflective criticisms
which sorely curb their ancient freedom.
Innumerable writers are showing up the
bestial side of military service. Pure loot
and mastery seem no longer morally
avowable motives, and pretexts must be
found for attributing them solely to the
enemy. England and we, our army and
navy authorities repeat without ceasing,
arm solely for "peace," Germany and
Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory.
"Peace" in military mouths to-day is a
synonym for "war expected." The word
has become a pure provocative, and no
government wishing peace sincerely should
allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper.
Every up-to-date dictionary should say
that "peace" and "war" mean the same
thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may
even reasonably be said that the intensely
sharp competitive preparation for war by
the nation is the real war, permanent,
unceasing; and that the battles are only
a sort of public verification of the mas-
tery gained during the "peace" interval.

It is plain that on this subject civilized
man has developed a sort of double per-
sonality. If we take European nations,
no legitimate interest of any one of them
would seem to justify the tremendous
destructions which a war to compass it
would necessarily entail. It would seem
as though common sense and reason ought
to find a way to reach agreement in every
conflict of honest interests. I myself
think it our bounden duty to believe in
such international rationality as possible.
But, as things stand, I see how desperately
hard it is to bring the peace party and the
war party together, and I believe that the
difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in
the programme of pacificism which set the
militarist imagination strongly, and to a

certain extent justifiably, against it. In
the whole discussion both sides are on
imaginative and sentimental ground. It
is but one Utopia against another, and
everything one says must be abstract and
hypothetical Subject to this criticism
and caution, I will try to characterize in
abstract strokes the opposite imaginative
forces, and point out what to my own very
fallible mind seems the best Utopian
hypothesis, the most promising line of
conciliation.

In my remarks, pacificist though I
am, I will refuse to speak of the bestial
side of the war regime (already done
justice to by many writers) and consider
only the higher aspects of militaristic
sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks
discreditable; nor does any one deny that
war is the romance of history. But inor-
dinate ambitions are the soul of every pa-
triotism, and the possibility of violent
death the soul of all romance. The milita-
rily patriotic and romantic-minded every-
where, and especially the professional
military class, refuse to admit for a mo-
ment that war may be a transitory phe-
nomenon in social evolution. The notion
of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they
say, our higher imagination. Where then
would be the steeps of life? If war had
ever stopped, we should have to reinvent
it on this view, to redeem life from flat
degeneration.

Reflective apologists for war at the
present day all take it religiously. It is
a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the
vanquished as well as to the victor; and
quite apart from any question of profit,
it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is
human nature at its highest dynamic.
Its "horrors" are a cheap price to pay for
rescue from the only alternative supposed,
of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-
education and zoophily, of "consumer's
leagues" and "associated charities," of
industrialism unlimited and feminism un-
abashed. No scorn, no hardness, no
valor any more! Fie upon such a cattle-
yard of a planet!

So far as the central essence of this feel-
ing goes, no healthy-minded person, it

ESSAYS

533

seems to me, can help to some degree
partaking of it. Militarism is the great
preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and
human life with no use for hardihood
would be contemptible. Without risks
or prizes for the darer, history would
be insipid indeed; and there is a type of
military character which every one feels
that the race should never cease to breed,
for everyone is sensitive to its superiority.
The duty is incumbent on mankind, of
keeping military characters in stock of
keeping them, if not for use, then as ends
in themselves and as pure pieces of per-
fection, so that Roosevelt's weaklings
and mollycoddles may not end by making
everything else disappear from the face
of nature.

. This natural sort of feeling forms, I
think, the innermost soul of army writ-
ings. Without any exception known to
me, militarist authors take a highly mys-
tical view of their subject, and regard war
as a biological or sociological necessity,
uncontrolled by ordinary psychological
checks and motives. When the tune of
development is ripe the war must come,
reason or no reason, for the justifications
pleaded are invariably fictitious. War is,
in short, a permanent human obligation.
General Homer Lea, in his recent book,
"The Valor of Ignorance," plants himself
squarely on this ground. Readiness for
war is for him the essence of nationality,
and ability in it the supreme measure -of
the health of nations.

Nations, General Lea says, are never
stationary they must necessarily expand
or shrink, according to their vitality or
decrepitude. Japan now is culminating;
and by the fatal law in question it is im-
possible that her statesmen should not
long since have entered, with extraordi-
nary foresight, upon a vast policy of
conquest the game in which the first
moves were her wars with China and
Russia and her treaty with England, and
of which the final objective is the capture
of the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands,
Alaska, and the whole of our coast west
of the Sierra Passes. This will give
Japan what her ineluctable vocation as a

state absolutely forces her to claim, the
possession of the entire Pacific Ocean,
and to oppose these deep designs we
Americans have, according to our author,
nothing but our conceit, our ignorance,
our commercialism, our corruption, and
our feminism. General Lea makes a
minute technical comparison of the mili-
tary strength which we at present could
oppose to the strength of Japan, and con-
cludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon,
and Southern California, would fall al-
most without resistance, that San Fran-
cisco must surrender in a fortnight to a
Japanese investment, that in three or four
months the war would be over, and our
Republic, unable to regain what it had
heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently,
would then "disintegrate," until perhaps
some Caesar should arise to weld us again
into a nation,

A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not
unplausible, if the mentality of Japan's
statesmen be of the Caesarian type of
which history shows so many examples,
and which is all that General Lea seems
able to imagine. But there is no reason
to think that women can no longer be the
mothers of Napoleonic or Alexandrian
characters; and if these come in Japan
and find their opportunity, just such sur-
prises as "The Valor of Ignorance" paints
may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as
we still are of the innermost recesses of
Japanese mentality, we may be fool-
hardy to disregard such possibilities.

Other militarists are more complex and
more moral in their considerations. The
"Philosophic des Krieges," by S. R. Stein-
metz, is a good example. War, according
to this author, is an ordeal instituted by
God, who weighs the nations in its balance.
It is the essential form of the state, and
the only function in which peoples can
employ all their powers at once and con-
vergently. No victory is possible save
as the resultant of a totality of virtues,
no defeat for which some vice or weakness
is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness,
tenacity, heroism, conscience, education,
inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical
health and vigor there isn't a moral or

534

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

intellectual point of superiority that
doesn't tell, when God holds his assizes
and hurls the peoples upon one another.
Die W eltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; and
Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the
long run chance and luck play any part
in apportioning the issues.

The virtues that prevail, it must be
noted, are virtues anyhow, superiorities
that count in peaceful as well as in mili-
tary competition; but the strain on them,
being infinitely intenser in the latter case,
makes war infinitely more searching as a
trial. No ordeal is comparable to its
winnowings. Its dread hammer is the
welder of men into cohesive states, and
nowhere but in such states can human
nature adequately develop its capacity.
The only alternative is "degeneration."

Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker,
and his book, short as it is, takes much
into account. Its upshot can, it seems to
me, be summed up in Simon Patten's
word, that mankind was nursed in pain
and fear, and that the transition to a
"pleasure economy" may be fatal to a
being wielding no powers of defense
against its disintegrative influences. If
we speak of the fear of emancipation from
the fear regime, we put the whole situation
into a single phrase; fear regarding our-
selves now taking the place of the ancient
fear of the enemy.

Turn the fear over as I will in my mind,
it all seems to lead back to two unwilling-
nesses of the imagination, one aesthetic,
and the other moral: unwillingness, first
to envisage a future in which army life,
with its many elements of charm, shall be
forever impossible, and in which the des-
tinies of peoples shall nevermore be de-
cided quickly, thrillingly, and tragically,
by force, but only gradually and insipidly
by "evolution"; and, secondly unwilling-
ness to see the supreme theater of human
strenuousness closed, and the splendid
military aptitudes of men doomed to
keep always in a state of latency and never
show themselves in action. These insis-
tent unwillingnesses, no less than other
aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it
seems to me, to be listened to and re-

spected. One cannot meet them effectively
by mere counter-insistency on war's ex-
pensiveness and horror. The horror makes
the thrill; and when the question is of
getting the extremest and supremest out
of human nature, talk of expense sounds
ignominious. The weakness of so much
merely negative criticism is evident
pacificism makes no converts from the
military party. The military party denies
neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor
the expense; it only says that these things
tell but half the story. It only says that
war is worth them; that, taking human
nature as a whole, its wars are its best
protection against its weaker and more
cowardly self, and that mankind cannot
afford to adopt a peace economy.

Pacificists ought to enter more deeply
into the aesthetical and ethical point of
view of their opponents. Do that first
in any controversy, says J. J. Chapman;
then move the point, and your opponent will
follow. So long as anti-militarists pro-
pose no substitute for war's disciplinary
function, no moral equivalent of war, analo-
gous, as one might say, to the mechanical
equivalent of heat, so long they fail to
realize the full inwardness of the situa-
tion. And as a rule they do fail. The
duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured
in the Utopias they paint are all too weak
and tame to touch the military minded.
Tolstoi's pacificism is the only exception
to this rule, for it is profoundly pessimistic
as regards all this world's values, and
makes the fear of the Lord furnish the
moral spur provided elsewhere by the fear
of the enemy. But our socialistic peace
advocates all believe absolutely in this
world's values; and instead of the fear
of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the
only fear they reckon with is the fear of
poverty if one be lazy. This weakness per-
vades all the socialistic literature with
which I am acquainted. Even hi Lowes
Dickinson's exquisite dialogue, high wages
and short hours are the only forces in-
voked for overcoming man's distaste for
repulsive kinds of labor. Meanwhile men
at large still live as they always have lived
under a pain-and-fear economy for those

ESSAYS

535

of us who live in an ease economy are but
an island in the stormy ocean and the
whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian
literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery
to people who still keep a sense for life's
more bitter flavors. It suggests, in truth,
ubiquitous inferiority.

Inferiority is always with us, and merci-
less scorn of it is the keynote of the military
temper. " Dogs, would you live forever? "
shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes,"
say our Utopians, "let us live forever, and
raise our level gradually." The best thing
about our "inferiors" to-day is that they
are as tough as nails, and physically and
morally almost as insensitive. Utop-
ianism would see them soft and squeamish,
while militarism would keep their callous-
ness, but transfigure it into a meritorious
characteristic, needed by "the service,"
and redeemed by that from the suspicion
of inferiority. All the qualities of a man
acquire dignity when he knows that the
service of the collectivity that owns him
needs them. If proud of the collectivity,
his own pride rises in proportion. No
collectivity is like an army for nourishing
such pride; but it has to be confessed that
the only sentiment which the image of
pacific cosmopolitan industrialism is ca-
pable of a rousing in countless worthy
breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to
such a collectivity. It is obvious that the
United States of America as they exist
to-day impress a mind like General Lea's
as so much human blubber. Where is the
sharpness and precipitousness, the con-
tempt for life, whether one's own, or
another's? Where is the savage "yes"
and "no," the unconditional duty?
Where is the conscription? Where is the
blood tax? Where is anything that one
feels honored by belonging to?

Having said thus much in preparation, I
will now confess my own Utopia. I
devoutly believe in the reign of peace and
in the gradual advent of some sort of a
socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic
view of the war function is to me nonsense,
for I know that war-making is due to
definite motives and subject to prudential
'.hecks and reasonable criticisms, just like

any other form of enterprise. And when
whole nations are the armies, and the
science of destruction vies in intellectual
refinement with the sciences of produc-
tion, I see that war becomes absurd and im-
possible from its own monstrosity. Ex-
travagant ambitions will have to be re-
placed by reasonable claims, and nations
must make common cause against them.
I see no reason why all this should not
apply to yellow as well as to white coun-
tries, and I look forward to a future when
acts of war shall be formally outlawed as
between civilized peoples.

All these beliefs of mine put me squarely
into the anti-militarist party. But I do
not believe that peace either ought to be
or will be permanent on this globe, unless
the states pacifically organized preserve
some of the old elements of army discipline.
A permanently successful peace economy
cannot be a simple pleasure economy.
In the more or less socialistic future
towards which mankind seems drifting
we must still subject ourselves collec-
tively to these severities which answer to
our real position upon this only partly
hospitable globe. We must make new
energies and hardihoods continue the
manliness to which the military mind so
faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be
the enduring cement; intrepidity, con-
tempt of softness, surrender of private
interest, obedience to command, must
still remain the rock upon which states are
built unless, indeed, we wish for danger-
ous reactions against commonwealths fit
only for contempt, and liable to invite
attack whenever a center of crystallization
for military-minded enterprise gets formed
anywhere in their neighborhood.

The war party is assuredly right in
affirming and reaffirming that the martial
virtues, although originally gained by the
race through war, are absolute and per-
manent human goods. Patriotic pride
and ambition in their military form are,
after all, only specifications of a more
general competitive passion. They are
its first form, but that is no reason for
supposing them to be its last form. Men
now are proud of belonging to a conquering

nation, and without a murmur they lay
down their persons and their wealth, if
by so doing they may fend off subjection.
But who can be sure that other aspects of
one's country may not, with time and
education and suggestion enough, come to
be regarded with similarly effective feeling
of pride and shame? Why should men
not some day feel that it is worth a blood
tax to belong to a collectivity superior in
any ideal respect? Why should they not
blush with indignant shame if the com-
munity that owns them is vile in any way
whatsoever? Individuals, daily more
numerous, now feel this civic passion.
It is only a question of blowing on the
spark till the whole population gets incan-
descent, and on the ruins of the old mor-
als of military honor, a stable system of
morals of civic honor builds itself up.
What the whole community comes to be-
lieve in grasps the individual as in a vise.
The war function has grasped us so far;
but constructive interests may some day
seem no less imperative, and impose on the
individual a hardly lighter burden.

Let me illustrate my idea more con-
cretely. There is nothing to make one
indignant in the mere fact that life is hard,
that men should toil and suffer pain.
The planetary conditions once for all are
such, and we can stand it. But that so
many men, by mere accidents of birth
and opportunity, should have a life of
nothing else but toil and pain and hardness
and inferiority imposed upon them, should
have no vacation, while others natively
no more deserving never get any taste of
this campaigning life at all, this is ca-
pable of arousing indignation in reflective
minds. It may end by seeming shameful
to all of us that some of us have nothing
but campaigning, and others nothing but
unmanly ease. If now and this is my
idea there were, instead of military
conscription a conscription of the whole
youthful population to form for a certain
number of years a part of the army en-
listed against Nature, the injustice would
tend to be evened out, and numerous other
goods to the commonwealth would follow.
The military ideals of hardihood and dis-

cipline would be wrought into the growing
fiber of the people; no one would remain
blind as the luxurious classes now are
blind, to man's real relations to the globe
he lives on, and to the permanently sour
and hard foundations of his higher life.
To coal and iron mines, to freight trains,
to fishing fleets in December, to dish-
washing, clothes washing, and window
washing, to road building and tunnel
making, to foundries and stokeholes, and
to the frames of skyscrapers, would our
gilded youths be drafted off, according to
their choice, to get the childishness knock-
ed out of them, and to come back into
society with healthier sympathies and
soberer ideas. They would have paid
their blood tax, done their own part in
the immemorial human warfare against
nature, they would tread the earth more
proudly, the women would value them
more highly, they would be better fathers
and teachers of the following generation.

Such a conscription, with the state of
public opinion that would have required
it, and the many moral fruits it would
bear, would preserve in the midst of a
pacific civilization the manly virtues
which the military party is so afraid oi
seeing disappear in peace. We should get
toughness without callousness, authority
with as little criminal cruelty as possible,
and painful work done cheerily because
the duty is temporary, and threatens not,
as now, to degrade the whole remainder of
one's life. I spoke of the "moral equiva-
lent" of war. So far, war has been the
only force that can discipline a whole com-
munity, and until an equivalent discipline
is organized, I believe that war must have
its way. But I have no serious doubt
that the ordinary pride and shames of
social man, once developed to a certain
intensity, are capable of organizing such a
moral equivalent as I have sketched, or
some other just as effective for preserving
manliness of type. It is but a question
of time, of skillful propagandism, and of
opinion-making men seizing historic op-
portunities.

The martial type of character can be
bred without war. Strenuous honor

ESSAYS

537

and disinterestedness abound elsewhere.
Priests and medical men are in a fashion
educated to it, and we should all feel
some degree of it imperative if we were
conscious of our work as an obligatory
service to the state. We should be owned,
as soldiers are by the army, and our pride
would rise accordingly. We could be poor,
then, without humiliation, as army officers
now are. The only thing needed hence-
forward is to inflame the civic temper as
past history has inflamed the military
temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the
center of the situation. " In many ways,"
he says, "military organization is the most
peaceful of activities. When the con-
temporary man steps from the street,, of
clamorous insincere advertisement, push,
adulteration, underselling and intermit-
tent employment, into the barrack yard,
he steps on to a higher social plane, into
an atmosphere of service and cooperation
and of innnitelymorehonorableemulations.
Here at least men are not flung out of
employment to degenerate because there
is no immediate work for them to do.
They are fed and drilled and trained for
better services. Here at least a man is
supposed to win promotion by self-
forgetfulness and not by self-seeking.
And beside the feeble and irregular en-
dowment of research by commercialism,
its little short-sighted snatches at profit
by innovation and scientific economy, see
how remarkable is the steady and rapid
development of method and appliances
in naval and military affairs! Nothing is
more striking than to compare the prog-
ress of civil conveniences which has been
left almost entirely to the trader, to the
progress in military apparatus during
the last few decades. The house appli-
ances of to-day, for example, are little

better than they were fifty years ago.
A house of to-day is still almost as ill-
ventilated, badly heated by wasteful
fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as
the house of 1858. Houses a couple of
hundred years old are still satisfactory
places of residence, so little have our
standards risen. But the rule or battle-
ship of fifty years ago was beyond all
comparison inferior to those we possess;
in power, hi speed, in convenience alike.
No one has a use now for such superan-
nuated things."

Wells adds that he thinks that the con-
ceptions of order and discipline, the tradi-
tion of service and devotion, of physical
fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal
responsibility, which universal military
duty is now teaching European nations,
will remain a permanent acquisition, when
the last ammunition has been used in the
fireworks that celebrate the final peace. I
believe as he does. It would be simply
preposterous if the only force that could
work ideals of honor and standards of
efficiency into English or American na-
tures should be the fear of being killed
by the Germans or the Japanese. Great
indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our mili-
tary enthusiasts believe and try to make
us believe, the only stimulus known for
awakening the higher ranges of men's
spiritual energy. The amount of altera-
tion in public opinion which my Utopia
postulates is vastly less than the difference
between the mentality of those black war-
riors who pursued Stanley's party on the
Congo with their cannibal war cry of
" Meat ! Meat ! " and that of the " general
staff" of any civilized nation. History
has seen the latter interval bridged over:
the former one can be bridged over much
more easily.

538

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894)

This narrator of romantic stories of England and the South Seas has also proved himself a most
charming writer of the familiar essay. The essay selected for study should prove an excellent tonic for
any one who has taken an over-dose of the social criticism which the other Victorian essayists offer us
for the good of our souls and our future amendment. Stevenson's style would bear careful study as
the work of a man who deliberately set out to become a writer of excellence.

JEs TRIPLEX*

THE changes wrought by death are in
themselves so sharp and final, and so ter-
rible and melancholy in their consequences,
that the thing stands alone in man's ex-
perience, and has no parallel upon earth.
It outdoes all other accidents because it is
the last of them. Sometimes it leaps sud-
denly upon its victims, like a Thug;
sometimes it lays a regular siege and
creeps upon their citadel during a score
of years. And when the business is
done, there is sore havoc made in other
people's lives, and a pin knocked out by
which many subsidiary friendships hung
together. There are empty chairs, soli-
tary walks, and single beds at night.
Again, in taking away our friends, death
does not take them away utterly, but
leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and
soon intolerable residue, which must be
hurriedly concealed. Hence a whole chap-
ter of sights and customs striking to the
mind, from the pyramids of Egypt to the
gibbets and dule trees of mediaeval Europe.
The poorest persons have a bit of pageant
going towards the tomb; memorial stones
are set up over the least memorable;
and, in order to preserve some show of
respect for what remains of our old loves
and friendships, we must accompany it
with much grimly ludicrous ceremonial,
and the hired undertaker parades before
the door. All this, and much more of the
same sort, accompanied by the eloquence
of poets, has gone a great way to put hu-
manity in error; nay, in many philoso-
phies the error has been embodied and
laid down with every circumstance of
logic; although in real life the bustle and
swiftness, in leaving people little time to

Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, author-
ized publishers of Stevenson's works.

think, have not left them time enough to
go dangerously wrong in practice.

As a matter of fact, although few things
are spoken of with more fearful whisper-
ings than this prospect of death, few have
less influence on conduct under healthy
circumstances. We have all heard of
cities in South America built upon the side
of fiery mountains, and how, even in thic
tremendous neighborhood, the inhabitants
are not a jot more impressed by the solem-
nity of mortal conditions than if they
were delving gardens in the greenest corner
of England. There are serenades and
suppers and much gallantry among the
myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the
foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels
of the mountain growl, and at any mo-
ment living ruin may leap sky-high into
the moonlight, and tumble man and his
merry-making in the dust. In the eyes
of very young people, and very dull old
ones, there is something indescribably
reckless and desperate in such a picture.
It seems not credible that respectable mar-
ried people, with umbrellas, should find
appetite for a bit of supper within quite
a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordi-
nary life begins to smell of high-handed
debauch when it is carried on so close to a
catastrophe; and even cheese and salad,
it seems, could hardly be relished in such
circumstances without something like a
defiance of the Creator. It should be a
place for nobody but hermits dwelling in
prayer and maceration, or mere born-
devils drowning care in a perpetual
carouse.

And yet, when one comes to think upon
it calmly, the situation of these South
American citizens forms only a very pale
figure for the state of ordinary mankind.
This world itself, travelling blindly and
swiftly in over-crowded space, among a

ESSAYS

539

million other worlds travelling blindly and
swiftly in contrary directions, may very
well come by a knock that would set it
into explosion like a penny squib. And
what, pathologically looked at, is the
human body with all its organs, but a
mere bagful of petards? The least of
, these is as dangerous to the whole economy
as the ship's powder-magazine to the ship;
and with every breath we breathe, and
every meal we eat, we are putting one or
more of them in peril. If we clung as
devotedly as some philosophers pretend
we do to the abstract idea of life, or were
half as frightened as they make out we
are, for the subversive accident that ends
it all, the trumpets might sound by the
hour and no one would follow them into
battle the blue-peter might fly at the
truck, but who would climb into a sea-
going ship? Think (if these philosophers
were right) with what a preparation of
spirit we should affront the daily peril of
'the dinner table: a deadlier spot than
any battle-field in history, where the far
greater proportion of our ancestors have
miserably left their bones! What woman
would ever be lured into marriage, so
much more dangerous than the wildest
sea? And what would it be to grow old?
For, after a certain distance, every step
we take in life we find the ice growing
thinner below our feet, and all around us
and behind us we see our contemporaries
going through. By the time a man gets
well into the seventies, his continued ex-
istence is a mere miracle; and when he
lays his old bones in bed for the night,
there is an overwhelming probability that
he will never see the day. Do the old
men mind it, as a matter of fact? Why,
no. They were never merrier; they have
their grog at night, and tell the raciest
stories; they hear of the death of people
about their own age, or even younger,
not as if it was a grisly warning, but with
a simple childlike pleasure at having out-
lived some one else; and when a draught
might puff them out like a guttering can-
dle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like
so much glass, their old hearts keep sound
and unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling

with laughter, through years of man's
age compared to which the valley at
Balaclava was as safe and peaceful as a
village cricket-green on Sunday. It may
fairly be questioned (if we look to the
peril only) whether it was a much more
daring feat for Curtius to plunge into
the gulf, than for any old gentleman of
ninety to doff his clothes and clamber into
bed.

Indeed, it is a memorable subject for
consideration, with what unconcern and
gaiety mankind pricks on along the Valley
of the Shadow of Death. The whole
way is one wilderness of snares, and the
end of it, for those who fear the last pinch,
is irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spin-
ning through it all, like a party for the
Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers
one of the humorous devices of the deified
Caligula: how he encouraged a vast con-
course of holiday-makers on to his bridge
over Baiae Bay; and when they were in the
height of their enjoyment, turned loose
the Praetorian guards among the com-
pany, and had them tossed into the sea.
This is no bad miniature of the dealings
of nature with the transitory race of man.
Only, what a chequered picnic we have of
it, even while it lasts! and into what
great waters, not to be crossed by any
swimmer, God's pale Praetorian throws
us over in the end!

We live the time that a match flickers;
we pop the cork of a ginger-beer bottle,
and the earthquake swallows us on the
instant. Is it not odd, is it not incon-
gruous, is it not, in the highest sense of
human speech, incredible, that we should
think so highly of the ginger-beer, and
regard so litcle the devouring earthquake?
The love of Life and the fear of Death
are two famous phrases that grow harder
to understand the more we think about
them. It is a well-known fact that an im-
mense proportion of boat accidents would
never happen if people held the sheet
in their hands instead of making it fast;
and yet, unless it be some martinet of a
professional mariner or some landsman
with shattered nerves, every one of God's
creatures makes it fast. A strange in-

540

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

stance of man's unconcern and brazen
boldness in the face of death!

We confound ourselves with meta-
physical phrases, which we import into
daily talk with noble inappropriateness.
We have no idea of what death is, apart
from its circumstances and some of its con-
sequences to others; and although we
have some experience of living, there is
not a man on earth who has flown so high
into abstraction as to have any practical
guess at the meaning of the word life.
All literature, from Job and Omar Khay-
yam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman,
is but an attempt to look upon the human
state with such largeness of view as shall
enable us to rise from the consideration of
living to the Definition of Life. And our
sages give us about the best satisfaction
in their power when they say that it is a
vapor, or a show, or made out of the same
stuff with dreams. Philosophy, in its
more rigid sense, has been at the same
work for ages; and after a myriad bald
heads have wagged over the problem,
and piles of words have been heaped one
upon another into dry and cloudy vol-
umes without end, philosophy has the
honor of laying before us, with modest
pride, her contribution towards the sub-
ject: that life is a Permanent Possibility
of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A
man may very well love beef, or hunting,
or a woman; but surely, surely, not a
Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He
may be afraid of a precipice, or a dentist,
or a large enemy with a club, or even an
undertaker's man; but not certainly of
abstract death. We may trick with the
word life in its dozen senses until we are
weary of tricking; we may argue in terms
of all the philosophies on earth, but one
fact remains true throughout that we do
not love life, in the sense that we are
greatly preoccupied about its conserva-
tion; that we do not, properly speaking,
love life at all, but living. Into the views
of the least careful there will enter some
degree of providence; no man's eyes are
fixed entirely on the passing hour; but
although we have some anticipation of
good health, good weather, wine, active

employment, love, and self-approval, the
sum of these anticipations does not amount
to anything like a general view of life's
possibilities and issues; nor are those who
cherish them most vividly at all the most
scrupulous of their personal safety. To
be deeply interested in the accidents of our
existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed tex-
ture of human experience, rather leads a
man to disregard precautions, and risk
his neck against a straw. For surely the
love of living is stronger in an Alpine climb-
er roping over a peril, or a hunter riding
merrily at a stiff fence, than in a creature
who lives upon a diet and walks a measured
distance in the interest of his constitution.

There is a great deal of very vile non-
sense talked upon both sides of the mat-
ter: tearing divines reducing life to the
dimensions of a mere funeral procession,
so short as to be hardly decent; and mel-
ancholy unbelievers yearning for the tomb
as if it were a world too far away. Both
sides must feel a little ashamed of their
performances now and again when they
draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed,
a good meal and a bottle of wine is an
answer to most standard works upon th>
question. When a man's heart warms to
his viands, he forgets a great deal of soph-
istry, and soars into a rosy zone of con-
templation. Death may be knocking at
the door, like the Commander's statue;
we have something else in hand, thank
God, and let him knock. Passing bells
are ringing all the world over. All the
world over, and every hour, some one is
parting company with all his aches and
ecstasies. For us also the trap is laid.
But we are so fond of life that we have no
leisure to entertain the terror of death.
It is a honeymoon with us all through,
and none of the longest. Small blame to
us if we give our whole hearts to this glow-
ing bride of ours, to the appetites, to
honor, to the hungry curiosity of the mind,
to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and
the pride of our own nimble bodies.

We all of us appreciate the sensations;
but as for caring about the Permanence
of the Possibility, a man's head is generally
very bald, and his senses very dull, be-

ESSAYS

S4i

fore he comes to that. Whether we re-
gard life as a lane leading to a dead wall
a mere bag's end, as the French say or
whether we think of it as a vestibule or
gymnasium, where we wait our turn and
prepare our faculties for some more noble
destiny; whether we thunder in a pulpit,
or pule in little atheistic poetry-books,
about its vanity and brevity; whether we
look justly for years of health and vigor,
or are about to mount into a Bath-chair,
as a step towards the hearse; in each and
all of these views and situations there is
but one conclusion possible: that a man
should stop his ears against paralyzing ter-
ror, and ruii the race that is set before him
with a single mind. No one surely could
have recoiled with more heartache and
terror from the thought of death than our
respected lexicographer; and yet we know
how little it affected his conduct, how
wisely and boldly he walked, and in what
a fresh and lively vein he spoke of life.
Already an old man, he ventured on his
Highland tour; and his heart, bound with
triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-
seven individual cups of tea. As courage
and intelligence are the two qualities best
worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the
first part of intelligence to recognize our
precarious estate in life, and the first
part of courage to be not at all abashed
before the fact. A frank and somewhat
headlong carriage, not looking too anx-
iously before, not dallying in maudlin re-
gret over the past, stamps the man who is
well armored for this world.

And not only well armored for himself,
but a good friend and a good citizen to
boot. We do not go to cowards for tender
dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic;
the man who has least fear for his own car-
cass, has most time to consider others.
That eminent chemist who took his walks
abroad in tin shoes, and subsisted wholly
upon tepid milk, had all his work cut out
for him in considerate dealings with his
own digestion. So soon as prudence has
begun to grow up in the brain, like a dis-
mal fungus, it finds its first expression in a
paralysis of generous acts. The victim
begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a

fancy for parlors with a regulated tem-
perature, and takes his morality on the
principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The
care of one important body or soul be-
comes so engrossing, that all the noises of
the outer world begin to come thin and
faint into the parlor with the regulated
temperature; and the tin shoes go equably
forward over blood and rain. To be over-
wise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger
ends by standing stockstill. Now the
man who has his heart on his sleeve, and
a good whirling weathercock of a brain,
who reckons his life as a thing to be dash-
ingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes
a very different acquaintance of the world,
keeps all his ^pulses going true and fast,
and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if
he be running towards anything better
than wildfire, he may shoot up and be-
come a constellation in the end. Lord
look after his health, Lord have a care
of his soul, says he; and he has at the
key of the position, and swashes through
incongruity and peril towards his aim.
Death is on all sides of him with pointed
batteries, as he is on all sides of all of us;
unfortunate surprises gird him round;
mim-mouthed friends and relations hold
up their hands in quite a little elegiacal
synod about his path: and what cares he
for all this? Being a true lover of living,
a fellow with something pushing and
spontaneous in his inside, he must, like
any other soldier, in any other stirring,
deadly warfare, push on at his best pace
until he touch the goal. "A peerage or
Westminster Abbey!" cried Nelson in his
bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are
great incentives; not for any of these, but
for the plain satisfaction of living, of
being about their business in some sort or
other, do the brave, serviceable men of
every nation tread down the nettle danger,
and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-
blocks of prudence. Think of the heroism
of Johnson, think of that superb indiffer-
ence to mortal limitation that set him
upon his dictionary, and carried him
through triumphantly until the end!
Who, if he were wisely considerate of
things at large, would ever embark upon

542

TYPES OF GREAT LITERATURE

any work much more considerable than a
halfpenny post-card? Who would project
a serial novel, after Thackeray and Dick-
ens* had each fallen in mid-course? Who
would find heart enough to begin to live if
he dallied with the consideration of death?
And, after all, what sorry and pitiful
quibbling all this is! To forego all the
issues of living in a parlor with a regulated
temperature as if that were not to die a
hundred times over, and for ten years at a
stretch! As if it were not to die in one's
own lifetime, and without even the sad im-
munities of death ! As if it were not to die,
and yet be the patient spectators of our
own pitiable change! The Permanent
Possiblity is preserved, but the sensations
carefully held at arm's length, as if one
kept a photographic plate in a dark cham-
ber. It is better to lose health like a
spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.
It is better to live and be done with it,
than to die daily in the sick-room. By
all means begin your folio; even if the
doctor does not give you a year, even if he
hesitates about a month, make one brave
push and see what can be accomplished
in a week. It is not only in finished
undertakings that we ought to honor use-
ful labor. A spirit goes out of the man
who means execution, which outlives the
most untimely ending. All who have

"Each left a novel unfinished at his death.

meant good work with their whole hearts,
have done good work, although they may
die before they have the time to sign it.
Every heart that has beat strong and cheer-
fully has left a hopeful impulse behind it
in the world, and bettered the tradition of
mankind. And even if death catch people,
like an open pitfall, and in mid-career,
laying out vast projects, and planning
monstrous foundations, flushed with hope,
and their mouths full of boastful language,
they should be at once tripped up and
silenced : is there not something brave and
spirited in such a termination? and does
not life go down with a better grace, foam-
ing in full body over a precipice, than
miserably straggling to an end in sandy
deltas? When the Greeks made their
fine saying that those whom the gods
love die young, I cannot help believing
they had this sort of death also in their
eye. For surely, at whatever age it over-
take the man, this is to die young. Death
has not been suffered to take so much as
an illusion from his heart. In the hot
fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point
of being, he passes at a bound on to the
other side. The noise of the mallet and
chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets
are hardly done blowing, when, trailing
with him clouds of glory, this happy-
starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into
the spiritual land.

THE END

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