LIBRARY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 PAVIS 
 
ESSAYS AND STUDIES 
 
ESSAYS AND STUDIES 
 
 $&ucaticrnal anft Citerarg 
 
 BY 
 
 BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE 
 
 N. MURRAY 
 
 MD.CCC-XC 
 
Six hundred copies only of this edition are 
 printed for sale in the United States. 
 
 This copy is No. 
 
 PRESS AND BINDERY OF COPYRIGHT, 1890, 
 
 ISAAC FRIEDENWALD, BALTIMORE. BY B. L. QILDERSLEEVE. 
 
Eight of the papers that go to make up this 
 volume were written in the years 1867-1869, by a 
 man of the Old South, and form a part of his life 
 long work for the furtherance of higher education 
 and literary development among the Southern people, 
 with whom he is identified by birth, by feeling and by 
 fortune. Committed to the Southern Review, under 
 the editorship of Messrs. Bledsoe and Browne, they 
 went into retirement with the withdrawal of that 
 periodical from the brave but hopeless struggle to 
 keep up a distinct literary life in the Southern States, 
 and from that retirement they are now brought forth 
 at the suggestion and with the active aid of personal 
 friends. To the New South and the Old North alike 
 they will be as if they had never been. Three of the 
 Essays were prepared at a much later date for the 
 Princeton Review, under the munificent reign of Mr. 
 Libbey. To these papers have been appended by 
 special request two of the many Occasional Addresses 
 . for which the author of the Essays and Studies is 
 responsible. 
 
The Educational Essays are arranged so as to 
 set forth the work of the Classical Scholar in the 
 World, in the College, in the University, in the Study, 
 the field narrowing until the confines of literary form 
 and grammatical science are reached. The Studies 
 follow the chronological order of their subjects. They 
 are all re published substantially as they were written. 
 Here and there a note has been added, to be distin 
 guished from the rest by the initials B. L. G., here 
 and there a blunder corrected, and a few, very few, 
 intolerable vivacities suppressed, but the partial and 
 harsh judgments, literary and other, that belonged to 
 the period quite as much as to the author have been 
 allowed to stand as documents of the time, sometimes 
 with, usually without protest. 
 
 The readiness with which the volume was accepted 
 in advance has roused the zvriter from the ' Oriental 
 detachment' which he has long sought to attain in 
 respect of his works, and he desires to express his 
 gratitude for the many indications of interest and 
 affection which the projected publication has elicited. 
 While seeing the book through the press he has been 
 especially cheered and aided by his friend and col 
 league, Dr. William Hand Browne, whose sympathy 
 and counsel have never failed him from the days of 
 the Southern Review to the present time. 
 
Several friends have expressed the wish that a 
 little series of studies entitled 'On the Steps of the 
 Bema ' should be included in this collection, but both 
 form and matter of those slight performances de 
 mand a decided change in their resurrection body, 
 and as a fearless publisher has offered to take charge 
 of them if they should ever be reshaped, it is not 
 impossible that they may some day be recalled to life. 
 
 University Club, Baltimore, 
 April i, 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL ESSAYS : 
 
 LIMITS OF CULTURE, 3 
 
 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES, 43 
 
 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA AND CLASSICAL 
 
 PHILOLOGY, 87 
 
 GRAMMAR AND ^ESTHETICS, 127 
 
 LITERARY AND HISTORICAL STUDIES : 
 
 THE LEGEND OF VENUS, 161 
 
 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES, 209 
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 251 
 
 LUCIAN, 299 
 
 THE EMPEROR JULIAN 355 
 
 PLATEN'S POEMS, 401 
 
 MAXIMILIAN ; His TRAVELS AND His TRAGEDY, 453 
 
 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES, 497 
 
00030 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 Towards the close of a life lengthened out far 
 beyond the usual span, Dr. Bigelow, 1 who is intro 
 duced to us by his title-page as ' late President of 
 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 
 late a Professor in Harvard University ', has favored 
 the world from the oracular centre of Boston with a 
 volume of ' Modern Inquiries ', which range in date 
 from the respectable antiquity of 1812 to 1866. 
 For more than half a century, then, has Dr. Bigelow 
 been thinking aloud, or at all events giving out his 
 views about thinking ; and the book has been cited 
 as a remarkable example of intellectual vigor pro 
 longed to advanced years. With his professional 
 essays and his political deliverances we have nothing 
 to do, but what concerns us immediately in the 
 book is the vivacious ignorance with which the old 
 gentleman assails the study of the classics ; and 
 even that would not rouse us if it were not an indi- 
 
 l i. Modern Inquiries: Classical, Professional and Miscella 
 neous. By Jacob Bigelow, M. D. Boston : 1867. 
 
 2. The Culture demanded by Modern Life : A Series of Ad 
 dresses and Arguments on the Claims of Scientific Education ; 
 with an Introduction on Mental Discipline in Education. By 
 E. L. Youmans. New York : 1867. 
 
 3. Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. An 
 drews, Feb. ist, 1867. 3y John Stuart Mill, Rector of the 
 University. 
 
LIMITS OF GUI 
 
 cation of the co^^rted movement which is making 
 against ^ whole scheme of higher education. In 
 cw^n an onset we should not expect to see so aged 
 a warrior. Old men are generally content to praise 
 the past, but here we have one who is evidently 
 proud that ' he has been swept along with the pro 
 gress of the age, and has become disciplined in 
 some measure to replace delightful visions with 
 arduous and growing realities.' But although we 
 accord the respect that is due to an old age which 
 keeps alive its sympathies with the living and mov 
 ing present, and calls for more, intellectual light 
 while the shades of the last darkness are drawing 
 round, still we must not allow our judgment to be 
 warped by our admiration. We do not say 
 
 turpe senex miles, turpe senilis amor 
 
 but we must see that the grey-beard is battling on 
 the right side, and that his love is not impure or 
 silly. Few minds show a symmetrical growth ; 
 advance in one direction is often purchased at great 
 expense in another, and the larger the growth the 
 greater in many cases the deformity. An old man 
 who keeps abreast of his age in one respect is 
 almost necessarily behind it in another; and Dr. 
 Bigelow, who is enamored of the developments of 
 the physical science of the present day, sees little 
 solid worth in classical studies, as they were pur 
 sued fifty or sixty years ago, when Ticknor and he 
 ' lay on the carpet and read Homer together ', when 
 the middle voice was a mystery without end, and 
 the first and second aorists were like unto the great 
 horn and the little horn of an apocalyptic beast. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 5 
 
 When Dr. Bigelow left off the study of Latin and 
 Greek, the new light of classical philology had not 
 begun to shine on this country, and the department 
 had not been lifted from its former low level and 
 settled firm and high on a foundation too solid to 
 be undermined, too lofty to be battered down. The 
 classical philologian of the present day is not a 
 mere grinder of vocables, not a mere monger of 
 paradigms. Elegant quotations no longer make 
 the true ' scholar ', nor is a man's taste measured by 
 ejaculatory admiration, by his euge and belle. Dr. 
 Bigelow is simply fighting the shadows of the past, 
 and shutting his eyes to the advance of studies 
 which are far from being ' unprogressive '. 
 
 The text from which Dr. Bigelow has undertaken 
 to preach against his own conception of classical 
 studies, is the old and much abused aphorism, ' art 
 is long and life is short', which Goethe has fitly put 
 into the mouth of the 'Philistine' Wagner in his 
 memorable dialogue with Faust. The true lesson 
 which it ought to teach in these times is the import 
 ance of making the art more effective. When it 
 leads to despairing acquiescence in ignorance, or to 
 a wilful retrenchment of the means of culture, we 
 heartily wish that the Greek doctor to whom the 
 saying is attributed had spared us a compound pill 
 of such unwholesome operation. Indeed we have 
 very little patience with this cry about the limit of 
 life and the limit of culture; and Stuart Mill may 
 well express his astonishment at the narrow views 
 of so many who profess to furnish theories of edu 
 cation. He may well enlarge on ' this strangely 
 limited estimate of what it is possible for human 
 
6 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 beings to learn, resting on a tacit assumption that 
 they are already as efficiently taught as they ever 
 can be. So narrow a conception not only vitiates 
 our idea of education, but actually, if we receive it, 
 darkens our anticipations as to the future progress 
 of mankind.' What we want is not less Latin and 
 Greek, but less waste of time in learning, or pre 
 tending to learn, Latin and Greek. We want 
 improved methods of teaching and in order to get 
 better methods we want better teachers. We want 
 teachers who have a living and breathing knowl 
 edge of the language which they profess to teach ; 
 a knowledge which the learner can bathe in as well 
 as drink. What constitutes the difficulty of acquir 
 ing Latin as compared with French, Greek as 
 compared with German ? Not merely the differ 
 ence of antique conception and modern, not merely 
 the difference between the order of the words, not 
 merely the more subtle modulation of the inflec 
 tions, it is the lack of teachers thoroughly pos 
 sessed of their subject, fervid in their love of the 
 vocation, affluent in illustration, watchful, inventive, 
 teachers that will force the scholar out of the 
 apathetic humdrum of exercise-book and grammar, 
 now exacting a microscopic examination of the 
 picture of antique life, now passing in rapid review 
 the great characteristic outlines, But such teachers 
 would be geniuses. Yes, and we need geniuses to 
 divine the way to better methods and save the 
 department from the opprobrium of dispropor- 
 tioned toil, so that it shall no longer be said with 
 any semblance of truth that 'for a period varying 
 from seven to ten years (four years in college and 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 7 
 
 from three to six in preparation) we keep young 
 men under a course of instruction in Latin and 
 Greek, and at the end of that time they are unable 
 in any proper sense to read either the one or the 
 other.' 1 
 
 But while we admit that the chief defect is in the 
 manner rather than the matter of instruction, we are 
 far from asserting that the only fault lies there. We 
 frankly acknowledge that much is included in the 
 scheme of classical education that might be better 
 omitted. This acknowledgment is not so easy for 
 a professional man to make, because it is not so 
 easy for a professional man to look at his especial 
 department simply as a branch of general culture, 
 which must not be suffered to grow to a dispropor- 
 tioned height or breadth. Instead of being one of 
 a hundred, windows, his particular casement seems 
 to him to let in all light and to give scope to all 
 vision. Seeing as he does how the vitality of his 
 subject exhibits itself in the remotest and most 
 delicate tissues of its organism, he is prone to dwell 
 too much on the more minute and subtle ramifica 
 tions, because to his mind the strength of the prin 
 ciple is made perfect in weakness. Hence the 
 charge of ' unpractical ' teaching, of hobby-horse 
 specializing ; hence the contempt which the pop 
 ular mind entertains for the sense of professors 
 generally. Now while the popular mind has no 
 right to dictate to the higher intellect wherewith 
 that intellect shall occupy its own powers, 2 it has a 
 
 1 Dr. Barnard. 
 
 2 In der Kunst, 
 
 Wie im Leben, kann das Volk 
 Todten uns doch niemals richten. Heine. 
 
8 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 right to Yeject claims of like devotion to the special 
 ties of science or literature. For instance, a man 
 can be a classical scholar in a very good and high 
 sense without possessing any facility in scribbling 
 elegiacs or alcaics, and without even a hearing 
 acquaintance with Serenus Sammonicus or Didy- 
 mus Chalcenterus. We cannot approve of spend 
 ing any time whatever, except for some specific, 
 professional purpose, in reading authors that would 
 not be worth reading unless they were written in 
 Latin or Greek. Away with Marcus Manilius, 
 Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus and tous cesgar$ons- 
 ld, as Scaliger called them with deserved contempt ; 
 and we earnestly hope that professors of Latin do 
 not generally deem themselves bound to read, as 
 poor Addison considered himself bound to quote, 
 these vapid productions, any more than a pro 
 fessor of English would esteem it his duty to go 
 through, say, Glover's Leonidas. Nay, if we might 
 whisper it, there are not a few pages in the opera 
 omnia of that Turveydrop of Latin style, Marcus 
 Tullius Chickpea, which a man might be forgiven 
 for skipping ; how much more such literature as 
 that we have just mentioned, for which the longest 
 life would be too short. Nor can we feel astonish 
 ment or resentment when reformers declaim against 
 the fearful waste of time in the classical schools of 
 England, in which the prime of boyhood is spent 
 over the composition of execrable Greek and Latin 
 verses, to the exclusion of other valuable matter 
 even in the domain of the classics themselves. In 
 order that one boy may improve a knack at versifi 
 cation, five hundred are sent out without a decent 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 9 
 
 knowledge of Latin prose composition, so that the 
 foreign sneer * utAnglus ' that is to say, ' you cannot 
 expect better Latin from an Englishman ' is, at 
 least, comprehensible. And what is the residuum 
 for the five hundred ? A knowledge of quantity ? 
 Why, the quantity may be learned by the ear with 
 out any trouble, if the teacher be competent; and 
 at any rate, so long as the absurd English pronun 
 ciation is in vogue, the quantity tells practically on 
 the penult only. An appreciation of poetical 
 beauty? Why, any boy that has an ear for the 
 rhythm of language can readily catch the music of 
 the most varied metrical structures, under the guid 
 ance of a duly qualified preceptor. If the ear be 
 denied by nature, then the enjoyment is denied and 
 'there an end'. 
 
 But while we concede the necessity of reasonable 
 limitations, such reformers as Dr. Bigelow have 
 inscribed ' Thorough ' on their standards. Dr. Big 
 elow is for eliminating the classical element from 
 popular education, and for reducing it to a mini 
 mum in the higher institutions of learning. To 
 ward Latin he seerns a little more tolerant, and he has 
 actually condescended himself to ventilate sundry 
 battle-flag Latin quotations; but Greek is the 
 Carthage of this Cape Cod Cato, 1 and he boldly 
 announces his belief that ' if the study of Greek 
 should be abandoned as a requisite in our Univer 
 sities although it would still be cultivated like 
 
 1 1 am reminded that I should have written ' Back Bay ' for 
 ' Cape Cod ', but in 1867 the finer differences of locality were 
 not present to the mind of one who was passing through the 
 rolling mill of the period. B. L. G. 
 
IO LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 other exceptional studies with success and delight 
 by many devotees yet our practical, bustling and 
 over-crowded generation would never again post 
 pone more useful occupations to adopt it as an 
 indispensable academical study.' True, he is not so 
 far a stranger to the literary culture of the day as 
 not to notice the great revival of the study of Greek 
 in England, that study which reflects itself in Ten 
 nyson and Swinburne, and thrusts itself even more 
 distinctly on the attention of the most casual 
 observer in the numerous translations of Homer 
 and in the vigorous investigations of Grote. But 
 this rise of Hellenism in England, one of the most 
 noteworthy signs of these years as betokening an 
 increase in the liberal element of English culture, 
 has no friend in Bigelow; and Gladstone's whim 
 sical book on Homer, which has no scientific value 
 whatever, is put into the foreground as a fair speci 
 men of the 'impending deluge' of Greek. But the 
 ' impending deluge ' of Greek will come in spite of 
 Dr. Bigelow ; and his hope that ' our hemisphere at 
 least will be relatively spared ', is sure to come to 
 nought. However, it will not be the fault of Dr. 
 Bigelow and abler minds than his, if that hope is 
 not an assured one. Sydney Smith's complaint of 
 ' Too much Latin and Greek ' has become the war- 
 cry, ' Little Latin and no Greek at all '. Year by 
 year the classics have been pushed back in the 
 regular curriculum of Northern Colleges. In many 
 of them, we believe, Latin and Greek are elective 
 studies during the last two years of the course ; and 
 fierce champions of ' scientific ' pursuits are hedg 
 ing in the poor Greeks and Romans until they will 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. II 
 
 be forced into quiet niches from which they can do 
 no harm. Meanwhile the character of the contro 
 versy is degrading. The delicate thing to be 
 educated, the wonderful human mind, is pulled 
 about and snarled over by these ' educationists ' as 
 if they were dogs and that a bone. Instead of join 
 ing in a common inaugural ceremony over the 
 erection of a new temple of education, each dis 
 putant is mouthing out an Oratio de domo sua ; 
 each advocate is eagerly gathering ex parte state 
 ments in order to make out a strong case ; and men 
 like Professor Youmans do not hesitate to divorce 
 the members of a plan of education in order to 
 carry out their own theories. How unfair, for 
 instance, to quote at considerable length Mr. Mill's 
 plea for scientific studies, and to dismiss as curtly 
 as Youmans does the same author's unanswerable 
 argument for the classics, as if that were not an 
 integral part of his scheme of education. As for^ 
 Professor Youmans' book itself, we do not deny 
 that he has done well in bringing together within 
 a brief and convenient compass these scattered 
 essays, many of which commend themselves to our 
 earnest attention by their depth of thought, as they 
 address themselves to our aesthetic sense by their 
 beauty of illustration ; but he has done exceedingly 
 ill in tying these gems in his own coarse cotton 
 handkerchief to maul the visages of the Muses 
 withal. We are very sure that he would have met 
 with little sympathy in this attempt from Faraday* 
 who says with an accent of perfect honesty that ' he 
 has no feeling of opposition to the classics ', or from 
 Tyndall, who cries out with an earnest longing for 
 
12 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 mutual understanding' Is there no mind in Eng 
 land large enough to see the value of both [science 
 and philology] and to secure for each of them fair 
 play? Let us not make this a fight of partisans; 
 let the gleaned wealth of antiquity be showered into 
 the open breast ; but while we " unsphere the spirit 
 of Plato " and listen with delight to the lordly 
 music of the past, let us honor by adequate recog 
 nition the genius of our own time.' And who shall 
 say him nay ? At the risk of being charged with 
 making feeble fight we shall not imitate the bigotry 
 of those who cry down the study of the classics, and 
 we shall admit as freely as any one the claims of 
 the sciences which are called by eminence the 
 inductive. But we shall attempt to show that an 
 education cannot be full-orbed and rounded off 
 without the classics ; or, if that statement of our 
 theme be too ambitious, we shall try, with more or 
 less direct reference to the works cited at the head 
 of this article, to make a partial exhibition of the 
 reasons why higher culture must embrace within 
 its limits the study which the Germans call the 
 ' science of antiquity '. 
 
 What is education ? Training of the mind ? 
 Like Faraday, ' we should like a profound scholar 
 to indicate to us what he means by training of the 
 mind.' But the profound scholar with whose dic 
 tum everybody will be satisfied has not yet arisen, 
 and practically almost everybody seems dissatisfied 
 with the training he has received. How comes it, 
 Maecenas ? The graduate of a polytechnic school 
 laments that the avenues to the great ranges of 
 antique thought were not thrown open to him in 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 13 
 
 early youth ; the Oxford Master of Arts regrets 
 that ' for the first twenty years of his life he had 
 been taught nothing regarding light, heat, mag 
 netism or electricity.' The one yearns for the 
 companionship of the great spirits of the past ; the 
 other finds himself perplexed by the insoluble 
 problems of the present. But your successful man 
 seldom complains in this way. The complaint is 
 so common because the self-imputation of misdi 
 rected genius is so common. ' There is an educa 
 tion for the ordinary man ', says a certain writer ; 
 * for the man of genius there is no education but 
 what he gives himself; the second generally con 
 sists in destroying the first,' and but too many seem 
 to think that every assault made upon their early 
 training is a vindication of their claims to the 
 heavenly gift and a justification of failure which 
 some people would deem deserved. When a young 
 man complains that his ' college lumber ' stands in 
 the way of useful acquisition and application, we 
 shall find in nine cases out of ten either that the 
 road must be small which such ' lumber ' would 
 block, or that the fault lies in a want of vitalizing 
 energy, which should have erected the 'lumber' 
 into a temple or a fortress ; which should have 
 turned the stores of learning into bone and muscle 
 instead of dragging them about in a guarded com 
 missary-train. May we not simplify this matter by 
 distinguishing sharply between ' education ' and 
 ' instruction ' ? Education is the normal develop 
 ment of the powers that lie in man's nature, and is 
 not to be confounded with instruction, which merely 
 furnishes the means and appliances of education. 
 
14 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 It is your merely ' instructed ' man that often amazes 
 you by a want of comprehensive power, not your 
 really ' educated ' man ; and when teachers of phy 
 sical science complain that untaught minds grasp 
 the propositions and sequences of inductive reason 
 ing more readily and firmly than those which have 
 been ' educated ' in all classical learning, they con 
 found accumulation with appropriation. Of such 
 ' instructed ' men Salmasius is the eternal type. 
 Salmasius on whom was written the famous epitaph, 
 Hie iacet Salmasius, vir immortalis memoriae, exspe- 
 ctans indicium ;^ he of whom Christina of Sweden said 
 that he knew the word for chair in many languages 
 but did not know how to sit on it in one. It is of 
 the modern representative of this class that the Times 
 says, with more force than elegance, ' at sea he 
 is a landlubber, in the country a cockney, in town 
 a greenhorn, in science an ignoramus, in business a 
 simpleton, in pleasure a milksop'; but it is unfair to 
 regard this as the legitimate result of the study of 
 the classics properly directed, of ' instruction ' con 
 veyed with a view to ' education'. And here we must 
 notice the influence which the popular nomencla 
 ture has had on the conception of the nature and 
 objects of education. The terms ' scholar ' and 
 'scholarly', which in other languages are used dis 
 paragingly, are in ours at once narrowed and 
 elevated, so that such a man as Faraday is forced to 
 say, ' I am not an educated man according to the 
 usual phraseology', because the usual phraseology 
 reflects the opinion that * scholarship ' is necessary 
 to education. But the same language that con- 
 
 1 Cited from memory. B. L. G. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 1 5 
 
 serves the old view of the necessity of the classics, 
 shows a remarkable shallowing off in other words. 
 For instance, ' inform ' and ' information ' have been 
 reduced in modern times to the mere acquisition of 
 facts, instead of a plastic process of assimilation ; x 
 and of a piece with this is the phenomenon that in 
 classic French there is no homme duqu y only an 
 homme instruit. Mortifying as the confession may 
 be to the vanity of these times, it is by no means 
 certain that our ideal of education is as high as it 
 was, and such renunciation as Dr. Bigelow preaches 
 is a signal indication of the decline. 
 
 Let us meet the question fairly. The advocates 
 of the subordination, nay, exclusion of classical 
 studies in favor of the scientific, maintain that scien 
 tific studies give all the mental training that is 
 claimed for the classics, and a surplus of useful 
 knowledge as an offset against the idle elegances of 
 antique culture; and that on the other hand a 
 classical education positively unfits the mind for the 
 study of physical science a statement which rests 
 on too slender proof to need a detailed refutation. 
 Now many who uphold in the main the existing 
 scheme of education, have tacitly acknowledged 
 themselves beaten on the point of the intrinsic 
 value of the classics and make their fight on the 
 line of their disciplinary usefulness. We are not dis 
 posed to make any such cowardly surrender. We 
 are not content to consider the sacred tripods as 
 dumb-bells to develop the mental biceps and triceps, 
 or the branches of the Delphic bay as an apparatus 
 
 1 So that Dr. Barnard can say, ' The object of education is to 
 form and not to inform the mind.' 
 
16 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 for turning intellectual somersaults or ' skinning ' 
 intellectual ' cats '. We are not satisfied with point 
 ing to the brawny arm of this or that ' bony prizer', 
 and with claiming that classic culture has done so 
 much for this or that successful champion of the 
 arena. The reply is too obvious, that the success 
 was attained in spite of time and force spent on 
 ' unprogressive studies ', and we open the way to an 
 assault on what Youmans calls ' the wasteful policy 
 of a vicarious discipline'. As the Spartans discour 
 aged those gymnastic exercises which did not bear 
 directly on the efficiency of the soldier, so our mod 
 ern reformers try to frown down all studies which 
 do not prepare for ' the work of life '. But what is 
 ' the work of life ' ? Is it not just here that we need 
 the high ideal of antiquity in order to counteract 
 the depressing tendencies of modern civilization, 
 and especially those of American civilization ? 
 The aims of most cultivated people are, when 
 examined, no more exalted than those of their 
 uneducated neighbors. How few feel 'the poor 
 ness and insignificance of human life, if it is to be 
 all spent in making things comfortable for ourselves 
 and our kin, and raising ourselves and them a step 
 or two on the social ladder.' 1 Material well-being 
 in more or less refined forms, is more or less con 
 sciously the main object. But the ideal life of 
 antiquity is constructed after a different pattern ; and 
 though it is as unattainable by the means of mere 
 humanity as the antique ideal of the state, we must 
 confess the superiority of the one as of the other to 
 the negative virtues and positive selfishness of our 
 
 1 Stuart Mill. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. IJ 
 
 modern standards. ' Life is short ', says the mod 
 ern. 'Acquire by the shortest way the most efficient 
 appliances for self-advancement.' ' Life is short ', 
 says an ancient. ' The one, true fruit of life on 
 earth is purity of heart and work for the good of 
 society.' 1 Which is nearer to the Christian model ? 
 The one is a machine, the other a corpse ; but into 
 this you may breathe the soul of love, into that you 
 can only introduce horse-power or donkey-power, 
 as the case may be. Antiquity was not so far 
 wrong in what it wanted, however mistaken in the 
 modes of attainment ; and we do well to catch the 
 noble aspiration of the elect few, our ' loftier brothers 
 of antiquity ', as Tyndall calls them; those 'larger 
 faculties ', as they are reverentially recognized by 
 Liebig. But our reverence is paid not only to the 
 stature, but also to the type a type which it is our 
 imperative duty to study. Yet Dr. Bigelow says 
 (and is he not 'late President of the American 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences ' ?), 'Antiquity has 
 produced many great men. Modern times have 
 produced equally great men and more of them.' 
 Argal, let the ancients go. But will they let us go ? 
 And this brings us to our first and great proposi 
 tion. The classics are not superfluous elegances, 
 they are inevitable necessities. 
 
 The history of the world is one. 'We cannot', 
 says Professor Tyndall, ' without prejudice to hu 
 manity, separate the present from the past. The 
 nineteenth century strikes its roots into the centu 
 ries gone by and draws nutriment from them. The 
 
 6 ftlos ' els KapTrbs TTJS firiyc tov fays diadems oa-La /cat 
 npdgeis Koiv&viKai. Marc. Ant. vi. 30. 
 
1 8 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 world cannot afford to lose the record of any great 
 deed or utterance ; for such deeds and such utter 
 ances are prolific throughout all times. We cannot 
 yield the companionship of our loftier brothers of 
 antiquity of our Socrates and Cato whose lives 
 provoke us to sympathetic greatness across the 
 interval of two thousand years. So long as the 
 ancient languages are the means of access to the 
 ancient mind, they must ever be of priceless value 
 to humanity ' ; and we would add, of prime neces 
 sity to all who wish to rise above the lower flats of 
 life. For until we can eradicate the present from 
 the past, until we can disentangle from the growing 
 structure of to-day the fibres of the far-off centuries, 
 until we draw out from our own lives the warp of 
 the ' loom of Time ', we cannot attain to any high 
 culture without an adequate knowledge of that 
 world of the ancients to which we owe so much. 
 Verily the old Greeks themselves were far more 
 philosophical than those recent reformers, who wish 
 to banish the study of antiquity as an old wives' 
 fable ; for they would not give up their mythical 
 age, not because they were credulous, as moderns 
 may think, not because they were liars, as the 
 Romans charged, but because they would not 
 break up the unity of their national life. And in a 
 much stronger sense is the ancient life a part of our 
 own. Athens and Sparta are more to us than 
 Theseus to the one or Menelaus to the other ; 
 Rome is more to us than Romulus to her. Now it 
 is on this inseparable union of antiquity with mod 
 ern life that classical philology bases its claims as 
 a study of indispensable importance. For if we 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 19 
 
 accept the necessity of studying ancient history, 
 we must accept the necessity of studying that his 
 tory largely in the original, and we must still 
 further include, besides the historians proper, the 
 great mass of illustrative literature. The Persian 
 war must be studied in ^Eschylus as well as in 
 Herodotus, the Peloponnesian in Euripides and 
 Aristophanes as well as in Thucydides and Xeno- 
 phon. For all this the originals are needed. ' There 
 is no part of our knowledge', says Mill justly, 
 ' There is no part of our knowledge which it is 
 more useful to obtain at first hand to go to the 
 fountain-head for than our knowledge of history. 
 Yet this, in most cases, we hardly ever do. Our 
 conception of the past is not drawn from its own 
 records, but from books written about it, containing 
 not the facts, but a view of the facts which has 
 shaped itself in the mind of somebody of our own 
 or a very recent time. Such books are very instruc 
 tive and valuable ; they help us to understand his 
 tory, to interpret history, to draw just conclusions 
 from it ; at the worst, they set us the example of 
 trying to do all this ; but they are not themselves 
 history. The knowledge they give is upon trust; 
 and even when they have done their best, it is not 
 only incomplete but partial, because it is confined 
 to what a few modern writers have seen in the 
 materials, and have thought worth picking out from 
 among them. How little we learn of our own 
 ancestors from Hume, or Hallam, or Macaulay, 
 compared with what we know if we add to what 
 these tell us even a little reading of contemporary 
 authors and documents ! The most recent his- 
 
2O LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 torians are so well aware of this that they fill their 
 pages with extracts from the original materials, 
 feeling that these extracts are the real history, and 
 their comments and thread of narrative are only 
 helps towards understanding it. Now it is part of 
 the great worth to us of our Greek and Latin 
 studies that in them we do read history in the 
 original sources. We are in actual contact with 
 contemporary minds ; we are not dependent on 
 hearsay; we have something by which we can test 
 and check the representations and theories of mod 
 ern historians.' 
 
 And for all this translations are inadequate. Not 
 to speak of differences in construction, in imagery, 
 in idiom, even words in different languages seldom 
 cover one another ; perfect equivalents are rare, and 
 not only so, but every classic author is studded 
 thick with technical terms, as it were, which must 
 be read by the light of that author's peculiar lan 
 guage and which defy a strict transfer to another 
 tongue. Especially is this the case with the an 
 cients, for their languages fitted tight to the skin 
 and revealed the form of thought much more accu 
 rately than our careless garb of diction, which like 
 our modern dress is pretty much the same for 
 prince and for peasant. Translations therefore are 
 almost necessarily inexact, partial or unbearably 
 diffuse, very certain to reflect the individual views 
 of the translator, if he be a man of thought, very 
 certain to be opaque, if he be a mere bookwright. So 
 we conclude that a knowledge of Latin and Greek 
 is necessary to that other necessity of high culture 
 an appreciation of antique life ; and we have the 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 21 
 
 still further inducement, that while we are thus pen 
 etrating into the spirit of antiquity we are not only 
 undergoing the silent but powerful plastic influence 
 of ' perfect and finished literary compositions ', but 
 also * laying in a stock of wise thought and observ 
 ation still valuable to ourselves '. (Mill.) For it is 
 a false though very common notion that the mine 
 of ancient ideas has been exhausted, that all that is 
 worth anything has been transfused into the sub 
 stance of modern thought, and that the impalpable 
 graces of artistic composition alone remain, a poor 
 reward to the 'earnest thinker' who has already 
 digested and assimilated or else rejected the solid 
 contents in other forms. Now to the man to whom 
 impalpable graces ' prove nothing ' we must of 
 course concede the inutility of classic literature on 
 that ground ; but we doubt very much whether 
 ' the Pythia has not always something new to show 
 those who revisit her shrine '. 
 
 For out of olde feldes, as men seith, 
 
 Cometh al this newe corn fro yere to yere ; 
 
 And out of olde bokes, in good feith, 
 
 Cometh al this newe science that men lere. Chaucer. 
 
 Indeed, we are inclined to suspect that much that 
 is supposed to be the last result of modern thought 
 is but the last result of modern plagiarism ; but be 
 that as it may, if the ancients are not now plagiar 
 ized, they still contain much that deserves to be 
 plagiarized ; and Mill is right when he says : 
 
 4 The discoveries of the ancients in science have 
 been greatly surpassed, and as much of them as is 
 still valuable loses nothing by being incorporated 
 in modern treatises ; but what does not so well 
 
22 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 admit of being transferred bodily and has been very 
 imperfectly carried off even piecemeal, is the treasure 
 which they accumulated of what may be called the 
 wisdom of life ; the rich store of experience of 
 .human nature and conduct, which the acute and 
 observing minds of those ages, aided in their 
 observations by the greater simplicity of manners 
 and life, consigned to their writings, and most of 
 which retains all its value. The speeches in Thucy- 
 dides ; the Rhetoric, Ethics and Politics of Aris 
 totle ; the Dialogues of Plato ; the Orations of 
 Demosthenes ; the Satires and especially the Epis 
 tles of Horace ; all the writings of Tacitus ; the 
 great work of Quintilian, a repertory of the best 
 thoughts of the ancient world on all subjects con 
 nected with education ; and in a less formal man 
 ner, all that is left to us of the ancient historians, 
 orators, philosophers, and even dramatists, are 
 replete with remarks and maxims of singular good 
 sense and penetration, applicable both to political 
 and private life.' Applicable both to political and 
 private! We should think so. -Tacitus writes as 
 if his cheek were burning with our shame 1 and 
 the ' fast ' youths of our country might take many 
 a lesson from the Nicomachean Ethics of the ' stout 
 Stagirite '. 
 
 Everybody has read the famous dream of Jean 
 Paul, in which he dreams that the great Architect 
 
 1 Read for instance the third book of the Histories ; how 
 these random phrases strike in : culpae vel gloriae socius(c. 3) 
 ignominiam consumpsistis (c. z)factum esse scelus loquuntur, 
 faciuntque(c. 25) extremum malorum, tot fortissimi viri prodi- 
 toris opem invocantes (c. 31). (1867.) The quiver of the period 
 of transition is here also. B. L. G. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 2$ 
 
 and Upholder of the Universe is dead: everybody 
 remembers how the ingenious German has racked 
 his invention to depict the dreadful * unsouling ' of 
 creation. And many of our readers in like manner 
 may have indulged their imagination in conjuring 
 up the consequences which would ensue from the 
 sudden annihilation of some important agency of 
 modern civilization. Suppose there were no steam- 
 engine. Suppose there were no electric telegraph. 
 But here the imagination is assisted by the history 
 of the past ; and that a past within the memory of 
 men. In supposing the annihilation of antiquity, 
 the fancy must take a more adventurous flight, a 
 flight more like that of the dreaming German. 
 Were we to wipe out all the records of classic 
 antiquity, what a series of inexplicable riddles 
 would our own history present ! Were we to blot 
 out every reference to the ancient writers and blow 
 away all the perfume that has been shaken down 
 from their vestments, how blurred and how scent 
 less would the fairest and most fragrant pages of 
 our own poets and historians appear ! Suppress the 
 matchless masterpieces of classic composition and 
 with rigid consistency do away with all those who 
 in modern times have studied and imitated them, 
 and what a chaos of style we should have in 
 a few years ! Bad as things are now, they would 
 soon become infinitely worse; and such 'messages ' 
 as the inspired reformers might have to deliver, 
 they would deliver in a far more unintelligible 
 gabble than they do now. Even the poor old gods 
 of Greece and Rome cannot be unniched from their 
 Pantheon without leaving an unsightly blank ; and 
 
24 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 though the machinery of the classic mythology be 
 rusty and obsolete, the soul which animated it still 
 animates it. As conventional deities, the gods are 
 dead ; but as eternal types of beauty, they need 
 only the breath of genius to wake them. 
 
 But all argument to show how closely the classics 
 of antiquity are complicated with our culture, 
 becomes amusingly superfluous in view of the con 
 cessions of the assailants themselves. In attacking 
 our doomed Thebes, each confident Alexander 
 wishes the house of his pet Pindar spared ; and so 
 we trust that not a building will be demolished. 
 ' Greek art is unapproachable. Do not touch that.' 
 ' Roman jurisprudence is a unique possession of 
 the ages. Do not disturb that.' ' There is but one 
 Homer. Let him alone.' ' There is but one Aris 
 totle. The " master of those who know " is still 
 king.' l And so we might go on and cull from the 
 writings of the most fervent of these image-breakers, 
 a list of exceptions which would embrace the whole 
 sculpture-gallery. Or, if we have no other defend 
 ers, the very words of our language would rise up 
 to maintain the necessity of preserving the old 
 scheme of education. 
 
 That Latin is necessary to a correct and idio 
 matic use of the English language we do not con 
 tend ; but why is it not necessary ? Simply because 
 the pattern of our phraseology was set by classical 
 scholars, and the combinations have become fixed 
 
 1 At this point I am reminded of Tennyson's quiet protest 
 against Dante's Maestro di color che sanno ': 
 
 ' Plato the wise and large-brow'd Verulam, 
 
 The first of those who know.' B. L. G. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 2$ 
 
 by usage. It will astonish any one who has not 
 paid attention to this feature of our language, to 
 see with what minute accuracy the Latin diction of 
 English is constructed, how little incongruity there 
 is in the parts, how little mixture in the metaphor. 
 If, then, a man attempts to enrich the phraseology of 
 the English language by new combinations with 
 out a knowledge of its constituent parts, he is 
 almost certain to blunder miserably in nine cases 
 out of ten ; and while a good style may be attain 
 able by the mere imitation of earlier authors, the 
 highest excellence in English is not to be reached 
 without Latin ; and that Latin is necessary to an 
 exact appreciation of its beauties no one will have 
 the hardihood to deny. What is true of Latin is 
 true in a less degree of Greek, and indeed the prac 
 tical importance of a knowledge of Greek for the 
 mastery of the technical terms of every art and 
 science is increasing instead of diminishing with 
 the expansion of physics. The nomenclature of 
 modern sciences is not like the nomenclature of 
 ancient grammar. The meaning of genitive and 
 accusative, article and subjunctive, is a matter of 
 little consequence ; these words are the dtbris of 
 dead systems, which it is interesting but not neces 
 sary to study ; but the nomenclature of modern 
 science is the expression of its life, and the student, 
 whether he will or no, is forced to learn what the 
 parts of each word mean, and must to that extent 
 learn Greek and Latin. We grant freely that the 
 Latin and Greek words which are used simply or 
 combined in science are not the words most fre 
 quently to be met with in the classic writers. For 
 
26 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 instance, in Botany the terms monocotyledon, 
 dicotyledon, thallophyte and cormophyte would 
 not inevitably suggest their technical signification 
 to the classical scholar; but when he has once 
 learned them he retains them more readily, and 
 there is in them for him a vividness of meaning and 
 a familiarity of sound to which the mere English 
 reader must be a stranger. And as the study of 
 both classic languages facilitates to a considerable 
 extent the acquisition and application of a scientific 
 vocabulary, so Latin especially, as the key to so 
 many valuable modern languages and as the 
 medium of learned communication for so many 
 generations, is absolutely indispensable to any 
 liberal education. 
 
 But we find that the argument has almost insen 
 sibly shifted from the high ground of the necessity 
 of the classics to their utility ; and even this lower 
 level gives a position from which we are not easily 
 to be dislodged. Let us develop some of the points 
 without pretending to embrace all or to exhaust any 
 one. 
 
 It has long been recognized that the study of 
 general grammar can best be mastered in connection 
 with the classic languages on account of the exact 
 ness as well as variety of their forms. In learning 
 Latin and Greek grammar the student is forced to 
 learn the grammar of his own tongue ; the best 
 writers of English have never studied English 
 grammar, and English grammars abound most in 
 America. But, not to dwell on this hackneyed sub 
 ject, there is one consequence of the regular and 
 complicated structure of the classic languages the 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 2*] 
 
 full disciplinary value of which is not generally 
 appreciated or brought out. We mean the freedom 
 with which the constituent parts of the sentence can 
 be arranged. This freedom is a peculiar charm of 
 the ripened literature of Greece and Rome. For in 
 the earlier Greek and Latin authors, although the 
 wealth of forms was greater, the mind was not suffi 
 ciently practised in the retention and application of 
 the integral parts of the sentence, to permit the devel 
 opment of those complicated structures which con 
 fuse the novice and delight the adept in classic liter 
 ature. The sentence in Homer, the sentence in the 
 early Latin comedy, is simple ; and as much can be 
 said in favor of the naturalness of the order of the 
 words as for the vaunted logical character of the 
 French, the English, or any other modern tongue. 
 But with the advance of the reflective powers the 
 sentence expanded, and we pass from the balanced 
 antitheses of Lysias and the rolling periods of Iso- 
 crates to the embattled array of the eloquence of 
 Demosthenes, and the ample sweep of Cicero's 
 swelling oratory. So characteristic is this freedom, 
 this variety of arrangement, that the classic lan 
 guages have been called ' the transpositive '. Now 
 we waive altogether the question of rhetorical 
 beauty, of logical force, of artistic rhythm : we do 
 not stop to show that our language has lost im 
 mensely by shutting itself up to a rigid sequence of 
 subject, predicate, and object; we confine ourselves 
 strictly to the consideration of the discipline which 
 this felicitous freedom imposes. The student is 
 forced ' to trace out and combine remote words and 
 members of a sentence, which, though disjoined in 
 
28 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 place, are still held in their true relations by inflec 
 tions of mode, tense, degree, number, case and gen 
 der'. 1 But this is only the first step. If he be 
 properly taught, the student is forced not only to 
 trace out but to retain in his memory what may 
 seem to him the scattered members of the sentence, 
 and to combine those parts not after a leisurely 
 survey but as they come forth living and glowing, 
 into the symmetry of a united whole, a breathing 
 organism. We grant that it is far too common to 
 be satisfied with an analysis of Greek and Latin 
 sentences and with a redistribution of the words 
 after the model of the English arrangement. Boys 
 are taught to ' take in ' the parts after a mechanical 
 scheme; and there are not many teachers who 
 attempt to render into English the power of the 
 varying position. But every one who knows the 
 classic languages knows that the stage of study 
 which Dr. Bigelow describes is a very elementary 
 one; and that the teacher who cannot carry boys 
 rapidly beyond it is unworthy of the name. Greek 
 and Latin, to be understood properly, must be read 
 in their written order. It is not enough that each 
 word should convey its peculiar, idiomatic signifi 
 cation to the student; it must strike his mind at the 
 point intended; and then only will he begin to 
 ' think in Latin and Greek ', a process of which so 
 much is said in jest and in earnest, and so little 
 understood. To this end the ear must be practised 
 as well as the eye, which is so apt to cheat by run 
 ning ahead of the meaning. If boys were made to 
 translate Greek and Latin from dictation instead of 
 
 1 Dr. Bigelow. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 2g 
 
 from the book, we should have much less of a 
 childish half-knowledge, which puts the elements 
 more or less slowly together like the pieces of a 
 dissected map or the lozenges and squares of a Chi 
 nese puzzle. 1 But considered merely as a discipli 
 nary exercise of the intellect, it is hard to conceive 
 how any one can underrate the gymnastics of a 
 practice that enables the mind to retain with ease 
 and combine with readiness the far-sundered mem 
 bers of a Platonic or a Ciceronian sentence, and to 
 regard as a mere juggling dexterity the firmness of 
 memory and the precision of judgment which such 
 a practice tends to develop and maintain. The 
 student who can catch and carry away a clear and 
 exact impression of a long and complicated period 
 from a single reading has attained a culture of the 
 intellectual faculties which, properly employed, can 
 not fail to secure valuable results even in fields of 
 thought and action far remote from the groves of 
 Academe. 
 
 But in our admiration of this valuable exercise of, 
 memory and judgment we must not forget to meet 
 the great complaint brought against the study of 
 the classic languages. The study of Latin and 
 Greek divides itself, as is charged, into a sing-song 
 memorizing of forms and vocables and the mechan 
 ical application of hit-or-miss rules of syntax ; the 
 grand principles of inductive reasoning are never 
 
 1 This passage, written in 1867, is still timely. J. E. B. Mayor, 
 in his Latin Heptateuch (1889) , speaks (p. Ixiv) of ' the blind and 
 cruel folly of teaching languages through the critical eye alone, 
 not through the quickening voice'. See also a very effective 
 presentation of similar views by Professor William Gardner 
 Hale : The Art of Reading Latin. Boston : 1887. B. L. G. 
 
3O LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 brought into play; and unless the goad of modern 
 inquiry stir up the mind, the classic scholar is apt 
 to turn into a cross between a parrot and a donkey. 
 Inductive reasoning ! Who does not become a little 
 weary of this cry of inductive reasoning ? this itque 
 reditque viam of so many philosophic praters. 
 
 But is there no scope for inductive reasoning in 
 the study of languages ? True, old-fashioned as it 
 may seem, we believe that the best method of 
 acquiring the forms of a language, its vocabulary, 
 its great syntactic phenomena, is by a direct strain 
 upon the memory. In vain does Professor You- 
 mans warn us of the direful consequences of this 
 treatment of the faculty; in vain does he intimate 
 that it is a sensitive surface which must not be 
 dulled for other things by the constant application 
 of dead vocables. Dead vocables have to be learned 
 in all the sciences ; and one of Professor Youmans' 
 ablest witnesses, Professor Henfrey, regards it as 
 quite a prince's feather 1 in the cap of Botany that 
 she practises the memory by her extensive and com 
 plicated Graeco-Latin glossary. But after the forms 
 are acquired as so many stiff and stark facts we 
 do not see any objection to the introduction of the 
 inductive process. For instance, the student of 
 Latin learns a list of verbs of the so-called third 
 conjugation which form the perfect in i. Another 
 set form the perfect in si? Those are facts emi 
 nently necessary to be learned, always provided 
 
 'Amaranthus hypochondriacus. 
 
 2 This illustration was taken from a Latin grammar (Latt- 
 mann and Muller's) which I happened to be translating at the 
 time, and I leave it as matter of history. B. L. G. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 31 
 
 that Latin is to be learned for its own sweet sake. 
 As facts they are parallel with hundreds of others 
 in the external world which he learns from his 
 book and which he cannot always verify with his 
 eyes. Now that these important facts have been 
 learned, let him observe the two sets of verbs and 
 what does he find as a further difference between 
 them ? The verbs which form the perfect in i have 
 a short stem syllable, those which form the perfect 
 in si have a long stem syllable. He is about to 
 jump to a rule but fair and softly there is a list 
 of verbs that go counter to this rule: he examines 
 these likewise with a view to their common charac 
 teristics : he finds that many of them are redupli 
 cated, and finally that in those which are not redup 
 licated, reduplication is suppressed or impossible ; 
 and so he pushes his search to the confines of a 
 double element in the perfect formation, each char 
 acteristically different throughout. How * scientific ' 
 we should be if the province of work were physics ! 
 Again, syntactical ' rules ', as they are called, are 
 mere groups of phenomena which we can use in 
 order to ascend to higher generalizations ; and after 
 the student has learned the facts he should be 
 taught to analyse and combine them. To draw yet 
 another illustration from Latin grammar. 'In 
 names of cities and small islands the place where is 
 expressed by the genitive; except in the third 
 declension or plural number, when the ablative is 
 employed.' At first it is not necessary to tell the 
 boy that the genitive in question is not a genitive, 
 because to be perfectly correct that would involve 
 the other statement that the ablative is not really 
 
32 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 an ablative; and what with real ablative and 
 pseudo-ablative, real genitive and pseudo-genitive, 
 there would be no getting forward. But the teacher 
 might use the unreasonableness of the exception to 
 make the boy think about the whole class of phe 
 nomena. Why should the third declension, why 
 should the plural number make the difference ? He 
 reads further and finds that the appositions of the 
 apparent genitive are not in the genitive but in the 
 ablative. He finds on the list of genitives a form 
 domi, which looks like a genitive but is not, and 
 he begins to suspect that the genitives are after all 
 nothing but ablatives in disguise; and so he turns 
 to the ablative and in like manner finds out the 
 different elements of that complex case : and here 
 too he has before him a problem of elimination, 
 which resembles very closely the conditions of 
 observation in physical science, and which brings 
 into active exercise those intellectual functions which 
 are supposed to lie dormant under the spoon-feed 
 ing process of classical cramming. True, our gram 
 mars, when they put these things at all, put them 
 first; but teachers ought to put them last and guide 
 their pupils through the course of reasoning which 
 led to the result. But these are poor exemplifica 
 tions of the range of philological investigations. If 
 we ascend to the higher walks of classical study and 
 enter upon the domain of textual criticism, we shall 
 find abundant exercise for every intellectual faculty. 
 Out of the confused mass of manuscripts the lead 
 ing heads of families are to be selected, their rela 
 tionships determined, the derivations explained, the 
 gaps filled, the original archetype restored. What 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 33 
 
 close comparison does such a process involve, what 
 careful research, what piercing acumen, what com 
 prehensive judgment, nay more, what quick intui 
 tion, what inventive fancy ! A great critic of this 
 kind cannot be a small man. And if on the other 
 hand the student turns from the masterpieces of 
 ancient literature to the languages themselves, what 
 a field of observation and research does their beau 
 tiful structure present! The laws which regulate 
 the combinations of vowels and consonants, the 
 'chemical affinities', the loves and hates of the 
 elements, the subtle shiftings of the accent, all these 
 things were not found out in dreams they were 
 ascertained by rigid inductive processes ; and while 
 the general student cannot be expected to master 
 all the details of the department, he ought to be 
 taught enough of the method to appreciate the 
 scientific character of the study. 
 
 How far the general science of language is to be 
 taught in schools is a much debated question a 
 question which is to our mind closely complicated 
 with that other question as to the proper age for 
 commencing the study of Latin and Greek. But if 
 it is to be taught at all, it is evident that it is best 
 taught in connection with the classic languages. In 
 this country the professorship of comparative philo 
 logy is often coupled with that of modern lan 
 guages ; partly as a sort of make-weight for the 
 supposed triviality of the grammatical studies re 
 quired in the department ; partly because the study 
 of modern languages is commonly later, and Greek 
 and Latin are presupposed. But the presupposition 
 is often a sad mistake. The knowledge of teacher 
 
34 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 and scholar is frequently at fault ; and in attempting 
 to enlarge the scope of comparison, accuracy of 
 comparison is sacrificed. Or if Greek and Latin be 
 set aside and the study be pursued merely by the 
 light of modern languages, it requires either too 
 little to be worth the name, or too much in propor 
 tion to its importance in any general scheme of 
 education. English and French etymologies out of 
 their organic place are mere curiosities. The stu 
 dent learns with a half-incredulous amusement that 
 wassail means a health to you /, or that aujourd 'hui 
 is a contraction for ad ilium diurnum de hoc die, or 
 that dortnavant is ' the short ' for de hora inde ab 
 ante. He learns it and straightway forgets it ; or if 
 he remembers it, remembers it only as he would a 
 droll anecdote. And on the other hand, to be 
 strictly scientific, and to exact Gothic of the student 
 of German, is as hard measure as to require Sans 
 krit of the student of Greek. Now we have not the 
 least doubt that the gospels have a new charm in 
 the version of Ulfilas, and that the Rig- Veda Samhita 
 unfolds a world of beauty to the initiated ; but the 
 majority of cultivated people will be satisfied with 
 King James' translation of the one and Max Miil- 
 ler's rendering of the other, and will naturally prefer 
 languages which contain a literature of greater 
 wealth or more sympathetic character such as 
 Greek and Latin, which, with the mother-tongue, 
 are sufficient for the comprehension of the general 
 outline of the study, certainly within the bounds of 
 the Indo-Germanic family. And here it is worthy 
 of note how each of the classic languages fits into 
 the other ; how the two nationalities preserve their 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 35 
 
 independence even in their monuments; so that 
 Latin after serving as the guide to bring modern 
 times to a knowledge of Greek beauty, attracts us 
 by its own peculiar worth. For, while the Greek 
 possesses a greater transparency of structure, a 
 greater wealth and flexibility of form, the Latin has 
 often remained more faithful to the original type ; 
 and though it has sacrificed the delicate shades of 
 vocalism in vowel and diphthong, has clung with a 
 firmer grasp to the consonants that bear the sacred 
 vessel of the sense. So the two languages serve 
 each to supplement the other and to present together 
 the noblest specimen of known languages, and the 
 best subject for the demonstration of the principles 
 of the new science. As we have said, it does not 
 yet appear how far that new science is to be taught 
 as an element of general culture ; but judging by its 
 rapid expansion and increasing popularity it will 
 soon claim a place in the curriculum as loudly as 
 any of those departments of human research that 
 find their eloquent advocates in Professor You- 
 mans' volume. For though no one now-a-days 
 supposes language to be a direct inspiration of the 
 Deity, on the other hand no one supposes that it is 
 a sheer invention of man ; and as on any theory it 
 is in Him that we live and move and have our being, 
 language as well as matter may be regarded as a 
 vestment of the divine idea. 
 
 But to return to the disciplinary advantages of 
 the study of the classics, we would emphasize one 
 which most people are apt to overlook, and that is, 
 the uncertainty of the results obtained. In inter 
 pretation, in criticism, in syntax, in etymology, 
 
36 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 innumerable problems present themselves that are 
 capable only of a more or less probable solution ; 
 just as in real life we are often forced to act on 
 partial evidence and rudely to bridge or boldly to 
 leap the chasms in our pathway. Thus the mind of 
 the student is educated . to balance between likeli 
 hoods, and, what is still more important, to suspend 
 judgment and confess impossibilities. Such a train 
 ing is a wholesome corrective to the natural dog 
 matism of youth and inexperience, and it is from 
 this point of view that Dr. Paget recommends the 
 study of physiology : 
 
 1 It is a great hindrance to the progress of truth 
 that some men will hold with equal tenacity, things 
 that are and things that are not proved, and even 
 things that from their very nature do not admit of 
 proof. They seem to think (and ordinary educa 
 tion might be pleaded as justifying the thought) 
 that a plain " yes " or " no " can be answered to every 
 question that can be plainly asked ; and that every 
 thing thus answered is a settled thing and to be 
 maintained as a point of conscience. I need not 
 adduce instances of this error while its mischiefs are 
 manifest everywhere in the wrongs done by prema 
 ture and tenacious judgments. I am aware that 
 these are faults of the temper, not less than of the 
 judgment; but we know how much the temper is 
 influenced by the character of our studies ; and I 
 think if any one were to be free from this over-zeal 
 of opinion, it should be one who is early instructed 
 in an uncertain science, such as physiology/ 
 
 So Faraday says of the ' education of the judg 
 ment ' : 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 37 
 
 * The mind naturally desires to settle upon one 
 thing or another ; to rest upon an affirmative or a 
 negative; and that with a degree of absolutism 
 which is irrational and improper. In drawing a 
 conclusion, it is very difficult, but not the less 
 necessary, to make it proportionate to the evidence. 
 Except where certainty exists (a case of rare occur 
 rence), we should consider our decisions as probable 
 only. The probability may appear very great, so 
 that in affairs of the world we often accept such as 
 certainty and trust our welfare or our lives upon it. 
 Still, only an uneducated mind will confound prob 
 ability with certainty, especially when it encounters 
 a contrary conclusion drawn by another from like 
 data. This suspension in degree of judgment will 
 not make a man less active in life, or his conclusions 
 less certain as truths ; on the contrary, I believe 
 him to be the more ready for the right amount and 
 direction of action on any emergency ; and am sure 
 his conclusions and statements will carry more 
 weight in the world than those of the incautious 
 man.' 
 
 But it may be objected that even if philology 
 affords the appliances for such training, the training 
 itself is rare. That is the fault of the method ; and 
 we do not deny, nay, vehemently urge, that the 
 method needs radical changes. And if it be further 
 objected that philologians are the most dogmatic 
 of men in their writings, it is not because they 
 are students of the classics, but because they are 
 teachers of the classics ; for teaching is an occupa 
 tion fraught with great danger to that humility and 
 that self-distrust which are necessary to the highest 
 intellectual attainments. 
 
38 LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 We have barely touched on the aesthetic and the 
 moral advantages of the study of the classics, and 
 we will not enter upon them now. With such argu 
 ments this generation has little sympathy, and most 
 persons must have their sympathy roused in order 
 that their intellect may have play. For the general 
 reader the theme is already threadbare, and a further 
 strain on it may be dangerous. The professional 
 student of the classics needs no vindication of his 
 devotion, nor need he reply to the reproach of 
 grubbing after tasteless or bitter Greek roots with 
 a philippic against the minutiae of scientific re 
 search. Agassiz is perfectly welcome to discuss the 
 vertebral structure of the selachidae, whatever they 
 may be; and we leave it to minds as shallow as 
 Charles Reade's to sneer at the philosophers who 
 make the crustaceonidunculae their chief study. We 
 concede freely to all, what we claim for ourselves, 
 the right of gaining knowledge for the sake of 
 knowledge. 1 Even in maintaining the right and title 
 of the classics as both a means and an end of 
 education, we have not thought it necessary to 
 imitate the example of those who would fain break 
 up the beautiful statues of antiquity to feed their 
 lime-kilns, to build their walls. We do not say 
 unreservedly ' the old is better '. We have no feeling 
 
 1 1 have dwelt upon the study as a means of mental discipline 
 and on its practical application, rather than as a branch of 
 science pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Let it not be 
 supposed that I do not prize it for its last attribute, for indeed 
 I regard this as the highest and best, and I might express my 
 own feelings in the well-known words of the wise king : It is 
 the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of a king to 
 search it out.' Professor Henfrey on the Study of Botany. 
 
LIMITS OF CULTURE. 39 
 
 against the physical sciences, and if necessary we 
 would fain make room for them by better methods 
 of instruction. But we do not intend to give up the 
 classics or resign any organic portion of the study 
 for anything else. They constitute not only a part, 
 but a member of all higher education not a pe'pos 
 merely, but a pfros. 1 Without that member any 
 scheme is imperfect, any outline mutilated. And if 
 our readers have wearied of the discussion, we beg 
 them, in palliation of our essay on a question that 
 has been dragged hither and thither so much, to 
 remember that such reviews become necessary from 
 time to time, and that at the present juncture a 
 return to the old paths, a renewal of the old fortifi 
 cations, is eminently appropriate. We of the South 
 have little left except our system of higher educa 
 tion, and it is our duty to meet the assault that is 
 making on it an assault which is a part of the 
 grand attempt to crush all individuality of develop 
 ment into a homogeneous centralization. Already 
 do we see the snares spread ; 2 already is the ' vast 
 slave-net of mischief preparing to draw all the 
 educational institutions of the country into the 
 meshes of a West Point system. In a few years the 
 Minister of Public Instruction will send out his 
 sergeants to drill the free citizens of this republic 
 into passive tools of a great central power ; and we 
 can well understand why studies which stir so many 
 earnest doubts of our present condition should be 
 thrust into the background, so that none but 
 dreamers may think of the wonders which Greek 
 
 1 M. Ant. vii. 13. 
 ydyyap.ov"ATT}s TravaXwrov, Aesch. Ag. 361. 
 
4O LIMITS OF CULTURE. 
 
 autonomy wrought, or of the immeasurable woe 
 which was the price of Roman unity and the cause 
 of Roman ruin. 1 
 
 1 This gloomy vaticination was written in 1867 and the pro 
 phecy has not been fulfilled yet, but the Blair bill is still an issue ; 
 and, as I am preparing these old studies for a brief resurrection, 
 the Nation of January 16, 1890, marshals the protests of Repub 
 lican Senators against a bill drawing into Federal control an 
 interest that from the settlement of the country to this day 
 has been under local control, and wisely so. It would be the 
 beginning of a permanent policy, a permanent new relation 
 between the Federal Government and the States, and it woul'd 
 never go backward ; it would never diminish its action.' (Sen 
 ator Hawley.) B. L. G. 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 It is not the immediate object of this study to 
 show the importance of the classics in any system 
 of education, the indispensable necessity of them 
 for all higher training. This is a thesis which has 
 not lacked champions, and such is its nature that it 
 is as inexhaustible as the history of human thought 
 and human culture. The phases of the subject 
 must be familiar to all ; and it might be as well to 
 take the point for granted, and to ask at once what 
 can be done for the advanced study of the classics 
 in our higher institutions of learning, and not pause 
 to strengthen and widen the old lines of defence, to 
 magnify the importance of the study of the ancient 
 languages as an intellectual discipline, to insist on 
 the aesthetic necessity of classical study, to expand 
 on our historical relations to antique life, and 
 to extol the intrinsic value of antique literature. 
 And yet, at a time when the great masters of the 
 department begin to show despondency, and ask 
 what they must throw overboard in order to save 
 the ship, the question does recur whenever any 
 educational theme is broached : Is the ship worth 
 saving ? Is this plea for the classics anything more 
 than an oratio de domo of a guild of needy school 
 masters, who would be utterly bereft of resource if 
 their occupation should be taken away, and who 
 
44 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 pass on to their unfortunate successors the dreary 
 watchwords of a hopeless cause ? That is hardly 
 the case. It is true that the vested interests of 
 classical study are, even from a mercantile point of 
 view, enormous. Not only teachers but pub 
 lishers have a heavy stake in the fortunes of the 
 classics, and the capital involved in them reminds 
 us of the pecuniary hold of Paganism in the early 
 Christian centuries. But this is only one aspect, 
 and it need hardly be said the lowest aspect, of the 
 question. The ancient classics are life of our life, 
 as has been well said, not merely money of our 
 purse. A part of our heritage from the ages, they 
 are an indefeasible possession. We cannot get rid 
 of Greece and Rome if we would. The phraseology 
 of Latin is wrought into our mother-tongue. The 
 scientific vocabulary of English is studded with 
 Greek words. The whole body of our literature is 
 penetrated with classical allusions. In the Marchen 
 of Goethe the will-o'-wisps 'with their peaked 
 tongues dexterously licked out the gold veins of 
 the colossal figure of the composite king to its very 
 heart, and when at last the very tenderest fila 
 ments were eaten out, the image crashed suddenly 
 together.' And some such fate would overtake 
 our higher culture if the golden threads of antique 
 poetry and philosophy were withdrawn. Not only, 
 then, do the traditions of the classic nations encoun 
 ter us at every turn. That might simply be an 
 annoyance. But they have marked out our course ; 
 they have dug out our channels of thought and 
 action. We build on Greek lines of architecture ; 
 we march on Roman highways of law ; we follow 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 45 
 
 Greek and Roman patterns of political and social 
 life. Not to understand these forces, these norms, 
 is not to understand ourselves. 
 
 Nor can we get rid of the ancients by the cheap 
 assumption that we have nothing to learn from 
 them. It is easy enough to repeat the familiar 
 aphorism about the ancients, to say that we are the 
 old and they the young, that we are richer than 
 they by the accumulated experience of millenniums. 
 There are departments of thought and art in which 
 the problems are eternal, the results abiding, the 
 achievements final. The old thinkers have asked 
 questions, the old moralists have laid down rules, 
 the old artists have moulded statues questions 
 which we repeat, rules which we must accept, 
 statues which we can only admire, which we can 
 not emulate. Their observation of external phe 
 nomena may have been defective. Of that let 
 professed physicists be the judges. It is not an 
 unfamiliar charge. Admit, then, the imperfect char 
 acter of their observation, not only in physics but 
 in language, and show how narrow was their range, 
 how imperfect their induction. And yet they pro 
 pounded all the ultimate questions concerning lan 
 guage questions which we are grappling with in 
 vain to-day ; and Max Miiller, after a wide survey 
 of the field, says that ' Plato's Kratylus is full of 
 suggestive wisdom ; it is one of those books which, 
 as we read them again from time to time, seem every 
 time like new books, so little do we perceive at first 
 all that is presupposed in them : the accumulated 
 mould of thought, if I may say so, in which alone 
 a philosophy like that of Plato would strike its roots 
 
46 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 and draw its support.' So far as the character and 
 origin of language are concerned, we are little 
 advanced beyond the earliest speculators on the 
 subject ; and while the ancients knew little of exper 
 imental science, while they had no proper concep 
 tion of the right method of putting nature on the 
 rack, nature seems after all to refuse to our severest 
 torture the last secret which the ancients sought to 
 elicit by divination, and while renunciation is often 
 the wisest course as to certain problems, renuncia 
 tion is not superiority. But this is a direction which 
 it would not be safe to urge. In physical science, 
 as in music, as in painting, the moderns may be 
 supposed to have everything their own way. * The 
 history of sciences ', says Goethe, ' is a grand fugue, 
 in which the voices of the peoples come in one by 
 one '; and he who has no appreciation of the wealth 
 of his own time has no right to speak of the value 
 of antiquity for all time. 
 
 In ethics and politics we have had, it is true, the 
 experience of centuries ; but man in his essence has 
 not changed, and in the ethical and political obser 
 vations of those who stood, as it were, nearer to 
 the nakedness of the soul as their art was more 
 familiar with the nakedness of the body, there is a 
 keenness of insight, a sagacity of counsel, from 
 which we can still learn. ' The discoveries of the 
 ancients in science', says Stuart Mill, 'have been 
 greatly surpassed, and as much of them as is still 
 valuable loses nothing by being incorporated in 
 modern treatises ; but what does not so well admit 
 of being transferred bodily, and has been very imper 
 fectly carried off even piecemeal, is the treasure 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 4/ 
 
 which they accumulated of what may be called the 
 wisdom of life; the rich store of experience of 
 human nature and conduct, which the acute and 
 observing minds of those ages, aided in their obser 
 vations by the greater simplicity of manners and 
 life, consigned to their writings, and most of which 
 retains all its value. The speeches in Thucydides ; 
 the Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics of Aristotle ; the 
 Dialogues of Plato ; the Orations of Demosthenes ; 
 the Satires and especially the Epistles of Horace ; 
 all the writings of Tacitus ; the great work of Quin- 
 tilian, a repertory of the best thoughts of the ancient 
 world on all subjects connected with education ; 
 and in a less formal manner all that is left us of the 
 ancient historians, orators, philosophers, and even 
 dramatists, are replete with remarks and maxims 
 of singular good sense and penetration, applicable 
 both to political and private life.' Of these, it may 
 be remarked here that Quintilian never fails to sur 
 prise the few and there are comparatively few, 
 including professional scholars the few who read 
 more than the famous first chapter of the tenth 
 book ; and the distinguished thinker just quoted 
 bears emphatic testimony to the effect produced on 
 his youthful mind by the perusal of the Institutions, 
 and says that he ' retained through life many val 
 uable ideas ' which he traced distinctly to read 
 ing Quintilian at an early age. We have known 
 mature men of fine intellect and ripe judgment to 
 be astonished and fascinated by the political insight 
 of Thucydides when they returned to him after a 
 long interval; and Arnold was right when he 
 remarked that the portion of history dealt with by 
 Thucydides is only ancient in the sense that the 
 
48 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 events related happened a long while ago. ' If the 
 reader of the newspaper', says Mr. Crawley, in the 
 preface to his spirited rendering of Thucydides, 
 ' will condescend to cast an eye on my translation, 
 he will find there the prototypes of many of the 
 figures to which he is accustomed in his favorite 
 journal. He will discover the political freedom 
 which he glories in, and the social liberty which he 
 sometimes sighs for, in full operation at Athens ; 
 factions as fierce as those of the Versaillais and 
 Communists at Corcyra ; and in the " best men " of 
 the Four Hundred, oligarchs as self-seeking and 
 unpatriotic as the gensdu bien of the " Figaro". . . . 
 In short, besides the practical lessons to be drawn 
 for his own conduct, he will enjoy the philosophic 
 pleasure of observing how the nature of man, in 
 spite of all change of time and circumstance, remains 
 essentially the same, and how short is the distance 
 from the civilized inhabitant of Athens or Corinth 
 to the dweller in London or Vienna.' 
 
 It may not be safe to insist on the value of the 
 ancients as types of literary excellence, or to 
 enlarge on the powerful influence of their perfect 
 and finished diction. The value is great and the 
 influence wholesome; but, unfortunately, artistic 
 power and the appreciation of art do not always 
 go together, and the classic training of most 
 authors has actually brought the stylistic usefulness 
 of the ancients into discredit in the eyes of those 
 who do not reflect that good models are not every 
 thing, nor even an appreciation of good models. 
 So Mark Pattison, in his clever essay, ' Books and 
 Critics ', in the Fortnightly Review for November, 
 1877, says : ' It is one of the paradoxes of literary 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 49 
 
 history, that in this very country Germany which 
 is the world's schoolmaster in learning the Greek 
 and Latin languages, so little of the style and beauty 
 of these immortal models passes into their litera 
 ture'; and Mr. Spencer cites among his examples 
 of the disproportion of results and appliances the 
 case of commentators of the classics, ' who are 
 among the most slovenly writers of English ', and 
 asks whether the self-made Cobbett would be guilty 
 of the awkwardness of a Queen's speech, or the 
 ploughman Burns or Bunyan the tinker blunder in 
 his diction like the head-master of Winchester or 
 some English bishop whom he cites. The question 
 is a question of faculty, not of training alone ; and 
 it is not fair to pick out the exceptional men of 
 genius whose education has not brought them into 
 direct contact with ancient literature, and hold them 
 up in triumphant contrast with those to whom 
 nature has denied, not the susceptibility of form, 
 but the power of classic reproduction. It is cer 
 tainly claiming too much for the classics to attribute 
 to them the creation of artistic faculty. It is enough 
 to assert their moulding influence when the artistic 
 faculty is there ; and it is hardly worth while to 
 notice the theory which has actually been advanced 
 that the slovenly style of the literary class in Ger 
 many is due to their excessive study of Greek. So 
 far as the decline of English among scholars is con 
 cerned, the large infusion of German in certain 
 leading English journals has much more to do with 
 it than anything else. 1 
 
 From the purely stylistic point of view, it is a pity that 
 most of our American philologians, having been trained, if not 
 in Germany, yet under German influences, should be so prone 
 
5O CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 The leisurely care with which the foremost men 
 of antique literature elaborated their great works 
 enabled them to attain an artistic perfection which 
 will remain an eternal norm, 1 and the lover of the 
 antique might maintain that they are as unap 
 proachable here as they are confessedly in plastic 
 art. But there the domination of the Greek is a 
 commonplace. If they made poor work, as Littrow 
 says, of counting the stars even with their clear 
 heavens and the sweep of a wider sky, they saw so 
 clearly and reproduced so wonderfully the play of 
 masculine muscle and the sinuous lines of female 
 beauty, that there have been found men to maintain 
 
 to neglect philological work that is done in France. It is a 
 gratuitous assumption that all Frenchmen are superficial ; all 
 can learn from the French, not only in methods of presenta 
 tion, but in delicate analysis of social conditions, personal 
 character, literary style ; and many a French e"tude conveys 
 under a graceful and popular form suggestions of wide scope 
 and deep significance. 
 
 1 In a recent critique on George Sand, in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, M. d'Haussonville, no blind admirer of the great 
 author whom he is reviewing, says : ' Rien ne dure en eff et que 
 ce qui est bien compose. Si les formes vieillissent, si les 
 idees changent, les lois de la composition sont eternelles ; 
 1'esprit humain, mobile dans ses gouts, est toujours constant 
 dans ses precedes. Les operations de la logique sont les 
 memes aujourd'hui qu'au temps d'Aristote, et les preceptes de 
 rhetorique, qui ont cours dans nos ecoles ne different pas de 
 ceux que la jeunesse studieuse recueillait autrefois sous les 
 portiques d'Athenes et de Rome. Celui qui se fait un jeu de 
 ces preceptes et qui ne sait discerner 1'eternelle verite des lois 
 cachees sur leurs formules arides pourra peut-e'tre surprendre 
 un succes d'un jour : mais il s'exposera a voir couler tot ou 
 tard sa reputation fragile, comme un edifice dont 1'architecte 
 aurait embelli la facade sans en asseoir la base d'apres les 
 lois de 1'equilibre geometrique.' 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 51 
 
 that such perfection was impossible without regular 
 anatomical studies. It is bewildering to think what 
 their art must have been when the mere mechanical 
 repetition of it in a little Oscan town fills the world 
 with wonder, when the shovel and the pick are 
 revealing every day in obscure corners of classic 
 ground the evidence of a wealth that staggers our 
 imagination. We need not resort to the unearthed 
 glories of Olympia, where we might expect to find 
 the noblest treasures of Greek art. Go to Tanagra. 
 Where is Tanagra ? It is a poor town in Eastern 
 Bceotia, and is remembered by the Greek scholar 
 chiefly because of Corinna, by the Greek antiquary 
 because of a famous breed of fighting-cocks, by the 
 Greek historian because of a battle fought in the 
 neighborhood. Strike into the soil, open the tombs 
 of the dead, and you bring to light thousands of 
 statuettes which breathe the infinite charis of Greek - 
 dom ; and it is said by experts that a new era of 
 * art-industry ' as our German-English has it is 
 to begin with this find of terra-cottas in a miserable 
 third-rate town of Boeotia, that Bceotia which we 
 have been taught by the quick-witted Athenians to 
 laugh at. It hardly seems quite safe to laugh at the 
 Bceotians. 1 
 
 Inevitable, then, as part and parcel of our own 
 civilization, indispensable as exemplars in those lines 
 of achievement which are peculiarly their own, the 
 ancient classics furnish us, besides all this, with 
 the best gymnasium for the exercise of the mental 
 
 a Bergk, in his ' Griechische Literaturgeschichte', i. 916, has 
 some good remarks on the Boeotians, in modification of current 
 
52 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 faculties, as well as the fairest theatre for the culture 
 of aesthetic appreciation. But it would be impossible, 
 within the compass of a single essay, even to review 
 the arguments in favor of the disciplinary value of 
 the classics and the classic languages of antiquity ; 
 and it is the opinion of the writer that this has been 
 made, if anything, too prominent in the discussion. 
 At all events, if it can be shown that the classics 
 have an intrinsic value of their own, it will be unne 
 cessary to defend what has been called by an assail 
 ant of the classics ' the wasteful policy of a vicarious 
 discipline'. And here it maybe noted that those 
 who have insisted most eloquently on the expulsion 
 of the classics from the curriculum, who would bid 
 Greek make way for German and reduce Latin to 
 the smallest possible modicum, are for the most part 
 men who, themselves reared in the atmosphere of 
 classical studies, cannot appreciate the extent to 
 which they are indebted, directly or indirectly, to 
 the very training they despise. The phraseology 
 of our language was fixed by scholars, and in its 
 higher ranges can only be extended by scholars ; 
 and if the control exercised by classical scholarship 
 should be forever removed, our noble tongue would 
 become a jangle of false notes or a rattling vul 
 garity of slang. Like those who tell us that we can 
 now at last afford to dispense with religion, and who 
 point to the noble lives led by men who yield no 
 allegiance to Christianity or even to theistic princi 
 ples, these eloquent denouncers of the classics forget 
 that the one experiment as well as the other requires 
 a vacuum, and that the vacuum is not yet ; nor can 
 we forecast the time when it will be possible to 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 53 
 
 eliminate the classical influences that permeate every 
 nook and corner of our intellectual domain. Until 
 then it will be in vain to cite personal examples by 
 way of proof that the highest results of modern cul 
 ture can be attained without the classics ; and it will 
 be necessary for the advocates of the new education 
 to make large concessions to the old models, or to 
 throw themselves without reserve into the arms of a 
 brutal materialism. There is really no other course ; 
 for it is evident that there is no better school of 
 form than we find in the history, the literature, and 
 the art of the Greeks. 
 
 Even Mr. Huxley, in his lecture at the Johns 
 Hopkins University, had something to say in behalf 
 of aesthetic culture; and although sestheticism is not 
 the satisfying portion of man, as an immortal being, 
 such a concession is something as a sign of the 
 times ; and it really seems as if some of the devo 
 tees of the new education, to use again a favorite 
 phrase, were beginning to feel the danger of the 
 utter breakdown of physical science itself, if the 
 present narrow methods of study be persisted in. 
 The cry of alarm has been raised by more than one 
 voice in Germany. So in a discourse by Emil du 
 Bois-Reymond, the well-known Berlin professor, a 
 tissue of rhetorical generalities about the history of 
 culture and natural science, there are some signifi 
 cant admissions which it may be well to notice. 
 Since the late war with France it is no secret that 
 the land of scholars has lost much of its attraction 
 in the eyes of scholars, because it has become so 
 strong, so despotic. ' Brutal ' is a hard word, but the 
 type of German materialism is the most brutal of 
 
54 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 all. In old times we might laugh at the provin 
 cialisms, the pettinesses, the local patriotisms, the 
 narrower fatherlands, the kinglets and the prince- 
 lets with their select society of subjects, the minus 
 cule aulic councillors of pocket-handkerchief duke 
 doms, the upper-court-chimney-sweepers of a micro 
 scopic Transparency, the cab-load which constituted 
 the contingent of this or that impotent potentate 
 to the federal army ; but the life of those days had 
 a charm which the new life has not. The political 
 activity for which the Germans yearned so many years 
 is nothing so glorious now that they have it, and 
 men begin to turn their eyes sadly to the despised 
 past. ' Germany ', cries our Berlin professor, ' Ger 
 many has become united and strong, and the wish 
 of our youth to see the German name honored on 
 land and sea has been fulfilled. Who would like to 
 pick flaws in such achievements ? And yet, if we 
 transport ourselves in imagination to the rent, poor, 
 powerless, kleinbiirgerlich Germany of our youth, as 
 it were, out of the cold splendor of the imperial city 
 into the midst of the nestling, cosey gable-roofs of a 
 little town of central Germany embowered in vines 
 and ivy, do we not feel that something is lacking in 
 the present, with its glitter, its intoxication, its 
 tumult? We have got rid of the undefined long 
 ing, the unsatisfied endeavor, the corroding doubt 
 of our own power, and with these of much of our 
 enthusiasm for ideals, our unselfish striving after 
 truth, our quiet and deep inner life.' And this is 
 but one voice among many voices, which are inex 
 pressibly sad to any one who, like the writer, owes 
 all the best impulses of his intellectual life to the 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 55 
 
 contact with German ideals. Twenty-eight years 
 ago x Germany was in deep humiliation, and these 
 lines are written in front of a memorial of the 
 unhappy Schleswig-Holstein troubles. It is a leaf 
 from the Schleswig-Holstein album, and the design is 
 by Julius Hiibner, the celebrated painter of Dresden. 
 It represents a queenly figure, prostrate in the dust, 
 discrowned, unsceptred, abandoned to hopeless sor 
 row, weighed down by a load of grief and shame, 
 and the legend is from the Lamentations of Jere 
 miah: 'The crown is fallen from our head.' It is 
 otherwise now. The grand figure is upright, but 
 the pickelhaube is on the head, not the crown ; the 
 sceptre is a truncheon, and the features are not the 
 features of Mother Germany, but of Prince Bis 
 marck ; and many who sorrowed deeply with Ger 
 many's sorrow then cannot find it in their hearts to 
 triumph unreservedly in Germany's triumph now. 
 All the gold that France has paid, or can pay, were 
 a poor exchange for the treasure of German idealism, 
 unbankable as it is. And the Germans feel it them 
 selves, and if anything were needed to show this, 
 the frantic revival of metaphysics in Germany would 
 suffice to indicate it. Leading men are calling halt 
 to their followers, and are deprecating the rash 
 advance of partisan chieftains upon ground over 
 which there once brooded a sacred peace. 
 
 The author to whose performance reference has 
 been already made in this paper, and who has given 
 most recent expression to the tendencies of the times, 
 Professor du Bois-Reymond, frankly acknowledges 
 that ' where physical science reigns exclusively, the 
 
 1 Written in 1878. B. L. G. 
 
56 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 intellect becomes poor in ideas, the fancy in images, 
 the soul in sensibility, and the result is a narrow, 
 hard and dry disposition, forsaken of the Muses and 
 Graces ; and not only so, but physical science leads 
 down by imperceptible gradations from the highest 
 efforts of human intellect to mere mechanical work 
 that looks at nothing beyond gain.' 
 
 It is not a pleasant hearing for Americans, who are 
 persuaded better things of their country, to be told 
 by our Berlin professor that this tendency to mate 
 rialism, this preference of the immediate and practi 
 cal to the remote and theoretical, in short, all that is 
 hard and realistic and ' unbeautiful ' in the recent 
 development of life is called Americanism, and that 
 those Americans who do not share these tendencies 
 are simply set down as un-American. And yet the 
 statement is but too true. The German author of a 
 text-book, in reply to the reproach that his work was 
 not sufficiently adapted to the wants of the school on 
 account of the introduction of the scientific exhibi 
 tion of the forms of the language, pointed with 
 triumph to the fact that his book had been translated 
 in this country, and urged that what the ' practical 
 American ' found available here would certainly not 
 be found unpractical in Germany. 1 The compli 
 ment to the American that American hardly de 
 served, and it is very certain that he winced a little 
 at the use which was made of his nationality. At all 
 events the existence of such an organ as this Review, 2 
 which is surely not dedicated to themes of merely 
 
 1 The author was H. J. Muller, the ' practical American' the 
 writer of these essays. B. L. G. 
 
 2 The Princeton Review. 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. $? 
 
 popular interest, is an evidence that there is an ele 
 ment in this country which is not in harmony with 
 the supposed characteristics of our people ; and after 
 all, a careful survey of our intellectual life will show 
 that, considering the imperious necessities of our 
 position, there is a large and increasing factor of 
 idealism, and that Americans are in less danger from 
 Americanism than the Germans are. At any rate, 
 the method which Professor du Bois-Reymond sug 
 gests to meet the case and to stay the progress of 
 Americanism in Germany and restore idealism to its 
 rightful place seems to an outsider amusing, to say 
 the least. Of course he begins with a reform of 
 secondary instruction as the indispensable prelimi 
 nary to the revival of higher life, and then recom 
 mends a modification of the course of study at the 
 gymnasium which shall give more scope to mathe 
 matics, encourage the object-method of teaching the 
 classics through pictures and casts from the antique, 
 do away with instruction in religion for the higher 
 classes and with the close grammatical study of 
 Greek ; and, finally, to make sure that everybody 
 will understand him, he raises a banner with this de 
 vice strange perhaps in Germany, not strange here : 
 'CONIC SECTIONS! NO MORE GREEK 
 EXERCISES ! ' To an American it certainly seems 
 droll that a German professor should select as the 
 best plan for counteracting Americanism the very 
 course which was almost uniformly followed in the 
 higher classes of American colleges in our youth. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to discuss at length this 
 method of saving German culture from the sinister 
 influences of Americanism, and yet it may be not 
 
$8 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 altogether out of place to say a word or two touch 
 ing the element of Greek exercises, which of late 
 years has been gaining rather than losing ground 
 in our American colleges and high-schools, thanks 
 to the earnest conviction, on the part of our best 
 teachers, that no thorough mastery of a language 
 as a source of culture is possible without the power to 
 use it within certain limits. To insist, for instance, 
 as some English scholars do, on an early facility in 
 the manufacture of Greek verses as a prerequisite to 
 the successful criticism of the Greek drama is going 
 too far ; and yet it is by no means certain that the 
 practice of verse-making has not been too much 
 neglected on the Continent, and the false quantities 
 that are becoming more and more common in 
 text-books mark a decline in exact scholarship that 
 is not an edifying sign of the times. But whatever 
 we may think of verse-making as a school exercise, 
 the command of the grammatical structure of a 
 Latin or Greek sentence cannot be gained in any 
 way so surely as by writing ; and when we remem 
 ber that language is the truest expression of the 
 life of a people, we shall begin to appreciate the 
 fundamental importance of an exercise which, as a 
 matter of course, is hardly congenial to the young 
 student. True, antiquity can be approached from 
 many sides, and he is a pedant who thinks that his 
 avenue alone leads to the shrine ; but all the advan 
 tages of Hellenism for higher culture cannot be 
 gained by the study of casts of the Panathenaic pro 
 cession, or photographs of the Nike of Paionios. It 
 is not sufficient to say that ' Goethe and Thorwald- 
 sen could not write a Greek exercise, and yet had a 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. $9 
 
 better insight into the secrets of Hellenic art than 
 many who profess and call themselves Grecians/ 
 Goethe, for that matter, did write Greek exercises, 
 and it is to be feared that many lads enter college 
 with worse preparation in Greek than is indicated by 
 the Frankfurt schoolboy's efforts at Greek composi 
 tion. But even if Goethe had written his Iphigenie 
 without Greek, as Thorwaldsen made his Triumph 
 of Alexander without Greek, such examples have 
 really no application to the question before us. The 
 training we seek in colleges is not for the geniuses 
 of the world, who after all go their own way, but for 
 men of certain average capacity ; and, granted the 
 value of a knowledge 'of Greek, for them there is 
 really no shorter way, we repeat, to a real grasp of 
 the language than a certain amount of Greek exer 
 cise-writing. Not that the advantage of a mere 
 reading knowledge of Greek is to be underrated. 
 Too few have that as it is. But Greek and Latin 
 stand on a different footing from modern languages. 
 Most cultivated men have a certain knowledge of 
 several modern languages, which they find very 
 useful in a literary sense, even if they are not able to 
 go through the paradigm of the verb successfully, 
 and would utterly break down in the composition 
 of a single sentence. But it is much less easy to 
 penetrate into the subtleties of antique diction with 
 out the close grammatical study which reproduction 
 postulates ; and while life may be too short and too 
 crowded for the manufacture of Latin and Greek 
 verse where there is no inner vocation, we must 
 erase from our banner the iconoclastic motto, ' No 
 MORE GREEK EXERCISES'. 
 
6O CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 But although our intellectual development is more 
 influenced by the thought of Germany than by that 
 of any other country, our concern in this paper is 
 not so much with the best methods of checking 
 materialism there, as with the prospects of classical 
 study as an element of culture here ; and the out 
 look is not nearly so discouraging as it might seem 
 at first. It is true that the classical philologians of 
 this country do not appear to have risen yet to the 
 full measure of their duty and their privilege, but 
 there is undoubtedly a notable increase in the num 
 ber of scientifically trained teachers of the classics, 
 and a higher type of technical scholarship through 
 out America. On the side -of literature, of culture, 
 there has not been the same advance in this country, 
 but in view of the active intercourse between Eng 
 land and America, we cannot overlook the fact that 
 in contemporary English literature there is a far more 
 intimate acquaintance with the spirit of Greek art 
 than can be found at any period of English letters. 
 Indeed, so strong a ply has English thought taken 
 in this direction, that forebodings have been ex 
 pressed lest our faith should be overwhelmed by an 
 Aryan revival. At any rate, the best contemporary 
 poetry of the mother-country is saturated with 
 Greek. Tennyson and Browning, Swinburne and 
 Morris, the older and the younger singers of our 
 time, draw much of their inspiration, some of them 
 much of their technic from Greek poetry; and 
 although it must be acknowledged in all fairness 
 that the result is after all exotic, and that this Neo- 
 Hellenic school is too scholarly, too reflective, too 
 consciously artistic, the movement shows that the 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 6l 
 
 time is not yet come for the elimination of the 
 classics from the formal education of the college and 
 the larger discipline of the cultured world. But 
 despite all the philological science that comes from 
 Germany, and all the potent influence of English 
 poetry, it does not seem as if we were deriving the 
 full benefit from either element, and it is the purpose 
 of this paper to inquire somewhat more narrowly 
 into the causes, so far as they may be supposed to 
 lie in the present organization of our higher insti 
 tutions of learning. In a recent address on the 
 failure and the future of American scholarship, 1 the 
 writer of this essay limited himself chiefly to the 
 statement of what he conceived to be the shortcom 
 ings of those who represent the classics in this 
 country : the lack of independent research, the 
 wholesale conveyance of foreign work, the limited 
 range of study, the mechanical multiplication of 
 text-books, the want of honest, manly criticism. 
 There may have been bitterness in the tone ; but if 
 so, the bitterness was that of confession, not of 
 satire. It was a nos consules desumus from begin 
 ning to end. True, it was intimated that the sys 
 tem under which our classical scholars have been 
 working is not the best in the world ; but, after all, 
 the moral delinquencies of the instructors them 
 selves formed the staple of animadversion, and 
 perhaps not unwisely. It is best not to portion out 
 faults, as that leads to a fatal easing of conscience. 
 Lay all the blame boldly everywhere. And so this 
 time it may be as well to turn our attention to the 
 sphere in which American philologians are called 
 
 1 Delivered before the Literary Societies of Princeton in 
 
 1877. 
 
62 CLASSICS AMD COLLEGES. 
 
 to work the colleges of the land. For, with rare 
 exceptions, our philologians are teachers, and 
 teachers under conditions which resemble more or 
 less those of the gymnasia of Germany. They are 
 sckulmanner first, philologians afterwards. That 
 the two characters are not incompatible is shown 
 by many illustrious examples. Take Ahrens for 
 Greek ; take Corssen for Latin. But such men are 
 in the full current of university influence, so far as 
 their higher work is concerned, and that is not true of 
 our philologians. The foremost philologian that this 
 country has ever produced, Professor Whitney, has 
 had to keep his scientific work alive amid a pressure 
 of scholastic duties and a whirl of mechanical engage 
 ments, which may enhance our admiration of his 
 steadfastness and his power, which cannot but make 
 us rebellious against a system so exacting, so re 
 lentless. This system is so contrived as to sacrifice 
 the teacher to the supposed good of the pupil, and 
 like all such immoral arrangements, injures both 
 alike. A heavy indictment to bring against the 
 traditional methods of our colleges ; but there can 
 be very little doubt in the mind of any one who will 
 look seriously into the matter, that our colleges are 
 not promoting the love of the classics in the student, 
 and are not fostering the scientific spirit of the 
 teacher ; that the actual contact of the average mind 
 with classic life is less than it was, say twenty-five 
 years ago, and that the best men we have are doing 
 little to push forward the lines of human knowledge 
 in their departments. It seems impossible not to 
 recognize this state of things, and recognizing it, 
 not to seek some remedy. Laudations of the 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 63 
 
 classics, however well meant, are of little avail for 
 the student, and the contio ad clerum, no matter how 
 loudly intoned, falls dead on the ear of the deaf or 
 drowsy teacher. The only hope is the redistribution 
 of the work of the teachers, and that is a theme 
 which has not yet lost all its interest, as is shown 
 by the perennial discussion of the subject in the 
 public press. To this discussion the present writer 
 brings little more than his personal experience and 
 personal conviction, and he has not been at the 
 pains to compile masses of statistics nor to marshal 
 authorities to sustain his position. Statistics can be 
 made to prove anything if properly manipulated, 
 and as they are valueless when they formulate no 
 organic principle, so they are apt to be too significant 
 when they are significant at all. The toilsome accu 
 mulation of facts and opinions to sustain precon 
 ceived notions may pass with the undiscerning for 
 laborious induction. Here, although use will be 
 made of such statistics and authorities as happen to 
 be at hand, there will be no ambitious attempt to 
 represent the individual impression as the result of 
 long and careful research, nor even of a steady 
 course of thinking on the subject. * Ich habe nie iiber 
 das Denken gedacht ', said Goethe ; and the writer 
 belongs to those teachers who have never taught 
 about teaching, whose conclusions as to the needs 
 of the higher education have been forced upon them 
 by the manifest exigencies of the practical prob 
 lems which they have had to encounter. These con 
 clusions are not new, and yet they may possibly be 
 worth registering as material for a more elaborate 
 exposition of the subject. 
 
64 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 It is high time to recognize practically the differ 
 ence between college and university work, as those 
 terms are or ought to be understood in this country 
 the difference between the stage of mere appro 
 priation and the stage in which appropriation 
 becomes assimilation, and assimilation results in 
 constructive effort. The curriculum must be simpli 
 fied for the college side ; the elective principle must 
 be the norm of the university side. There must be 
 no such incongruous blending of the two as is seen 
 all over the country, so that it would not be hard to 
 point out institutions in which college work is done 
 on university principles and university work is done 
 on college principles. There are things that must 
 be learned by a dead pull, and no amount of scien 
 tific presentation will be of any practical avail ; and 
 on the other hand, there are high ranges that cannot 
 be traversed without the discursive faculty. 
 
 To attain this end separating university and 
 college a thorough reform is necessary. The first 
 step is, of course, the abolition of the old-fashioned 
 four-years curriculum. This is nothing new, for 
 the example was set by the University of Virginia 
 more than fifty years ago, and has been followed by 
 greater and greater numbers as the years go on. 
 Of course, the older colleges which have a history 
 hesitate, and compromise, and modify, and most of 
 them have managed, after a fashion, to make changes 
 without any solution of the historical continuity. 
 But the break must come, however tenaciously the 
 parts may be held together, and for the simple 
 reason that life is not long enough for the demands 
 
 1 Written in 1878. 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 65 
 
 of the college as now constituted. The current 
 boast about the advance of the standard is an uncon 
 scious prediction of the total abandonment of the 
 plan. The various colleges are emulating one 
 another as to conditions for entrance, and thus doing 
 their best to advance the average age of the candi 
 dates. It would be invidious to ask how far the 
 terms of admission are complied with ; how large a 
 proportion are allowed to make up for deficiencies 
 at their leisure, and whether the passage from the 
 lower to the higher class is everywhere as diligently 
 guarded as the entrance. But, invidious or not, 
 that is not the immediate question. The require 
 ments for admission are so high, or, as Stuart Mill 
 would probably have put it, the preliminary train 
 ing is so poor, that students now enter college at an 
 age when a very large proportion left it, twenty-five 
 years ago. Even in the last twenty years the aver 
 age age of the students at entrance has advanced 
 appreciably. So President Eliot says in his annual 
 report for 1874-1875: 'The average age of the 
 young men admitted to Harvard has been gradually 
 rising, until it has now reached a limit which had 
 better not be exceeded.' 'The average age has 
 risen six months in twenty years' (from 1856 to 
 1875). ' The average age for the last five years has 
 been eighteen years and five months, and the rise of 
 age has mainly resulted from a diminution of the 
 proportional number of those who enter while under 
 seventeen years of age and an increase in the propor 
 tional number of those who enter at from eighteen. 
 The present average age at admission is high 
 enough to secure that degree of maturity and of 
 
66 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 capacity for self-control which it is desirable that a 
 college student should possess, and the Faculty 
 have no desire to see it rise higher.' Recent events 
 furnish a strange commentary on the first clause 
 of the last paragraph ; and if age is any security 
 for self-control, it seems as if it would be necessary 
 to encourage students to put off entering college a 
 decennium or two longer, until they shall have 
 learned wisdom by repeated contact with police courts 
 during their preparation for college. 1 It is the firm 
 belief of the writer that the recent disorders, which 
 have brought so much disrepute upon American 
 colleges and have furnished the newspapers of the 
 country with a theme thrice welcome to the national 
 love of humorous exaggeration, are due in good 
 measure to the fact that the discipline to which 
 boys, after boyish resistance, once gracefully suc 
 cumbed, is, even in its semblance, an intolerable 
 nuisance to young men. But to return to the report. 
 ' The increase in the requisitions for admission to 
 college, which has been going on steadily for many 
 years, has a tendency to raise the age of admission ; 
 but all improvements of method in the preparatory 
 schools tend to lower it; and so it is hoped that 
 the age will not mount any higher, and that a 
 young man will have some five years for professional 
 study, say from twenty-two to twenty-seven.' Happy 
 are they who can spend so long a time in prepara 
 tion ; but it is only too evident that this scheme has 
 no regard for the exigencies of ordinary life, and 
 must either limit the advantages of a college course 
 
 *At this time the newspapers were filled with reports of 
 hazing ', ' cane-rushes ', and college riots generally. B. L. G. 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 6? 
 
 to an increasingly smaller proportion, or shorten 
 the period of special preparation for a profession. 
 And so far as the attitude of the preparatory schools 
 is concerned, it is worth inquiry whether they are 
 not making the lowest margin of entrance into 
 college their chief end ; and whereas in former times 
 many of the schools aspired to fit a boy out for life, 
 if he could not obtain a college education, the great 
 aim is now to land the candidates safely within the 
 pale of the freshman class. Make colleges, if you 
 will, of the preparatory schools, and make univer 
 sities, if you can, of the colleges ; but do not keep 
 up the continuity of schoolboy work far into man 
 hood. 
 
 Again, it does seem as if even this advanced 
 standard, of which so much is made, were not a 
 superhuman thing after all, and as if, with the 
 boasted improvement in method, a boy of average 
 sense might be got ready for the best of our colleges 
 before he is eighteen. But whether that be so or 
 not, if he enters at eighteen, he ought not to be kept 
 at college work until he is twenty-two, as a matter 
 of necessity. The curriculum should not require 
 four years. It ought to be something that could be 
 managed in two or, at most, three by a student of 
 average ability and application. Every one ought 
 to be at man's work by the time he reaches man's 
 estate. 
 
 President Eliot has limited the range of inquiry 
 to the twenty years prior to 1875. The further 
 back you go, the more marked the difference, as an 
 inspection of any biographical dictionary will show. 
 The men of the first half of the century left college 
 
68 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 at an age when many enter it now. So Harvard 
 sent out Everett and Bancroft and Motley at seven 
 teen, Lowell at twenty ; Yale graduated Morse and 
 Woolsey at nineteen, N. P. Willis and Porter at 
 twenty ; Princeton graduated Dallas and Bishop 
 Mcllvaine at eighteen. Daniel Webster completed 
 his college course at nineteen, Chase and Choate at 
 twenty, W. D. Whitney at eighteen ; and examples 
 may be multiplied indefinitely. Of course, the 
 objection will be raised that these are picked men ; 
 but it does not follow because they are picked men 
 that they were precocious men, and it is very evident 
 that they represent the average age. At any rate, 
 their success shows that their equipment was not so 
 wretchedly insufficient as it may seem to those who 
 extol the present advance in the standard. Instead 
 of learning routine lessons at twenty -two, they were 
 busy in the great university of life. 
 
 In France the difficulty seems to be in keeping 
 the age of the baccalaureat up, so that even a re 
 former like M. Breal 1 dares not insist on a minimum 
 age of eighteen for the candidates, and France may 
 be left out of the question. Nor need we consult 
 English statistics, as it is abundantly evident that 
 despite the active commercial intercourse between 
 England and America, Germany has more weight 
 with us in matters of higher education than England 
 has. Now German students often go up to the 
 university at the age indicated by President Eliot as 
 the average age of the Harvard freshman ; 2 and 
 
 1 ' Le Baccalaureat Allemand.' Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 15 Nov., 1873. 
 8 Of fifty-four philologians of note in Freund's Triennium, 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 69 
 
 though the age may have advanced there also, the 
 advance has not been material, 1 and at the conclusion 
 of their university career the German students are 
 little older than the average of American students 
 when they leave college. In some respects, it is 
 true, the German gymnasium proper does not 
 present so full a course as the American college, as 
 for instance in mathematics and physics, but in other 
 departments the instruction is much more thorough, 
 and very few admirers of American institutions will 
 contend that the same special training can be got in 
 the same time by the American and the German 
 methods, that the American who finishes his curri 
 culum at twenty-two is as far on his way in the 
 preparation for his work in life as the German uni 
 versity student of the same age. Indeed, American 
 
 i. 76, thirty-eight or about 70 per cent entered the university 
 at seventeen (12), eighteen (16) and nineteen (10). Six entered 
 at sixteen, only six at twenty. One, Gottfried Hermann, was 
 only fourteen, and W. Dindorf only fifteen, and there were 
 doubtless special reasons in the cases of the two late comers, 
 one at twenty-one and the other at twenty-two. 
 
 1 A writer in the Revue de PEnseignement Superieur for 
 1889, in view of the usual duration of the time of study (four 
 years), expresses his surprise that so many of the German 
 students enter the university after nineteen, and the surprise 
 is natural from the French point of view. But, according to 
 American standards, that age is not high for the entrance 
 upon professional study; in fact, it is early. Statistics show 
 that about 41 per cent of the students in the Prussian univer 
 sities during 1887 were between twenty and twenty-two, and 
 about the same percentage between twenty-two and twenty- 
 five, from which it is clear that a man who takes his Bachelor's 
 degree in an American college at twenty-two would still, 
 according to German standards, be rather late in beginning a 
 university course. B. L. G. 
 
yO CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 students, who go over to Germany to complete their 
 studies, often appear as tyipadels, and any advantage 
 they may have over their German compeers is not 
 the result of the training of the college, but the 
 result of the more liberal life of the nation. A Ger 
 man student as he issues from the gymnasium often 
 seems a baby as compared with his American con 
 temporary when he enters college, but measure the 
 two according to attainments towards the close of 
 their college or their university life, and the differ 
 ence will not be in favor of the American. The 
 demand for early specialization is a dangerous 
 heresy, advocated by men of more brilliancy of 
 style than solidity of judgment ; and the importance 
 of a broad and generous foundation for professional 
 study must be insisted on ; but there is no valid 
 defence for the prolongation of what is essentially 
 an elementary course into the years of full manhood. 
 
 It is true that the average of human life is longer 
 than it was centuries ago, and that ' Old John of 
 Gaunt, time-honor'd Lancaster ', would be only in 
 his prime if he were our contemporary ; but life is 
 not yet long enough to dawdle away the early years 
 of manhood over a course of study which does not 
 bring any fresh set of intellectual muscles into play, 
 and does not convey any information that is directly 
 useful for the future career. 
 
 Now observe the consequence. The proportion 
 of college-bred men is sensibly lessening in the 
 country, and that not to the advantage of society 
 or of government. Men who take a hard, practical 
 view of life will not give up their sons from eighteen 
 to twenty-two, will not suffer them to be cut off 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 7 1 
 
 from all the valuable connections which are formed 
 at that important period ; and so boys who might 
 have had a college training up to nineteen or twenty 
 are put to work at sixteen or seventeen, and the 
 narrow-minded fathers are blamed, and sermons are 
 preached about the worship of mammon and the 
 decline of culture. The old-fashioned curriculum 
 had its glaring defects, with its uniform grind for 
 the lower classes and the jumble of all manner of 
 sciences in the upper. This everybody admits. But 
 it was the college life after all that was the main 
 thing, the liberal atmosphere, the contact of fervid 
 minds, the putting forth of untried strength ; and 
 while the prescribed college course was a small 
 affair to an active mind, it actually presented points 
 of interest and incitement enough to the better class 
 of students, and the leisure it afforded was not an 
 unmixed evil. A much larger proportion of a man's 
 general reading is done in these early years than is 
 commonly supposed ; and that is so important a part 
 of an education that a course of study that exhausts 
 the student's whole time is far from desirable. And 
 this, to be frank, seems to be the great trouble with 
 the system of independent ' schools ' in those col 
 leges which follow the elective system, pure and 
 simple. Each professor, naturally sensitive for the 
 honor of his department, claims the utmost that can 
 be exacted of his students, and faithful attention 
 to the exercises of two or three such ' schools ' 
 exhausts the power of the student for mental effort; 
 and the result is a lack of intellectual mobility, a 
 certain hard, dry, professional habit of mind, a cer 
 tain attitude which makes everything appear in the 
 
72 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 light of puzzle, problem, exercise. Hence the old 
 curriculum was not so bad a thing for the boys for 
 whom it was intended. If not blessed in what it 
 did, it was at least blessed in much that it left 
 undone. If it did not make scholars of the highest 
 type, it did not prevent individual expansion. How 
 is it with the new curriculum, which is followed by 
 so many grown-up men now ? It is certainly much 
 more crowded than it used to be, and the variety of 
 subjects taught, great enough before, is bewildering 
 now. This very multiplicity, however, has made 
 some plan of relief necessary, and in many of our 
 colleges a part of the studies is elective and a certain 
 bifurcation takes place, in some after the freshman, 
 in some after the sophomore year, in others accord 
 ing to plans of marvellous complication. Does not 
 this meet the wants of the time ? Is not this the 
 true way, this gradual differentiation and specializa 
 tion ? But it would seem and this must be said 
 with reserve that this elective work is conducted 
 not in the university, but in the college spirit. It is 
 after all essentially a hearing of lessons, not scientific 
 study, still less personal research. Reading harder 
 Greek, harder Latin, does not, of itself, constitute 
 university work. It always has been, and always 
 will be, a question when hard reading is to be taken 
 up. English schoolboys still read, and American 
 schoolboys used to read, such authors as Aeschylus, 
 Thucydides and Tacitus, authors that men like 
 Friedrich August Wolf and August Boeckh main 
 tained should be reserved for the university. A 
 few specimens might be given in the gymnasium, 
 says Boeckh, but nothing more. For the proper 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 73 
 
 appreciation of such authors a more advanced age, 
 a wider knowledge of history, is necessary ; and 
 some might consider it a positive injury to under 
 take the wrestling with these intellectual athletes 
 before the muscles are sufficiently strengthened. 
 Still, that may be an over-rigid rule. The hardest 
 authors will always yield some benefit to the younger 
 student, 1 while the easiest will always offer problems 
 enough to the most mature : 
 
 'Anders lesen Knaben den Terenz, 
 
 Anders Grotius '; 
 Mich, Knaben, argerte die Sentenz 
 
 Die ich nun gelten lassen muss.' * 
 
 It is not, then, a question of harder or easier 
 Latin and Greek : it is a question of method. It is 
 not a question of more complicated problems in 
 mathematics, or the learning of more recondite laws 
 of physics. It is a question of method. The student 
 should be taken into the workshop of the professor, 
 should see him work, should have the tools put into 
 his hand, and should be taught to use them. In 
 most of our higher classes, if not in all, the mastery 
 
 1 In the preface to his school edition of the 'Agamemnon ', 
 Enger has well said : ' Wohl wird der Schiller nicht Alles 
 nach seiner tieferen Bedeutung zu erfassen im Stande sein, 
 Vieles wird sich seinem Verstandnisse ganz entziehen, Man- 
 ches wird er nur ahnen und als einen spater zu hebenden 
 Schatz aufbewahren : allein dies wird nicht bios bei der Lecture 
 des Aeschylos, es wird bei alien alien Klassikern und in noch 
 weit hsherm Grade bei den neueren der Fall sein.' That the 
 modern classics are really harder than the ancient, and that the 
 scientific study of modern languages really requires a far more 
 extensive apparatus than that of the ancient, ought to be no 
 secret to any one who has thought on the subject. 
 
 8 Goethe, Zahme Xenien IV. 
 
74 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 of the text-book is the main thing, and, if there are 
 lectures, the lectures are little more than compila 
 tions, little more than text-books in the making, or 
 else mere popular discourses, with most of the dis 
 advantages and few of the elegances of the French 
 method, which von Sybel has characterized so well 
 in his memorable discourse on the German univer 
 sities (2d ed., Bonn, 1874), a method which Breal 
 deplores so sincerely in his book entitled 'Quelques 
 mots sur 1'instruction publique en France, 3 e ed., 
 Paris, 1874.' Breal admits that, in the higher 
 French schools, the great questions of history and 
 philology are set forth with talent, that new ideas 
 are at once taken hold of and elucidated ; but he 
 remarks with justice that it is one thing to propa 
 gate science, another to teach it, and says boldly 
 that the part of a popularizer (vulgarisateur), useful 
 in itself, is not that which is proper for a professor ; 
 at least, it is only half of his task. The professor 
 should begin the investigation over again, and 
 repeat the work of the originator in order to enable 
 his pupils to continue the discoveries made by their 
 seniors. A point of literary history cleared up by 
 a study of the sources, a text critically studied, an 
 inscription well commented, is worth much more 
 for pupils than any number of brilliant lectures on 
 language, literature, the discoveries at Mycenae and 
 Olympia, or the latest finds in Attica and Bceotia. 
 True, the American professor, so long as he keeps 
 within the walls of his college, is not exposed to the 
 same danger of consulting the tastes of his audience 
 and of catering for a fastidious public from year to 
 year, as is his French colleague ; but the same false 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. ?$ 
 
 conception of the academic lecture is apt to prevail. 
 The courses are so short that it is hard to do more 
 than give the results of investigations; there is no 
 incitement to personal research on the part of the 
 instructor, and so the lecture falls very far short of 
 being the powerful instrument it might be for 
 quickening the scientific spirit by scientific example. 
 It does not follow by any means from what is said, 
 that popular lectures, popular in the best sense, do 
 not serve an important end. The masters of the 
 various departments should, from time to time, put 
 themselves into sympathetic communication with 
 the people, but 'popular science', as a recent journal 
 has well remarked, 'is commonly taken to mean 
 the superficial exposition of results by a speaker or 
 writer, who himself understands them imperfectly, 
 to the intent that his hearers or readers may be 
 able to talk about them without understanding 
 them at all.' Popular lectures of this sort ought to 
 have no place in the universe, much less in the 
 university; and no lectures however 'good' they 
 may be, can have a quickening, moulding effect, 
 unless their subject-matter is penetrated by the liv 
 ing, plastic forces of personal research and personal 
 communion with the sources. How many courses 
 of lectures in our colleges come up to this standard 
 would be an unpleasant question to press. And 
 yet without such lectures, or at all events without 
 exercises of some sort animated by this spirit, there 
 can be no university life. If we are to be forever 
 slavishly dependent on Germany for results, let us 
 acknowledge it frankly and make no further claim 
 to anything beyond secondary education ; but if we 
 
76 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 can employ scientific methods, where are we to 
 begin the discipline if not in our colleges and 
 college-universities? The physicist will not assert 
 that there is lack of material ; the comparative ety 
 mologist has a wide field before him, with only a 
 few acres tilled ; the student of English has no end 
 of work to do ; but the prospect does not seem so 
 inviting to the classical philologian, and the cry 
 goes up that the Germans have occupied all the 
 ground, and even as the wail ascends some German 
 proves that yet there is room, by doing something 
 of moment that had not yet been thoroughly done. 
 The problem is one which must be faced by every 
 classical scholar who has the perpetuity of his 
 department at heart. As on the one hand the clas 
 sical philologians must not divorce themselves from 
 general culture, so on the other they must see to it 
 that they do scientific work and have scientific work 
 done, that they live in a scientific atmosphere. Even 
 as an educational element the value of personal re 
 search is inestimable ; and no one who has seen the 
 rapid unfolding of the powers of the mind under 
 the quickening influence of independent work, the 
 firmer grasp, the more exact knowledge, the more 
 immediate perception of the objects of study, could 
 readily consent to shut up these expanding faculties 
 to schoolboy task-work. And schoolboy task-work 
 is most of that which goes under the name of ad 
 vanced courses. But still the question will recur : 
 What can we do ? How can we find material for 
 scientific investigation in classical philology, such 
 as would be suitable for the students in our higher 
 classes? To answer such a question may seem 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. ?/ 
 
 presumptuous, and yet some answer is demanded ; 
 for if an answer be not given, the natural inference 
 will be that the asking of the question is a con 
 fession of failure, as indeed the power of originat 
 ing lines of research is a prime requisite for the 
 university teacher. It is true that the classical 
 philologian in this country is much hampered by 
 the want of books, as there is not a library in 
 America that would meet the requirements of a wide 
 research. But it must be remembered that good 
 work has been done elsewhere with resources as 
 scanty; and so long as the texts of the ancient 
 authors themselves are accessible, there is enough 
 to do in the way of investigation into the gram 
 matical and rhetorical usages of various writers, into 
 the historical development of the classic languages, 
 into the attitude of the antique mind toward the 
 great problems of politics, of religion, of art, enough 
 in all conscience to keep us busy. All these are 
 problems, it is true, which have occupied the atten 
 tion of Transatlantic scholars, yet they are all 
 problems the solution of which can be reached by 
 the study of the sources themselves ; and the very 
 fact that we are in a measure cut off from the tide 
 of treatises with which Germany is flooded is a 
 positive advantage,' if it only sends us back to the 
 fountain-head. If Americans wish to accomplish 
 anything in classical philology, they must perforce 
 make independent studies ; and the training for this 
 kind of work should begin within the years now 
 ordinarily occupied by college lessons. 
 
 But while we insist on the importance of an intro 
 duction to scientific method in the later years of 
 
78 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 college life, or as we should prefer to have it, the 
 first years of university life, there is a growing ten 
 dency to introduce so-called scientific methods into 
 elementary instruction, of which something should 
 be said before this paper is closed. In a treatise on 
 the Homeric Question published a number of years 
 ago, Georg Curtius warned young teachers against 
 introducing the subject into their class instruction 
 of boys. Such warnings are always needed. A 
 progressive man is always in danger of being 
 misled by his own interest in a recent discus 
 sion or a new development; and every one who 
 has had much experience in lecturing will recog 
 nize the great difficulty of distributing a course 
 properly, owing very much to this temptation to 
 expand on themes which are of immediate per 
 sonal interest to the lecturer. This disproportion 
 may not do so much harm in a university course, 
 the object of which is to incite rather 'than to in 
 struct ; but in an elementary course there is great 
 danger of overlooking the real object to be had in 
 view. Now, there does not seem to be any special 
 peril to the classics from over-abundance of literary 
 speculation on the part of our teachers of junior 
 classes. There are few American instructors who 
 are guilty of enveloping their pupils with the 
 fog of the Homeric Question, or of plunging them 
 into the ocean of debate concerning the Platonic 
 canon. But there is a false method which is be 
 coming more and more popular, one against which 
 it is dangerous to protest, because it is difficult so 
 to guard the protest that it will not Tbe misunder 
 stood. Latin and Greek are to be studied primarily 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 79 
 
 for the knowledge of the life of the Roman and 
 Greek people as manifested in language and litera 
 ture, and not because Latin and Greek are con 
 venient vehicles for the communication of a certain 
 amount of linguistic philosophy or comparative 
 grammar. Such matters are entirely out of place in 
 the early stages of study. The beginner has to do 
 with results chiefly, not processes ; and while these 
 results must not be taught in an inorganic way, 
 while no known falsehood must be tolerated because 
 of its supposed practical advantages, while regard 
 must be had to the mental training to be acquired 
 by the study of the grammar of the ancient lan 
 guages, as well as to the more subtle education of 
 the taste, it is a capital mistake to introduce a stu 
 dent into the maze of hypotheses in which the 
 formation of a language is involved before he has 
 any practical acquaintance with the language itself, 
 before he has any insight into the literature for the 
 sake of which chiefly the language is to be learned. 
 Let comparative grammar come in due time. There 
 is no nobler study ; and although its ample domain 
 gives large scope to pretenders and sciolists of every 
 degree, no classical philologian will now sneer at 
 its methods and disregard its results. It is only 
 through the comparative study of language that we 
 can get any answer to some of the most urgent 
 problems of classical study, and although it is some 
 what disheartening to find the great ' world-circum 
 navigator of languages ', Pott, so wofully deficient 
 in English as to construct the following sentence : 
 ' I will be drunk ; no shall me help ', in the fond 
 belief that it meant, ' I will be drowned, nobody 
 
8O CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 shall help me ', still we are not to be deterred by the 
 blunders of polyglots from paying our homage to 
 the genius and learning and thoroughness of many 
 illustrious workers in this department. 
 
 But this is not a question of the value of the 
 study, the value of the results, the position of the 
 masters of the science. It is a question of time and 
 stage. An attempt tp study one of the classic lan 
 guages scientifically, as it is called, from the outset 
 must lead to one of two results : either the unhesi 
 tating acceptance as proved facts of a number of 
 provisional hypotheses, or the despairing see-saw 
 between conflicting views, which the novice has 
 neither the knowledge nor the experience to con 
 trol ; and it is hard to tell which of these is the 
 worse for the development of the young student. 
 In a science which is making such rapid progress, 
 or rather which shifts its ground so rapidly as com 
 parative etymology does, it is very dangerous to lay 
 down a rule ; and it is enough to call a smile to the 
 face of the most saturnine to see the favorite super 
 scription, ' Based on the certain results of compar 
 ative philology.' No sooner is a great point gained 
 than it is at once turned to practical account, and the 
 new theory is clapped into the grammar before it 
 has had time to cool, which generally means time 
 to shrink. There are results as certain as anything 
 can well be ; although, when we find that it has 
 been the fashion in certain quarters to attack such 
 a pillar and ground of the truth as Grimm's Law, 
 the question naturally arises : What is really safe ? 
 what can we state with absolute confidence ? It is 
 simply amusing to see the changes that take place 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 8 1 
 
 within a very few years in the theory of forms, in 
 the theory of phonetics. First the reflexive form 
 ation of the Greek middle is announced as a cer 
 tainty ; then, after that has been acquiesced in for 
 a while, the ingenious suggestion is made that the 
 middle is after all not a reflexive, and its termina 
 tions only indicate a peculiar differentiation from 
 the active ; then the originator of this theory takes 
 it all back and gives an improved edition of the first 
 theory ; and finally a sober judge, after a careful 
 survey of the ground, says that the theory is not 
 proved. Look at the theory of the connecting 
 vowel. It is a convenient expression, an appar 
 ently innocent expression ; and- yet many a man 
 has been tempted to wish that he had never been 
 born by reason of the connecting vowel. Is it 
 merely phonetic? Is it originally significant? 
 Vicarious protraction that is a fine phrase ! Vi 
 carious protraction or compensative lengthening 
 explains so many things. Length by nature takes 
 the place of length by position. It is a beautiful 
 principle, this satisfaction made for lost consonants ; 
 it leads to profound moral reflections, and is applied 
 with great zeal and zest where it does not belong. 
 So the old-fashioned explanation that 8l8ov is for 
 8i8o f as &?Xou for S^Xoe, is discarded, and we are 
 taught that didov is for didodi, the lost syllable 61 
 having been paid for by the lengthening of o into 
 ou. A few years pass by. Teachers and scholars 
 alike repeat this beautiful explanation, until it is 
 observed that unless the deceased consonants have 
 a certain amount of property, no damages will be 
 paid, and dead syllables, as such, bequeath no 
 
82 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 claims ; and so the old * unscientific ' explanation 
 of 8i8ov comes back, but the correction halts far 
 behind the mistake. Comparative syntax is the 
 latest born daughter of the new science, and not 
 the least attractive ; but she is too young to know 
 her own mind on some of the most important 
 points, and the utterance of to-day may be revoked 
 to-morrow. In short, all this is university work, 
 the essence of which is progress from hypothesis 
 to hypothesis, but it ought to have no place in 
 preliminary instruction. There is a tendency, 
 healthy in the main, to reduce the amount of ratio 
 cination in our grammars, to temper the severe 
 'metaphysics of the subjunctive mood', as it has 
 been called. May it not be time to watch the 
 encroachments of speculation on the exhibition of 
 the forms and their consequent use, and to see that 
 we do not commit ourselves in one year to an orig 
 inal locative signification for the infinitive, which we 
 shall a year or two after sadly retract in favor of 
 the dative, to be followed perhaps in a few months 
 by a judicious compromise between dative and 
 locative ? Nor would it be amiss to ask whether 
 the subject of phonetics does not need watching. 
 The proportions which the department has assumed 
 are appalling even to some professed philologians, 
 who find themselves in danger of being disbarred 
 by those who consider it the chief end of a student 
 of language to make himself master of the physical 
 side of speech. All this belongs to the univer 
 sity course, not to the college course proper, and 
 the mischievous effects of anticipating these studies 
 are showing themselves more and more. Vocab- 
 
CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 83 
 
 ulary is sacrificed to etymology, the knowledge of 
 the actual forms to the theoretical genesis of the 
 inflections, and time which might be spent in gain 
 ing a nearer acquaintance with the masterpieces of 
 antique literature is occupied with the deglutition 
 of the last ragotits of language-cookery ; and the 
 less the mastery of the subject on the part of the 
 teacher or writer, the greater seems to be the desire 
 to make the treatment ' scientific ' ; and so in the 
 plastic age of study the golden opportunity of 
 appropriating the peculiar value of the classic lan 
 guages is thrown away for the sake of imparting 
 the elements of a science which cannot be taught as 
 a science without going back at least as far as the 
 Indo-European basis of our family. 
 
 It does not mend the matter at all to plead that 
 the same tendencies are to be noticed in the Ger 
 man gymnasia; that the actual reading of the classic 
 authors is there also made of too little account in 
 the course of study ; that there as here the ancients 
 are used more as vehicles for intellectual exercise 
 than as food for mind and heart. It is not the object 
 of the writer of this paper to hold up the German 
 gymnasia as faultless models, nor yet to advocate 
 the unconditional imitation of German universities. 
 Certainly, when thoughtful German scholars like 
 von Sybel, and experienced teachers like Peter, 
 warn their own countrymen against the false 
 methods that are prevalent there, it were well for us 
 to pause before adopting every new device in teach 
 ing that is sanctioned by German authority. 
 
 How far the methods of the German university 
 are applicable to our educational life is a question 
 
84 CLASSICS AND COLLEGES. 
 
 which it is too late to open at the close of an article 
 already too long ; and it is possible that further sug 
 gestion may be as unwelcome as further fault-find 
 ing is sure to be. In brief, what we want is more 
 thorough conviction on the part of our teachers of 
 Greek and Latin, better drill and less science in the 
 elementary classes, a wider range of reading for 
 literary purposes, a separation of university work 
 and college work in the last years of student life, 
 and a resolute purpose to make an honorable posi 
 tion for the American people in this department of 
 thought and culture as in others. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA 
 
 AND 
 
 CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA AND 
 CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 
 
 An attempt to define university work would in 
 evitably end in so protracted a discussion of the 
 idea of the university itself, that little room would 
 be left for the proper theme of this paper. 1 The 
 term is undoubtedly vague. In England it has a 
 different meaning from what it has in Germany; 
 and in this country, although the ideal to which we 
 are tending is rather German than English, the tra 
 ditions of our older institutions of learning and the 
 circumstances of our nationality necessarily modify 
 the conception of university work. If we consider 
 it to be the crowning exercise of an educational 
 system, then we are confronted by the question, 
 Does university work differ from college work in 
 kind or in degree, or in both ? This question also 
 cannot be answered categorically. In Oxford and 
 Cambridge, where the colleges constitute the uni 
 versity, it cannot be answered at all ; nor are we 
 aided in the solution of the problem by those 
 Boards of Examiners which assume the name of 
 universities, while discharging only one function of 
 a university. In Germany, if we consider the 
 
 'This essay, published in the Princeton Review for May, 
 1879, is the expansion of my presidential address to the 
 American Philological Association at their Saratoga meeting, 
 July n, 1878. 
 
88 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 gymnasium as corresponding in some general way 
 to our college, the answer will vary according to 
 the department. In some directions the gymna 
 sium overlaps what we should consider university 
 work ; in others it leaves too much to the univer 
 sity teacher. Indeed, complaints are rife enough 
 in Germany that students come up to the university 
 unprepared for scientific work in the classics ; and 
 the older the teachers are, the further back do they 
 push the golden age when young men were fully 
 acquainted with all the technicalities of Latin and 
 Greek grammar before they entered the sacred pre 
 cincts of the university. The professors of my 
 student days used to hold up their hands over 
 eccentric formations and erratic accents and declare 
 that it was far otherwise when their Plancus was 
 consul, and the same doleful strain runs through the 
 records of each preceding generation. But after 
 making large deductions in view of this well-known 
 tendency toward the exaltation of the past, there 
 must be some ground for the complaint ; and, 
 at any rate, when we look so much to German 
 models, it is the part of wisdom to guard against 
 the evils which our leaders themselves deplore. It 
 is true that there, as here, the voices of the reformers 
 are not in unison : that some complain of the mass 
 of subjects which must be got up for the examina 
 tions and so preclude the possibility of special 
 research, while others maintain that early special 
 ization is the bane of the intellectual life of the Ger 
 man student of to-day, and that in consequence of 
 a narrowing range of vision everything is becoming 
 hopelessly microscopic and hopelessly dry. But, 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 89 
 
 in spite of this difference of opinion, it is not hard 
 to see that the danger for any university life that we 
 may have or may initiate will come rather from the 
 tendency to specialization than from the attempt to 
 take in too large an area of study, because that 
 university life will be moulded mainly by young 
 specialists, bred in the schools of Germany, who 
 will very naturally measure the importance of 
 everything by the standard of their own early suc 
 cess. The upshot will be that the crowded curric 
 ulum of the college will be followed by university 
 courses in which detailed study and minute inves 
 tigation will not leave time for a general view of 
 any one great department of science or literature. 
 In short, we shall have the specialist part of a Ger 
 man university based on the conglomerate of an 
 American college. Such an incongruous structure 
 can hardly be regarded with complacency as the 
 best outcome of the arduous work of American 
 teachers. University as well as college should 
 be American, meet the needs of our civilization, 
 and bear the stamp of our national character. In 
 the preceding paper I have stated my conviction 
 that a great deal would be gained by frankly 
 recognizing the necessity that the work now done 
 by the colleges should be redistributed. That ac 
 complished, and our secondary schools brought up 
 to a higher state of efficiency, we should have the 
 elements for the solution of the problem of univer 
 sity work in America ; and in the faith that these 
 reforms will yet be wrought, I venture to antici 
 pate that future and face a question, on the 
 answer to which our higher intellectual life is 
 
9O UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 suspended. For, as nearly all the learned activity 
 of Germany proceeds from the universities, to which 
 the French themselves attribute their defeat in the 
 late struggle, so in this country, owing to the 
 absence of any large class of men who enjoy at 
 once cultivation and inherited wealth, the scientific 
 work of the country must come mainly from those 
 who are teachers, and who have to teach for the 
 means of subsistence. In England a considerable 
 portion of the best work that is done has no aca 
 demic character, and it is not to be denied that the 
 advantage is not wholly on the side of the German. 
 The Englishman breathes a freer air and brings to 
 his work a fresher realism than is possible for 
 most German professors, whose wide reading and 
 quick sympathy cannot counteract the peculiar 
 limitations of their existence limitations, however, 
 which are rapidly falling away in the new political 
 life of the German people. The American pro 
 fessor, then, like the German, is not only the 
 teacher of his class but the teacher of his nation ; 
 and we must look to our universities and colleges 
 for the bulk of our scientific work mathematical, 
 physical, historical, and linguistic. How to pro 
 mote that work, how to make our highest educa 
 tional institutions most effective for at once ad 
 vancing the empire of knowledge and training the 
 future leaders of American thought, is a question 
 of the gravest importance ; and while no one man 
 can hope to master the problem in all its bearings, 
 every observant teacher, every scholar on whom 
 rests the spirit of his vocation, can aid in the prac 
 tical solution, if it be but by a single suggestion or 
 by an earnest aspiration. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 9 1 
 
 As was intimated in the beginning of this paper, 
 no attempt will be made to mark off sharply the 
 boundaries between university work and college 
 work. There is much ground that is necessarily 
 common to both, whatever theoretical difference 
 you may make. The material, to a considerable 
 extent, is the same, and in certain departments the 
 method must be the same. The student of a Ger 
 man university, if we take that as our type, has to 
 traverse many of the authors whom he toiled over 
 in the gymnasium ; and the university student, if 
 he is to succeed, must be content to say his San 
 skrit paradigms at twenty-one as meekly as he said 
 his Latin paradigms at ten. Still the university 
 differs, or, let us say, ought to differ, from the col 
 lege, inasmuch as it should be a great laboratory of 
 systematic research. On the other hand, it differs 
 from an academy of sciences, inasmuch as it should 
 be a great centre of instruction. To the combina 
 tion and interaction of research and training, the 
 German universities owe their efficiency and their 
 influence ; and whatever modification German meth 
 ods must undergo before they can be made fruitful 
 in our civilization, these two elements must always 
 be associated in our highest work. True, an able 
 explorer may be an indifferent teacher ; a good 
 teacher may not have the spirit of initiative which 
 leads to successful investigation ; but the two fac 
 ulties, though not always in perfect balance, are 
 seldom wholly divorced, and a university professor 
 should possess both. Much of the wrong-headed- 
 ness of unacademic scholars, wrong-headedness 
 that seriously impairs the scientific value of their 
 
Q2 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 results, comes from the want of contact with other 
 minds ; and the teacher who is forced by the exi 
 gencies of instruction to formulate his views may, 
 indeed, be exposed to the great peril of premature 
 dogmatism ; but if he is an honest man, he is com 
 pelled to grapple with problems which he might 
 otherwise have left in abeyance ; if he is a sympa 
 thetic man, there is a woe upon him unless he con 
 quer his hearer's conviction ; if he is an observant 
 man, he will not fail to see new avenues of thought 
 opening through the perplexities of his scholars. 
 We often read of the solitary thinker's long strug 
 gles in the dark with some great question, from 
 which the blessing of an answer is at last extorted, 
 but we do not always know the full history of the 
 problem, nor what pupil's keen objection or curious 
 inquiry first evoked the contest. To the investi 
 gator, then, the teacher's function is not, certainly 
 need not be, a mere clog on his work of personal 
 research. Nor should the man who is conscious of 
 an especial aptitude for teaching be content with 
 the orderly arrangement and the systematic com 
 munication of other people's results. He must not 
 only judge for himself, he must work for himself; 
 and while special research has, it is true, the draw 
 back that it tends to make the course of instruction 
 less symmetrical, what is lost in the rounded com 
 pleteness of form is more than made up by the 
 kindling life that goes forth from every one who is 
 engaged in the ardent quest of truth ; and so thor 
 oughly correlated is all knowledge, that there are 
 subtle lines of connection between the most remote 
 regions of scientific study which vitalize theme and 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 93 
 
 method through the whole intervening space. This 
 thesis is far from being new, but it is susceptible of 
 ever new and ever fresh illustration, and the career 
 of any of the great men who have been at once great 
 investigators and great teachers would be a profit 
 able study for those who wish to make their aca 
 demic life something worthier than a perfunctory 
 discharge of mechanical duties. On the selfish and 
 the indolent such lessons would be wasted. 
 
 But, not to incur the charge of mere declamation 
 about ideals, which may be tolerated only in a holi 
 day address, let us ask ourselves what can be done 
 here in America for the furtherance of a higher 
 standard of work both in research and teaching; 
 and this inquiry I desire to bring within the range 
 of those studies with which I am personally most 
 familiar. And yet I am not without hope that what 
 I shall have to say of the subject of research and 
 teaching in classical philology may have a wider 
 application, and so be not unwelcome to those who 
 believe with me that it is not in vain that the Amer 
 ican student has been endowed with that ' singular 
 buoyancy and elasticity ' which, according to Dean 
 Stanley, is the marked peculiarity of our people ; 
 not in vain our unequalled adaptability, our quick 
 perception, our straightforwardness of intellectual 
 motion. 1 We have the defects of our good qual 
 ities, no doubt ; but those defects do not preclude 
 the possibility of scholarly work of a high order. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that the outlook 
 for the classical philologian is not encouraging. 
 
 1 Even Mr. Matthew Arnold conceded this. We Americans 
 ' think straight and see clear '. B. L. G. 
 
94 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 Let us imagine a young man fresh from the best 
 German schools. Such a supposition would have 
 been construed as a personal allusion twenty-five 
 years ago ; it is hardly more definite now than to 
 suppose a graduate of Harvard or of Yale. Our 
 young friend begins his novitiate either as a tutor 
 in one of our large universities, or as a professor in 
 some half-endowed college. The transition is one 
 of the most painful that can be imagined. Even 
 the return of the mythical good American from the 
 Elysian fields of Paris could be scarcely less dis 
 tressing than the descent of the enthusiastic student 
 from the academic heights of German university life 
 to the unromantic levels of the American class 
 room. If our hero had spent a semester or more 
 at a minor university, or followed the exercises of 
 a gymnasium for a few months, the feeling of exal 
 tation might have worn off and the fall might 
 have been broken. But he comes from the best 
 in quality and the richest in resource to our average. 
 In the meagrely furnished library he misses his 
 favorite books, or rather books which by frequent 
 citation he seems to know ; in the reading-room he 
 cannot find the journals so familiar to eye and ear. 
 He has no one who will suffer him to talk about 
 the themes of his personal research or even the 
 absorbing topic of his doctor-dissertation, because 
 there is no one who has a like attention to exact 
 of him in turn. His duties are eminently dis 
 tasteful. Instead of following the history of a con 
 struction, chasing an etymon through a score of 
 languages, getting at the sources of an historian, 
 analysing the style of an orator, he has to listen to 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 95 
 
 translations of Xenophon's Anabasis, to correct 
 exercises in which Darius and Parysatis continue to 
 have two sons in all the moods and tenses, and, 
 what is worst of all, he is often waked up out of his 
 learned dreams to find that the irregular Greek 
 verbs, which he once fancied he knew well enough, 
 are to be an object of steady contemplation for the 
 rest of his natural life, and that with all his gettings 
 he has still no end of work to do in the mechanical 
 mastery, so to speak, of the language to which he 
 has devoted himself. The situation is grim, and 
 there is little help from without. Sometimes he is 
 utterly alone. Sometimes the traditions of the col 
 lege or university do not favor easy intercourse 
 between the principal and the subordinate teachers. 
 But even when the older colleague is accessible and 
 has gone through the same experience, even when 
 counsel and sympathy are not far to seek, still men 
 of the younger generation being naturally prone 
 to consider their case one of especial hardship, 
 prefer to nurse their own bitterness ; and after a few 
 years of repining at the situation, a few years of 
 sneering at the possibility of American scholarship, 
 they go the way of all the rest, edit some over- 
 edited school classic, translate some convenient 
 manual, get up a text-book of some sort, and in the 
 lapse of time look with half-pitying, half-envious 
 eyes on the lads who come back from their studies 
 abroad conscious, as their elders were once, of a 
 special divinity within them. And this is the history 
 of many of our best men not all their history, for 
 it were not only foolish but criminal to measure a 
 professor's efficiency simply by his written work. 
 There is often a sublime self-denial in the resolute 
 
g UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 concentration of a teacher on the business of the 
 class-room; and the noiseless scholarship that 
 leavens generation after generation of pupils is of 
 more value to the world of letters than folios of pre 
 tentious erudition. It was with profound insight 
 that the Greeks called higher study by the same 
 name as personal intercourse. To the Greek, 
 university students were of o-wovres ; and he who has 
 made faithful use of this power of personal influence 
 shall have his reward, even if he has nothing to show 
 in black and white. Still, if individual research is, 
 as we have seen, a necessary element of university 
 work, it should not be confined to the four walls of 
 lecture-room or laboratory ; it must find expression 
 where it can encounter criticism, where its results 
 can be corrected, if they need correction, where its 
 method can direct and its life inspire others, to say 
 nothing of that recognition which every true scholar 
 craves from true scholars. It is sad to think that so 
 plain a text should still need a preacher, but it will 
 not need a preacher long. Even at the slow rate 
 at which our philological life is accumulating, 
 closer contact, and hence quickened activity, is inevi 
 table. Every year the ranks of American philolo- 
 gians receive accessions of ambitious young men, 
 and the chief care must be to keep their zeal alive. 
 To this end the existing organizations are not suf 
 ficient. The American Philological Association 
 a comparatively recent institution and its elder 
 sister, the American Oriental Society, are praise 
 worthy expressions of the desire for a better state of 
 things ; but everybody knows that these companies 
 of scholars depend for their existence on the per 
 sonal influence and reputation of a few distin- 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 97 
 
 guished men, and the meetings are too infrequent, 
 the attendance too meagre, and the elements too 
 varying to encourage the hope that the redemption 
 of philology for which we pray is to come from 
 them. Even in Germany, with its hosts of scholars 
 and its narrower territory, the annual conventions 
 of philologians do not seem to be so successful as 
 they were in time past ; and what if Germany de 
 pended on those meetings for the inspiration of an 
 entire year ? Indeed the question seems rather to 
 be how to infuse vitality into our yearly meetings, 
 and thus preserve these organizations for better 
 times, than how to quicken through them the life of 
 American philology. Both these associations to 
 which I have referred would be roused to higher 
 activity if there were similar centres of work all 
 over the country, Wherever there is a college or 
 university the professors and the advanced stu 
 dents of whom a handful might always be found 
 should unite, not in a club for reading little essays 
 and for miscellaneous talk, but for some kind of 
 work, work in which all should participate. In 
 these minor associations lines of research would be 
 opened, material accumulated, crudities worked off, 
 and papers prepared for publication. It is an open 
 question how far such associations should be made 
 a part of the official duties of professors and stu 
 dents, because the official tends to the perfunctory ; 
 but they should have a place made for them in the 
 organic plan of the institution. 1 These gatherings, 
 
 1 The hundredth meeting of the Johns Hopkins University 
 Philological Association, which has ' a place in the organic 
 plan ' of the university, was held in the month of February, 
 1890. B. L. G. 
 
98 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 by bringing the older and younger men together, 
 would do much to thaw the reserve of the hier 
 archical relations which we have inherited from our 
 kin beyond the sea, and by stimulating production 
 would make the establishment of a medium of 
 philological intercommunication a more urgent 
 necessity than it is felt to be now. The want of 
 such a medium is admitted in some languid way, 
 but there seems as yet to be no acute sense of the 
 privation, and it certainly betokens great supineness 
 on the part of our scholars that a country which 
 boasts a Journal of Speculative Philosophy should 
 not have even a solitary periodical devoted to a 
 science which counts its professed votaries by hun 
 dreds, if not by thousands, and that our professors 
 and teachers should be satisfied with consigning an 
 occasional paper to the slow current of a volume of 
 transactions, or exposing a stray lucubration to 
 struggle for notice amidst the miscellaneous matter 
 of a review or the odds and ends of an educational 
 magazine. 1 No greater need than a regular channel 
 of intercommunication among the philologians of 
 the country and such associations as have been sug 
 gested would quicken the sense of want, and the 
 need would become a demand. 
 
 Local associations and a common organ would 
 do much as incentives to research. Let us now 
 look at the sphere of research and ask, Is there any 
 work for Americans to do in the department of 
 classical philology any work for which they are 
 
 1 This sentence led to the establishment of the American 
 Journal of Philology, which I have edited to the best of my 
 ability for ten years, and the end is not yet. B. L. G. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 99 
 
 especially fitted either by natural bent or peculiar 
 environment? Or, to put the question in its mild 
 est form, Is there any work in which they are not 
 at too great a disadvantage as compared with their 
 European brethren ? The temptation to answer the 
 question in the negative is very strong, and the 
 classical scholar is almost excusable for yielding to 
 despondency when he considers the problem of 
 truly philological, not merely school-book work, 
 under the conditions of American life. Who is a 
 stranger to this feeling, and who has a more bitter 
 experience of it than those of us who for a large 
 segment of their intellectual existence were cut off 
 not only from contact with those who were pursu 
 ing the same line of study and pressing forward 
 toward the same ideals, but cut off from new books, 
 new journals, nay, every sign of life from without, 
 now by the pillar of fire which is called war, now by 
 the pillar of cloud which is called poverty? But 
 there is no need for any true philologian to lose heart 
 under any circumstances that leave him access to 
 the great originals on which our ultimate knowledge 
 of antiquity must largely depend, and the com 
 plaints of the want of apparatus, natural as they are, 
 must not be suffered to serve as a cover for in 
 dolence. Some of the greatest discoveries in phy 
 sics have been made by the help of very simple 
 apparatus, and the most learned men are not always 
 those who have easiest access to the largest libraries. 
 Still, no one who has to consider the future of 
 higher classical work in this country can blink this 
 question ; and while it is impossible to discuss the 
 subject in detail here, some disposition must be 
 
IOO UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 made of it. In the first place, then, the disparity 
 between European and American resources is dim 
 inishing. The increased facilities of intercommun 
 ication and the new organizations for controlling 
 the mass of minor philological monographs enable 
 Americans to work with almost the same advantages 
 as their European fellows. Every important acces 
 sion to philological literature may be laid on our 
 tables a few days after publication, and in the matter 
 of appropriation and assimilation of Continental 
 results, Americans, partly by reason of their train 
 ing, partly by reason of their greater receptivity, are 
 often months and years in advance of their English 
 cousins, who never seem fully awake to the merits 
 of a book until it has acquired sufficient reputation 
 to compel a translation into English not to speak 
 of the French, whose national weakness hitherto 
 has been to neglect work done outside of their own 
 borders. Indeed, when we consider the rapid 
 growth of our American libraries, the rapid advance 
 of bibliography in this country; when we reflect 
 that a large portion of the volumes that cumber 
 European collections is practically useless, and that 
 the annual appropriations to some of our great 
 libraries will soon enable us to compete with all but 
 the very largest in the world ; when we look at our 
 accession-lists, as they are published from time to 
 time, and compare the slow increment of some 
 university and gymnasium libraries of Germany, in 
 which, for all that, excellent work is done we ought 
 to take shame to ourselves for complaining as 
 loudly as we do. And even if the average Amer 
 ican scholar is not so well off in this regard as the 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. IOI 
 
 average European, still he should bear in mind that, 
 after all, the range of authorities is not so great, the 
 truly indispensable books not so numerous, as 
 might seem at first. What sensible man in editing 
 a classic would undertake to read every edition, say, 
 of the much-edited Horace? What student of 
 Sophocles would deem it his duty to master every 
 treatise in Genthe's catalogue ? Especially ought 
 we to practise a little philosophy as to the value of 
 some of the inaccessible fruits of foreign learning, 
 those two or three berries on the top of the upper 
 most bough, four or five on the outmost fruitful 
 branches thereof. A well-known German house 
 offers for sale sixty thousand dissertations. If you 
 have a subject in hand, send for everything in the 
 line of your work. You will doubtless get a fair 
 proportion, and when you have read half a dozen, 
 remember that those you have not got are no better 
 than those you have got, and do not mourn as those 
 who are without hope for the missing treatises. So 
 the failure to secure this or that ' doctor-dissertation ' 
 ought not to fill the investigator with hopeless 
 gloom. The ordinary ' doctor-dissertation ' is a thing 
 to be written, not necessarily a thing to be read. 
 It is a vindication of the young man's right to walk 
 alone; but in the rarest instances does it give him 
 a right to guide others. Not unfrequently these 
 dissertations have, at all events, the semblance of 
 being inspired, and the disciple rides his master's 
 hobby out for an airing. Sometimes indeed very 
 frequently in the present drift of study the novice 
 is instructed to make collections in certain direc 
 tions, and such collections may possibly be used 
 
IO2 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 by others when an organic principle is discovered to 
 vivify them. In that case special investigations into 
 the usage of individual authors may be turned to 
 account, although so closely are form and spirit 
 interfused that the lack of a generous command of 
 the whole subject is apt to mar even the mechanical 
 gathering up of phenomena. Still, these contribu 
 tions are the most useful that young men can make, 
 and as this is a line of work which is as open to 
 American students as to European, far be it from 
 me to underrate the importance of it in this attempt 
 to console those who find so many monographs 
 beyond their reach. But granting that all the 
 literature were accessible, every edition of every 
 author, every treatise on every subject, it would not 
 be desirable to dull the freshness of appreciation 
 which can only be gained by direct employment 
 with the text, with the theme. It is, indeed, dis 
 couraging in the extreme to find after a long search 
 that everything has been done, that your pet theory 
 has been anticipated and your pet illustration has 
 been used already ; but all these ' disillusionments ' 
 are not too high a price to pay for the confidence of 
 immediate knowledge and the rewards which cer 
 tainly await a careful and zealous explorer. The field 
 of antique literature is indeed vast, but it is a narrow 
 range as compared with the continent of commen 
 tary and dissertation, and any man who has a 
 scholar's familiarity with Latin and Greek can sur 
 vey with his own eyes large stretches of the original 
 sources of all our knowledge, and so gain new 
 points of view as well as new illustrations for his 
 theme. At first the lists of parallel passages, the 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 1 03 
 
 masses of references, in the great editions are simply 
 appalling, but a narrower examination will show 
 that the parallels and references are mainly tradi 
 tional, and that the individual contribution is slight. 
 It would be invidious to specify, invidious to point 
 out irrelevant citations, references to spurious books, 
 parallels from authors that do not belong to the 
 same sphere of illustration and owe the mention of 
 them to the accidental circumstance that the editor 
 has had them for one reason or another specially 
 in hand. These and similar blunders and short 
 comings are much more likely to catch the eye of a 
 student who has gone over the ground for himself 
 and has exhausted his own resources first, than if 
 he had been content to make a selection of the best 
 things of others and to salve his conscience by 
 hunting up a few little matters for himself. Let any 
 one try what can be done by close study of a text, 
 a complete absorption into the spirit of the author, 
 and by a wide range of reading in cognate direc 
 tions, before he says that Americans have nothing 
 to do except to repeat the references of German 
 books, or, at most, to run over the indexes of Ger 
 man editions. To have full organic value the pas 
 sages must be read in situ, and every one who 
 thinks as he reads it is not every one must have 
 been amused by the droll irrelevance of much that 
 is dragged in by way of illustrations, as well as 
 amazed to observe the number of side-lights that 
 have never been brought to bear on the theme under 
 consideration. A lurid rhetorical extravagance 
 of Juvenal is not worth a tithe so much to the 
 historian of manners and customs as a quiet hint of 
 
104 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 Epictetus which is not recorded in the index rerum, 
 from which so much learning is gathered. To be 
 sure, no speedy reward is to be expected for this 
 work except the delight of immediate vision and the 
 consciousness of faithful effort ; but either of these 
 should be enough for the true scholar. Just now 
 all that is expected of the average classical philolo- 
 gian in America is a meek reproduction of foreign 
 wisdom, but the way to better things is open, and if 
 the younger generation of American university 
 students will walk in it, if close acquaintance with 
 the sources become the great characteristic of our 
 philology, American books will receive higher 
 approval from foreign critics than the half-pitying 
 commendation with which they recognize the faith 
 ful use of the most recent German works on the 
 subjects treated. But in order to walk we must 
 stand on our feet, and, so standing, discard the lead 
 ing strings which so many like to feel, even if they 
 do not lean on them. 
 
 Of course if we persist in treading the eternal 
 round of school-books, there will be less room for 
 individual effort; but even in the most thoroughly 
 beaten track of classic literature there is something 
 yet to be learned, and if the work of philology is 
 looked at from the historic and the aesthetic side, 
 all of it requires to be done over again every few 
 years. With the progress of social science, with 
 the advancing knowledge of historical evolution, 
 the problems of antique culture, of antique legisla 
 tion, appear in new lights ; and these problems are 
 problems of abiding interest, because our own life 
 is involved in them. Then, apart from the general 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. IO5 
 
 improvement in method, with our modern facilities 
 of transmission and reproduction, American schol 
 ars need not be shut out from their share in the 
 positive gain to be derived from the newly-discov 
 ered inscriptions and monuments, which are adding 
 more and more definiteness to our conception of 
 the antique world, and are helping us to a better 
 understanding of the dialectic life of the .classic 
 languages, and the cantonal and provincial life of 
 the classic peoples. And not only so, but ancient 
 history has to be interpreted into terms of Amer 
 ican experience, and it would not be saying too 
 much to maintain that many of the aspects of 
 American life enable us to understand the ancients 
 better than some of our European contemporaries 
 can do. An audacious, inventive, ready-witted 
 people, Americans often comprehend the audacious, 
 inventive, ready-witted Greek a demi-mot, while the 
 German professor phrases, and the English ' don ' 
 rubs his eyes, and the French savant appreciates 
 the wrong half. No nation is quicker than ours to 
 take in the point of a situation, and there is no 
 reason discernible why Americans should not excel 
 in the solution of the most subtle problems of 
 antique manners and politics. 
 
 But, aside from the special aptitude of Americans 
 for the appreciation of the political and social rela 
 tions of antiquity, due partly to our peculiar endow 
 ment, partly to our peculiar position, the aesthetic 
 problems involved in the study of classical phil 
 ology shift from time to time : the great masters 
 ever need new interpreters. Even the best work 
 done forty or fifty years ago leaves us thoroughly 
 
IO6 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 dissatisfied. Not only is there that sense of short 
 coming which we feel in all translations, but there 
 is often a repulsive, often a ludicrous incongruity, 
 which shows a change of aesthetic basis. We might 
 not choose Swinburne to interpret Sappho for us ; 
 but Ambrose Phillips's versions, which hold their 
 own in our manuals by a ludicrous anachronism, 
 however admired in their day, are to us simply out 
 of the question except as specimens of the taste of 
 that time. Now Americans have proved and are 
 proving every day that they do not lack subtlety 
 of discernment, delicate appreciation, just compre 
 hension, and responsive sympathy in their literary 
 criticism ; but, so far as appears, there has been 
 little independent treatment of the antique authors 
 in this regard. Our aesthetics come with our gram 
 mars from Germany. All that we want is a little 
 candor, a little courage, courage that would come 
 from immediate study, and candor that would com 
 mand consideration, if not the candor of partial 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is true that the philologians of to-day, while 
 they are extending the lines of their investigations 
 in one direction, are narrowing them in another ; 
 and so sharply objective is the character of the 
 dominant school of philology that the very mention 
 of the word ' aesthetics ' is almost enough to send 
 the utterer into the camp of the litterateur and the 
 essayist. Yet it is my firm conviction that the 
 exact study of function will lead to valuable results 
 in aesthetics as well, that the comparative study of 
 syntax and the historical study of syntax are des 
 tined to give us a firmer foundation and a clearer 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. ID? 
 
 outline for the whole structure of style than would 
 have been thought possible some years ago. I 
 appreciate the danger of the study as well as its 
 fascinations. I know that leading critics have cau 
 tioned us against the hasty employment of gram 
 matical peculiarities as indications of spurious- 
 ness or genuineness. I am not unmindful of the 
 warning that ' a statistic of thought is a monstrous 
 delusion '; but it remains for me an ultimate prin 
 ciple that a true organism will make itself felt in 
 every fibre of its structure, and wherever you can 
 trace growth there you can find characteristic ; and 
 therefore it is not absurd to speak of the aesthetics 
 of syntax. But whether such a study can be put 
 on a scientific basis or not, there is no question 
 that the scientific study of syntax, or rather of 
 function, either as a part of comparative or as a 
 part of historical grammar, is a field which calls for 
 any number of laborers. A few pioneers have 
 opened avenues here and there, and monographs 
 on isolated points or separate authors are appearing 
 in greater and greater numbers in Germany. But 
 there is ample room for workers in this depart 
 ment ; and this is work that can be done as well 
 here as in Germany. It does not demand the vast 
 apparatus which other studies seem to postulate, 
 and it should be the business of our scholars all 
 over the land to lend their aid. It is not given to 
 every one to reach great generalizations ; it is given 
 to almost every one to observe, to collate, to 
 arrange. Here, then, is a province which has not 
 been so occupied that American philologians may 
 not find in it abundant room for the native sagacity, 
 
108 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 the unresting energy, which have distinguished our 
 people in other departments of science. It is, in 
 deed, a noble province, as the true philologian 
 knows, and he was a great scholar in other lines of 
 work who in his Encyclopaedia and Methodology 
 of Philology gives to grammar the place of honor, 
 and says, with an emphasis that means much in a 
 man of Boeckh's balance, ' Grammar is the highest 
 problem of science. It is the tipiyKbs ^aB^arwv for 
 philology.' 
 
 As for lexicography, 1 especially Greek lexico 
 graphy, no one can tell how much remains to be 
 done. The history of words or constructions is 
 seldom even so much as sketched, and the vast 
 department of synonyms, which must be approached 
 by each nationality from its own basis, is almost 
 untouched in English. 
 
 We cannot, then, vie with European scholars in 
 the study of antiquities except the Cypriote; we 
 shall not have the same facilities for making our 
 selves accomplished epigraphists or palaeographers, 
 although, by ever-multiplying means of reproduc 
 tion, inscriptions and manuscripts are not so remote 
 from us as they once were; but in the mastery of 
 the secrets of antique life, in the cultivation of our 
 perception for the harmony of antique expression, 
 in the patient disentanglement of the web of the 
 ancient languages, why should we acknowledge so 
 hopelessly our impotence? Why, at all events, 
 
 1 Unsere jetzigen Griechischen Lexika erheben sich, so dank- 
 bar man. den Fleiss der Sammler anerkennen muss, wesentlich 
 nicht iiber den Charakter iiothdurftiger Compilationen fur 
 praktische Zwecke. Zu tieferen Forschungen liegen nur Anfange 
 vor. G. Curtius, Leipziger Studien, i. 56. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 1 09 
 
 should we not do enough independent work to give 
 our teaching the impress and the inspiration of im 
 mediate knowledge ? 
 
 But enough has been said on this score. Let us 
 turn to the university as the training-school. A 
 university, as I have already said, is not an academy 
 of sciences, an academy of inscriptions and belles- 
 lettres. It is a school, and the professors are not 
 investigators merely they are teachers. But as the 
 German universities are more or less consciously 
 our ideal, and as the universities are doubtless for 
 Germany the great centres of learned research, it is 
 very natural that prominence, perhaps too much 
 prominence, should be given to this side of univer 
 sity work ; and nothing is more common than a 
 taunting comparison of the book outcome and the 
 money income of English and German professors. 
 If, however, a German university were nothing but 
 a book-making and a dissertation-manufacturing 
 community, it would not be worth so much to the 
 world as a power and an example. And if it should 
 appear that there is too much writing and too little 
 teaching, too much and too early specialization of 
 professor and student alike, too much formal lectur 
 ing and too little active interchange of ideas, we 
 shall do well to pause before we undertake to import 
 into our American educational system German 
 methods with which Germans themselves are becom 
 ing more and more dissatisfied to say nothing of 
 the disparateness of the German and the American 
 character. The German lecture-system has its ad 
 vantages. If a real teacher be in the chair, the mere 
 memory of his manner is a lifelong inspiration; but 
 
IIO UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 in too many instances the German course of lectures 
 is a book doled out in small slices/ plentifully gar 
 nished with the inevitable ' literature '; and as the 
 recollection of the droning delivery is anything but 
 pleasant, so the inspection in after days of the care 
 fully written notes often provokes the question, 
 What was the use of all this ? Inspiration there was 
 none ; the bibliography is antiquated in a few years ; 
 the crotchets of the professor seem to have hitched 
 themselves to the pages rather than the great 
 thoughts, if he had them, and Ritschl's outspoken 
 contempt for alte Hefte finds ample justification. It 
 is true that, as a rule, the great professors are well 
 worth hearing, if but for what we may call the 
 catalytic effect ; but it is also true that the students 
 attend too many lectures, and consequently fail to 
 work them up, and, which is no small evil, are often 
 forced to take them out of organic succession in 
 order to hear them at all. There is a theory that 
 studies are so arranged in Germany that any student 
 who stays at a university for the triennium or qua- 
 driennium, as may be demanded by the faculty, will 
 have an opportunity of making the round of the 
 different departments in their due order, but it is a 
 mere theory for philology certainly so far as the 
 smaller universities are concerned; and when we 
 
 1 This point is forcibly put by Bona Meyer, who says : 
 ' Die Hauptgebrechen der jetzigen Studienart liegen auch 
 jetzt noch unstreitig von Seiten der Lehrer in dem nicht sel- 
 tenen Mangel einer klaren Unterscheidung zwischen den Be- 
 durfnissen ernes Buches und denen eines Vortrages, und von 
 Seiten der Studirenden in der allzu gehauften Passivitat des 
 Horens und dem allzu einseitigen Drangen zu den Brod- und 
 Examinations-Studien.' 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. Ill 
 
 add to this the natural, and, I may say, to some 
 extent healthy, desire to migrate from university to 
 university in order to preserve a freedom from bias, 
 the difficulty of pursuing a proper course is enhanced. 
 If the young men who take their doctor's degree in 
 Germany would only publish in their vitae the titles 
 of the lectures they attended before they came up for 
 examination, we should have an exhibit of consider 
 able practical value, as illustrating the necessarily 
 scrambling course of so many German students. 
 
 But the Germans observed long ago the defects 
 of the lecture-system pure and simple. The aca 
 demic freedom, of which they are so justly proud, 
 is a great thing, but all students are not ripe for it. 
 More guidance would do no harm, though it need 
 not degenerate into the tutorial grind of England. 
 And, in fact, various methods have been pursued 
 for many years to counteract the funnelling process 
 of lectures. In the physical sciences this good 
 work is from the beginning an organic part of 
 the study. The laboratory balances the lecture. 
 In some faculties the repetent, or * coach', plays 
 an important part. Then, in the historical studies, 
 to which philology belongs, there are special clubs 
 formed by the students themselves, there are private 
 societies conducted by the professors ; but the great 
 organized agency is the seminarium, the theory of 
 which is very well stated by the Owens College 
 Extension Commission : ' The ordinary lectures of 
 the professors being continuous discourses, and the 
 students being hearers only, and not subject to any 
 oversight as to attendance and industry, it is found 
 that this system does not suffice for the training of 
 
112 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 those who are themselves to be teachers. To meet 
 this want the seminarium was established. A lim 
 ited number of students/whose merits and adequate 
 preparation are ascertained, are in the seminarium 
 drilled in the manner usual in college lecture-rooms 
 in England, but with the special object of qualifying 
 them for original investigation and for the higher 
 teaching posts/ This is the theory ; but in prac 
 tice so much depends upon the individuality of the 
 director that a general criticism is impossible : and 
 to pronounce an opinion on the basis of personal 
 impressions now a quarter of a century old would 
 be manifestly unfair. 1 At the same time, there is not 
 a point in which those impressions have not been 
 confirmed, either by recent writers or by those who 
 are fresh from the universities where the voices of 
 the great teachers of my youth have not so long 
 been silent; and it is not hazardous to maintain 
 that as the German lecture-system can never be 
 transplanted in its entirety to our academic soil, so, 
 for many reasons, the German seminarium must 
 undergo important modifications, at least in philo 
 logy, if it is to be fruitful in our country. 
 
 As to the medium in which the philological sem 
 inarium is to be conducted, there is something to be 
 said in favor of retaining Latin for certain portions 
 of the higher work ; but if this is done, more time 
 must be devoted to the acquisition of the necessary 
 facility than seems to be allowed to it now in Ger 
 many. I have been ear-witness of all manner of 
 absurdities, which were not less absurdities because 
 
 1 Personal impressions renewed since 1879 on ^y confirm the 
 view presented above. B. L. G. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 113 
 
 they were learned. The Latin academic oration 
 may pass, though few official orators study the 
 prime condition of a clear and simple style, and the 
 portentous periodology of many professors of elo 
 quence, as they are called, ' would have made 
 Quintilian stare and gasp.' That is a matter of 
 taste. But I have known a man of real ability to 
 come into the seminarium with a ponderous Latin 
 treatise on Hesiod which he read with the utmost 
 vehemence and volubility for the space of three 
 quarters of an hour vehemence and volubility 
 which would have made even his German a sput 
 ter ; and under the spell as I was then, I cannot say 
 that I had any high opinion of the virtue of such 
 an exercise. Training the ear as well as the eye is 
 of the greatest importance, and entirely too much 
 neglected in our ordinary methods of instruction ; 
 but apart from the modest range of philological 
 debate, the ear should be trained by listening to the 
 verses and the periods of the ancient models them 
 selves. If the discourse of the professor is to be an 
 immense convolute of labored Latinity, if the stu 
 dent is to be allowed in his oral use of Latin to 
 revel in false quantities, slipshod syntax, and par 
 rot-like phrases, the sooner the Latin medium is 
 done away with the better. The training that the 
 German boys get at their gymnasia in the classic 
 languages is much better than ours, as is shown by 
 the difference of the work required in our colleges 
 and the German universities, although the students 
 in both are very much of the same age ; but it 
 would be a great mistake to suppose that the few 
 hours' practice in Prima will give a young man 
 
114 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 such a command of Latin that he can use it with 
 ease and correctness even within the narrow com 
 pass of philological subjects ; and while the pro 
 fessor may at times be moved by the agony of his 
 ears to remonstrate with the candidatus philologiae 
 on the score of his language, such ' expectorations ' 
 come to be regarded as the- obbligato steam-whistle 
 of the machine, which carries the passenger to the 
 end of his journey for all that. If this is the case 
 in Germany, if the professors there, with their ad 
 vanced students, find it hard to harmonize attention 
 to the form with attention to the matter of the dis 
 cussions, we should be very much worse off here : 
 and for some time at least Latin exercises of this 
 sort should be intended chiefly for the study and 
 practice of the form. In the main, then, our semi- 
 narium work should be conducted in English, 
 practice in oral Latin, and, which is much to be 
 desired, in oral Greek, being relegated to special 
 hours. 
 
 Let us now consider the matter, the work itself. 
 This, as has already been stated, depends so much 
 on the personality of the director that a general 
 criticism is hardly possible. The professor is per 
 fectly free to teach in his own way, and it is sup 
 posed that the student is perfectly free to learn in 
 his own way, although if the professor be a man of 
 high position there will always be some who will 
 consider it safer to learn in the professor's way. If 
 he be a man of commanding intellectual force it is 
 almost impossible, even if it were desirable, to resist 
 the pressure of the head of the school and the 
 school itself. To speak, then, of the work in a 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 11$ 
 
 German seminarium as if it were uniform would be 
 glaringly inappropriate ; and an exposition of the 
 seminarium studies going on all over Germany, 
 even if all the material were accessible, would re 
 quire too much space. Still, there are certain lines 
 of work which in the nature of things must be kept 
 up in the seminarium, however directed; and of 
 some of these I would say a word so far as they 
 mayt be thought applicable to the state of things 
 here. In Germany the seminarium consists of the 
 pick of the students. Full membership is an honor, 
 and the meagre endowment of the position is not 
 despised in a poor community. There are regular 
 members, associate members, aspirants, and listeners. 
 Here, for lack of material, we could not afford to 
 be so discriminating ; and we should be obliged 
 to make the work less pretentious, not necessarily 
 less effective. Two things the seminarium should 
 strive to develop power of presentation and power 
 of research. The former is too much neglected in 
 Germany, and ought to occupy a more prominent 
 position in the training of the future scholar than it 
 does there. It is not given to every one to make 
 great discoveries, and even those who are endowed 
 with keen sagacity or a happy vein of divination 
 vary in their achievements as they vary in their 
 moods ; but every one should be trained to sort his 
 materials in an orderly manner and present the sum 
 of his observations clearly and succinctly. And 
 the importance of this is too much overlooked in 
 the German schools of philology : and in endeav 
 oring to rear an American school of classical philo- 
 logians we ought not to encounter the reproach of 
 
Il6 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 formlessness in our studies of form, of being aesthet- 
 ical in everything except in what we write. 1 Of course 
 it may seem schoolboy work to make abstracts, to 
 sketch outlines of monuments of literary art ; but 
 for all that it is an important exercise, and skill .in 
 it one of the most useful facilities that a philologian 
 can possess. Such an outline is worth all the 
 aesthetic criticism that a young man can excogitate, 
 because in working it out he must necessarily put 
 himself, to some extent, in sympathy with his 
 model, and thus learn to appreciate transition and 
 motive far better than he could otherwise have done, 
 far better even than if he had translated the piece, 
 because the translator follows the author too closely 
 to see the track he is going. But to make the work 
 truly profitable it must be synthetic, not analytic 
 a Nachdichten, as the Germans happily call it, not a 
 dissection. 
 
 A regular part of the duties of the seminarium 
 consists in the exegesis and textual criticism of the 
 classical authors. It is high time that more atten 
 tion were paid to the former element by German 
 editors, the best of whom have seemed to consider 
 the function of a commentator beneath their dig 
 nity, and prefer to show their command of the 
 
 1 Die englischen Universitaten entwickeln bei ihren Schiilerii 
 nebeti einem lebendigeren Geflihl fur die Schonheit und Ju- 
 gendfrische des Alterthums auch den Sinn fur Feinheit und 
 Scharfe des sprachlichen Ausdrucks in hochst anerkennens- 
 werthem Grade, und dies inacht sich bei ihnen namentlich 
 auch geltend in der Weise.wie sie die Muttersprache zu hand- 
 haben wissen. In dieser Richtung ist, wie ich furchte, eine 
 der schwachsten Seiteii des deutschen Jugendunterrichts zu 
 finden. Helmholtz. 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 1 1/ 
 
 author in hand by implication. There are said to 
 be signs of reaction. Whether the seminaria share 
 in it I do not know ; but so long as the directors 
 prefer criticism to hermeneutics so far as the two 
 can be separated the pupils will be prone to spend 
 most of their time over various readings. Now, a 
 considerable portion of the business of the future 
 teacher will be the exposition of classical texts ; and 
 the members of the seminarium should be taught 
 how to construct a commentary for school use, as 
 well as incited to attempt the elucidation of authors 
 that lie outside of the beaten track. This is not the 
 place to set forth the virtues of a commentator, but 
 many of the qualities that are required may be 
 imparted by training the sense of proportion, the 
 suppression of the inevitable tendency to over-inter 
 pretation, the rigorous exclusion of irrelevant 
 matter, the honest grapple with real difficulties. A 
 useful study for the young philologian would be 
 the comparison of commentaries from different 
 periods, in which the history of philology would 
 fairly mirror itself; and if he wishes to assure him 
 self that his is a progressive science, he will be 
 much comforted by reading the lucubrations of 
 great scholars on points that are now within the 
 knowledge of every one. 
 
 The prerequisites of textual criticism are so 
 numerous that, except in case of great native 
 endowment, it is hard to see how the student can do 
 much more than make a beginning in his university 
 years ; and yet with some slight palaeographical 
 knowledge and some second-hand views concerning 
 families of manuscripts, a great deal of juvenile 
 
Il8 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 criticism is done in Germany and elsewhere, largely 
 of the conjectural sort. But it is not enough to 
 write the peccant words in uncials and stare at 
 them until something suggests itself more satis 
 factory to you than the text. In order to restore 
 the lost fibre you must know every other fibre ; and 
 conjectural criticism, apart from a thorough knowl 
 edge of an author, no matter how successful, is but 
 a genial guess. And as for the ' duodecimo critics ', 
 as the Germans would call them, who are publishing 
 their adversaria, miscellanea, and collectanea in 
 imitation of Madvig and Cobet, many of them 
 should be impaled in the seminaria as warnings 
 against rash generalizations and wanton disregard 
 of the laws of grammar. Nothing can be more 
 revolting than a whoop of triumph over a ' lucky 
 divination ', which the uniform usage of the language 
 shows to be an impossibility or the habit of the 
 author proves to be utterly unnecessary. 
 
 Critical studies should certainly form a prominent 
 part of the seminarium training, but they should not 
 absorb all the energy of the class. But, after all, 
 the handling of the authors does not appear to the 
 member of the German seminarium as the main 
 thing. The Arbeit is the crown of the seminarium, 
 as the Heft is the glory of the lecture. The Arbeit 
 is supposed to represent original research. To 
 develop this power, not given in its highest sense 
 to many, is indeed one of the most precious results 
 of university training. But there is research and 
 research. Some investigations involve little more 
 head-work than the sorting of nails, while some 
 bring into play every high faculty of understanding 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 1 19 
 
 and imagination. It may be well sometimes to 
 temper the enthusiasm of those who consider them 
 selves qualified for more exalted activity by forcing 
 them to perform those mechanical tasks which are 
 inevitable in all prolonged research, practising the 
 eye, training the hand, and breaking in the eager 
 feet to a steady pace. But if there is any capacity for 
 higher things, the student should be encouraged to 
 put to the test his right to independent research. 
 Now, it is in this department that the most difficult 
 work of the university teacher lies: most difficult 
 because it cannot be achieved by mere industry. 
 True, study can do a great deal. A wide knowledge 
 will reveal many gaps that are yet to be filled ; but 
 if the teacher tells the student too much, he is 
 virtually doing the work himself, and doing it imper 
 fectly, besides destroying the spirit of initiative 
 which is the great gain of the whole matter ; if he 
 tells him too little, the young man is apt to flounder 
 hopelessly in a Serbonian bog of extemporized 
 erudition. Some professors cannot imagine any 
 greater happiness for a student than to work in the 
 same direction with the master, and the native bent 
 of the pupil goes for nothing in the calculation ; 
 while others genially toss the neophyte into a mass 
 of controversy of which the younger man knows 
 nothing, the older man very little ; and at the end 
 the teacher is not competent to criticise without a 
 careful study of the whole question, which he may, 
 of course, accomplish more rapidly than the begin 
 ner if he has nothing better to do on his own 
 account. It is indeed a glorious thing to make some 
 substantial addition to science, however small it 
 
I2O UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 may be. It is the promise of future usefulness, the 
 earnest of a higher life; but, like other glorious 
 things, it must be worked for, and the theme should 
 evolve itself out of a range of reading ; and in the 
 early stages of university study especially, more 
 good might be done in the way of training by putting 
 questions that have already been solved, and fur 
 nishing the materials for problems that have been 
 triumphantly settled, than by forcing the student to 
 attack such fresh subjects as may be hastily started 
 for his experiments. The future mathematician, the 
 future chemist, the future professor of physics, have 
 to undergo a long apprenticeship in such solutions. 
 The future philologian is too often compelled to 
 grapple with questions the conditions of which he 
 cannot possibly command. It is true that any 
 subject that stands in organic connection with 
 philological science cannot be pursued without 
 ultimately involving the whole ; but it is not a matter 
 of indifference from what point you start ; and the 
 most fruitful work is that which grows out of wider 
 study. No man can labor in any portion of his 
 department without finding much that is unsettled ; 
 and a genuine curiosity once excited, the punctum 
 saliens of scientific life is there. To put into the 
 hand of a young man the first dissertation at your 
 elbow and bid him pick it to pieces, or to assign 
 to two callow youngsters sides in a philological 
 discussion these processes, so familiar in German 
 universities, do not lead to the highest results, nor do 
 they breed the best habits of mind. The criticism 
 should follow an independent study of the subject. 
 The disputation should grow out of a genuine 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 121 
 
 difference of views between those who are working 
 in the same direction. It should not be what the 
 German Burschen call a duel pro patria a mere 
 official combat. All such sophistic displays are 
 remnants of an earlier system of education; and the 
 greater the success, the worse the habit that is 
 engendered of criticising for the sake of showing 
 superiority, and the more acrimonious the tone of 
 the controversialist, who at last fuses the personality 
 of the investigator with the truth which he is 
 supposed to be seeking, and, like a famous German 
 scholar, declares any denial of his principles to be 
 the mysterious sin against the Holy Ghost. At all 
 events, in our endeavors to organize university 
 work here, let us, in appropriating the good that 
 Germany has to show us in abundant measure, 
 learn to avoid the evil. Special studies by all means, 
 special even to the minutest variations of form and 
 structure, to the exactest detail of statistic. But, for 
 all that, let us not lose sight of the magnificent idea 
 of philology, which is instinct with the life of 
 humanity. Let not aesthetical babblers and philo 
 sophical phrase-mongers frighten us from aesthetics 
 and philosophy into arid regions whither no one 
 will follow us, and, which is worse, whence, we 
 ourselves may never find it possible to escape. 
 In Germany classical philology may survive for 
 generations by virtue of the organizations already 
 established, but in this country, where the scientific 
 study of the department is yet to be built up to the 
 university standard, it would be folly to sever such 
 connection as the classics have with the life of the 
 people. French scholars sometimes sigh for German 
 
122 UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 
 
 methods of instruction and research ; but the wide 
 circulation of the classical studies of such writers as 
 Boissier and Perrot is a good sign of the intelligent 
 interest of the cultivated public in these subjects, 
 and without such an intelligent interest the depart 
 ment must die. Almost every Greek and Latin 
 writer of note has been translated into French. How 
 many gaps there are in English no philologian 
 needs to be reminded. The Didot collection has 
 been of immense service to classical letters, and I 
 remember the emphasis with which one of the lead 
 ing philologians of our century dwelt on the value 
 of the Latin translation which accompanies the 
 Greek text in that series, and the generous heat 
 with which he warned his disciples against alienat 
 ing those who were in sympathy with the classics 
 by convenient sneers at defects in technical scholar 
 ship. Here, certainly, we need all the support we 
 can get, and the university professor, while making 
 his researches and while training those who are to be 
 the teachers of the country, should not forget his 
 duty to a wider public. The danger of this, however, 
 may not seem to be imminent, and for the present 
 it may be more important to insist on the esoteric 
 work and to study the conditions of higher philo 
 logical training in American universities. But, as 
 has been intimated in a previous portion of this 
 essay, the tendency of our younger university men 
 will naturally be to over-specialization ; and while 
 it is very true that the transition from what may be 
 called the formal side of philology to the study of 
 history, antiquities, and art is much easier than the 
 reverse, and should therefore form the staple of 
 
UNIVERSITY WORK IN AMERICA. 123 
 
 university instruction, no one, teacher or scholar, 
 should so lose himself in grammatical and crit 
 ical studies as to become insensible of the deep 
 truth which is embodied in the old term, the 
 ' humanities '. 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS 
 
GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 
 
 Minute specialization is one of the prominent 
 features of modern science. It is not peculiar to 
 modern culture, for subdivision of the professions is 
 as old as the Pyramids. In the Athens of the best 
 times there were those who made their living by the 
 manufacture of hair-nets. An epigram of Martial 
 informs us that there were surgeons in Rome who 
 limited their practice to the effacement of the scars 
 that disfigured the persons of branded slaves. But 
 the narrowness of a handicraft is different from the 
 narrowness of an intellectual pursuit, or rather an 
 intellectual pursuit is reduced by this narrowness to 
 a handicraft; and in this second half of the nine 
 teenth century the joyous and adventurous swing 
 of the human mind through the range of knowledge 
 and science which marked the first half has been 
 quieted down to a sober pace, not to say a treadmill 
 gait. The line along which the earlier investigators 
 flamed is now traversed by the solitary track-walker, 
 who turns his lantern on every inch of the ground, 
 and travel is often interdicted on account of the 
 insecurity of the road. So much the better for those 
 who are to come after us, but meanwhile life is 
 lonely for the explorer. For times come to every 
 such man when he feels an imperious necessity of 
 justifying himself to them that are without, of seek 
 ing a larger audience than the narrow circle of his 
 
128 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 disciples and associates. True, the utter failure to 
 come to an understanding with the rest of the world 
 often sends the student back to his special work 
 with a determination never again to tempt any com 
 munication with his fellows except on the most 
 ordinary topics of social converse, and to lead his 
 intellectual life alone. 1 The old jarring contrast 
 between the man of practice and the man of theory 
 makes itself felt in every fibre of a nature that, by 
 its daily and hourly occupation, is made sensitive 
 to the slight vibrations that are unheeded by the 
 so-called men of the world, the men of affairs. One 
 of the most famous pictures of this contrast has been 
 drawn by Plato in his Theaetetus, in which Thales 
 appears as the type of the philosopher, the thinker, 
 who falls into a well while star-gazing, and is laughed 
 at by his merry Thracian maid-servant for not seeing 
 that which is before his feet. Your antique scholar, 
 like your modern, goes mooning about the city. He 
 does not know the way to 'Change; he cannot tell 
 you where the court-house is or the city hall. He is 
 a stranger to clubs and parties and dinners and 
 banquets. He is profoundly ignorant of family 
 history and family gossip. He is such a university 
 man as the London Times described a few years 
 ago: 'at sea he is a landlubber, in the country 
 a cockney, in town a greenhorn, in business a simp 
 leton, in pleasure a milksop.' We all know the 
 man, although in the movement of modern life the type 
 is becoming less common even in Germany, once 
 the habitat of intellectual oddities and unpractical 
 
 1 This Suspirium Grammatici ' was published in the Prince 
 ton Review for May, 1883. 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 1 29 
 
 dreamers. For this change the Empire may possibly 
 be responsible, but certain it is that such a figure as 
 Freytag's Professor Raschke, in the ' Lost Manu 
 script ', will soon be as extinct as the dodo. 
 
 Still, while the external differences are more and 
 more effaced, and the professor is not singled out 
 by his manners and his conversation, the inner 
 dissidence will remain, and may perhaps increase 
 with the advance of specialization. The professor, 
 the student may become more like the rest of the 
 world, but the heart of his life will be more remote 
 from the bulk of mankind than was the case with 
 the ancient scholar, whose range of sympathies was 
 necessarily wide. Then, to come back to Plato's 
 philosopher, his ideal sage is utterly indifferent to the 
 praise or blame of the world, whereas in the modern 
 specialist we often find a sensitiveness which is bred 
 by the special studies themselves. Every one can 
 not attain to the philosophic calm which is, in the 
 last analysis, philosophic selfishness, and which 
 makes us resentful when we think of Plato and of 
 Goethe, though not when we think of Shakespeare, 
 for with Shakespeare we do not quarrel any more 
 than we do with the nature of things. And so it 
 is hard for one who is always seeking to find or 
 to frame the key to the beautiful, when the convic 
 tion is borne in upon him that the more successful 
 he is in his quest, the more certain he is to be set 
 down among the mere locksmiths who are not 
 suffered to enjoy the treasures which their patience 
 and ingenuity have disclosed. The fewest have the 
 divine faculty of imagination which is necessary to 
 intellectual sympathy, and a vivid representation of 
 
I3O GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 the conditions of another's life is possible only for 
 chosen souls. Hence much blundering in all 
 manner of missionary effort. To popularize without 
 vulgarizing is one of the most difficult of arts, and 
 the specialist, afraid of vulgarizing or unwilling to 
 vulgarize, is apt to lose himself in technicalities 
 which the outsider cannot follow. Nor is the 
 unlucky specialist much comforted by those who, 
 recognizing in him the specialist, patronize him by 
 a real or simulated interest in his line of work. 
 The Grecian does not like to be told that his inter 
 locutor used to be fond of Greek when he was at 
 college and still keeps it up after a fashion. This is 
 in its way almost as bad as the threadbare and, 
 because threadbare, uniformly successful jest about 
 Greek roots. And so, between the condescension 
 of those who wish to make some acknowledgment 
 of the value of the special work, and the rudeness 
 of those who repeat the trite jokes of the outside 
 world, the scholar, the student, the investigator 
 withdraws into himself, himself disheartened despite 
 philosophy, and the world possibly the poorer. 
 
 Now, of all the special lines of work, among the 
 most arid to the average mind is that of grammar. 
 By grammar is not meant the ' science of language ', 
 so called. The success of various popular exhibi 
 tions of this department shows that it is possible to 
 interest a very wide circle in the curious facts and 
 glittering theories that lie on the track and encom 
 pass the circuit of these studies. What I mean is 
 grammar proper, that very grammar, carried to a 
 higher power, which is the detestation of most 
 youthful minds. No study more fascinating to 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 13! 
 
 those who are addicted to it; none more repulsive 
 to the natural man. The average child hates parsing 
 worse than he does arithmetic. Of course, the 
 attitude of the modern mind toward grammar is 
 different from that of the ancient nations, for gram 
 mar is an inheritance with us, to them it was a slow 
 growth ; it has passed into our mental processes, 
 to them it was a process apart. Still, scientific 
 grammar in its strictest sense is a horror even to a 
 large class of people of cultivation. The average 
 literary man cordially dislikes the grammarian 
 or heartily despises him ; and as grammar becomes 
 more and more detailed, as phonetics develop more 
 and more, and syntax assumes more and more the 
 alluring shape of a census-table, there is increasing 
 danger lest philology shrivel up into mere statistics, 
 and aesthetics be relegated to the mere dilettanti. 
 
 Phonology, to begin with that, has grown into a 
 science which threatens to overshadow the rest of 
 philology; and though no one would wish to with 
 hold from the school of the Junggrammatiker the 
 tribute of admiration for the thoroughness of their 
 method, which brings phonetic phenomena under 
 rules of sharp physical consistency, one wishes a 
 second life for this new line of work, as Lobeck did 
 when he declined to go into Sanskrit. The theory of 
 formation, instead of being simplified by the advance 
 of science, has become greatly complicated, and the 
 frank, objective way in which facts are put remind one 
 very much of the early machinery of grammar. For 
 instance, the ancient grammarians divided the Greek 
 declensions into ' parisyllabic ' and ' imparisyllabic ' 
 one of those inorganic arrangements that contain a 
 
132 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 germ of organic truth. Needless to say, such a divi 
 sion was practically of no moment. The cases went 
 their own sweet way, and well-meaning attempts to 
 reduce the inflections to order resulted in a formid 
 able list of declensions. In like manner the reduction 
 of the Greek declensions to three, and ultimately to 
 two, was considered a great advance in the early part 
 of this century. Now that has proved to be a failure 
 so far as simplification goes, and advanced grammar 
 follows mechanically the endings of the stems. Thus 
 we oscillate from diversity to unity, from unity to 
 diversity again. Syntax has divorced itself from 
 logic. All the grand generalizations in which the 
 first scientific grammarians indulged have been 
 abandoned, and it is no disgrace to decline giving a 
 definition of case or tense or mood ; it is only a wise 
 reserve. No longer logic-mad, your modern gram 
 marian is statistic-mad. It is useless to tell him that 
 statistic is nothing unless it embody some idea. The 
 plan is to get all the empty shells ready in case a 
 soul should be found to occupy them. Arrange your 
 facts in some orderly manner, no matter how 
 mechanical, and the seeing eye will discern vital 
 principles. To an outsider this study some might 
 hesitate to call it a study seems incredibly dull, 
 seems to be work that ought to be assigned to 
 a servtis litterarius as brainless as Caravella, the 
 author of the ' Index Aristophanicus ', that marvel of 
 patience and stupidity; or as Cruden, the author of the 
 Concordance, who was another semi-idiot. And yet 
 questions of a higher nature are constantly arising 
 in the midst of such work, questions that cannot be 
 delegated to inexperienced and thoughtless com- 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 133 
 
 pilers ; and there comes to the writer the grim 
 consolation that whatever befalls the theory, the 
 facts will stand. Veitch's ' Greek Verbs, Irregular 
 and Defective ', will always be of more real value 
 than most of Gottfried Hermann's grammatical the 
 ories ; and there is much more in Veitch than a 
 mere collector. But at times even the most deter 
 mined statistician grows weary. He repeats to 
 himself the warning that he must not theorize before 
 he gets all the facts together, and yet, while the hod 
 may be a model hod and the bricks without flaw, the 
 question will come up, Are we never to use mortar, 
 even if it be untempered mortar ? 
 
 Such is the present condition of grammar. It 
 shows a strong tendency to assume the mathe 
 matical formula, and outsiders ask, What is the use of 
 this array of figures ? The answer is mainly neg 
 ative, at least in the present stage of inquiry, and 
 insiders themselves show here and there impatience. 
 Grammar is becoming a dry and thirsty land, and 
 the grammatical Achsah may well say, ' Thou hast 
 given me a south land; give me also springs of 
 water.' 
 
 Meanwhile aesthetic criticism is going its own 
 way, a ' primrose path of dalliance ' with fine sub 
 stantives, superfine adjectives a path which is apt 
 to lose itself in mere finical fault-finding or sympa 
 thetic phrase-mongery. True, the critics of our day 
 are not the failures that Lord Beaconsfield's epigram 
 would make them out to be. Like many other 
 strictures of that cynical statesman, this does not 
 apply to the present time ; it is purely retro 
 spective. Our foremost critics are our foremost 
 
134 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 producers, and the man whom many would consider 
 the first critic of our time is acknowledged to be 
 one of the best writers of our time. No man's style 
 is more envied than Matthew Arnold's, and that by 
 those whose envy is a compliment. Still there is a 
 widespread distrust as to the ultimate value of all 
 the aesthetic criticism of the day, sympathetic or 
 other. The antique critic, as we shall see, went 
 into tangible details. He left a margin for unrea 
 soned perception, for direct intuition, but his 
 grounds are for the most part susceptible of test. 
 Even the robust critic of the Johnsonese school is 
 comprehensible, is refutable, if need be. Not so the 
 supersubtle genius of the present day. He poses a 
 line of poetry and then poses himself before the line, 
 and if you do not see all poetry in that line, or do 
 not hear all poetry in that line, you are blind and 
 deaf. So Mr. Arnold in his introductory essay to 
 Ward's ' English Poets ' gives a series of test verses 
 for the appreciation of higher poetry. His Dante 
 line is 
 
 * In la sua volontade e nostra pace.' 
 
 His Chaucer line is 
 
 ' O martyr souded in virginitee.' 
 
 He strikes these chords very deftly; he repeats 
 these verses as a supernal melody. Who knows 
 what mood is associated in his poetic brain with 
 that melody? The overtone is perhaps what he 
 hears. If any ordinary mortal like the present 
 writer should set up another verse, say 
 
 La creatura ch' ebbe il bel sembiante ', 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 135 
 
 Mr. Arnold and Mr. Arnold's admirers might see, 
 might hear nothing special in that ; and yet perhaps 
 something could be said for a verse which concen 
 trates all the doom of Lucifer, as well as' for 
 
 ' In la sua volontade 6 nostra pace ', 
 
 and many a Chaucerian scholar may have his 
 favorite instead of 
 
 ' O martyr souded in virginitee '. 
 
 But any one who attempts to mediate between 
 two extremes is in danger of being torn to pieces 
 by the wild horses that he is attempting to yoke 
 together; more furious and unbecoming contro 
 versy than has of late raged between poets and philo- 
 logians would be hard to find in the unpleasant 
 annals of the quarrels of authors, and one would not 
 like to have his family name maltreated, or to be 
 shown up as a dullard and pedant. 1 Still, with 
 the full consciousness of the risk, he who is a lover 
 of grammatical as well as of literary study can 
 hardly refrain from making at least some effort to 
 show how stronger hands than his may yet succeed 
 in the work of reconciliation. There are men, and 
 those not a few, who have at once the liveliest 
 delight in the observation of grammatical phe 
 nomena and the keenest appreciation of literary 
 beauties. Do these faculties work side by side 
 without any correlation ? It was said of Faraday 
 
 1 Swinburne's name has been turned by one of his assailants 
 into Pigsbrook ; and the poet in one of his mildest passages 
 speaks with characteristic alliteration of 'the blackguard's 
 loaded bludgeon of personalities ', ' the dastard's sheathed 
 dagger of disguise '. 
 
136 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 that he had two lives which he kept apart ; that he 
 shut his laboratory when he went into his oratory. 
 Is a similar statement true of the scholar ? Is his 
 enjoyment of the literary side of his work entirely 
 independent of the scientific side ? Are contem 
 plation and analysis completely divorced ? Every 
 one who has attempted the close grammatical study 
 of a supreme work of art knows how hard it is to 
 keep steadily at the task when the passion of the 
 piece grows strong. The note-book ought to drop 
 from the hand when Odysseus stands forth revealed. 
 Then, like the hero, the reader strips off the rags of 
 grammar and goes into the fight. 1 But for all that 
 the note-book should be picked up again and the 
 patient assemblage of facts resumed. In art nothing 
 is small ; and how fully this was appreciated in 
 antiquity is shown by the study of the literary 
 judgments of the great critics of antiquity. Antique 
 criticism took into account much that we relegate 
 to the grammar, even now that grammar is becoming 
 more and more unaesthetic. Shall we not avail our 
 selves of the more exact methods of these days to 
 secure a more objective standard of criticism ? The 
 attempt, as has been said, is dangerous in the 
 extreme. The moral inferences, so to speak, which 
 have been drawn from grammatical peculiarities in 
 languages, dialects, periods, departments, indi 
 viduals, are partly shadowy, partly hazardous, and 
 yet not only is the problem fascinating in itself, but 
 after all it is a fair problem. It may never receive 
 a complete answer. This in the nature of things is 
 impossible, for the elements are too varied, too 
 
 1 avTap 6 yvfjuxadr) paKccov noXvfJLTjTis ' 
 
GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 137 
 
 subtle. But it is susceptible of an approximate 
 answer, and in time the outline of a system will be 
 laid down. Between the salient points there will be 
 room enough for the play of aesthetic fancy, and 
 fine writers can add arabesque to arabesque, but the 
 structure itself will be essentially fixed. 
 
 If a better, a more objective aesthetic should be 
 the outcome of grammatical study, this would only 
 be a completion of the cycle, for grammar began with 
 aesthetic, as can be shown historically. But to prove 
 this point it is not necessary to go back to written 
 records ; for, if we wish to reproduce the past, it is 
 only necessary to go down to a lower stratum, and 
 the attitude of the uncultured mind toward language 
 would give ample confirmation of this position. 
 The artistic sense survives in the people, to whom, 
 and not to the makers of books, language ultimately 
 belongs. Doubtless the artificial language finds 
 its way among the people, and what is artificial, 
 nay, what is individual in one generation becomes 
 popular, becomes national in another. Yet it must 
 be remembered that in the main, indeed in almost 
 every fibre, the people owns the language, not king 
 or queen, and in any natural scheme of grammar the 
 unsophisticated classes are to be consulted. This 
 widens the sphere of observation from the imperfect 
 registry of manuscripts and the seclusion of the 
 study to the living utterance and the open air of 
 popular life ; and in this larger field we learn the im 
 mense importance of phonetics. What we analyse 
 with so much care, the body of sound, is to the 
 people as pronunciation, the main thing ; and on this 
 score every one who has lived in foreign parts has had 
 
138 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 mortifying experiences to record. If one's intercourse 
 is limited to the cultured classes, to those who have 
 much to do with strangers, there is no great difficulty 
 about making one's wants known. But it is otherwise 
 with the masses. With the masses the pronunciation 
 is the great thing. Inflection may be twisted and 
 syntax rent in sunder so long as the color of the sound 
 is preserved. The lack of a familiar gasp or a special 
 click, the failure to reproduce the intonation of a sen 
 tence, will make the foreigner unintelligible to the 
 people. Departure from the standard is visited with 
 mockery. It is considered unbeautiful, it is the viola 
 tion of a norm. Not that the people is unobservant 
 of other defects, but of none is it more keenly observ 
 ant than of this. In this direction the study of dialect 
 is destined to lead to important results, and if philo- 
 logians lived more in the world they might make 
 valuable additions to the study of language by cul 
 tivating the fields that lie untilled about us, by noting 
 the criticisms of the people, and by finding out the 
 sensitive points of the popular tongue. Perhaps 
 there is less opportunity in this country for such 
 observation, because language has been more levelled 
 here than elsewhere, and the process is still going 
 on; and yet there is opportunity enough. The 
 advance of phonetics will enable us to register 
 pronunciation more exactly, and we shall not be 
 satisfied with such rude representations of sound as 
 we find in the current spelling of Yankee, Southern, 
 Western, or negro dialect. To him who has ears to 
 hear and mind to reason there is a vast field open 
 in the domain of every-day speech. Omnibus, street 
 car, railway, not a journey that takes us out into a 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 139 
 
 new stream of collinguals but may furnish new 
 specimens for our exhibit, and the student of lin 
 guistic may go on an expedition for such a purpose 
 with as clear a conscience as a mineralogist or a 
 botanist. 
 
 It has just been said that the phonetic or, if you 
 choose, the orthoepic side is that which strikes the 
 popular mind most, and it might be worth while to 
 examine early and unsophisticated representations 
 of barbarous speech with a view to ascertaining the 
 truth of this position. By ' sophisticated ' here is 
 meant grammatical ; and as one who has learned 
 his own language under the pressure of grammar 
 is not a fair judge, the material must be sought 
 in pre-grammatical or extra-grammatical, not to 
 say, supra-grammatical spheres. So, for instance, 
 Aristophanes' representations of dialectic and bar 
 baric Greek have a philological, a grammatical 
 interest. Passing by Aristophanes' specimens of 
 dialectic Greek as involving too many difficult ques 
 tions, we turn to the barbaric Greek, not to the 
 couple of lines of mock-Persian and mock-Persian- 
 Greek of the coarse impostor, Pseudartabas, in the 
 Acharnians, but to the representation of the lingo 
 of the Scythian archer in the Thesmophoriazusae, 
 in which the work seems to be very well done, and, 
 so far as we can judge, quite on a level with any 
 modern reproduction of the speech of foreigners, 
 aided, as our reproduction is, in a measure, by 
 the familiar categories of grammar. And it must 
 be remembered that there was no such thing as 
 grammar proper in the time of Aristophanes, for he 
 himself made merry over the categories, now most 
 
140 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 familiar to us, that were suggested by the thinkers 
 of the time ; and false genders, false cases, to the ear 
 of Aristophanes must have been little more than 
 mistakes in pronunciation; for all the grammar 
 known to the most cultivated Athenians of that 
 time pertained to the phonetic side of the language ; 
 and Aristophanes felt the barbarian's blunders in 
 syntax not otherwise than he represents Socrates 
 to have felt the uncultured pronunciation of Phei- 
 dippides when he is brought to him for training. 
 The differentiation belongs to a later period. Viewed 
 in this light, Aristophanes' representation of bar 
 baric Greek gains a new interest. The wonderful 
 reproduction of musculature in Greek statues has 
 led some to suppose that Greek anatomical studies 
 were further advanced in the time, say, of Pheidias 
 than tradition would have led us to suppose, so 
 admirably did the Greek divine the muscle under 
 the skin. In like manner, Aristophanes, in his 
 representation of the Greek of the Scythian archer 
 or policeman of Athens, goes through every gram 
 matical category, as if he were a trained Observer. 
 The barbarian drops his final consonants, sim 
 plifies his diphthongs, puts tenues for aspiratae, 
 evaporates his A's, substitutes dative for accusative, 
 and gets his genders wofully mixed. And with 
 more art than many modern imitators of foreign 
 speech, who attribute to all Germans mistakes 
 in English that no German makes, Aristophanes 
 preserves here and there a group of correct Greek. 
 But the attitude of the ungrammatical mind toward 
 grammar is too difficult a study to be attacked in 
 passing, and it will be more profitable to show by 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 14! 
 
 some statements and illustrations the antique con 
 nection between grammar and aesthetic, and to give 
 some hints as to a scientific restoration of their joint 
 action. 
 
 The great difficulty, as has already been hinted, 
 consists in drawing the line between grammar and 
 rhetoric. The syntaxis ornata of the older grammars 
 is pure rhetoric. Grammar as a regulative art, and 
 as such it was considered until of late years, really 
 takes up one side of rhetoric correctness ; and if 
 there is any overlapping in the following exhibit, 
 let it be forgiven. 
 
 Grammar rises after the decline of literature. It 
 is originally retrospective, except when it has been 
 passed on from nationality to nationality as the 
 grammar of the Romans from the Greek, and modern 
 grammar from Latin, and it is therefore associated 
 in this first stage with interpretations either of an 
 earlier monument of literature or of foreign speech, 
 including dialectic variation. Grammatical study 
 is in point of fact literary study, and arises from the 
 necessity of expounding to later generations some 
 great work that has made its language the norm for 
 the period or for the department, whereas for a 
 long time the language of every-day life resists the 
 analysis, and one is astonished to see how many 
 centuries of thought and controversy were needed 
 to settle the categories that every school-child 
 knows after a fashion. This long process of philo 
 sophical fermentation is shown by the nomencla 
 ture of our grammar, some of which was not settled 
 until a period long subsequent to the death of the 
 antique world, so that the consciously grammatical 
 
142 GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 
 
 speech of the cultivated is a strange resultant of 
 tradition and study. 
 
 There may have been, let us grant that there must 
 have been, a time when every element in such a 
 language as the Greek had its felt force ; but there 
 is no written record of that period, and ages before 
 our first data the sharp lines had been rounded and 
 the simple functions complicated. To maintain, as 
 has been done, that every people thinks something 
 not only at every utterance, but at every element of 
 that utterance, is going too far certainly too far 
 for the resonance or ' dingdong' theory of language. 
 Out of conscious composition, according to the 
 dominant view, we pass into a feeling of total effect 
 and general relation. At any rate, this is the condi 
 tion in which we find language before the grammatical 
 period, and the dawning of what we should call gram 
 mar lights up first the aesthetic side, the musical side ; 
 for the music to which the language is set, otherwise 
 called the accent, attracted the attention of the Greek 
 before anything else. 'Acute' and ' grave ' were old 
 in the time of Plato, and it is significant that the 
 first element that the artistic Greek noted was the 
 last to receive scientific treatment at the hands of 
 modern grammarians, who had been content to 
 repeat the pretty saying of the ancients that ' accent 
 is the life -breath of the word ', and were very far from 
 recognizing the wide reach of its influence. To the 
 same artistic side belongs the recognition of the 
 power of the different letters letters for the ancients 
 did not emancipate themselves from the external 
 symbols, and even modern philologians have not all 
 succeeded in keeping symbol and power apart. Every 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 143 
 
 cultivated Greek, as early as the end of the fifth 
 century B. C., knew of some the divisions which are 
 still popularly made in the 'letters', and Plato draws 
 his illustrations freely from this sphere as something 
 familiar to all the personages of his dialogues. 
 
 But if we look further, we shall find in the heyday 
 of Attic literature no genuine grammatical develop 
 ment. 'Noun' and 'verb' were used, it is true, 
 but not in their strict grammatical sense. The 
 moods were appreciated but not defined ; the first 
 crude attempt was purely rhetorical. Cases were 
 unknown ; if the Scythian archer used dative for 
 accusative, the Greek of that time could only feel 
 that he was wrong. Plato makes sharp distinctions 
 between the tenses distinctions which modern 
 grammarians, at least until of late years, did not 
 take in ; he virtually draws a fine line in the 
 Euthyphron 1 between the participle as participle 
 and the participle as adjective ; but subtle as Plato 
 was, he could not have formulated his propositions 
 
 1 This is not the place to interpret a Platonic passage. Suf 
 fice it to note that Plato is equal to grammatical distinctions 
 that sorely puzzle his commentators if they are not of a gram 
 matical turn. Grote says on the passage referred to (Euthy 
 phron, 10 A-D) : ' The manner in which Socrates conducts 
 this argument is over-subtle. The difference between the 
 meaning of (pepfrai and (pepopcvov ecrn is not easy to see ' 
 nor does Grote see it, and, not seeing it, naturally considers it 
 over-subtle. Jowett, being a professed Grecian, which Grote 
 was not, explains the passage thus : ' The next objection . . . 
 is shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and 
 the act, corresponding respectively to the adjective (<i'Xoi>) 
 and the participle ((pi\ovp.fvov), or rather perhaps to the parti 
 ciple and the verb ((piXovp-fvov and <iAetrai).' The Master of 
 Balliol can hardly be considered happy in his alternative. 
 
144 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 grammatically. But it is not necessary to sketch 
 the development of technical grammar, to point out 
 what Aristotle contributed, what the Stoics, what 
 the Alexandrians. It is sufficient for the present 
 purpose to note that it was soon divorced from 
 science and became a purely regulative art. The 
 early observers who marked the difference between 
 vowel and consonant were truly scientific. Not so 
 those who collected glosses and barbarisms and 
 solecisms for the interpretation of the earlier poets, 
 for the training of youthful Hellenists. The dili 
 gence and acumen of the long line of grammarians 
 are not to be underrated, and yet we find only here 
 and there a mind that thinks a truly scientific 
 thought as to the functions of grammatical forms. 
 And so it continued down to times that are very 
 near our own. Grammar was and is still to many 
 the art of reading, writing, and speaking correctly, 
 not the exhibition of the structure and growth of 
 language. 
 
 As an art, grammar entered largely into antique 
 aesthetic criticism. The ancient models were 
 studied with a view to imitation, and the analysis 
 extended to every element of discourse. Nothing 
 that had been recognized as characteristic was over 
 looked, and no modern criticism can compare with 
 this microscopic dissection. Unfortunately, few but 
 professional philologians push their studies into the 
 domain of the Greek and Roman rhetoricians, and 
 even these are apt to become impatient with what 
 must seem at first to be fanciful detail, or at best only 
 applicable to the forms of the classic languages. But 
 while we may consider this study tedious in itself 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 145 
 
 and futile in its aim as a regulative art, there is 
 much to be learned from the old rhetorical use of 
 grammar as* an organon of aesthetic appreciation. 
 The ancient rhetorician took into account phonetics, 
 word-formation, syntax, periodology, all from a 
 purely subjective point of view. Now all these 
 matters fall under the observation of the scientific 
 grammarian, all are subjected to rigid measurement 
 and computation. We know the proportions in 
 which the different vowel-sounds appear in given 
 monuments of literature ; we know what sequences, 
 what combinations of sounds certain languages will 
 tolerate, the emergence and the disappearance of 
 such and such terminations, the growth and limit of 
 case-use, tense-use, the extent of section, member, 
 and period ; and while it is not proposed to make 
 a mathematical aesthetic on the basis of grammar, it 
 may be possible to remove some part of criticism 
 out of the range of mere sensibility and opulent 
 phraseology. A type of the system to which we 
 may look forward in the remote future is presented 
 by the recent advances in the study of antique 
 metres. Before the development of the new system 
 of antique metres, or rather the rediscovery of the 
 old system, the construction and recitation of lyric 
 measures in Greek and Latin were left very much 
 to individual taste and feeling. Whether a man 
 read an ode of Horace or a chorus of Sophocles 
 or an epinician of Pindar well or ill was a matter 
 between the reader and his audience, tf not between 
 the reader and himself. There was no standard. 
 The result was not absolutely satisfactory ; appre 
 ciation of the rhythm was confined to a few ; and 
 
146 GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 
 
 the admiration was conventional, and nothing is 
 more deadening to the sense of the beautiful than 
 conventional admiration, from which, it may be said 
 by way of parenthesis, the study of the classics has 
 suffered more than from all other troubles put 
 together. Now that the great principles which reg 
 ulate the movement of antique rhythm are brought 
 within the comprehension of every student, now 
 that we can trust to the correcting finger as well as to 
 the less certain ear, now that we can say digitis calle- 
 mus et aure, the enjoyment is surely not less real, not 
 less deep, because it is both so much more exact 
 and so much more explicable. Of course it is not 
 maintained that any such system can be perfected 
 for the relations of grammar and literary art. Much 
 detail is yet unsettled even in metrical study, and 
 the problem before us is, one might almost say, 
 infinitely more complicated. Still the task is not 
 hopeless, and although it has never been approached 
 in a systematic way, partial results and undesigned 
 successes show what may yet be accomplished. 
 
 It has just been said that the ancient rhetoricians, 
 who were the aesthetic critics of antiquity, went into 
 a much more minute analysis of their authors than 
 would be tolerable now ; and as the object of this 
 paper is to vindicate minute grammatical study with 
 a view to aesthetic result, it may not be considered 
 irrelevant to call up the grammatical points which 
 are to be found in one of the various critical writings 
 of the famous rhetorical theorist Dionysius of Hali- 
 carnassus. This great critic was in some respects an 
 unfair and pedantic judge, yet his writings deserve 
 all the close study that they have received of late 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 147 
 
 years. 1 Minute he is, but not arid, and there are 
 passages in his rhetorical works that would not 
 be unworthy of Mr. Pater or Mr. Symonds. 
 
 In his admiration of Demosthenes, Dionysius 
 seems to have gone to the extent of underrating all 
 other Greek writers in order to heighten the stature 
 of his idol, who in his judgment overtopped them 
 all, avoided all their defects, and combined in cul 
 mination all their merits. Yet he has keen insight, 
 just tact, and in the merely sensuous side of his 
 criticism, that which pertains to rhythm and color, 
 we must still be content to learn of him. Now 
 Dionysius' judgment of Thucydides is thought to 
 be singularly harsh, and it is adduced here only to 
 show first what the categories are that antique 
 criticism thought it right to bring in, and then to 
 ask whether some of these categories are not such 
 as may be satisfactorily filled by the processes of 
 modern grammar. Not that it will be thought 
 necessary to give an analysis of the long essay 
 which Dionysius has devoted to Thucydides. He 
 himself has gathered up in a shorter tract what he 
 considers the peculiarities of the style of the great 
 historian, and from a summary of this we may cull 
 the grammatical elements. 
 
 Professor Usener has recently shown in his edition of the 
 irepl fj.tfj,f)(re<os that the literary judgments of the famous critic, 
 for whom, by the way, he has no better name than magistellus, 
 go back to an earlier and better time. See also Professor 
 Nettleship in the Journal of Philology, Vol. XVIII (1890), No. 
 36, p. 263 foil. This enhances the value of the specimens that 
 have been given in the text, because it is an indication that 
 the importance of what we call grammar for style was recog 
 nized before the age of pedantry. B. L. G. 
 
148 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 According to Dionysius, Thucydides went delib- 
 eratejy to work at a new style of his own, one that 
 was neither pure prose nor absolute poetry, yet 
 blended out of the two. It must be noticed that the 
 ancient critic writes of Thucydides as many modern 
 critics have written of Carlyle not as though his 
 style were the man, the expression of his individu 
 ality, but a mechanical contrivance, with a deliberate 
 view to novelty of effect. How far the ancient 
 critic and the modern are right this is not the place 
 to inquire, although Carlyle almost makes con 
 fession of conscious mannerism in his Reminis 
 cences, one of his best or at all events one of his 
 most characteristic productions. By the way, some 
 one with a turn for computation has counted the 
 parentheses in the Reminiscences, and it is much 
 to be wished that the same observer had watched 
 the rise and growth and general norm of paren 
 theses in Carlyle, so that this paper might have 
 received an additional illustration from a familiar 
 region. Was parenthesis a designed peculiarity of 
 Carlyle, which afterwards passed over into blood 
 and bone ? Were the characteristics of Thucydides 
 just so many evidences of his artistic purpose? 
 Here Dionysius is wrong. To attribute full con 
 sciousness to the greatest writers would be a 
 capital mistake, and the value of the study dis 
 cussed in this paper would be much diminished by 
 such an assumption. But Dionysius, it must be re 
 membered, looked upon his author with the eyes of 
 a rhetorician who is in search of a norm for prac 
 tice. This study has to do only with the appreci 
 ation, not with the creation, of works of literary art. 
 
GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 149 
 
 Dionysius, then, treats Thucydides as an inno 
 vator, not by virtue of a native necessity, but in the 
 interest of striking effects. As to his phraseology, his 
 selection of words, Thucydides uses tropical expres 
 sions instead of literal, glossary vocables instead of 
 current words, archaisms instead of the common and 
 familiar language of his contemporaries another 
 charge, by the way, that is freely made against 
 innovators of our day, both in prose and poetry. 
 True, it is one that does not come fully within the 
 scope of grammar, but the next set of peculiarities is 
 strictly grammatical. As some scholars have gone 
 so far as to call English a grammarless language, 
 so some have claimed a similar character for Thucy 
 dides, or at any rate have said that Thucydides is 
 not to be judged by the rules of ordinary grammar, 
 and so can never be called ungrammatical because 
 he is not holden of grammar. Dionysius goes fur 
 ther and makes him antigrammatical, as one who 
 deliberately sets himself to disappoint the gram 
 matical sense of his reader. As there was no tech 
 nical grammar in Thucydides' time, this designed 
 discord must have been brought about by feeling 
 rather than by reasoning; and while Thucydides 
 might have understood his critic when he says that 
 the historian loves to expand a word into a sen 
 tence, and again to contract a sentence into a word, 
 he would not have understood so well, if at all, 
 when the critic says that he makes verbs out of 
 nouns and nouns out of verbs ; shifts actives and 
 passives ; exchanges singulars and plurals ; blends 
 feminines with masculines, masculines with femi- 
 nines, both with neuters, to the utter confusion of 
 
I5O GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 
 
 natural sequence; deals in daring constructions 
 according to the sense; is no respecter of gram 
 matical persons ; is lavish in the exchange of tenses, 
 and behaves generally in a manner that in a lesser 
 author would be called solecistic. He indulges in 
 abstracts for concretes, concretes for abstracts, and, 
 like Carlyle, lets parenthesis in as a flood, so that 
 his sentences become twisted and hard to disen 
 tangle. The other strictures on Thucydidean style 
 we pass by on the build of the sentence, the 
 equalization of the members, the jingle of the 
 clauses, the play on words, the balanced anti 
 theses ; but what is important for us to notice has 
 been verified the large part that grammar, pure 
 and simple, plays in this characteristic. Now 
 Thucydides is confessedly an extreme, as much 
 an extreme as Carlyle, and we must expect to 
 find every peculiarity exaggerated in him ; but it 
 is by these extremes that we learn the outline. 
 The insight into finer distinctions comes only 
 after multiplied observations. Hence a notorious 
 case has been selected. Of course, it is not supposed 
 for a moment that even in modern literary criti 
 cism grammatical peculiarities have not been noted, 
 but they have not been systematically studied, and 
 there has been little serious attempt to get at the 
 moral, the aesthetic value. This value, recognized 
 by the ancient critics in a general way, is suscep 
 tible of more exact ascertainment, thanks to the 
 exhaustive methods in vogue, and such an ascer 
 tainment is the highest as it is the most refined 
 result of grammatical study. Dionysius has else 
 where, as, for instance, in a remarkable and valu- 
 
GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. l$l 
 
 able treatise on ' Composition ', that is, the arrange 
 ment of words in the sentence, gone largely into 
 the euphonic side of literary art, the sequence of 
 sounds and the artistic effect of the combination of 
 the phonetic elements. This, too, is grammatical, 
 or at all events borders on the sphere of grammar, 
 and with the advance of phonetics we may expect 
 here also sharper formulae and clearer results. The 
 symbolism of sound is, it is true, a most treacherous 
 subject of investigation, and, looking at the fan 
 tastic tricks that have been played with the corres 
 pondence of sense and sound in ancient as well as 
 in modern times, it is well to be cautious. The 
 permeation of the ' lightning letter ' i (pron. ee) t the 
 hissing hate of the repeated s, the dull obstinacy of 
 the dental, and the loving lapse of the liquid, all 
 this symbolism has had a fascination for minds of a 
 certain order from the beginning ; and those who 
 are intolerant of such fancies in others fall into 
 similar fancies themselves. A man who will sneer 
 at the symbolism of Homeric verses as expounded 
 by the old interpreters will not hesitate to recognize 
 moral and aesthetic elements in the vowel-register 
 and consonant-range in various dialects of the same 
 language. How far fancy can be excluded and 
 science be introduced is a problem which the 
 advance of phonetics must solve. It may be the 
 dream of a pedant to suppose that the aesthetic 
 appreciation of an author as an artist can be fur 
 thered by the tabulation of his vowels and his 
 consonants ; and yet, inasmuch as quite as subtle 
 an element, the sufferance of the hiatus, has done 
 good service as a criterion of genuineness, and to a 
 
152 GRAMMAR AND AESTHETICS. 
 
 certain extent as a criterion of style, it is not well to 
 reject with scorn the possibility of a successful 
 application of these delicate tests. Physical science 
 has of late years in all its departments made mar 
 vellous advances in the invention of instruments of 
 precision. Everything is weighed, counted, regis 
 tered, to the nicest exactitude; but weighing, 
 counting, registering, all signify something. Shall 
 grammatical weighing, counting, registering signify 
 nothing ? Leave the largest possible area for con 
 vention. If there is but one word to express an 
 idea, the individual taste must accept that word, 
 whatever its phonetics ; but is there not a margin 
 of choice which is sufficiently susceptible of men 
 suration to be characteristic? May not phonetics 
 come in here, even in a language apparently so 
 careless in this respect as the English ? The love 
 of variation is a marked natural peculiarity of Eng 
 lish style ; it was loudly proclaimed by the trans 
 lators of the Authorized Version. Do we not find 
 the same principle at work in the phonetics of our 
 literature, our written art ? Poets have occasionally 
 noticed some points. So Coleridge somewhere 
 remarks on the disagreeable effect of blended asso 
 nance and consonance such a sequence of rhymes, 
 for instance, as rose, grown, blows, cone, being 
 offensive to the ear by the want of contrast. 1 But 
 
 1 In his ' Science of English Verse ', which is a contribution 
 to the phonetic and musical side of style, the late Mr. Sidney 
 Lanier has laid down as one of the laws of rhyme : 'Avoid 
 neighboring rhymes which are very nearly alike in tone-color. 
 For example, if two lines rhyme with 'name ' and ' fame ', do 
 not have the two next lines rhyming in ' vain ' and ' stain ', or 
 similar near shades of vowel-color. The result is like two 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 153 
 
 poets do not often make their combinations scien 
 tifically; they group sounds as florists group 
 flowers, by the complementary sense, and leave the 
 scientific appreciation to others. Professor Syl 
 vester's essay on the ' Laws of Verse ' shows the 
 fruitfulness of this method as applied to poetry. 
 For artistic prose little has been done either on the 
 appreciative or on the regulative side. 
 
 Periodology belongs to the music of style as well 
 as the sequence and combination of sounds. This 
 also falls within the domain of grammar, at least in 
 its elements. The importance of periodology in the 
 estimate of antique composition has of late years 
 been fully recognized, thanks to a renewed study 
 of the ancient authorities. The symmetrical struc 
 ture of the oratorical period, the proportion of its 
 members, the distribution of its feet, all these matters 
 now enter into characteristics of style, and become 
 important for questions of individual development as 
 well as of genuineness ; and it is not necessary to 
 insist on the self-evident fact that in this region of 
 aesthetics minute statistics and careful measurement 
 are not only possible but are susceptible of valuable 
 application. 
 
 The term syntax in its modern use is so vague that 
 it runs over freely from the grammatical to the rhetori 
 cal side of the study of language, and yet even in the 
 narrowest sense in which it can be taken, the theory 
 of construction, it may have an aesthetic value. It 
 is not a matter of indifference as to the aesthetic 
 
 contiguous shades of pink in a dress : one of the rhymes will 
 seem faded.' Elementary and obvious as such a rule may 
 seem, it must have been new in Coleridge's time. 
 
154 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 effect of composition what the dominant construc 
 tions are 1 and there is yet open a wide field of 
 observation in this direction. Sporadic remarks 
 are found in grammars and commentaries, but much 
 more remains to be found out and brought into 
 tangible shape. For great departments and great 
 periods of literature some of these observations are 
 of more importance than pages of exclamatory 
 admiration. We contrast the epos of Greece with 
 the epos of Rome. One grammatical difference 
 sums the whole matter up. No historical present 
 in the one, while the historical present abounds in 
 the other, and nothing more is needed for him who 
 appreciates the range of grammatical phenomena. 
 The wide sphere of the dative in Latin poetry is 
 another such significant fact. Now as the examina 
 tion of the usages of different periods and different 
 authors becomes more exact, more detailed, we 
 shall find a potent meaning in much that seems 
 to us indifferent now. 2 The writer's consciousness 
 
 1 1 venture to refer to a recent study of mine in the Ameri 
 can Journal of Philology for 1888, IX 137 foil., on the Stylistic 
 Effect of the Greek Participle. B. L. G. 
 
 2 ' La plus belle tache que puisse se proposer la critique, c'est 
 de repenser avec clarte ce que la genie a concu plus ou moins 
 confusement, et, semblable a Mercure, de se faire pres des 
 hommes Pinterprete des dieux. Voila pourquoi je ne me laisse 
 point arrSter ou troubler par 1' objection commune : " Vous 
 pretez aux poetes des intentions qu'ils n'ont pas cues." Qu'im- 
 porte qu'ils ne les aieht pas cues, si elles sont dans leurs 
 ceuvres ? Tout ce que 1'etude peut y decouvrir, la critique a le 
 droit de le developper avecune abondance,une largeurd'analyse 
 vraiment illirrfitee ; elle ne risquera guere de s'egarer si elle est 
 sympathique et respectueuse et elle ne doit craindre en aucuii 
 cas d'epuiser le sujet ', etc. (Paul Stapfer, Shakespeare et 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 155 
 
 would make the study of less interest, of less 
 value to us who follow the appreciative rather 
 than the regulative side. But in this unreasoned 
 choice, if the expression be not an absurdity, the 
 characteristic often lies. When we compare two 
 authors, we are apt to look chiefly at the range of 
 thought and the vocabulary. Periodology is con 
 sidered only in its extremes ; euphony is not brought 
 to any scientific test; and syntax is not studied 
 except in its monstrosities. Ask an ordinary 
 student, ' What is the difference between the style of 
 Addison and that of Johnson ? ' Would the answer 
 be anything like the one given by the shrewd 
 observer who says : * One of the chief points of 
 contrast in their style lies, I apprehend, in the easy 
 and natural recurrence in the former of the verb, 
 and the artificial preponderance given in the latter 
 to the noun. Since Dr. Johnson's time the substan 
 tive has been gaining ground ; the infinitive mood, 
 the gerund, and the compound participle have been 
 in the same proportion suppressed in many works 
 of which the composition is highly elaborate. As 
 far as unstudied writings may be expressed in set 
 phrase, the usurpation has extended even to these'? 
 This is a grammatical observation of wide reach and 
 capable of ample illustration ; yet those who are 
 outside of grammatical study would see in the collec 
 tion and registration of such facts nothing but the 
 
 I'antiquite, i. 316.) The same line of defence applies to 
 grammatical analysis. Sophocles could not have given a reason 
 for his use of the negatives ; and Mr. Bryant's grammatical 
 explanation of shall and will in his Thanatopsis seemed to 
 me as faulty, when I read it, as the word Thanatopsis itself. 
 
156 GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. 
 
 senseless toil of the pedant. Of course much 
 depends on the texture of the language ; statistics 
 that would be valuable in Greek would be worthless 
 in English, and it requires a certain clearness of vision 
 to see what are true analogies. Yet with just 
 limitations it is true that the statistics of construction 
 do serve to fix the characteristics of style not only 
 in periods and departments, but also in individuals. 
 Given, for instance, a certain conditional combina 
 tion in Greek ; determine the frequency of its 
 occurrence in comparison with another conditional 
 in various departments and in a series of authors, 
 and it will be found that in that one category we 
 have a sharp index of character. The tragic poets 
 will employ the severer conditional in larger propor 
 tion than prose writers, and as compared with one 
 another the nearer they approach the standard of 
 every-day life the smaller the proportion becomes. 1 
 Comic poetry stands in this respect on the same 
 level with prose, and prose in emergency rises to 
 the level of tragedy. It is true that there is more 
 exciting reading than a table of decimals, but those 
 decimals have after all a meaning ; and if a lodgment 
 has been gained for the thought that all the minute 
 grammatical research of the present day may be 
 made available, and is to be made available, for 
 literary criticism, for aesthetic appreciation, some 
 thing has been done in vindication of the much- 
 abused fellowship of grammarians the ' corner- 
 
 1 An allusion to a laborious investigation, the results of 
 which were published in the Transactions of the American 
 Philological Association for 1876. B. L. G. 
 
GRAMMAR AND ESTHETICS. IS/ 
 
 hummers ', as the Greek epigrammatist l contemp 
 tuously calls them. That it is possible to forget 
 the end in the means, that there are those who never 
 go beyond the collection of facts, is most true ; but 
 there are others, and those not a few, who while 
 they put aside the mere dilettantism of aesthetic 
 phrase-making are not insensible of the total effect, 
 and while they use the measuring-rod are not 
 blind to the chambers of imagery to cherubim 
 and palm-trees and lions. 2 Music and architecture 
 rest on mathematics ; and no one denies to the 
 votaries of music and architecture the due appre 
 ciation of their arts because of counterpoint, 
 because of studies as to the strength of material. 
 The very love of art forbids the neglect of any 
 detail, and the quest of some principle, the effort to 
 get exact expression for every manifestation of 
 spiritual life, is not unworthy of the highest intel 
 lectual faculties. Wherever there is true art there 
 is law, however it may hide itself under the facts, 
 and this recognition of law lifts the study of literary 
 art out of the domain of elegant trifling and carries 
 it into a region where art and science meet. 
 
 TO (T(})lv KO.I TO Cr<f>(pV KCU TO fUV T)de TO VIV. 
 
 8 Ezek. ch. xli. 
 
Citerarg 
 
 0taMe0 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1 
 
 The literary world has its fashions as well as the 
 world that reads Le Follet and the Journal des 
 Modes, but the changing fashions of literature are 
 often more unaccountable than the expansion and 
 contraction of skirts and the rise and fall of the top 
 knot. A simple creed refers the long worship of 
 St. Crinoline and the marvellous development of the 
 chignon to the Empress of the French ; but why 
 should bookworms of a certain period all turn to 
 the same kind of moth ? Successful example 
 cannot always be assigned as the cause. True, we 
 can understand how Scott made the historical novel 
 popular, how Byron established the Satanic school, 
 how De Quincey is responsible for all the hashish- 
 eaters who have inflicted their stupid dreams on a 
 sleepy public. We can understand how any de 
 cided impulse given by a man of great intellect and 
 learning may be felt for generations; how Wolf 
 and Niebuhr are working on even now in the per 
 sons of their admirers and imitators. Otfried 
 M tiller, for instance, made a lucky hit with his first 
 book a monograph on ^Egina and thereby set 
 
 J i. Tannhauser, or the Battle of the Bards. A Poem. By 
 Neville Temple and Edgar Trevor. American Edition. Mo 
 bile : S. H. Goetzel & Co. 1863. 
 
 2. Laus Veiieris and other Poems and Ballads. By Al 
 gernon Charles Swinburne. New York : Carleton. 1866. 
 
1 62 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 every apprentice philologian to writing a special 
 treatise on some city or island, Greek or barbaric, 
 until the literary world became as weary as any 
 ' Mariana of the moated grange ', of such treatises 
 as the ' History and Topography of the unidentified 
 Island of Krokyleia ', and the ' Position of the Ger- 
 gesenes in the Development of the World-religion '. 
 All this is easily explained on the imitative or 
 emulative principle. But sometimes the subjects 
 require long preparation and the careful working out 
 of details, so that we must suppose the inception at 
 least to be independent. Translations of Homer 
 cannot be tossed up so quickly as the editor of the 
 Fry ing-Pan of Freedom, tosses up his daily omelet 
 of politics. A long stretch separates Pope from 
 Chapman, a considerable interval sunders Cowper 
 from Pope; but within the last few years any 
 number of worthy English amateurs have tried their 
 hands on the difficult task, and every new bulletin 
 brings an advertisement of a new rendering of the 
 great epic ; this one in the metre of the original, that 
 one in the Spenserian stanza, yet another in a spick- 
 and-span new measure, and a fourth in a traditional 
 blank verse. The literary world is Homer-struck ; 
 and we should not be surprised at seeing the dead 
 walls of our suburbs filled with rival placards, 
 ' Everybody reads Worsley's Odyssey ', and ' Every 
 body takes Hobensack's Liver Pills '; ' Herschel's 
 Hexametrical Homer ' and ' Radway's Ready Re 
 lief; Lord Derby and Dean Alford in the close 
 neighborhood of 'Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup' 
 and ' Hoofland's German Bitters '. To us it seems 
 that a revived belief, once almost prostrate, in the 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 163 
 
 personality of Homer, has renewed the artistic 
 interest in the unique poems which bear his name. 
 Viewed as a pack-thread that ties together a series 
 of old ballads, or even as an ingenious compiler, 
 Homer's person is not an image to call forth a 
 passionate love. But as the real author of the great 
 double picture of Greek heroic life, he appeals more 
 loudly than ever to his English admirers, as one 
 whose very soul has been saved from the dese 
 crating hands of the rationalists. The English must 
 have a person, and hence they prefer ^Eschylus and 
 even Euripides to the less salient Sophocles ; while 
 the Germans care more for the art and less for the 
 artist. Whether this be the true explanation or not, 
 it is well to remember that a difficulty is not solved 
 by paraphrasing the statement of it, as those philo 
 sophers do who tell us that the law of develop 
 ment postulates the simultaneous occupation of 
 several minds with the same subject ; that if Le- 
 verrier and Adams had not discovered Neptune, it 
 would have been discovered a week afterwards 
 without them ; that the steamship and the loco 
 motive would have been evolved independently of 
 Fulton and Stephenson. 
 
 But the present popularity of the legend of Venus 
 does not belong to the wholly inexplicable class. 
 In its mediaeval form the story has a charm which 
 its native Germany has never been backward to 
 appreciate ; and the only wonder is that it was not 
 sooner taken up by English poets. To this intrinsic 
 interest must be added the intense excitement 
 which was called forth by Wagner's celebrated 
 opera ' Tannhauser'; a work which was intended to 
 
164 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 establish the ' music of the future ', and which has 
 succeeded in making a prodigious hubbub among the 
 musicians of the present. A poem with the same 
 title, which appeared in England a few years ago 
 under the assumed names of Neville Temple and 
 Edward Trevor, had a great success in the Southern 
 States, and the edition before us is a Confederate 
 one ; and now Swinburne's Laus Veneris is selling 
 by thousands, and the American publisher repre 
 sents his presses and himself as wellnigh worn out 
 by the applications of booksellers, who in their turn 
 are hard pressed by a host of readers as madly in 
 love with Swinburne as Tannhauser himself with 
 Dame Venus. 
 
 There is a story afloat that when Gustave Dore 
 was asked to illustrate Tennyson's poems, he in 
 quired, with all the superciliousness of which the 
 French language is capable : Who then is this Ten 
 nyson ? We ask ourselves a similar question, but 
 in a far better spirit: Who then is this Venus? 'A 
 question to be asked ' but not so easy to answer. 
 It is not the egg of Columbus, but the egg of Eros 
 that is to be chipped before the problem can be 
 solved ; and to give a detailed account of the origin 
 and history of this multiform deity would carry us 
 back to theogonies which are dainty neither in the 
 reading nor in the telling, and carry us down into 
 rites unmentionable and revolting. What we pur 
 pose to do is to set forth as well as we may in the 
 compass of a few pages, the double aspect of the 
 mysterious goddess of life and death, of love and 
 hate, of pleasure and pain, of things supernal and 
 things infernal; to show how in one form or 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 165 
 
 another the symbolism of immortality is retained ; 
 how the same personages in different disguises 
 reappear as the heroes of like adventures, although 
 a vast distance separates Baal and Tannhauser, 
 Ashera and the ' kept goddess ' of the Thuringian 
 Horsel. 1 Of course when we speak of ' the same 
 personages ' we do not mean absolute identity ; 
 we only mean personifications of the same general 
 idea, modified by religion, by nationality, by 
 climate ; and we disclaim expressly any ambitious 
 attempt to reduce to a last analysis one of the most 
 composite of mythical formations. 2 
 
 The original figure of Venus is of Oriental and 
 specifically of Semitic growth ; a goddess of nature 
 and yet not a goddess only, for the embodiment of 
 
 1 Une divinite aux camelias, et pour ainsi dire une deesse 
 entretenue. Heine. Les Dieux en Exil. Revue des deux 
 Mondes, ier Avril, 1853. 
 
 2 As I said in the preface, these papers are republished sub 
 stantially as they were written, and nothing can be further from 
 my mind than the attempt to restudy these studies, and this is 
 especially true of the ' Legend of Venus ', for which all the 
 stores of learning then accessible to me were faithfully ran 
 sacked. In the light of to-day those stores will seem very 
 meagre, but some of the combinations may still have some in 
 terest. One of my former students, Dr. W. M. Arnolt, has had 
 the kindness to look up the recent literature in the Semitic field, 
 and so that part of the article will not be hopelessly out of date ; 
 and I have added a few notes picked up in my reading. 
 The paper sins greatly, I know, in the multiplication of proper 
 names and of foot-notes, and though I rebelled against the 
 criticism of these particulars at the time it was a woman's 
 criticism I have never in a would-be popular article indulged 
 so much in proper names from that day to this, and have tried, 
 when sowing my foot-notes, to sow them in obedience to 
 Comma's precept, ' with the hand and not with the whole 
 sack.' B. L. G. 
 
1 66 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 nature must present a being complete in itself. 
 Male Venuses were known before ' Our Mutual 
 Friend ' : the Romans had a bearded deity of that 
 name, 1 the Greeks an Aphroditos 2 as well as an 
 Aphrodite, the Philistines a Dagon as well as a 
 Baaltis. In the statues of Dionysus or Bacchus 
 there is an evident blending of the male and the 
 female character; 3 and the well-known son of 
 Hermes and Aphrodite is but a late expression of 
 the same symbolism. 4 Still the prevailing idea was 
 that of a goddess ; and the first form that we have 
 to notice is Ashera or Wife 5 for such seems to be 
 the meaning of the word the spouse of her lord 
 Baal. Ashera, the goddess of nature, the germi 
 nating earth, in Babylon called Mylitta 6 or Ge- 
 netrix ; in Phrygia, Cybele or Magna Mater, held 
 her court in the open air. Groves were her first 
 temples, her altars the high places. Sacred to her 
 
 1 Schol. in II. ii. 820. On a bearded Aphrodite in Cyprus, 
 sometimes identified with Herakles, see Dethier in Academy, 
 April n, 1874. B. L. G. Also Perrot and Chipiez, Art in 
 Phoenicia (Eng.tr.), ii. 151. W. M. A. 
 
 2 Macrobius, Sat. iii. 8. 
 
 3 Muller, Archaologie der Kunst, p. 594 fgg. Ariadne is 
 his Kora, his Persephone ; and the heads are often confounded. 
 
 4 On the early Hermaphroditi see Preller, Griech. Myth, i. 3 
 419-20. On the later, Mtiller, s. 627. 
 
 5 Fiirst, Hebraisches Worterbuch s. v. (1867). PHl^N accord 
 ing to most Assyriologists is connected with Assyrian asirtu 
 ' she who brings salvation, prosperity ', phallus '. F. Delitzsch 
 explains it as equal to sanctuary ', ' temple ', whilst there be 
 those who cling to 'tree ', 'stake '. See Collins, Proceedings 
 of Soc. Bibl. Archaeol., June 4, 1889, vol. xi, pp. 291-303, and 
 Eschrader, Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie, iii. 367. W. M. A. 
 
 6 Mylitta=rn^fD Duncker : Geschichte des Alterthums, i. 4 
 203 Fiirst, s. v. 'Ashtoreth. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. l6/ 
 
 was the mighty terebinth with its unfading leaf and 
 the evergreen cypress. The pomegranate, emblem 
 of fertility, was hers, with its dense array of seeds ; 
 the pomegranate which is the miscalled apple of 
 discord, and which we find on the ephod of Aaron 
 (Ex. xxviii. 33) and on the 'chapiters ' of the two 
 strange pillars 1 made by Hiram of Tyre (i K. vii. 
 1 8, 20) as well as on the cheeks of Sulamith (Cant. 
 iv. 3). Goats and rams were her victims, doves 
 were sacred to her, and fish, with their multitudi 
 nous progeny. Indeed she is none other than the 
 Derceto of Askalon, who was the mermaid of the 
 period, as Dagon was the merman. The sea is 
 hers ; for water, which the wise son of Javan, 
 Thales, made the first principle of things, is sacred 
 to Ashera; and when Hannibal, whose name is 
 derived from Ashera's consort Baal, 3 wished to take 
 the most solemn of oaths, he swore to Philip ' in 
 the sight of rivers and meadows and waters '. But 
 of this Ashera, though frequently mentioned in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, our version of the Bible makes 
 no account; and she has disappeared in the ' groves ' 
 which were sacred to her, and the rude images 
 reared in her honor. 
 
 1 These pillars re-appear in the pillars of Melkarth, the pil 
 lars of Melkarth in the pillars of Hercules, and these in the 
 Spanish pillar-dollar and, according to one theory, in our 
 dollar-mark ($), in which form they receive an adoration nothing 
 short of Phoenician idolatry. 
 
 8 Bunker i. 4 264. Diodor. Sic. ii. 4. Derceto was the 
 mother of Semiramis, and made away with the father of her 
 child, as is the wont of such deities when they go astray. 
 
 3 Polybius vii. 9. Hannibal = Baal is gracious, as Johannes 
 =Jehovah is gracious. See Fiirst, s. v. Jehohanan. So Han 
 nibal might be translated into Jacks9n. 
 
1 68 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 Far more familiar is the name of the divinity with 
 whom Ashera was afterwards confounded : Astarte 
 or 'Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians ' 
 (2 K. xxiii. 13). Her name, too, signifies Consort. 1 
 She is the queen of heaven, and heaven's king was 
 Moloch not the mild lord Baal, the old easy-tem 
 pered Uranus, but the devouring fire, the scorching 
 heat of midsummer. As Moloch was the sun, so 
 was Astarte the moon the chaste goddess, whose 
 priestesses and whose victims were virgins, whose 
 temples no married woman durst enter. But as the 
 dualism of all the old religions endeavors to pass 
 over or perhaps to pass back into a higher unity, so 
 we find Baal blended with Moloch, Ashera with 
 Astarte. 2 
 
 The Baal of Tyre, the Helios of the Greeks, was 
 Melkarth, the king of the city, the god of the sun 
 the wandering god, who set up at far-off Cadiz the 
 pillars which the malapert Greeks claimed for their 
 own hero Hercules, the roving Baal whose priests 
 Elijah mocked on Carmel, saying (i K. xviii. 27): 
 ( Cry aloud, for he is a god ; either he is talking, or 
 pursuing, or he is in a journey ', or peradventure he 
 sleepeth and must be awaked.' But it was not good 
 for this new Baal, this sun-god, to be alone, and 
 Astarte the moon-goddess must be won for him. 
 As a wandering goddess, Dido 3 was her name ; 
 
 1 Furst, s. v. < Mooned Ashtaroth, 
 
 Heaven's queen and mother both.' Milton. 
 
 2 According to Professor Haupt, as cited by C. P. Tiele in a 
 paper read at Leyden in 1885, Asherah and Ashtoreth are 
 feminine forms of Asur, Istar being for Itsar. W. M. A. 
 
 3 Fiirst, s. v. T1/J in confirmation of Etym. Magn. Tr^avqTic;. 
 Comp. Duncker i. 4 272 (1867). So too Paul Schroder, 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. l6g 
 
 and Baal-Melkarth, the knight errant of day, sought 
 the lady errant of night far into the west, into the 
 land of sunset and of darkness. There found, she 
 yielded to Melkarth, and men called her no more 
 Dido or the wanderer, but Anna or Hanna * the 
 gracious one '; or, if we interpret it into the lan 
 guage of our ancestors, Huldah, a German goddess, 
 whose analogy with Venus we shall consider before 
 long. In view of all this it is no fancy that the cold 
 moonshine of Astarte rests on Vergil's Dido ; that 
 there is an unreality about the whole conception, 
 which shows a want of faith in the poet himself; for 
 Vergil was a bookish man and better informed of 
 the real purport of Dido l than some of his commen 
 tators, who have gravely urged against him the 
 charge of anachronism. 
 
 The struggle between the friendly and the hostile 
 powers of nature, which was solved in Tyre by the 
 union of Baal and Moloch in the person of Melkarth, 
 was symbolized in the myth of Adon. Adon a or 
 lord, (in Greek, Adonis), is the bloom of nature ; 
 by the heat of summer, the floods and storms of 
 autumn, the fair youth is done to death. When the 
 mountain stream that empties near Byblus (Gebal) 
 into the sea was swollen by the rains of autumn 
 
 Phoeniz. Sprache, p. 126, but the Assyrian analogy dadu=TH 
 (Ipwf ) points to ' beloved ' as the meaning of David and Dido, 
 and accords also with the signification of Anna and Hanna. 
 W. M. A. 
 
 1 Not a little remarkable is the verse : 
 Hic[Iopas] caniterrantemlunam solisquelabores. Aen. 1.742. 
 
 9 Theocritus has the original form in the verse : 
 
 Xoup', "Ao>i> ayanr]T t KOI cs x a>i P OVTas 0tKu. xv. 149. 
 
I/O THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 and its waters ran red with clay, then they said that 
 Adon had been slain on Lebanon by the wild boar 
 of Moloch, sacred by reason of his furious strength 
 to the fiery god. Seven days did the mourning for 
 Adon last. His wooden image was washed and 
 anointed and laid on a bier, and the women of 
 Byblus lamented his death, crying : Ailanu ! Ailanu ! 
 ( Woe is us ! Woe is us /) This is the Adon that was 
 called Tammuz, of whom Ezekiel speaks when he 
 says (viii. 14) : Then he brought me to the door of 
 the gate of the Lord's house, which was toward the 
 north, and behold there sat women weeping for 
 Tammuz. 1 With the fresh green of spring the god 
 awoke, and the joy at his resurrection was as wild 
 and extravagant as the grief at his death. 2 This 
 myth, which holds in solution so many strange 
 elements, in which the ebb and flow of vegetative 
 life mingle with the dim Oceanus, the all-begirding 
 river of eternity, passed over into Greece, gaining 
 in beauty of expression without losing in depth of 
 significance. 
 
 The mistress of Adonis, the Grecian Aphrodite, 3 
 
 1 In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn. 
 
 Milton, Hymn on the Nativity. 
 
 2 Duncker i. 4 274, Kenrick 308-9, Preller, Griechische 
 Mythologie, i. 4 219. 
 
 8 The ordinary etymology which goes back to d<f)p6s 'foam', 
 and which is still supported by such authority as Pott, is not 
 satisfactory, although Benfey (Wurzellex. i. 586) cites a similar 
 myth from the Hindootheogony. Compare alsoMaury, Histoire 
 des religions de la Grece antique, i. 117, note 3. Benfey divides 
 thus: *A0po5- (ablative) Irr) 'she that hath gone forth from 
 the foam ', or, as our Tennysonian friends would say, ' spume- 
 born '. The jesting Greek etymology from cxjypocrvvi] ' want 
 of sense ', Eur. Tro. 989-90, is not so good as the British sailor's 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. I/ 1 
 
 was not of Grecian growth. The daughter of sky 
 and water, she came from beyond the seas, from 
 Cyprus, where the sly Phoenician dwelt from 
 Cyprian Paphos, the home of Ashera and of her 
 favorite Kinyras the man of the cithern, 1 from 
 Cyprian Amathus, which is in the Phoenician tongue 
 Hamath. She came from Crete, where Europa 
 landed, borne thither by Zeus in the form of a bull, 
 an animal sacred to the king of heaven. Indeed 
 all Crete is full of Phoenician idolatry. Europa 2 
 herself is Astarte, the moon, but so is Pasiphae, the 
 wife of Minos. Minos is Moloch, but so is the 
 Minotaur ; and Talus, the famous brazen policeman, 
 who made the entire coast of the island his beat and 
 pressed poor shipwrecked mariners to his glowing 
 
 ' half-rotted ' (London Society, Aug. 1866), which we respect 
 fully recommend to Mr. Swinburne and the admirers of his 
 medlar Muse (1867). 
 
 Leo Meyer divides 'A^po-Srn; and assumes l/di 'shine', von 
 Schroeder V di in 8ipos, Aphrodite =IG abhradltS. or abhraditi 
 'cloud-flitter', one of the Apsaras or water-nymphs and air- 
 spirits (see Am. Journal of Philology viii. 511). Hommel's 
 identification of Aphrodite with Ashtoret, first propounded, to 
 my knowledge, in the Academy, Feb. 25, 1881, has found much 
 favor. On the etymology T)S'fly', see O. Keller, Berliner 
 Phil. Wochenschrift, 1887, p. 525, who cites Brandis, Mttnz- 
 wesen von Vorderasien, s. 263, & propoi> of a coin of Paphos 
 with a dove flying. Burton in his commentary on Os Lusiadas 
 i, 8 makes Aphrodite Albanian Afeldita 'dawn', 'morning 
 star'. B. L. G. 
 
 1 Kinnor, the harp. See Preller i. 4 360-369, and compare that 
 other favorite of Aphrodite, Anchises 
 
 TTtoXerr' tvQa KOI tvQa dtairpva-iov KiQaplfav' 
 
 Hymn, in Ven. v. 80. 
 
 8 Preller i. 4 372-3, and on this whole Cretan section, ii. 3 
 
1/2 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 breast until they melted, is the familiar image of 
 Moloch to which the idolatrous Israelites offered 
 their children. The genealogy is very complex, and 
 after a while every god becomes his own father and 
 son, step-father and step-son ; every goddess her own 
 mother and grand-mother, daughter and grand 
 daughter. Dido was bad enough ; she was her own 
 sister, and the parvulus ^Eneas she wanted would 
 have been her grandson ; but the Cretan labyrinth 
 of relations is even worse, and the ' Cretians ' evid 
 ently deserved the stigma of ' slow bellies ' for not 
 getting their myths into proper trim. It is a droll 
 island at best. The Cretans, or as the Bible calls 
 them 'the Cherethites', 1 were fervent Molochians, 
 and used to furnish king David with his body-guard. 
 What ails the modern Candiotes that they must 
 needs break off this time-honored connexion with 
 the East, refuse to become good Moslems and to 
 send their contingent to the Ottoman army? From 
 this Crete with its ' evil beasts ' came Phaedra, ' the 
 shining one ', the sister of Ariadne, and if not Venus 
 herself, yet a living witness of the power of Venus 
 Phaedra whose guilty love for Hippolytus is the 
 type of numberless stories in which the Oriental 
 woman woos the Occidental man. We recognize it 
 in Hercules and Omphale, in Jason and Medea, in 
 Ulysses, now with Circe, now with Calypso. It goes 
 back to the ancient tale of Ninus and Semiramis. 2 
 
 1 e. g. 2 Sam. viii. 18 ; xv. 18. 
 
 8 Semiramis is a Venus Victrix with a vengeance. See 
 Duncker, ii. 4 7 fgg. Her name according to Diodor. Sic. ii. 
 4, signifies ' dove '; her history is rather ' the rage of the vulture ' 
 than 'the love of the turtle ' (1867). See an interesting paper 
 on Semiramis by Dr. Cyrus Adler, Johns Hopkins University 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1/3 
 
 It glimmers through the narrative of Samson and 
 Delilah, and comes out in the full light of historic 
 times, as if to give actuality to the idea, in Antony and 
 Cleopatra. The whole dome of poetry is resonant 
 with the accents of this fateful love. You hear it 
 in the magic gardens of Armida ; it lingers in the 
 song of Vivien. True, in most instances the human 
 element overbears all others. To the Greek, Helen 
 was a weak and treacherous woman, who fell in 
 love with Paris for his handsome face and fine 
 clothes ; and in no wise the goddess of the moon, 
 although she smote Stesichorus with blindness for 
 repeating the old scandal about her escapade with 
 the son of Priam. 1 Witness, for instance, how purely 
 human she is in the fourth book of the Odyssey, in 
 which she receives Telemachus with all the compo 
 sure of a high-bred woman, listens to the conversa 
 tion with an easy grace, sheds her melodious tear to 
 the memory of the brave chieftains who fought for 
 her, mixes a sleeping draught with all the skill of 
 Mrs. Gamp, tells her little story about that interview 
 with Ulysses during the war, and like a good house 
 keeper sees to it that Telemachus's bed is properly 
 blanketed before ' she of the sweeping train, the 
 divine among women ' takes her place by the side 
 of the husband whom she had betrayed. And then 
 that little story ! How natural it is ! How artfully 
 she conciliates the good-will of her hearers by tell 
 ing them that her heart yearned for home even in 
 those wicked days, and how she mourned over the 
 
 Circulars No. 55 (Jan. 1887), with Professor Haupt's confirma 
 tion of Diodorus' etymology. B. L. G. 
 1 Preller ii. 3 109. 
 
174 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 fatal mischief-making of Aphrodite, who had taken 
 her away from her fatherland, her child, her husband 
 her husband ' who lacked nothing in sense or in 
 person '. Well said, madam Helen ! Your humanity 
 is fully vindicated. But though thus humanized in 
 the person of Helen, Aphrodite has a deep signifi 
 cance even in Greek mythology; and indeed the 
 Greek worship of Aphrodite is no less profound, 
 while it is infinitely more graceful, than the Oriental. 
 The Greek received nothing from the East that he 
 did not make doubly his own by the beauty with 
 which he invested it 1 mater iam super ab at opus 
 and the Aphrodite Urania is as far above the Oriental 
 personification of the conceptive principle of nature 
 as the graceful image of Venus issuing from the 
 shell fairest of bivalves excels the clumsy mer 
 man Dagon, whose hands and feet were cut off upon 
 the threshold of his temple when he lay a prostrate 
 deformity before the ark of the Lord at Ashdod. 
 We grant that some local features of the worship of 
 Aphrodite were beyond redemption. No religious 
 consecration can palliate in our eyes the sacrifices 
 of those handmaidens of Aphrodite, the Bayaderes 
 of Corinth, any more than the gross debaucheries 
 which made the language employed by the Old 
 Testament prophets concerning the infidelity of 
 Judah and Israel but too appropriate in a double 
 sense. 2 However, these abuses were confined to 
 certain districts, and it was only when the Hetaerse, 
 
 1 Plato, Epinomis, 987 E, o n nfp av E\\rjves ftapftdpav na- 
 paXiifitoai) KO\\IOV TOVTO i T6\os airfpydovTai. 
 
 2 Compare the extended allegory in Ezekiel, ch. xxiii., and 
 Swinburne's Aholibah. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 175 
 
 in the decline of Greece, made Aphrodite their lady 
 patroness and sat as models for statues of the deity, 
 which were to serve at the same time as advertise 
 ments of their own charms, it was only then that the 
 service of the goddess became wholly sensual, 
 only then that the representation of Aphrodite in 
 plastic art became coarse and vulgar. Yet the 
 healthier tradition never became wholly extinct, and 
 while the Medicean Venus, in spite of all her 
 merely corporeal charms, is little better than a 
 Phryne prepared to be surprised, the Venus Victrix 
 of Milo ' stands in the full glory of her regal beauty, 
 opulent as nature herself, tender as true love itself, 
 thoughtful as if musing on the life to come, and yet 
 proud as the mistress and mother of gods and men. 
 Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas. 
 
 The oriental myth of Adonis, so closely con 
 nected with the worship of Aphrodite, found ready 
 entrance among the imaginative Greeks. All re 
 ligions that celebrate the life of earth couple 
 unmeasured joy at the revival of nature with 
 unmeasured sorrow at the approach of winter ; and 
 it is not unlikely that the eastern story was grafted 
 on a Greek stock. From Sappho and Praxilla to 
 Theocritus and Bion, 2 the love of Aphrodite for the 
 beautiful youth, his untimely end, and the grief of 
 the goddess at his death, formed a fruitful theme of 
 poetry; but though here as elsewhere the human 
 elements come prominently into the foreground, the 
 
 1 In the Louvre. Everybody remembers Clive Newcome's 
 ecstasies (The Newcomes, ch. xxii.). 
 
 2 Sappho : Paus. ix. 29, 3 ; Praxilla : Bergk P. L. 4 iii. 566 ; 
 Theocr. Idyll, xv. ; Bion, Idyll, i. 
 
1/6 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 symbolical meaning is hardly veiled at all. Ac 
 cording to the familiar legend, Adonis was doomed 
 to stay six months below in the cold arms of Per 
 sephone ; six months he was permitted to remain 
 in the warm embrace of Aphrodite ; ' as the seed 
 remaineth six months in the ground from the time 
 when it was sown ; and six months Aphrodite hath 
 him, to wit, the well-tempered air.' 1 The death and 
 the resurrection of the vegetative principle were 
 plainly set forth in the ' gardens of Adonis ', the 
 little wicker baskets in which the Greek women 
 used to sow seeds of rapid germination, and which 
 they threw into the water when Adonis went down 
 into the lower world. To this lower world the love 
 of Aphrodite followed him, and in her grief for her 
 beloved the character of the joyous goddess is 
 changed ; she puts on mourning, veils her face and 
 descends into the tomb. Nay, she herself becomes 
 a second Persephone ; just as in Italy the goddess 
 of birth is the goddess of death, as Lucina and 
 Libitina are one. Thus the wonderful series of 
 contrasted yet kindred ideas is complete pain in 
 its strange union with pleasure, 2 death hand-in- 
 hand with life, 3 the mortal paired with immortality. 
 But the love-affairs of Aphrodite are not always 
 so serious as her passion for Adonis ; and Anchises 
 presents the other and the more sunshiny side. He 
 is a more fortunate Adonis ; and, if it were not too 
 
 1 Schol. Theocr. iii. 48. 
 
 2 Plato, Phaedo 60 B. 
 
 8 The Lamia side of the mythology was present to Coleridge 
 when he wrote 
 
 The nightmare Life-in-Death was she 
 
 Who thicks men's blood with cold. Ancient Mariner. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 irreverent, we might call him the Bottom of the 
 Greek Midsummer Night's Dream. As Oberon 
 made Titania fall in love with the weaver, so Zeus 
 himself put forth his power to mortify golden 
 Aphrodite ; l and if the Greek Bottom has not' an 
 ass's head, the candor of his animal nature reminds 
 us forcibly of his English analogon. Perhaps, 
 however, this is all prejudice, and we may as well 
 frankly acknowledge that our conception of pater 
 Anchises has always been grotesque. To carry or 
 to be carried pick-a-pack is graceful neither in the 
 carrier nor in the carried ; and we cannot conceive 
 Anchises otherwise than mounted on the shoulders 
 of pious .^Eneas, with a pad under him to make his 
 old bones comfortable. As Vergil describes him, 
 the old gentleman was little more than a respect 
 able mummy ; but even in the prime of his youth 
 and beauty ' strolling backwards and forwards and 
 loudly a-sounding his cithern ', he is rather amusing 
 than heroic, if we may trust the charmingly naive 
 report in the Homeric Hymn on Aphrodite. At 
 first the minstrel of Ida, like the minstrel Tann- 
 hauser, 2 is willing to die if he may gain the love of 
 his fair one ; but after he has gained it, he begs 
 most piteously that he may not have to pay the 
 usual penalty for his happiness. For the lovers of 
 the ancient she-divinities seem to have run no 
 little risk ; and Anchises, who, according to one 
 
 1 Hymn, in Venerem, v. 45. 
 
 2 Anchises : @ov\oifj.r)v <v eTreira, yvvai tiKv 
 
 (rrjs evvijs tVi/Say 8vvat So/xoi/ "Ai'Sos euro). 
 
 w. 154-5. 
 Tanhuser : solde ich vor ir ligen tot, 
 
 ich mehte ir niht vermiden. 
 
1/8 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 conjecture, held a fief of the Assyrian empire, 
 knew too much about Semiramis. Semiramis, as we 
 have seen in passing, another form of the Ashera- 
 Astarte of the Phoenicians and the Dido-Anna of 
 the Carthaginians, had filled her land with funeral 
 mounds of her paramours ; and Anchises, a cautious 
 fellow, who would have demanded guaranties of 
 Catharine the Second, did not emulate their fate 
 nor yet that of poor shrivelled Tithonus the hus 
 band of the blooming Eos (Aurora). 1 So he prays 
 as he covers his fair face with his blankets : 
 
 But I beseech and entreat thee by Jupiter, Lord of the ^Egis, 
 Do not permit me to live among men as a ghost and a shadow ; 
 Nay, but have pity on me, for I know that the life of the mortal 
 Whoso shareth the couch of immortal goddesses, pineth. 
 
 vv. 188-91. 
 
 This Aphrodite, the celestial mistress of Anchises, 
 came to Rome and found that she must submit to a 
 change of name. Here she was called Venus, 2 as 
 Athena was called Minerva or the goddess of 
 thought, Hermes, Mercurius or the god of gain, 
 and Demeter (mother earth) Ceres the goddess of 
 
 1 Compare Nimrod's reply to Istar in the sixth tablet of the 
 Nimrod Epos. 'This speech is a scathing reproach from 
 Izdubar to Istar, a complete survey of her excesses, and a 
 refusal to accede to her blandishments.' See Dr. Cyrus Adler's 
 paper cited above. B. L. G. 
 
 2 The old etymology from venire ('to come ') quia ad o mites 
 venit> is nonsense. Grimm suggested (Deutsche Mythologie, 
 i. 413) a comparison of (g) Venus with Goth, gino, A. S. cwen, 
 Gr. yvvr) (1867). Bre'al derives Venus from Sks. van ' to love'. 
 In the present attitude of etymological science it is well to 
 cherish as profound a distrust of the etymology as of the god 
 dess herself. B. L. G. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1/9 
 
 growth, to the great detriment of the varied signi 
 ficance of their original titles. For while the Greek 
 and Roman nationalities have a common stock of 
 religious ideas ; while there is a general analogy 
 between the deities of Greece and Rome, and many 
 of their religious rites were the same, still the differ 
 ence of development is marked. 1 The genuine 
 Roman Pantheon lacks the human and artistic 
 interest which attaches itself to the undying 
 forms of the Greek divinities. The gods of the 
 Romans did not marry nor beget children ; they 
 did not move among mortals, nor did they need 
 nectar. Most of them are tiresome abstractions : 
 personifications of natural processes, of mechanical 
 actions, of social institutions, nay, of material 
 objects, for everything here below has its genius in 
 the unseen world. There are spirits of the forest, 
 the furnace, the door, the hinge, the threshold. In 
 fact, some of these abstractions, tame as they seem, 
 were among the oldest and most revered of the 
 Roman deities, such as Terminus the god of the 
 landmark, Concordia the goddess of one-minded- 
 ness, and above all Janus, god of the beginning. 
 But as the Romans became better acquainted with 
 the Greeks, the Greek deities were naturalized, and 
 as they were made free of the city, they were 
 received into the gentes of the existing gods. 
 Kronos was called Saturnus, the god of sowing; 
 Artemis was turned into Diana. Hera, Our Lady 
 of the full-orbed eye, is still in schoolboy parlance 
 the 'ox-eyed venerable Juno', and Aphrodite is 
 
 1 This exhibit follows Mommsen closely, Rom. Gesch. B. i. 
 K. 12. 
 
180 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 permanently Venus. The original Italian Venus is 
 said to have been a goddess of the gardens, and so 
 in one aspect equivalent to Flora, goddess of 
 flowers. Aphrodite might have put up with 
 Flora, but she could never have liked being called 
 Venus, and must have curled her dainty nose when 
 she heard her new name used by that vulgar Cam- 
 panian poet Naevius, as a synonym for pot-herbs. 1 
 And for our part we candidly acknowledge that we 
 sympathize with the teacher of Peisistratos Caxton 
 when he cries out : ' Und Du ! and dou Aphrodite ; 
 dou whose bert de seasons velcomed ! dou who 
 didst put Atonis into a coffer and den did durn him 
 into an anemone ; dou to be called Venus by dat 
 snivel-nosed little Master Budderfield ! Venus 
 who presided over Baumgartens and funerals and 
 nasty tinking sewers ! Venus Cloacina ! O, mem 
 Gott ! Come here, Master Budderfield ; I must a 
 flog you for dat ; I must indeed, little boy ! ' But 
 if Venus be really a goddess of vegetation, we find 
 the same element in the homelier Italian as in the 
 bewitching Greek conception. Here too she is 
 the divinity of the life-giving earth, or rather of the 
 fructifying moisture that courses through the veins 
 of everything that has life ; her grandest emblem 
 the sea, her nearest, the tidal flow of our own blood. 
 As Aphrodite descending to Hades became a 
 Persephone, so the Roman Venus Libitina is a 
 goddess of death also. All that is born must die 
 to rise again, and like Mother Earth, like Cybele, 
 she has the keys of the nether world. To the 
 common people of Rome then, as to the learned 
 
 1 Festus, s. v. coquum. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. l8l 
 
 now, the name Persephone 1 conveyed no satis 
 factory idea ; and so by the alchemy of the vulgar 
 tongue it was transmuted into Proserpina, the god 
 dess of the forth-creeping plant, fit daughter of 
 Ceres, the goddess of growth, and readily blended 
 with the floral divinity of Venus. 
 
 After the establishment of Christianity, Venus 
 lingered for a long time in Italy, and her image was 
 strangely wrought into no less a personage than 
 the Virgin Mother. As Venus Marina she was 
 confounded with the Stella Maris ; and many of the 
 pictures of the Madonna the Madonna with the 
 moon and stars, the Madonna with the fish, the 
 Madonna called la belle jardiniere remind us by 
 their attributes of the heathen Queen of Heaven, 
 although those attributes can likewise be accounted 
 for by Christian symbolism. 2 Of course, apart 
 
 1 IIfpo-(f)6vr] for i&fpfffcfrovTj, the death-bringer, is not quite 
 satisfactory. The original obscurity is indicated by the great 
 variety of forms among others 4>ep(re</>ftrTa which might 
 mean the dove-bearer. There was a statue of Uemeter at Phi- 
 galeia with a dove in her hand, the dove being sacred to Per 
 sephone also. Compare Preller, who says correctly that most 
 of these ancient etymologies are mere puns (1867). According 
 to Gustav Meyer, Gr. Gr. 2 15 -<ao-(ra in <I>epo-e</>ao-ora is a 
 participle from the same radical as -$01/77 B. L. G. 
 
 2 The Madonna with the moon and stars, by Rev. xii. i; La 
 belle jardiniere by the Song of Solomon ; and a volume might 
 be written on the fish as a heathen and Christian symbol. See 
 the commentators on Herod, i. 24. The fish on the tombs of 
 the early Christians was in fact a monogram of our Saviour's 
 name: '1(770-01?) X(pio-ro?) 0(coi)) Y(I6y) 2(o)T7p). (1867.) 
 
 Of the literature that has gathered about the pagan ele 
 ments of Christian tradition since this article was written I 
 will cite only Professor Usener's fascinating study, ' Die Le- 
 genden der heiligen Pelagia' (Bonn, 1879), * n which he has 
 
1 82 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 from a few external representations there was 
 no fusion. The enmity to the fallen and exiled 
 deities was bitter indeed we may call it sec 
 tarian. It was the anger which a follower of the 
 new Zeus might be supposed to have felt against 
 that old cannibal Kronos. To the apprehension of 
 the early Christians the heathen gods were devils. 1 
 1 The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sac 
 rifice to devils and not to God ' (i Cor. x. 10) : ' to 
 demons ', if you choose, but the popular mind made 
 little distinction. And these demons, as real exist 
 ences and not mere figments, were thought to be 
 carrying on a guerrilla war for their lost cause in 
 the nooks and corners of the earth ; and though 
 there was but slender proof of any foul play on the 
 part of these poor devils, the zealots of the period 
 manufactured some admirable stories of kidnapping 
 and the like. In Italy especially, wild rumors were 
 afloat of statues of Venus called into life by magic 
 rites; all which rumors were nothing but far-off 
 echoes of the old myth, according to which Pyg 
 malion roused the queen of love from her long 
 
 identified many of the Magdalene figures of the hagiology with 
 surnames of Venus-Aphrodite. Usener's paper was written for 
 the Philological Convention at Treves, and by an odd chance it 
 was at Treves that I read it for the first time in 1880. As 
 suredly no better place than the ancient Augusta Treverorum 
 in which to study the strange blending of the life of the Church 
 and the life of heathendom, and I shall always think of 
 'AffrpodiTrj IlcXayta, or, if you will, Venus Marina, as standing 
 guard by the Porta Nigra, and St. PelagSa as adoring the Holy 
 Coat B. L. G. 
 
 1 Us aimerent mieux souffrir le martyre que de montrer la 
 moindre veneration pour ce diable de Jupiter, cette diablesse 
 de Diane et cette archidiablesse de Venus. Heine. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 183 
 
 slumber in the tomb. 1 Instead of citing the great 
 source for stories of this kind, Aureolus Philippus 
 Theodorus Paracelsus 2 Bombast ab Hohenheim, 
 we will content ourselves with an extract from a 
 work of much easier access, Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy (Am. ed., p. 447) : 
 
 * One more I will relate out of Florilegus ad 
 annum 1058, an honest historian of our nation, 
 because he telleth it so confidently, as a thing in 
 those days talked of all over Europe : A young 
 gentleman of Rome, the same day that he was mar 
 ried, after dinner with the bride and his friends 
 went a walking into the fields, and towards evening 
 to the tennis-court to recreate himself; whilst he 
 played, he put his ring on the finger of Venus 
 Statua, which was thereby made in brass ; after he 
 had sufficiently played and now made an end of his 
 sport, he came to fetch his ring, but Venus had 
 bowed her finger in and he could not get it off, 
 whereupon loth to make his company tarry, there 
 left it, intending to fetch it the next day or at some 
 more convenient time ; went thence to supper and 
 so to bed. In the night Venus steps in between 
 him and his wife (unseen or felt of her), and told 
 him that she was his wife, that he had betrothed 
 himself unto her by that ring which he put upon 
 her finger: she troubled him for some following 
 nights. He not knowing how to help himself, made 
 his moan to one Palumbus, a learned magician in 
 
 1 Ovid, Met. x. 243-297. Preller, i. 4 364. 
 
 9 In turning over Paracelsus, we have stumbled on a passage 
 which may be of interest to those who intend to pursue the 
 subject further : Paracelsus, De Morbis Invisib. lib. iv. 
 
1 84 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 those days, who gave him a letter, and bid him at 
 such a time of the night, in such a cross-way, at 
 the town's end, where old Saturn would pass by 
 with his associates in procession, as commonly he 
 did, deliver that script with his own hands to Saturn 
 himself; the young man of a bold spirit accord 
 ingly did it, and when the old fiend had read it, he 
 called Venus to him, who rode before him, and 
 commanded her to deliver his ring, which forthwith 
 she did and so the gentleman was freed/ l 
 
 Some of these stones were carried into Germany 
 and grafted on earlier traditions, and the outgrowth 
 was the figure of Frau Venus, who holds high 
 revel in an enchanted mountain and lures men to 
 eternal ruin; but under that name she does not 
 seem to occur earlier than the fourteenth century, 
 and we must look for her analogies among the 
 native German deities. 
 
 In the somewhat misty German Pantheon, three 
 personages can be descried, each of which has some 
 analogy with Venus ; each of which presents points 
 of attachment for classic traditions. 2 The most 
 familiar of these is Freyja, most familiar because 
 she has given her name to the sixth day of the 
 week, Friday, Veneris dies, Vendredi. As Venus 
 was espoused to a man, now Adonis, now An- 
 chises, so was Freyja married to a man with an 
 unpronounceable Gothic name ; but the ungrateful 
 mortal forsook her and she sought him wandering 
 through the wide, wide world, a roving goddess 
 
 1 The story is also well told by Heine, 1. c. 
 
 2 On this section see Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie. The 
 book has an index. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 185 
 
 like Astarte, like Dido, like Helen. A more pro 
 saic goddess is Holda (Huldah), who in her ca 
 pacity as ' queen of heaven ' a High-Dutch Venus 
 Urania is the 'old woman picking geese', whose 
 performances Christian nursery-maids still point 
 out to baptized children in unheathen America 
 whenever the snow-flakes begin to fall, and who 
 appears more poetically in Notre Dame aux Neiges. 
 It is true that Holda has many features which 
 remind us of Diana. She is at once the wild 
 huntress and the goddess of the distaff and 
 spindle. But as Artemis and Aphrodite have 
 common functions and are often merged into a 
 common person, as for example in the famous 
 Diana of Ephesus, so Holda as goddess of the 
 water and as queen of the elves is an indisputable 
 Venus, and it is her mountain that is called Venus' 
 mountain, the mountain before which sits the trusty 
 Eckhart to warn the unwary. This Eckhart is a 
 strange figure out of the olden time; a strange 
 cross between Cerberus and unhappy Theseus who, 
 according to Vergil, sits and will sit forever . . . 
 sedet aeternumque sedebit. 
 
 The third personage is Halja, unmentionable to 
 ears polite as hell. But the further back we go 
 in the history of this deity, the less hellish she 
 appears. She is not death, she does not kill, she 
 does not pursue; she only receives the souls of the 
 departed and holds them in her inexorable embrace. 
 According to one account she is half black, half 
 white, according to another all black. So Demeter 
 was draped in mourning, so Aphrodite was surnamed 
 
1 86 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 the Black ; l and as the Madonna in Italy fell heir 
 to some of the attributes of the exiled queen of 
 love, so Our Dear Lady (Unsere liebe Frau) in 
 Germany assumed the color of the departed Halja ; 
 and we have seen black images of the Virgin in 
 other places than those mentioned by Grimm. 2 
 This Halja seems to have been confounded at times 
 with Holda, as Venus with Proserpine. 
 
 Goddesses enough, we should say, to represent 
 Venus ; and as it was commonly believed that men 
 often mysteriously disappeared (spirited away, as 
 the phrase is) and spent months and years with the 
 elves, it was not long before a hero was found to 
 take the place of Adonis or of the cithern-player 
 Anchises. In Scottish legend, Thomas the Rhymer 
 of Ercildoune and Tamlane 8 figure very largely as 
 recipients of elfin favors, and in one ballad no less 
 a being than the ' quene of heuen ' is the heroine, 
 in another the inevitable apple comes in. But we 
 must keep away from the treacherous land of fairy 
 and confine our view to the German tradition ; and 
 first of the Tannhauser of history. Tannhauser, 
 Tannenhauser or Tanhuser, whichever you will, 
 
 1 The explanation of the MeXaii/iV in Pausanias (viii. 6) is 
 wonderfully prosaic, and being somewhat indecent is hereby 
 assigned to Swinburne as a theme. 
 
 2 Especially famous is the Black Virgin of Altotting. On a 
 1 black edition ' of the Madonna in Auvergne see an article by 
 Lady Verney in the Contemporary Review for Dec. 1882. 
 ' This variety is generally very old and particularly efficacious, 
 being probably a survival of the idols formed of meteoric 
 stones, like " the image of Diana of the Ephesians descended 
 from heaven".' B. L. G. 
 
 3 Child, English and Scottish Ballads, i. 213, 227, 232, 363, 
 372 ; W. Scott, Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter iv. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1 8? 
 
 was a Bavarian knight, who lived in the thirteenth 
 century and distinguished himself as a Minnesinger. 
 His poems are said to mark a decided decline in 
 tone : 1 with him love is no longer ideal but sensual, 
 and his verses are redolent of the riotous living in 
 which he spent his substance ; and it was as the 
 representative of this voluptuous decadence of the 
 once sacred art that he was drawn by tradition into 
 the Battle of the Bards on the Wartburg, a contest 
 in which all the prominent Minnesingers of the time, 
 real and imaginary, were engaged. 2 This prodigal 
 sinner and singer was well fitted to sustain the part 
 of the lover of Frau Venus, and the older character, 
 whoever he was, disappeared to make room for 
 the truant bard. 
 
 Here is an outline of the story. Frau Venus had 
 been driven out of her chosen home in the south. 
 Her temples had been destroyed, so that scarce one 
 stone was left upon another, and in her dismay she 
 fled far northward, if peradventure there might be 
 some place of refuge found for her. At last, in the 
 depths of the Thuringian forest she chanced upon 
 a mountain, Horsel by name, and in its recesses 
 she held her court. Sounds of bewitching music 
 haunt the valleys around, and draw by their 
 enchantment the hearts and the feet of all who hear 
 to the abodes of the queen of love. Eckhart, the 
 Trusty, sits at the entrance and warns the unwary 
 of their danger, but many press on to pleasure and 
 to ruin. Of these was Tannhauser, who took up 
 
 1 Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen National-literatur, i. 
 
 339- 
 
 8 Gervinus, ii. 36. 
 
1 88 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 his abode with Frau Venus and enjoyed all the 
 pleasures of sin for a season. But one day his heart 
 awoke from its slumber, and he felt how grievously 
 he had offended God and done wrong to his own 
 body and soul. So he arose and went to Rome, if 
 so be he might find forgiveness for his great sin. 
 But the Pope, whose name was Urban, entreated 
 him harshly, and showing him his withered staff, 
 said, ' When this staff shall bud, then shall thy sins 
 be forgiven.' So the knight departed, grieving 
 much, and because there seemed to be no salvation 
 for him, he went back again to Venus's mountain, 
 where he shall dwell until the last day. But on the 
 third day the Pope's staff budded, and the Pope 
 sent into all lands to seek Tannhauser, but Tann 
 hauser was no more to be found. 
 
 It is evident that in this form, as in so many forms 
 of the myth of Venus, the human side has been 
 turned outward and the original symbolism com 
 pletely hidden. Indeed, the German ballad of 
 Tannhauser is nothing else than a protest against 
 the uncharitableness of the priesthood as compared 
 with the boundless mercy of God ; but even from 
 this point of view we see that the old myth has been 
 transmuted ' into something rich and strange '. It 
 is not a dead body, but a soul, dead in trespasses 
 and sins, that is to be quickened. 
 
 The story is best set forth in an old German 
 ballad, reprinted by Achim Von Arnim in his well 
 known collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. 1 The 
 language does not indicate a great antiquity ; it is 
 
 1 i. 97. From Frau Veneris Berg von Kornmann, Frankfurt, 
 1614 ; Pratorii, Blockes-berg Verrichtung, Leipzig, 1668. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 189 
 
 to our ear very much the racy tongue of Luther's 
 Table Talk, so that the version which we give below, 
 from a manuscript source, is faulty in that it crowds 
 too many obsolete English words into so short a 
 space, as well as in other particulars which the 
 discerning student of English ballad-writing will 
 not fail to notice. But ' mon siege est fait\ as the 
 French historian, Vertot, said when new sources of 
 information were pointed out to him; our transla 
 tion is written ; and we only hope that even in this 
 imperfect rendering the reader may still trace the 
 rude directness of the original, its lively portraiture, 
 its boldness of transition, its honesty and its earn 
 estness. 
 
 THE BALLAD OF TANHUSER. 
 
 And now I will begin my song, 
 
 And of Tanhuser tell, 
 And all the wonders done the while 
 
 He did with Venus dwell. 
 
 Tanhuser was a right good knight, 
 Great wonders he fain would see, 
 
 So went he to Dame Venus' mount, 
 Where other fair dames be. 
 
 ' Sir Tanhuser, I love you much, 
 This you should take to heart : 
 You sware to me a solemn oath 
 No more from me to part.' 
 
 ' Dame Venus, that I did not do, 
 
 And that I will gainsay : 
 There's none that saith so, saving you, 
 So help me God this day.' 
 
190 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 1 Sir Tanhuser, how say you so ! 
 
 Here you must spend your life : 
 I'll give you one of my play-feres 
 To be your wedded wife.' 
 
 ' If I should take another wife 
 
 Than her which I desire, 
 Then I must burn forevermore 
 In brimstone and hell-fire.' 
 
 ' You talk so much about hell-fire 
 
 And have not been therein 
 Bethink ye of my rosy mouth 
 And of my dimpled chin.' 
 
 ' What good doth me your rosy mouth ? 
 
 It doth not please me moe ; 
 By all dames' honor, Venus sweet, 
 Give me good leave to go.' 
 
 Sir Tanhuser, if you wish leave, 
 
 I will not give you none : 
 
 Now stay, my noble Tanhuser, 
 
 And fresh your life anon.' 
 
 My way of life hath fallen sick, 
 
 I cannot longer stay ; 
 From your proud body give me leave, 
 Sweet dame, to go away.' 
 
 ' Sir Tanhuser, nay speak not so, 
 
 You are not in your mind : 
 Let us go back into my bower, 
 Our fill of love to find.' 
 
 ' I am a-weary of your love, 
 
 In which I wont to revel 
 O Venus, noble damosel, 
 
 Methinks you be a she-devil.' 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 19! 
 
 ' Tanhuser, how can you speak so ? 
 
 Too bitter is your gird. 
 If you should longer stay with us, 
 You'll pay me well that word. 1 
 
 ' Tanhuser, if that you will go, 
 
 Take leave of my knights around ; * 
 And when you journey through the land, 
 My praises shall you sound.' 
 
 Tanhuser from the mountain went 
 
 In sorrow and in ruth 
 ' Unto Rome city I will go 
 
 And tell the Pope the truth. 
 
 ' Now joyously, with God to friend, 
 
 To Rome I trust to win. 
 The Holy Father, Pope Urban, 
 Will shrive me clean from sin. 
 
 1 Lord Pope ! O Holy Father mine, 
 
 I am in sore distress 
 For all the sin which I have done, 
 The which I now confess. 
 
 ' A twelvemonth fully I have been 
 
 With Venus, that ladye ; 
 Now I wish shrift and penitence, 
 God's face that I may see.' 
 
 The Pope he had a white, white staff, 
 
 'Twas made of a dry, dry tree : 
 1 When this staff beareth leaves, then shall 
 Thy sins forgiven be.' 
 
 1 ' I'lJ pay that doctrine or else die in debt.' Shakespeare. 
 
 2 The original : von meinen Greisen, 'from my greybeards '. 
 Heine : de mes chevaliers^ which we have adopted as making a 
 clearer sense. 
 
IQ2 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 ' If I should live not more than a year 
 
 But one year here below 
 
 I would do penance and repent, 
 
 God's grace again to owe.' 1 
 
 Then gat he him away from Rome, 
 
 And sorely he did grieve : 
 ' O Mary Mother, Virgin pure, 
 If thee I thus must leave, 
 
 ' I'll get me back to yon mountain, 
 
 To dwell forever and aye 
 With Venus, mine own ladye dear, 
 Where God will have me stay.' 
 
 * O welcome home, Tanhuser dear, 
 I've missed you long and sore : 
 O welcome home, my dearest lord, 
 My chosen evermore.' 
 
 Mayhap the third day after that, 
 
 The staff again waxed greeri, 
 And criers were sent to every land 
 Where Tanhuser had been. 
 
 But he was back in Venus' Mount, 
 
 And there he shall aby 2 
 Forever, till the judgment day, 
 
 When God his soul shall try. 
 
 Now this is what no priest should do 
 
 Miscomfort any that live : 
 If a man do penance and repent, 
 
 His sins he should forgive. 
 
 1 Owe, 'own'. 
 
 2 Aby, usually 'pay for': here 'wait', as in Spenser, F. Q. 
 vii. 6, 24 : But Jove all fearelesse forc't them to aby. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 193 
 
 We cannot say with Heine that it is magnificent, 
 but we can recognize with him a certain artlessness 
 that is beyond the reach of art. The whole con 
 ception is as dramatic as the Iliad. A short pre 
 lude, and we plunge at once into the thick of the 
 drama. The ballad-singer has seized on the organic 
 centre of the whole myth, and instead of wearying 
 us with a long description of the wiles by which 
 Venus enticed the luckless sinner into her den, he 
 brings before us at once the two contending parties, 
 as Homer introduces to us, in the very first lines, 
 Atrides, king of men, and godlike Achilles. In this 
 controversy the character of Dame Venus comes 
 out in clear outlines, by no means as the Aphro 
 dite Urania, but rather as the ' strange woman ' of 
 the Book of Proverbs. She has all the insolence 
 and cajolery of her class ; and this unfortunate god 
 dess understands as well and applies as readily 
 as any unfortunate female the argumentum ad 
 hominem, Tannhauser on the other hand appears 
 throughout as a creature of impulse ; he is as 
 violent in his efforts to get out as he had doubtless 
 been eager to get in ; and it is a most happy stroke 
 by which the account of the journey is put into the 
 mouth of the headlong knight himself, as if the 
 ballad-singer sympathized with the impatience of 
 his hotspur hero. And as the Iliad ends, where it 
 ought to end, with the burial of Hector, in whose 
 mound were entombed all the hopes of Troy ; so 
 this poem ends, as it ought to end, with the final 
 disappearance of Tannhauser, and does not deaden 
 the dread effect by such prurient descriptions of 
 sensual joys as we find in Mr. Swinburne's verses. 
 
194 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 The closing verse of the ballad is in exact accord 
 ance with the dramatic canon of antiquity ; and no 
 Greek chorus ever chanted a more appropriate 
 exodos to a tragedy than that which rounds off 
 the production of this unknown genius. The pecu 
 liar character of the tragedies of yEschylus pre 
 cludes a comparison ; but if we examine Euripides, 
 we shall find that no less than five plays of this 
 master end with the same wretched tail-piece: 
 
 A Lord Steward High is Zeus in the sky, 
 And much that is odd's fulfilled by the gods ; 
 That comes not about for which you look out ; 
 What you don't expect, that God doth effect, 
 And such was the course of this story. 1 
 
 And this is the best ; the rest are utterly insigni 
 ficant. Sophocles, we must confess, does a little 
 better; and we think that the close of the Antigone, 
 in which the poet urges the importance of sober 
 thought and the obligation of reverence towards 
 the gods, is not unworthy of the author of Tann- 
 hauser, though of course devoid of the deep morat 
 significance of those noble verses : 
 
 Das soil rummer kein Priester thun 
 Dem Menschen Misstrost geben : 
 Will er denn Buss und Reu empfahn, 
 Seine Siinde sei ihm vergeben. 
 
 In all seriousness for it may be necessary to say 
 that we have been jesting we prefer the old ballad 
 to its modern interpreters ; and in vindication of this 
 
 J Medea, 1415 seqq. Comp. Alcestis, 1160 ; Andromache, 
 1285; Bacchae, 1358; Helena, 1688. The Medea tail-piece 
 begins with TroXXwi/TQ/iiayZeuff eV 'oXu/ATTw ; the others, TroAXat 
 /Liop^ai rail/ datfiovifov , ' how many the forms of these devilish 
 storms ! ' 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1 95 
 
 opinion it will be necessary to give a brief account 
 of the way in which the story has been handled by 
 sundry authors of greater or lesser fame. 
 
 The ' Tannenhauser ' of Ludwig Tieck is found 
 in a collection called ' Phantasus ', which contains 
 his charming little story of the 'Elves', familiar to 
 the English-reading public in Carlyle's translation. 
 But the story of Tannhauser has not fared as well 
 in Tieck's hands. By the side of the ballad, it is 
 colorless and conventional. In his version, Tann 
 hauser, an 'Imperial councillor', suddenly vanishes, 
 and after a long absence in the mountain of Venus, 
 reappears to an intimate of his, Frederick von 
 Wolfsburg. His pilgrim's weeds disclose his inten 
 tion to go to Rome ; and duly urged, he unfolds to 
 Frederick the tale of his transgressions* A couple of 
 pages are devoted to. an analysis of Tannhauser's 
 nervous system a system with which the real 
 Tannhauser had as little to do as with the Coper- 
 nican and to a description of certain inner music 
 which must have puzzled sorely the stethoscope- 
 doctors of the period. Out of this nervous system 
 the Imperial councillor finds his way into a wood, 
 in which he loses it again, and rambles about until he 
 comes to a garden full of beautiful roses. Of course 
 ' a marvellous longing after the roses took possession 
 of him ; he could not restrain himself, he forced his 
 way through iron railings and got into the garden. 
 Forthwith he fell on the ground, embraced the 
 bushes with his arms, kissed the roses on their red 
 mouth, and melted into tears.' In this pastime he 
 is interrupted by the approach of two girls, with the 
 younger of whom Emma by name he incon- 
 
196 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 tinently falls in love. Just as Tannhauser had 
 established himself on the footing of a friend of the 
 family, and had reached 'that stage of the tender 
 passion which bound him to regard everybody else 
 as the foe of the family ', a rival appeared ; and we 
 learn to our great relief that the inner music stopped, 
 although the nervous system seems to have been as 
 complicated as ever. The other man finally carries 
 off the prize, and Tannhauser goes stark mad with 
 love and jealousy, and slays his rival. The sequel 
 is for all the world like an opera : 
 
 First chorist : Tannhauser's sweetheart dies of grief. 
 Second chorist : Tannhauser's mother dies of grief. 
 Third chorist : Tannhauser's father dies of grief. 
 Tutti : Tannhauser, you must die of grief. 
 
 But Tannhauser himself like many another hero 
 of the same latitude thought it better to die of 
 drink; and so he gave himself up to all manner of 
 debauchery, until he felt that ' hell was lusting after 
 him '. In a spirit of accommodation he called on 
 the arch-enemy to show him the way, and the foe 
 of God and man put a song in his mouth, and the 
 song acted as his guide how, he does not deign to 
 explain, 'ffa ira, fa ira' At the entrance to 
 the mountain of Venus, Tannhauser is stopped by 
 Eckhart, but he presses past the faithful sentinel to 
 the mountain, as he forced his way through the 
 iron railings to the roses. A new delirious music 
 greets his ear, and the jocund heathen gods come 
 trooping forth to meet him, Frau Venus at their 
 head. In the society of the Queen of Love and of 
 the beauties of her court he dwelt, how long he 
 knew not, revelling in all the pleasures that earth 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 1 97 
 
 affords. ' Insatiate was his bosom and infinite the 
 enjoyment'; but the appetite of readers is not 
 insatiate, and their patience but finite. Suddenly 
 a longing for the poor mean life of other mortals 
 came over Tannhauser. God in his mercy opened 
 a way of escape, and now he is on his way to Rome 
 to seek absolution from the Holy Father. When 
 Tannhauser was through with his story, Frederick 
 quietly told him that he was beside himself; that 
 he, Frederick, had taken her, Emma, to his wedded 
 wife ; that the said Emma was still alive, and that 
 Tannhauser had vanished before their marriage, 
 and had never been in love with the said Emma. 
 Tannhauser scouted these very sensible representa 
 tions, as a device of the arch-enemy to keep him 
 from going to Rome, and speedily took his depar 
 ture for the Holy City. Some months afterward 
 Tannhauser came back rather the worse for wear, 
 rushed into the chamber where his friend was yet 
 sleeping, waked him by a burning kiss, and said 
 that the Holy Father could not and would not 
 forgive him, that he must needs return to his old 
 abode. Frederick roused himself and went to 
 the apartment of his spouse. But Tannhauser had 
 been there before him and murdered the fair Emma 
 a solemn warning against the ' unwisdom ' of 
 separate chambers for married folk, and one which 
 Balzac should have known when he wrote his 
 chapter on that subject in his notorious ' Physiologic 
 du Manage '. Tannhauser's kiss had magic power, 
 and, like the mysterious song before mentioned, 
 drew Frederick toward the mountain of Venus. 
 Exeunt omnes. We lay heavy odds on the ballad. 
 
198 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 A strict chronology would require us to consider 
 next in order Wagner's Tannhauser ; but as a 
 proper appreciation of that enigmatic work of art 
 requires a review of the music as well as of the 
 drama, we must content ourselves with a brief 
 examination of the English reflection, which is a 
 somewhat ambitious attempt of two young poets to 
 make an Idyl of the King out of the opera. We 
 have but little space for a criticism of the poetry of 
 Messrs. Temple Bulwer and Trevor Fane. Of course 
 it is Tennysonian. Everything is Tennysonian now- 
 a-days. We have the same free handling of the 
 blank verse, the same fondness of salient description, 
 the same incorporation of the highly spiritual in the 
 highly sensuous, the same affectation without the 
 exalted genius that redeems the illustrious original. 
 Of course the language is a purely artificial language, 
 an impossible language, a language in which such 
 harsh Germanisms as ' name-scroll' and such mouth- 
 filling words as 'Aurorean', such intricate com 
 pounds as ' disintertwined ' and such monsters as 
 * direful-sweet' are found in 'blandly-busy' com 
 munion with a galvanized glossary of old Saxon. 
 Americans who writhe under the English condemna 
 tion of wilted' will be consoled by finding it here ; 
 and those who, as Gifford says, ' live upon a 
 whUome for a week ' will have ample pasture in 
 'sinewous' and 'gauds' and 'purfle', and in forms 
 like * writhen ' and 'bursten '. ' Nathless ' they may 
 be puzzled sometimes to decide whether a word is 
 old English or belongs to the peculiar diction of 
 the ingenious young gentlemen whose 'gorgeous 
 glooms ' are not always ' litten ' by ' rifted glare '. 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 199 
 
 So for our part we profess our inability to decide 
 whether the ' filed pilgrims ' who ' fared beside ' 
 Elizabeth were travel-stained in the old ballad 
 sense 1 or arranged in files ; probably and improperly 
 the latter. As for anachronisms, they are patent 
 enough and we do not quarrel with them ; but 
 cheap allusions to Shakespeare and Milton, such as 
 ' crack of that tremendous doom ', ' flashy songs ', 
 and ' ghastly glare that knows no speculation ', are 
 a little out of place in a supposed mediaeval poem, 
 though not quite as bad as the hackneyed quotation 
 from Ovid, ' rude and undigested mass ', which 
 Walter Savage Landor has put into the mouth of 
 Pericles. Again, while we admit that from the 
 point of view of the middle ages it is correct enough 2 
 to call Aphrodite 
 
 1 That fair fiend 
 Venus, whose temples are the veins in youth ' 
 
 it is not necessary to speak of a divinity of such 
 eminent social position as * the lustful queen ', ' the 
 libidinous goddess ' and ' that bloat queen '. Tann- 
 hauser's 'she-devil' was hard enough to bear, and 
 observe how she resented it. She never called him 
 ' Sir ' again ; and he deserved to lose the title after 
 giving his lady-love such an impolite Old-Nick- 
 name. 3 But we have little to do with the poem as a 
 
 1 And take her up in thine armes twaine 
 Jf 'or filing of her feete. Child Waters. 
 
 2 See some remarks on this subject by Lewes, Life of Goethe, 
 i. 241. 
 
 3 Old-Nickname : see Pott, Personennamen, p. 10, note, 
 Nix devil. (1867.) This etymology surrendered long ago 
 to its rival, ' an ekename '. B. L. G. 
 
2OO THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 piece of writing; and after making general amends 
 to the authors by acknowledging the pleasure we 
 have derived from sundry dainty bits, we pass on 
 to the consideration of the plot, which is, in the 
 main, Wagner's. 
 
 In this treatment of the story, the basis is changed 
 or rather the centre of gravity rests on the Battle 
 of the Bards, that shadowy contest in which no 
 real interest can be felt, and so far the authors have 
 made a great mistake. To the fatal love of Venus 
 a counterpoise is put in the pure and human love 
 of Elizabeth ; and Tannhauser's passionate nature 
 is counterbalanced by the calmer temperament of 
 his friend Wolfram of the Willow-brook, 
 
 ' Who long had loved Elizabeth, 
 As one should love a star in heaven, who knows 
 The distance of it and its reachlessness.' 
 
 This is all well enough for melodramatic pur 
 poses, but the irredeemable blunder is the change 
 in the traditional catastrophe. We are as sorry for 
 Tannhauser as any of our sentimental great-grand 
 mothers, who used to pelt good old Samuel Rich 
 ardson with petitions to save the soul of Lovelace ; 
 yes, we too are sorry for Tannhauser, but in order 
 to the true poetic effect it is essential that he be 
 damned. 
 
 According to this rendering, on Tannhauser's 
 return from his first stay with Dame Venus, he is 
 brought back to court by Wolfram, and then ensues 
 the Battle of the Bards. The theme is Love, and 
 Tannhauser so incenses the assemblage of ' shaggy 
 barons ' and ' grim gnarled men ' by his fervid 
 praise of sensual pleasure, that they would have put 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 2OI 
 
 him to death had it not been for the intervention of 
 Elizabeth, who pitied and still loved the fallen soul. 
 The Landgrave dismissed Tannhauser from his 
 court to seek in Rome forgiveness of his sin. Eliza 
 beth pines a twelvemonth, and when she finds that 
 Tannhauser has not returned with the pilgrim-band, 
 and that he is still unshriven, she dies of a broken 
 heart Wolfram in his anguish * wanders forth 
 incurious of the way ', and in his aimless rambles 
 falls in with Tannhauser, who after much colloquy 
 tells the story of his visit to Rome and the harsh 
 sentence of the Pope. As he leans exhausted on 
 Wolfram's bosom, the old seductive melody comes 
 back to him in his delirium, from which he is 
 aroused only by the announcement of Elizabeth's 
 death aroused to a faint effort after repentance. 
 While he is thus struggling with the temptations of 
 sin and the shadows of death, Elizabeth's corpse is 
 carried by, and Tannhauser ' falls flat upon the bier 
 of love, his bourn at last '. Just as his spirit had 
 parted, a messenger, bearing 'a withered branch 
 o'er-flourish'd with green leaves ', came dashing in, 
 too late to reassure the poor sinner on earth, not 
 too late to give hope to his mourning friends. 
 Very pretty, very sentimental and very modern. 
 
 If the twin poets have erred in dressing up the 
 story with too much reference to operatic points 
 and to the requirements of modern sentimentality, 
 Mr. Swinburne is certainly not open to the charge 
 of over-scrupulous regard for the nerves of anybody, 
 perhaps not even excepting his own. Of the whole 
 collection of poems which he has put forth, we have 
 neither time nor patience to treat. With frank 
 
2O2 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 indecency every scholar has more or less to do ; 
 and many a plodding student has read his Petro- 
 nius with more concern about the corruption of the 
 text than about the corruption of morals which that 
 text indicates. But Swinburne's indecency is not 
 the childlike nudity of Aristophanes, nor the open 
 vulgarity of Martial, nor the outspoken candor of 
 the old ballad. Compare with him the most frolic 
 passages of Ariosto, or the most highly colored 
 stanzas in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis to 
 take an extreme instance and the difference in 
 healthiness will appear. Swinburne has neither the 
 excuse of passion nor that of art. Not of passion : 
 for true passion expresses itself with more direct 
 ness ; it is depraved and jaded appetite that needs 
 prolonged and varied excitement, the pain of 
 scourge and prick of nettles. Not of art : for art in 
 any high and noble sense cannot live in pruriency. 
 The most famous works in this line have never had 
 more than an ephemeral existence ; or if they have 
 survived, have survived by reason of other qualities. 
 How many of our readers are familiar with the 
 name of Choderlos de Laclos ? and yet ' Les Liaisons 
 Dangereuses ' was the most famous book of its time. 
 Who in our day can bear to read the Memoirs of 
 Casanova ? And yet they were deemed a marvel 
 of cleverness when they first appeared. Amatory 
 poetry, falsely so-called, has less chance if possible 
 than prose. There is much beside ' chambering 
 and wantonness ' to commend Byron's Don Juan ; 
 else even that had died with Little's poems, and 
 been gathered to its impure fathers, Piron and La 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 203 
 
 Fontaine. 1 Mr. Swinburne, then, unless he is cured 
 of the moral leprosy which incrusts his composi 
 tions, will not live as a poet. As a museum of 
 morbid moral anatomy, as a curiosity-shop of out- 
 of-the-way phrases, as a mosaic made up of odds 
 and ends of quaint learning, as a specimen of Ten- 
 nysonianism possessed of an unclean spirit, the 
 ' Laus Veneris ' may retain a niche in the collector's 
 library and be occasionally peeped into by a stu 
 dent of literature. But the people that are buying 
 the book now are those who buy every new impro 
 priety that comes out, whether Michelet's ' Love ' 
 and ' Woman ', or Victor Hugo's revived horror, 
 'Bug JargaT.* 
 
 A few words will compass what we have to say 
 of Mr. Swinburne's treatment of the legend to 
 
 1 Of course the reference is to the La Fontaine of the Contes 
 and not to the La Fontaine of the Fables, and a moral might 
 be drawn from the relative vitality of the two halves of a 
 most delightful poet. B. L. G. 
 
 2 This preachment against a poet who had already written 
 'Atalanta in Calydon ' is a curious example of the prevalence 
 of moral indignation over artistic sense, and seems strangely 
 old-fashioned now that Mr. Swinburne has become a classic in 
 his way, and to no one is it more incomprehensible than to the 
 critic, whose eyes have been opened by recent developments. 
 But it must be remembered that the cry of ' art for art's sake ' 
 was not so prevalent a quarter of a century ago as it is now, 
 and the literary cult of the Great Goddess Lubricity did not 
 count so many votaries. And so let the artistic and the moral 
 estimates stand as historical curiosities, as records of a past, 
 when a contributor to the Contemporary Review, Nov. 1873 
 (G. B. Smith), called Swinburne's poetry 'the alliterative 
 deification of lust ', and Professor Huxley heard no music in 
 the school that might not be characterized as ' sensual cater 
 wauling '. B. L. G. 
 
204 THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 
 
 which we have gradually narrowed our view. To 
 open the recesses of the mountain of Venus after 
 Tannhauser had gone back to dwell there unto the 
 end, is of itself an offence against every correct 
 instinct of taste ; just as to save Tannhauser after 
 the priest's doom had been pronounced was to 
 weaken in a measure the double moral effect. Yet 
 the one or the other may have been an error of 
 judgment, and in this respect we would not speak 
 more harshly of Mr. Swinburne than of Messrs. 
 Bulwer and Fane. But to blend the description of 
 a physical love, fierce in its satiety, with blasphemies 
 the most abominable, is to insult every better feeling 
 of our nature, and to crush out the sympathy which 
 might have been felt with the repentant sinner, who 
 had been thrust back to sin by the unforgiving 
 priest. Surely the reverence which ought to dwell 
 in every true poet's heart should have forbidden 
 what artistic fidelity does not require, and if it did 
 require, cannot excuse, these parodies of the sacred 
 words of Holy Writ, this familiar treatment of the 
 person of our Saviour, in comparison with which 
 the grossest ribaldry is almost respectful. Much 
 of it is obscure, and we marvel at the corruption of 
 this age which must find a peculiar charm in 
 working out naughtiness as if it were a conundrum, 
 instead of buying it ready made as in ' Les Cent 
 Nouvelles Nouvelles ', or the ' Heptameron ' of Mar 
 guerite of Navarre, or any of the old collections. 
 
 But we have done with the subject, and in view 
 of the political and social corruption of our country 
 we have not the heart to insist on a regeneration. 
 The Lust of the Eyes and the Lust of the Flesh under 
 
THE LEGEND OF VENUS. 2O$ 
 
 the leadership of the Pride of Life, that untranslate- 
 able, 1 beggarly, bragging, restless pride of life, are 
 the ruling trinity of our boasted republican world ; 
 and it is idle to show that even in the crude legend of 
 a ' creed outworn ' there were visions of love faithful 
 in death and hopes of immortality, for these are 
 times when a spotless religion and a full revelation 
 are scouted and set aside, when men ' leave the bread 
 of angels for the husks that the swine do eat.' 
 
 1 1 John ii. 16 fj aXafrveia rov @lov. See Trench, Synonyms 
 of the New Testament, s. v. d\ao>v. (1867.) Ribbeck's clas 
 sical treatise, ' Alazon', will be in every scholar's mind now. 
 B. L. G. 
 
 2 Imitatio Christi, iii. 14 : qui comedebant panem angelorum 
 vidi siliquis delectari porcorum. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 Zeller, 1 the well-known historian of Greek philo 
 sophy, has reprinted among these ' Prelections and 
 Treatises ' his scholarly jeu d' esprit m vindication of 
 Xanthippe. 2 It is a. jeu d' esprit, but as learned men 
 are generally so matter-of-fact in their flirtations 
 with the historic muse as to challenge a scrutiny of 
 their intentions, our author has done well to inform 
 us, not only in the body of the article itself, but also 
 in divers other places, that he is almost, if not alto 
 gether, in sport. We, who pride ourselves on being 
 very much in earnest, sincerely wish that some com 
 petent scholar would enter the lists as a real com 
 batant and engage in a fight a entrance in behalf of 
 the slandered lady. A mock championship like 
 Zeller's is apt to do more harm than good, and we 
 admire the thorough conviction of an old fellow, who 
 one hundred and fifty years ago maintained the 
 quarrel of Xanthippe against all comers, and illus 
 trated his theme by a parallel worthy of Plutarch, 
 between Socrates and Luther, Xanthippe and 
 
 1 Zeller : Zur Ehrenrettung der Xanthippe 2 (in : Vortrage 
 und Abhandlungen. geschichtlichen Inhalts. Leipzig, 1865.) 
 
 2 On comparing my study again with Zeller's after the lapse 
 of twenty-three years, I find, as was to be expected, that many 
 of the points made are taken from the illustrious historian of 
 Greek philosophy ; but my ' Xanthippe and Socrates ' is nearly 
 three times as long as Zeller's 'Zur Ehrenrettung', and what 
 has been added is not all padding. B. L. G. 
 
2IO XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 Katharine von Bora. Nor was the worthy gentleman, 
 Heumann by name, so far out of the way; for 
 Luther's Kate was inclined to be a. termagant, and 
 although Luther does not seem to have been as quiet 
 under her goad as Socrates was under Xanthippe's, 
 it must be remembered that we are not favored with 
 as full reports of the table-talk of the Greek philo 
 sopher as of the German reformer. But tempting as 
 is the comparison of the two couples, we must brush 
 by them resolutely to take up our first position, and 
 to express our firm conviction of the inutility of any 
 attempt to vindicate Xanthippe's character. How 
 ever skilful her champion might be, we know how 
 we should make our betting-book. There is a mel 
 ancholy Greek proverb to the effect that ' whom 
 fortune hath painted black all time cannot whiten,' 
 and the permanency of historic lies is so well estab 
 lished that one may readily be permitted to doubt 
 the wisdom of an assault on fortifications which 
 seem to get stronger the more vigorously they are 
 pounded. Apart from the feelings of the blackened 
 character himself and his immediate friends and 
 descendants, it is a matter of little consequence 
 how a man appears on the page of history. The 
 great celebrities, the great ' shadows of names ' are 
 typical forms, which answer rhetorical and so-called 
 moral purposes perfectly, and the popular mind will 
 not allow itself to be robbed of its models. The 
 Richard the Third of the people is, and to all time 
 will be, the Richard the Third of Sir Thomas More 
 and Shakespeare, and not the attractive young gen 
 tleman depicted by Bulwer. The Tiberius of Tac 
 itus and Suetonius will always keep down the real 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 211 
 
 Tiberius. Gaius, who stepped into the slippers of 
 his great-uncle, under the surname of Caligula or 
 Boots, will always kick out the real Gaius and serve 
 to round a period in conjunction with Nero and 
 Caracalla. And yet Tiberius was good enough for 
 the Romans of his day and as great a man as ever 
 succeeded Caesar ; and Caligula, if he had a bee in 
 his bonnet, had a wasp in his tongue, and showed 
 an intellect of brilliancy so penetrating that it has 
 dazed most of his historians. But, in spite of all 
 this, we are against any change, and intend on occa 
 sion to pepper Tiberius and salt Gaius to suit the 
 popular taste. And aside from the futility of the 
 effort to dislodge popular idols or to redeem pop 
 ular abominations, we cannot but look with sus 
 picion on the whole tendency of recent apologetic 
 literature. It is either sophistic or partisan. Mr. 
 Grote uses the Athenians as a bulwark of English 
 Radicalism. Mr. Motley delivers his Boston humani- 
 tarianism from behind the imposing figure of Wil 
 liam the Taciturn. The historic grandeur of Caesar 
 serves as a clothes-horse to air an unwashen set of 
 Napoleonic ideas. Or, if no partisan ends are to 
 be accomplished, a reputation for ingenuity is to be 
 gained and the arts employed are those of the 
 ancient sophist. Now nothing pleased your ancient 
 sophist so much as a good paradoxical subject. 
 Flies, fever, famine furnished favorite themes for 
 sounding panegyrics, and the gout by reason of its 
 very difficulty was looked upon as a lovely case for 
 encomium. So thoroughly ingrained was this itch 
 of display that the sweet and swelling Isocrates, 
 whom Milton heaven knows why has called 'that 
 
212 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 old man eloquent', while rebuking a novice for 
 attacking Socrates and defending Busiris, must 
 needs show how much better himself would have 
 done the job ; and on another occasion actually 
 devoted a considerable time for he was the most 
 deliberate of writers to the composition of a frivo 
 lous encomium of Helen. It is the same desire of 
 vainglory that prompts men now-a-days to like 
 purifications of the lepers of history, and the old 
 sophists, who extolled such fellows as Phalaris, 
 would have recognized a kindred spirit in the grave 
 divine who proved that Judas Iscariot was a mis 
 taken patriot for which, by the way, he had some 
 scriptural ground in the statement that the said 
 ' Judas was a thief. In short, we do not believe 
 either in the efficacy or in the honesty of the modern 
 process of deodorizing unpleasant reputations, and 
 we hope that as we venture into the charnel-house 
 of Xanthippe's character, this protest will give us 
 some little credit with the reader for an earnest pur 
 pose not to be too lavish of chloride of lime and 
 vinaigre des quatre voleurs. And yet Xanthippe 
 needs all manner of ' medicinal gums ' to make her 
 sweet, for of all the women of classic antiquity she 
 is beyond compare the most notorious. She is 
 known where Sappho is an obscurity and Artemisia 
 a nonentity. She is known wherever her husband 
 is, and it is not unlikely that in some circles Soc 
 rates is known as the husband of Xanthippe, rather 
 than Xanthippe as the wife of Socrates. This 
 unsavory popularity of Xanthippe is attributed by 
 Zeller, in some degree at least, to the accident that 
 her name begins with X. In conveying a knowl- 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 2 13 
 
 edge of the letters, primers proceed on the principle 
 of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and present the pic 
 ture of an object, the name of which begins with 
 such and such a letter of the alphabet for instance, 
 
 A was an archer and shot at a frog, 
 B was a butcher and had a big dog. 
 
 Now when we get to the tail-end of the Christ- 
 Cross-Row, the choice of objects is limited, and 
 hence the appearance of such otherwise uncommon 
 words as zany, such outlandish beasts as the zebra 
 and the zebu, and such diminutive scriptural char 
 acters as Zaccheus ; and so these out-of-the-way 
 words are lifted up and their horns are exalted, just 
 as 'pelf has been saved alive because it rhymes 
 with 'self, and the red ' levin ' has not been 
 quenched in utter midnight because it makes a 
 jingle with ' heaven '. But if Z is bad, X is a per 
 fect cross. Scan. the dictionary and what do you 
 find ? Xebec and xyster. ' Xebec, a small three- 
 masted vessel navigated in the Mediterranean.' That 
 will never do. * Xyster, a raspatory/ Worse and 
 worse. Hence recourse must be had to proper 
 names; and of these the ancient manufacturers of 
 primers found but two that presented themselves in 
 bold relief. One of them is Xerxes, and the New 
 England Primer has handed him down to the mem 
 ory of the sons of the Pilgrims in the impressive 
 verses : 
 
 Xerxes the Great did die, 
 And so must you and I. 1 
 
 1 So I learned the verses when a child, and several of my 
 contemporaries confirm me in maintaining the genuineness of 
 this noble form. What I find in a so-called 'oldest' version, 
 ' Xerxes did die, And so must I', shows, as a valued friend 
 
214 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 And by the way, this lyric outburst suggests the 
 interesting question why the poet of the primer, not 
 content with the classic allusion to the celebrated 
 review at which Xerxes wept so bitterly over the 
 prospective death of all that mighty host, why he 
 alone of high authorities, in the teeth of so many 
 cheapeners of Xerxes' character, should have called 
 him the Great ? Was it to show that he knew the 
 official title of the Great King ? Was it to express 
 his contempt for all human greatness by attaching 
 the surname to Xerxes ? Was it because Xerxes 
 was the tallest and handsomest man in that immense 
 armament ? Was it because a keener insight into 
 the soul of history showed the New England scholar 
 that Xerxes had been hardly dealt with by the lying 
 Greeks ? Or was it because Xerxes had come to 
 the relief of the author at that critical juncture ? 
 But if the New England Primer startles us by 
 novelty of view, the ordinary German primers are 
 satisfied to transmit, with uncritical simplicity, the 
 character of Xanthippe as depicted in the chronique 
 scandaleuse of ancient times. Here is one of the 
 ribald couplets : 
 
 Xanthippe was a shrewish wife : 
 To scold was her delight in life. 1 
 
 has pointed out, ' a narrow egoism that compares unfavorably 
 with the generous, broad "altruism" of the other version', 
 and is evidently the Procrustean work of a miserable unifor- 
 mitarian who did not understand the swelling of the voiceful 
 line in correspondence with the heroic subject of the distich 
 and in marked contrast to the shrinking of the couplet, which 
 happily symbolizes the brevity of ' Zaccheus, he '. 'Xerxes 
 the Great, Shared common fate ' is a contemptible compro 
 mise. B. L. G. 
 
 1 Xanthippe war em boses Weib, 
 Der Zank war ihr ein Zeitvertreib. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 21$ 
 
 And here is another like unto it: 
 
 Xanthippe at her husband thundered, 
 X times X makes just one hundred. 1 
 
 But how did Xanthippe get into such notoriety 
 before German primers were heard of? Mainly, of 
 course, by the agency of a set of rascally rhetoricians, 
 who delighted in the brilliant antithesis of the 
 scolding wife and the serene philosopher, and by 
 the help of gossiping chroniclers who gathered up 
 all manner of absurd items with the eagerness of 
 the local editors of our day. Whenever one of 
 these self-styled philosophers had in hand a little 
 tractate on the expediency of not letting one's angry 
 passions rise, Xanthippe was an inevitable figure. 
 Whenever anecdote-mongers sorted their wares, 
 Xanthippe was a part of the stock in trade. Of 
 course there must have been some foundation for the 
 superstructure, and there is no denying that Xan 
 thippe had a high temper but doubtless she was 
 no worse than many other wives who have escaped 
 criticism. There, for instance, are the venerable 
 consorts of the patriarchs. If Xanthippe was a less 
 comfortable person than Sarah, we are totally mis 
 taken in our divination of character. Perhaps she 
 was not so comely, for we are told that Sarah was 
 fair to look upon and we are willing to concede 
 
 1 Xanthippe ihren Mann anfuhr, 
 
 X mal X macht hundert nur. 
 Yet another reads : 
 
 Schon ist es lange Mitternacht 
 Da sitzt ein Mann und schreibt und wacht, 
 Sein Weib ist zankisch und genau, 
 Xanthippe heisst die bose Frau. 
 
2l6 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 that in all likelihood, as beauty is not an ordinary 
 gift, Xanthippe did not deserve to play a part in 
 any Vision of Fair Women. Yet why must she 
 have been ugly? We have absolutely no evidence 
 on the subject, and on this point popular prejudice 
 is against her in despite of the doctrine of chances. 
 Abstractly considered, it is not as likely that she 
 should have been both cross and ugly, as that she 
 should have had one of these defects ; and if she 
 had combined the two, the gossips would not have 
 failed to discuss the question ' whether Xanthippe 
 was the greater scold or the greater scare-crow ? ' 
 That she was beautiful we do not maintain, and yet 
 we cannot allow Zeller to sneer at her appearance 
 by hinting that Socrates did not model his statues 
 of the Three Graces if they were his after the 
 physical proportions of his wife. Verily the recent 
 German is not a whit less prejudiced than the old 
 Italian professor, grandfather of the famous Socinus. 
 This gentleman, a distinguished jurisconsult of 
 Siena, took unto himself a wife, and thereupon 
 discontinued his lectures ; and when his friends 
 remonstrated with him and urged the example of 
 Socrates, who had never deserted philosophy for 
 his spouse, he replied that Socrates had in Xanthippe 
 a vixen, and perhaps a fright, whereas he had a 
 pretty and obliging bride. And so the world runs 
 away, and, in sheer wantonness, the charge of 
 infidelity has been added to the grievous sin of 
 ugliness, and poor Xanthippe has become an epitome 
 of all the defects and vices of womankind. Of this 
 popular view, Dominicus Baudius gave perhaps the 
 most extravagant expression, when he said that it 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 was a deed of charity in the Athenians to release 
 Socrates from such wedlock by hemlock. But 
 Dominic is sufficiently punished for this flippant 
 speech, in that it calls the attention of people to his 
 worthless self, otherwise happily forgotten ; and an 
 inspection of Peter Bayle's rag-bag of bad characters 
 shows us that the frivolous and vicious Dutchman 
 was not worthy even of a Xanthippe. 
 
 Pereat Dominicus, 
 Quivis Antixanthippus 
 Atque irrisores. 
 
 On nearly every important point that would aid 
 us in understanding the relations of Xanthippe to 
 her husband, we are without satisfactory informa 
 tion. Given, Xanthippe a vile shrew, and Socrates 
 a great oddity what can we do with such unsatis 
 factory data ? Let us see. In the first place we 
 should like to know something about Xanthippe's 
 origin. It is in our opinion not unlikely that she 
 was of gentle blood, if of ungentle temper. Her 
 name has a Clara Vere de Vere sound about it. 
 Another Xanthippe, a descendant of Periander, has 
 had her name embalmed in an epitaph by Simon- 
 ides. Xanthippus was the victor of Mycale the 
 father of Pericles. Indeed, names compounded 
 with hippos 'horse' were regarded as aristocratic in 
 Athens, perhaps because of an early religious con 
 nection with Poseidon, to whom the horse was 
 sacred, and who preceded Athena in the guardian 
 ship of the city. It was as if an English family 
 were to go back beyond the Norman conquest and 
 base its claims on the invasion of Hengist and 
 Horsa. Pisistratus called two of his sons Hippias 
 
2l8 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 and Hipparchus, and Callias, the rich Athenian, 
 called his heir Hipponicus. So in the Clouds of 
 Aristophanes, when Strepsiades (Twist), who is the 
 original of Moliere's George Dandin, has a son 
 born to him, his aristocratic wife, 'a Megacles of 
 that ilk ', insists that the baby be named 
 
 Xanthippus or Chaerippus or Callippides. 
 
 Now names of women like the names of men were 
 handed down from generation to generation, and it 
 is not impossible that Xanthippe was remotely con 
 nected with the great family of which Pericles is the 
 most conspicuous representative. The shabby-gen 
 teel is quite a noticeable element in the stories 
 current about this poor lady, and we shall see pres 
 ently how ill-matched she was in this very respect. 
 Like the wife of Strepsiades, however, she carried 
 her point in naming the first boy, who bore the 
 grand name Lamprocles. Of the others, one was 
 called after his grandfather Sophroniscus ; the other, 
 Menexenus, perhaps after a disciple of Socrates. 
 Certainly Xanthippe's conduct can be more readily 
 understood if we conceive her as the impoverished 
 scion of a great stock, forced to submit to a union 
 with a good-for-nothing stone-scraper, whose 
 mother was a midwife. 
 
 Another question to be considered is her age. In 
 the Phaedo of Plato she is represented as having a 
 baby in her arms. This statement shows that she must 
 have been considerably younger than her husband, 
 who was about seventy at the time of his death, and 
 the difference in their ages cannot have been much 
 less than twenty-five years. Her oldest son Lam- 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 2 19 
 
 procles is spoken of in the Socratic Apology of 
 Plato in such a way as to show that he was not fully 
 grown at that period, so that in all probability So 
 crates did not marry until he was turned of fifty. A 
 further confirmation of this is the silence of Aris 
 tophanes in the ' Clouds '. If Socrates had married 
 his vixen before 423, the date of the Clouds, Aris 
 tophanes would not have failed to drag Mrs. 
 Socrates on the stage, or at all events would have 
 made infinite mirth of the hen-pecked philosopher. 
 But perhaps too much stress is not to be laid on 
 this argument from silence. Xanthippe may not 
 have developed her latent capacities, or, for aught 
 we know, the domestic relations of Socrates may 
 have furnished Aristophanes with one of the traits 
 of Strepsiades, to which we have already adverted. 
 Such a distribution would not be foreign to the per 
 versity of the comic muse. Still we incline after 
 profound reflection to the opinion that Socrates was 
 not married until some years after the representa 
 tion of the ' Clouds '; partly, as already intimated, 
 on account of the age of Lamprocles, partly on 
 account of another circumstance, of which no pre 
 vious investigation has given a satisfactory explana 
 tion, and that is, the comparative mildness of Ari 
 stophanes towards Socrates in his later comedies. 
 The comic poet was not a bad fellow at heart and 
 was sorry for the ill-wived philosopher: a poor 
 explanation on our own theory, but as good a one 
 as the elaborate hypotheses of recent writers. 
 
 The great difference in age is clear ; that Socrates 
 married late in life is clear; but neither of these 
 clearnesses helps us to light on the age of Xanthippe 
 
22O XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 at the time of her marriage. She may have been 
 sixteen, she may have been twenty-five. The latter 
 age was regarded by the Greeks as over-mature, 
 and Xanthippe's match looks very much like a 
 match of despair. A portionless old girl had very 
 little chance among that people and at that time. 
 For in the Peloponnesian War even sweet sixteen 
 was at a discount. If Xanthippe was married at the 
 end of the period known as the Ten- Years War, it 
 is not unlikely that she was an old maid, as the 
 matrimonial market began to be brisker and the 
 men less scarce ; and it is not difficult to divine her 
 feelings when we think of the sore misfortune for a 
 young lady of the South to have been born a suffic 
 ient number of years before the war to diminish 
 seriously her chances of matrimony after the war. 
 But young or old, Xanthippe might have consoled 
 herself; for a few years afterwards things got even 
 worse, and the later comedies of Aristophanes point 
 to a dire paucity of husbands. 1 So in the Lysi- 
 strata, which was acted in the year 411, after the 
 dreadful Sicilian catastrophe, and in a miserable 
 ' muddle ' of matters generally, the lady who gives 
 her name to the piece is introduced as holding con 
 verse with one of the committee of public safety, 
 somewhat after this fashion : 
 
 LYS. And then when we wives ought to have a good time and 
 
 enjoy our youth in its flower 
 We lie all alone on account of the war ; but don't bother 
 
 your noddles on our score, 
 'Tis the girls that I'm vex'd for, to see them grow old 
 
 and pine away in their chambers. 
 P. S. But do not the men grow old as well ? 
 
 1 Comp. Thesm. 410, in which old men are considered better 
 than no husbands at all. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 221 
 
 LYS. Nay, that is a different matter, 
 
 A man comes along as old as the hills and he snaps up 
 
 a fresh young creature j 
 But the season of woman is very brief, and unless she 
 
 seize on it quickly, 
 Not a soul will have her; she's left to read all the rest 
 
 of her days Dr. Gumming. 1 
 
 Young or old, in view of the dearth of men, Xan 
 thippe may have congratulated herself on attaining 
 what the Greeks considered, and what too many in 
 modern times consider, the aim of a woman's being. 
 As a certain one also of their own poets hath said : 
 
 In failing of a husband, woman fails of life. 
 
 But the drollest of husbands fell to her lot, and 
 she may well have been discontented, as the inti 
 macy of married life revealed more and more the 
 peculiarities of this strange man. Let us abstract 
 for a while from the historic fame of Socrates, from 
 his transfigured image, as seen in the Platonic 
 poems. Let us try to see the Socrates of Xanthippe 
 as he appeared before the final light of his memo 
 rable death shone back on his past career, illumined 
 the unseen depths of his character, and softened into 
 beauty and warmed into loveliness much that was 
 harsh and repulsive. 
 
 To begin with externals. Living as he did in the 
 midst of the handsomest of the sons of men, Soc 
 rates was the ugliest of the sons of men. No face 
 more famous, none better known; not Alexander's, 
 
 1 Gumming, the apocalyptic preacher of 1867, belongs to 
 ancient history as much as Socrates. This shows the danger 
 of translations with reference to current events. So Droysen 
 found it necessary to annotate his rendering of Aristophanes as 
 if that had been the original. B. L. G. 
 
222 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 not Caesar's, not the numerous representations of 
 the beautiful Antinous. In the most crowded gal 
 lery he is to be identified at a glance. Who does 
 not know the bald pate with its fringe of bristly 
 hair, the lobster eyes, the bridgeless nose, which 
 tries to redeem its flatness by a superb development 
 of nostril, the thickly padded mouth ? Every linea 
 ment speaks of a coarse, passionate, animal nature ; 
 and the standing comparison with Silenus does 
 injustice not to Socrates but to Silenus for the 
 Silenus type is milder. Such an exceeding weight 
 of ugliness in her husband was, beyond a doubt, a 
 grievous burden to Xanthippe, and would be a 
 burden to any modern wife, despite our advanced 
 views on the subject of male looks. Beauty was 
 regarded among the Greeks, and for that matter 
 among the Old Testament Hebrews likewise, as the 
 only proper incitement of love ; and the utilitarian 
 argument, which one of the admirers of Socrates 
 put into the mouth of his hero, would find now, as 
 it found then, but little response. The eyes might 
 see the better for protruding, the nostrils might 
 smell the better for expanding freely, the mouth 
 kiss the more softly for its cushioned amplitude, 
 but popular prejudice was, and still is, in favor of 
 eyes that keep to their sockets, modest nostrils 
 and normal mouths. Nor was the ugliness of Soc 
 rates .redeemed by any grace of carriage or comeli 
 ness of figure. Sturdy and vigorous enough he 
 was, but protuberant of paunch and bandy-legged, 
 and his gait seems to have been peculiarly absurd ; 
 and as that gait is described in the Clouds by a 
 word which is supposed to be derived from an 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 22$ 
 
 unknown water-fowl, we are left to imagine some 
 ineffable extravagance of movement, some unutter 
 able resultant of pride and awkwardness, such as 
 many aquatic birds exhibit when they disport them 
 selves on land. 
 
 Nor did Socrates attempt to redeem his want of 
 comeliness by attention to his attire. He was 
 always meanly clad ; indeed so meanly clad as to 
 attract attention even in a city where the poorer 
 classes were not to be distinguished in their dress 
 from the slaves. And his shoelessness was pro 
 verbial, for in that part of Greece going barefoot in 
 the streets was regarded as evincing either great 
 poverty or great affectation. Simple in their tastes 
 as the Athenians were, they had to draw a line 
 somewhere, and they drew it there ; and as the 
 modern French test of gentility is to be bien gante 
 et bien botte, so the ancient Athenians insisted that a 
 gentleman should wear shoes out of doors. This 
 Socrates rarely did, summer or winter, and thus 
 provoked the wrath of the Greek St. Crispin, who 
 ever he was, and brought Anytus, the leather- 
 dresser, about his ears. But not to dwell too long 
 on the mere outside of the ' unwashen ' philosopher, 
 as he was called, let us investigate some of his ways, 
 which were even worse than his looks. He was 
 indeed an oddity beyond the risk of a parallel. 
 His trances, for instance, made him appear not 
 unfrequently little better than a lunatic, and a 
 modern Xanthippe would have had him housed in 
 an asylum for the insane without any further ado. 
 At such times he could not have been an agreeable 
 inmate, standing as he would for hours together 
 
224 ' XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 staring at vacancy and meditating on the self-good, 
 the self beautiful and the self-true. A husband 
 with fits is not a comfortable companion; but worse 
 than occasional fits is chronic laziness. And work 
 he would not except in some spasmodic way. He 
 was an idler and lounger, a busybody in other men's 
 matters and strenuously negligent of his own ; so 
 that Eupolis, the comic poet, reflected the common 
 opinion of many a worthy Athenian when he said : 
 
 I hate him, too, that Socrates, that prating, jabbering beggar ; 
 
 So very thoughtful of all things else, 
 
 But whence he shall get his bread to eat, neglecting altogether. 
 
 What progress he made in the sculptor's art we 
 have no means of telling. The Three Graces are 
 attributed to him on but doubtful authority at best ; 
 and it is unlikely that he ever handled a chisel after 
 he got the missionary mania into his head. Now, 
 though the Greeks had a high and mighty way of 
 looking down on all handicrafts, a way which they 
 carried so far as to depreciate even their greatest 
 artists, the Greek housewives were hardly indifferent 
 to the idleness of their husbands, when they had a 
 trade; and Xanthippe, if indeed she was of a noble 
 family, must have been much chagrined at finding 
 that she had married not only an artisan, but an 
 artisan whom scarcely any stress of circumstance 
 would force to work. How often may not Soc 
 rates have heard from the mouth of his disappointed 
 and soured wife such wise saws as this: 
 
 Unless you thresh and grind your corn, you shall not eat. 
 
 Or this : 
 
 A harbor from disaster is a handicraft. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 22$ 
 
 r 
 
 How he made his bread no one knows. Any 
 assistance from outside sources is unlikely, from the 
 character of the man ; any considerable assistance 
 is not to be admitted in view of his own declaration 
 that he was steeped in fathomless penury. Mali 
 cious tradition points to some operations in the 
 brokerage business, by which he lost his patri 
 mony ; and once in that way of speculation he may 
 have acquired a fondness for it, as philosophers and 
 divines have done since. 1 True, it did not require 
 much to keep soul and body together in Athens. 
 When Archelaus of Macedon held out to Socrates 
 considerable inducements to join his literary court- 
 circle, Socrates is said to have replied, ' Four 
 measures of flour are sold at Athens for an obolus, 
 and water is to be had for nothing.' An obolus is 
 three cents (gold), the measure mentioned (the 
 chcenix) is a quart, which was the daily ration of a 
 slave, so that two or three oboli a day (a sum which 
 so many Athenians picked up for their attendance 
 on the public courts) would have fed a small family 
 after a fashion. But according to the reported 
 statement of Socrates at his trial, his floating capital 
 only amounted to a mina, or six hundred oboli, or 
 if we accept Boeckh's calculation, to not more than 
 two minae, so that he could not have made both 
 ends meet by ' shaving paper' at thirty-six per cent, 
 a high but not unheard of rate; and even as a 
 ' curbstone broker ', he would hardly have been as 
 
 1 There is possibly some confusion here. Another Socrates, 
 ' the banker ', is mentioned by Dem. pro Phonnioiie 28, as the 
 father-in-law of Pasion and was probably a close contemporary 
 of the philosopher. B. L. G. 
 
226 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 successful as the man in Theophrastus, who asks 
 twenty-five per cent a day, and scholars have found 
 more trouble in supporting Socrates' income return 
 than Socrates himself found in supporting his 
 family. 
 
 In any case, his was a very shiftless life, and the 
 fare exceedingly meagre; and then we must re 
 member that Xanthippe was very often left alone 
 to her dry victuals, while Socrates dined out ; and 
 of course on such occasions she felt as bitterly as 
 any modern wife would feel and how bitterly 
 modern wives feel is shown by various feminine 
 deliverances against clubs. At the houses of the 
 elegant acquaintances of Socrates, as for instance 
 at Crito's house, the rich Athenian dilettante in 
 philosophy, the menu was not so simple as in the 
 hovel of Socrates, and wine flowed freely. Now we 
 do not doubt the temperance of Socrates, which 
 rests on the most indisputable evidence ; but when 
 Socrates came home in the morning watches, what 
 woman would not have suspected, what woman of 
 classic antiquity would not have been envious ? 
 For the ladies of that time were given to drink ; it 
 was one of the pet vices of their sex ; and we need 
 not stop to prove this by the testimony of the 
 ancients, especially as Young America is beginning 
 to rival Old Greece in this regard, and New York 
 milliners are said to drive a more thriving trade 
 in liquors than in laces. 1 So, then, to come in 
 reeking with Chian wine, while his poor wife was 
 condemned to drink water, was an insult which he 
 only heightened by his praise of thin potations. 
 
 1 This scandal, very current in 1867. has been recently re 
 vived. B. L. G. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 22/ 
 
 Another trouble which Xanthippe had to encoun 
 ter came from the friends and aquaintances of 
 Socrates. Some of them were noisy and dissipated 
 characters. So, for instance, that graceless scamp 
 Alcibiades, who was an especial eye-sore to her for 
 more reasons that one, as we shall see. Then there 
 was Apollodorus,surnamed the madman, who foamed 
 and fumed at everything and everybody except 
 Socrates. Another was Chaerephon, the Boswell 
 of the Athenian Dr. Johnson. It was Chaerephon that 
 Aristophanes selected as thefamu/us of his Socrates ; 
 Chaerephon 'the Bat/ a fussy, meddling half-student, 
 half-politician, another disagreeable character that 
 Plato and Xenophon have seen fit to gloze over. 
 Then, if Xanthippe had any lingering aristocratic 
 notions, it must have been exceedingly unpleasant 
 to her to have Socrates bring in his especial pet, 
 Simon the cordwainer, who turned philosopher 
 after his master's death, and cobbled Socratic 
 dialogues as he Had never cobbled Socratic shoes. 
 Xenophon was beyond a doubt an especial bore to 
 the good woman, as he is to most people now-a- 
 days, though scholars from silly weakness are afraid 
 to acknowledge it ; and her dislike must have been 
 very much enhanced by the political views of that 
 insufferable prig ; for if it is not demonstrably certain, 
 it is very likely, that Xanthippe's politics were the 
 reverse of those of her husband's friend, Xenophon, 
 that degenerate, ungrateful son of Athens. Xanthippe 
 as a woman, and as a woman of quick feelings, was 
 patriotic, and her patriotism, as it was female patri 
 otism, consisting in adoring Athens and despising 
 Sparta, she must have loathed Xenophon's and, we 
 
228 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 are sorry to say it, Socrates' coquetry with the 
 principles of the Lacedaemonians. When Xenophon 
 went on his filibustering expedition with the younger 
 Cyrus, little word of cheer had she for him, and 
 Xenophon in his turn was careful to record Xan 
 thippe's peculiar traits, not by way of revenge Oh, 
 no ! but in the service of the high moralities. Of 
 course we are aware that such an interest in politics 
 as we have attributed to Xanthippe will seem an 
 anachronism to those who have formed their concep 
 tion of the life of Greek women from convenient 
 manuals. Politics, it is commonly supposed, were 
 left to men and to a few ' emancipated ' ladies, but, 
 as we may have occasion to see hereafter, the 
 fashionable view is entirely too narrow ; and to think 
 that a woman of so ardent a temperament as was 
 Xanthippe should have lived in and through such 
 a time of revolution as the Peloponnesian war with 
 out canvassing matters which were life and death to 
 the whole community, is simply absurd in the light 
 of our recent experience. What Xanthippe's view 
 of Plato was we cannot so easily conjecture. While 
 his connection by blood with some of the principal 
 actors in the Reign of Terror was not much in his 
 favor, she probably looked upon him as a simple 
 youth addicted to poetry and sentiment, and it is 
 hard to tell whether Plato's reticence with regard 
 to Xanthippe is spiteful or not. But of all her 
 visitors, or rather of all the visitors of her husband, 
 Connus must have been the most exasperating. 
 Socrates, it appears, took into his crotchety head at 
 an over-mature age to learn music and dancing, and 
 for his instructor in the former art he selected this 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 22g 
 
 Connus, a broken-down maestro who had once 
 enjoyed great celebrity as a composer, and was 
 suffering at that time an almost equal celebrity as 
 an idiot. With Chaerephon in one corner of the 
 little hut and Connus in another and Socrates in the 
 middle of the room tuning his ancient pipes, the 
 spouse of the philosopher must have had a hard time 
 of it, and we cannot blame her very severely if she 
 vented her spleen occasionally on poor little Lam- 
 procles, her first-born. 1 
 
 But now that we are on the chapter of the friends 
 of Socrates, we must not omit to mention one breach 
 of the minor morals of married life with which 
 Socrates is chargeable according to the accounts of 
 his own admirers ; and this leads us to the examina 
 tion of a group of stories which may as well be 
 discussed here, once for all. Socrates if the tradi 
 tion is true had a way of inviting friends to take 
 pot-luck with him, to the infinite chagrin of Xan 
 thippe, who being, as we have established (by 
 divination), of a genteel family, liked to keep up 
 appearances. How she felt on such occasions may 
 be gathered from the annoyance which she showed 
 when Socrates announced to her that he had in 
 vited some of the capitalists of Athens to a little 
 dinner ; and small comfort to her was it when he 
 
 1 It appears from Plato, Euthyd. 272 c, that Socrates did not 
 take private lessons of Connus, but joined a cheap cithern 
 class, for Connus was a citharist. Still he must have practised 
 music at home, for we know from Xenophon that he practised 
 dancing at home, as an anticipated Swedish movement cure, and 
 he doubtless received visits from Connus. At all events I have 
 not the courage to remove from the text a picture that has 
 given me comfort in lonely hours. B. L. G. 
 
230 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 told her that if they were moderate men (gentlemen) 
 they would put up with the fare ; if they were trifling 
 fellows (sons of Belial), it made no difference. 
 Perfectly true and perfectly philosophical ; but like 
 so many things that are both true and philosophical, 
 perfectly unsatisfactory. Now if this was bad enough, 
 what is to be said of his asking off-hand such 
 luxurious young fellows as Alcibiades to luncheon ? 
 But we doubt the story, and are half inclined at once 
 to acquit Socrates of the bad habit attributed to him, 
 and also Xanthippe of shrewish demeanor. 
 
 Let us subject our authorities to a little sifting. 
 The first on the witness-stand is one Teles. Teles 
 was a contemporary of Aristotle's, and as he is not 
 so very far removed from the times of Socrates 
 himself, he ought to be tolerable authority. We do 
 not altogether like the cast of his features. He is 
 evidently given to moralizing, and we distrust all 
 such personages. But let us listen to his story first, 
 and inquire into his character afterwards. The tale 
 is told, and not very daintily, in an extract from his 
 dialogue ' On Contentedness ', which is preserved by 
 one Jack Stubbs, who was born a few centuries too 
 soon and christened Johannes Stobaeus. We will 
 modernize it a little. 
 
 Alcibiades was brought in one day by Socrates 
 to breakfast or luncheon, or however we may best 
 translate the manger sur le police of the Greek. 
 Xanthippe came in and upset the table, and Teles 
 implies that she did it purposely, and compliments 
 Socrates on his refraining from loud outcries and 
 ejaculatory indignation. Upset the table! Yes, 
 but what sort of a table ? It was a light frame-work, 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 231 
 
 which they in no wise called a table (tabula, plank), 
 but a four-legged thing (trapezd) little bigger than 
 a chair. Such ' fancy ' tables were theirs as we see 
 snugly packed in nests in the corners of drawing- 
 rooms, intended for timid gentlemen or careful dow 
 agers who do not desire to be scalded by their tea 
 or greased by the butter of their bread. Such 
 tables, we maintain from vast experience, are more 
 easily knocked over than not. But long practice 
 seems to have made the Athenians dexterous in the 
 use of these abominable substitutes for the hospi 
 table board ; and accident or no accident, Alcibiades 
 was very much shocked. He got into a fit of the 
 sulks and stayed there, the said sulks being mani 
 fested by burying himself in the fplds of his cloak. 
 Thus enveloped, he resisted the blandishments of 
 Socrates, who picked up the breakfast things and 
 bade his young friend fall to. ' Well, then ', said 
 Socrates, ' let us be off. Xanthippe is in one of her 
 bad humors, and she will be for bespattering us 
 with her oxyrhegmia.' Oxyrhegmia ! it is a dread 
 ful word. It sounds badly enough in Greek and 
 even worse in English, and means that Xanthippe's 
 temper had soured on her stomach, and that she 
 was about to give them the benefit of her indiges 
 tion. O Teles ! if thou speakest truly, Socrates 
 deserved another drench of foul water over that 
 bald pate of his. Oxyrhegmia indeed ! So the two 
 companions went off and had a good time some 
 where else, leaving Madame Xanthippe to take 
 whatever stomachic was most in vogue among the 
 Athenian ladies of that day. A few days after 
 wards Socrates was breakfasting with Alcibiades. 
 
232 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 A game-hen flew on the table while they were at 
 this social meal and upset their dish. Socrates 
 mimicked Alcibiades, enveloped himself in his 
 cloak and refused to be comforted. Thereupon 
 ensues an unsavory comparison between Xanthippe 
 on the one hand and a crazy hen and mad sow on 
 the other a comparison, we must admit, very much 
 in the Socratic vein. 
 
 Now before we pass over to another version of 
 the same story, let us fulfil our threat of examining 
 a little more closely the credibility of our wit 
 ness Teles. If there is anything famous in the later 
 reactionary movements at the close of the Pelopon- 
 nesian War, it is the jaunty death of Theramenes. 
 This shifty gentleman, when his last shift had been 
 shifted, and his enemy and colleague Critias had 
 brought him to a full stop, jerked out the heeltap of 
 his hemlock negus on the floor, in imitation of the 
 practice of the jolly topers of his time, and said as 
 if pledging a favorite, ' Here's to my sweetheart, 
 Critias '; or as Grote has translated it, in utter point- 
 lessness, ' Let this be for the gentle Kritias '. Such 
 bravado will be judged accordirig to the tempera 
 ment of the reader. Some will admire, some con 
 demn. 1 But all will admit that it would have been 
 out of keeping with the serious serenity of Socrates 
 in his dying hour to make use of a second-hand 
 triviality of this sort, and yet Teles quietly dove 
 tails the celebrated story of Theramenes, as told by 
 
 1 Toute plaisanterie dans un homme mourant est hors de sa 
 place ; si elle roule sur de certains chapitres, elle est fimeste. 
 C'est une extreme misere que de donner a ses depens a ceux 
 que Ton laisse le plaisir d'un bon mot. La Bruyere. 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 233 
 
 Xenophon, into the immortal description in the 
 Phaedo, substitutes Socrates for Theramenes, Alci- 
 biades for Critias, and virtually palms off the whole 
 on Plato. And this is a specimen of our best 
 authorities. 
 
 Here is Plutarch's version of the table story : 
 ' One day Socrates returning from the palaestra 
 took Euthydemus with him [to dinner]. Xan 
 thippe rushed at him in a towering passion, broke 
 out into abuse and finally upset the table. Euthy 
 demus arose, and feeling much aggrieved was going 
 away. Tut ! tut ! said Socrates, why at your house 
 a hen flew in and did the very same thing and I 
 was not provoked !' This illustrates the way in 
 which the philosophic gossips of antiquity allowed 
 themselves to modify traditions in order to suit 
 their momentary ends. In this version by Plu 
 tarch, instead of Alcibiades we have Euthydemus, 
 and the dramatic features are entirely effaced ; but 
 that matters little to the narrator so long as the 
 moral is preserved. The substantial truth is there. 
 Who cares about the circumstantial falsehood? 
 And so in another place another philosopher is 
 brought in, and another table upset, in order to 
 show how placidly such domestic troubles are to be 
 received. Pittacus is the hero this time, and the 
 wife of Pittacus the heroine; only the remark of 
 Pittacus is more dignified, as befits his rank : ' Each 
 of us has his evil : happy the man who has mine.' 
 From another source it appears that Pittacus, like 
 Socrates, had a wife who henpecked him furiously ; 
 and in connection with our theory in regard to 
 Xanthippe, it is deserving of note that her more 
 
234 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 aristocratic origin is stated as the cause. We leave 
 to others the rapid induction that, in antiquity, 
 wives of gentle birth played the shrew when mar 
 ried to men of humbler extraction, and used to 
 upset tables when their husbands invited friends to 
 dinner ; but certainly the story seems to be a stock 
 one, and we incline to think that the names of So 
 crates and Xanthippe have been written in to fill up 
 the parts. Among the recent curious applications 
 of the photographic art is that of representing two 
 celebrities in grotesque and unlikely combinations. 
 The bodies are taken from hired posture-makers, 
 the heads put in from other photographs. In such 
 anecdotes as these this modern rascality is antici 
 pated. 
 
 As this group of stories may be called the table 
 stories, so the next may be entitled the cloak stories. 
 The himation, the upper garment, or, as it is com 
 monly translated, the cloak, of the Greeks, was an 
 epicene article of attire, being in fact a large blanket- 
 shawl ; and hence by way of joke it was often said 
 that such and such a couple were too poor or too 
 stingy to have more than one himation between 
 them. Who first started the notable jest it is im 
 possible at this distance of time to discover, just as 
 it is impossible to tell whose refined wit originated 
 the conception of the man who lies abed while his 
 solitary shirt is in the wash. Among the figures 
 made to fit this story are Phocion and his wife. 
 Phocion was famous for his virtue and his poverty, 
 and of course the anecdote-pilferers of antiquity 
 cast lots upon his raiment. ylian, a wretched and 
 untrustworthy scribbler, devotes a chapter of his 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 235 
 
 ' Varia Historia ' to the commemoration of this com 
 munity of goods between Phocion and his wife, and 
 waxes eloquent on the subject somewhat after the 
 following strain : ' Was it not, quoth he, great sober- 
 mindedness in Phocion's wife to wear Phocion's 
 cloak ? She did not want a corn-colored silk, she 
 did not want a Lyons brocade, she- did not want a 
 Garibaldi jacket, she did not want a circular cape, 
 she did not want a net for her hair, she did not 
 want a chignon for her head, she did not want 
 this and she did not want that, but she wore her 
 sober-mindedness next to her skin and over that she 
 put on just what she had.' In glaring contrast to 
 this model of female sober-mindedness is lugged 
 forth Xanthippe the wife of Socrates, who would 
 not put on her husband's cloak and go to the show 
 in that rig, and so brought on herself the famous 
 rebuke, ' Aha !' said Socrates, ' so you are going 
 out not to see but to be seen.' This pat antithesis, 
 which we have no doubt was invented by Cain or 
 Lamech or whoever first had a dressed wife, is 
 dished up to us again by the aforementioned Jo 
 hannes . Stobaeus in a slightly different platter. 
 Here Xanthippe is represented as going out in full 
 dress, and nothing is said of her refusal to wear 
 Socrates' cloak, which indeed would not have 
 constituted a very sumptuous outfit. True, we read 
 that on one occasion the unwashen philosopher 
 bathed himself and put on pumps to go to a grand 
 dinner, but his ordinary attire was so shabby that 
 his crack-brained friend Apollodorus sent him a 
 handsome himation to die in ; and if Xanthippe 
 wanted to go out in holiday dress, she would have 
 
236 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 done better to borrow a wrapper from some neighbor 
 rather than from her husband. This story of the 
 vicarious himation was still further bolstered up by 
 another tale that Xanthippe assaulted Socrates in 
 the market-place and stripped off his cloak, which 
 violent proceeding was of course attributed to her 
 rage at being baulked in her gadabout propensities, 
 in consequence of Socrates' appropriation of the 
 sole himation of their house and home. But the 
 final touch is given by Marcus Aurelius, who in one 
 of his dolorous preachments exhorts himself to re 
 member how Socrates behaved on one occasion, 
 when Xanthippe having sallied forth with his hima 
 tion, the philosopher donned a sheepskin coverlet, 
 and what he said to his friends when they retreated 
 in confusion at the, sight of him arrayed in such tog 
 gery. We wish that Marcus had had the goodness 
 to tell us, who do not know, instead of the super- 
 fluousness of reminding his tiresome self, who did 
 know ; and he would fain have done so, as these 
 self-communings were intended for the public eye, 
 but probably his Xanthippe, Faustina, did not give 
 him time to finish the memorandum, and we must 
 content ourselves with remarking that, if there is 
 any truth in the anecdote, the stupefaction of the 
 philosopher's friends shows that this was no ordi 
 nary transaction. 
 
 The same idle spirit of invention that divided 
 Socrates' cloak multiplied his wives ; and ac 
 cording to a favorite tradition, which we find 
 repeated over and over again in the gravest authors, 
 Socrates was twice married. The name of his 
 imaginary wife was Myrto, a granddaughter of 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 237 
 
 Aristides, and the match was made in view of the 
 eternal fitness of things. What better wife for the 
 poor and virtuous philosopher than the descendant 
 of the poor and virtuous nobleman ? According to 
 some, this Myrto was the predecessor of Xanthippe, 
 but the majority heightened the fun by sealing 
 another wife to Socrates, after he had married Xan 
 thippe, and by representing the two women as 
 engaged in an internecine feud for the possession of 
 the ugliest man in Athens. The fable of the two 
 simultaneous wives runs counter to the character of 
 Socrates as well as to the laws of Athens, and is 
 discredited by the silence of the serious friends and 
 the comic enemies of Socrates. It was sufficiently 
 refuted in antiquity, but refuted only to be revived 
 again. 1 But it was not necessary to invent a rival 
 wife in order to account for the shrewishness of 
 Xanthippe's temper on the ground of jealousy. 
 There was enough in the relations of Socrates to 
 other persons to wound the feelings of a wife. In 
 their estimate of the life of the sexes in antiquity, 
 modern scholars have too generally been contented 
 to accept the creed of the antique husband, and 
 to take for granted the unquestioning adherence of 
 the wife to such brutal confessions of faith as -we 
 find in the notorious speech against Neaera : ' We 
 have mistresses (hetaerae) for the sake of pleasure, 
 concubines for the daily attendance on our persons, 
 
 1 The ghost of Myrto effectively laid, one should have 
 thought, by Luzac in 1809, has been raised again by Burmann, 
 Der legitime Concubinat der Athener und die vermeintliche 
 Bigamie des Sokrates (Jahrbucher f. klass. Philol., Supplement- 
 bd. ix. 1878, p. 569 foil.). B. L. G. 
 
238 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 wives for the sake of legitimate children, and of 
 having faithful guardians of our households.' 
 Such was substantially the view of Socrates himself 
 as announced to his son Lamprocles. ' Streets and 
 houses are full of filles de joie. The wife is made a 
 wife in order to be made a mother.' So on another 
 occasion Socrates defends himself for his endurance 
 of Xanthippe by comparing her with geese. Geese 
 hiss, but they lay eggs : Xanthippe scolds, but she 
 bears children. But we doubt, and think we have 
 good reason to doubt, whether the life of the mar 
 ried woman was depressed to the dead level of this 
 degrading doctrine. Much, very much, that is 
 regarded as characteristic of the position of woman 
 of antiquity, is characteristic only of the peculiar 
 views of this poet or that philosopher. Comedy in 
 all its forms was composed for men, and so the 
 testimony of the comic poets must be almost wholly 
 excluded. What views of the life of woman in this 
 our day would posterity take if that life were to be 
 seen only through the tobacco-smoke and alco 
 holic fumes of the club-room ? What would become 
 of our elevation, our purity, our thorough appre 
 ciation of the capacities and excellences of the 
 female character, on all which this age of progress 
 prides itself? Gross as was male antiquity, modern 
 men are hardly behindhand in this respect, when 
 woman's influence is even temporarily withdrawn. 
 For a genuine appreciation of that which underlay 
 the family life of Greece, as it must underlie any 
 stable form of family life, we must betake ourselves 
 to the domain of serious Greek poetry, in which 
 there are images of Greek women pure, noble and 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 239 
 
 loving. We must penetrate the recesses of sacred 
 Greek literature to divine the subtle perfume of 
 their domestic altars. 
 
 Men may construe God's ordinance as they 
 please ; they may take the sensual view of marriage, 
 unfortunately too common in modern times ; they 
 may take the political view which was current in 
 antiquity, and regard wedlock as a loveless bond 
 contracted for the purpose of adding items to the 
 census. But such is God's blessing on what He 
 himself has ordained, that the necessary community 
 of life leads, as it has led throughout all time, in the 
 vast majority of cases, to earnest and ardent affection. 
 
 Consuetude concinnat amorem. 
 
 On general principles, then, we do not doubt 
 that Xanthippe loved Socrates, and that she was 
 deeply wounded by his neglect. Even if guilty of 
 no actual infidelity, he used to keep very suspicious 
 company, and Theodote was scarcely the only lady 
 of high-priced complaisance that he visited. But it 
 was not from her own sex that Xanthippe had to 
 fear the most serious rivalry. For Socrates, as for 
 a large proportion of his countrymen, all that we 
 call ' romance ' in love found its expression in 
 admiration of the beautiful youth rather than of the 
 beautiful maiden ; and while we give full credence 
 to all that has been said in championship of his 
 purity, we must not overlook the fact that a certain 
 degree of scandal attached itself to some of his per 
 sonal relations. It was but natural then that the 
 fierce jealousy of Xanthippe's ardent nature should 
 have been directed against Alcibiades rather than 
 
240 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 against a Myrto or a Theodote ; and we are not sur 
 prised at reading in more than one author that when 
 Alcibiades sent to Socrates a cake (as one should 
 say a box of bonbons], Xanthippe with true womanly 
 indignation trod under feet this token of affection 
 whereupon Socrates, ' Well ', quoth he, ' you won't 
 have any neither ' a style of wit not at all above 
 the capacity of a modern nursery-maid, and, like so 
 many mots of antiquity, utterly unworthy of record. 
 Not inconsistent with this outburst of jealousy is 
 the story that on one occasion Alcibiades sent Soc 
 rates magnificent presents, the acceptance of which 
 was urged by Xanthippe and declined by Socrates ; 
 but as Alcibiades was ostentatious in his offer, there 
 may have been as much spite in her conduct then 
 as before. And moreover the same story, mutatis 
 mutandis, is told of everybody. 
 
 But this whole question of jealousy leads us to a 
 graver and deeper consideration of the want of inner 
 harmony between the husband and the wife. We 
 waive the difference of age ; it was a difference of 
 which the Greeks thought favorably. We waive 
 the difference of birth, which may be a mere fancy. 
 We waive the oddities and eccentricities of Socrates, 
 his poverty, his laziness, his neglect. All these do 
 not render impossible a comfortable conjugal co 
 operation. But it is evident that Socrates and Xan 
 thippe were not what is called a happy couple ; and 
 we think that the cause is to be sought in the fact 
 that their natural tempers were so much alike. It 
 was not without a certain insight into character 
 that Cato the Elder called Socrates a violent man 
 and a revolutionist; and a remarkable witness, 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 24! 
 
 Aristoxenus, says that his sensuality was vehement, 
 that he was ill-bred, ignorant, unpolished, easily 
 provoked, naturally rough-tempered, and whenever 
 fired by passion, guilty of every impropriety. 1 In 
 this portrait we should hardly recognize the secular 
 saint of Plato and Xenophon, but if we take it as a 
 representation of his natural disposition, we can 
 find every lineament of it in his face and not a few 
 traces of it in his conduct. It is not likely that 
 Xanthippe always found her husband as cool as he 
 was after his memorable shower-bath, and when the 
 moral restraint of company was removed there may 
 have been some very unphilosophical scenes. Fa 
 mous is the story, to which we have already 
 adverted, that when Xanthippe tore off his cloak in 
 the market-place, his friends advised him to admin 
 ister manual correction. His reply was character 
 istic : ' Yes ', said he, ' so that the bystanders may 
 cry, while we are at fisticuffs, Well done ! Socrates. 
 Well done ! Xanthippe/ (Go it, Socrates ! Go it, 
 Xanthippe !) In this answer there is shown an evi 
 dent repugnance to washing foul linen in public ; 
 but whether he would not have done it at home is 
 another question. But we have no quarrel with the 
 traditional representation of Socrates, and we are 
 perfectly willing to believe the wonderful stories 
 
 1 Remembering that my late colleague, Professor C. D. 
 Morris, whose English conservatism I shocked very often, was 
 especially shocked by a popular lecture in which I presented 
 a similar sketch of the great saint of heathendom from 
 the point of view of the Athenian Philistine, I am moved to 
 add here that Zeller's vindication of Socrates against Aristo 
 xenus and all such carpers seems to be complete. See his 
 Philosophic der Griechen, ii. 4 i (1888), p. 65. B. L. G. 
 
242 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 that are told of his patient endurance of the per 
 sonal violence that he brought upon himself by his 
 rude and searching style of debate. The passionate 
 nature, which was unfettered in the case of Xan 
 thippe, was kept down in Socrates by a rigid self- 
 control ; but the self-control of an ardent disposition 
 almost always degenerates into hardness, and Xan 
 thippe's unruly member can hardly have been a 
 severer scourge than the bridled tongue of Soc 
 rates. Xanthippe's tongue may be compared with 
 the motherly slipper which the Greek matron used 
 in the same way as her modern sister. Its blows 
 were rapid, nervous, rubefacient, but not really dan 
 gerous. The cuts which Socrates gave often went 
 to the bone. Repression is not amiable of itself; 
 and the virtue of Socrates was not the result of the 
 transforming process of a Christian faith which 
 works by love and turns human passion into its 
 proper channel does not try to dam it up, does not 
 try to drain it dry. Now this constant self-control, 
 which must have been more or less evident as it 
 was more or less conscious, must have chafed Xan 
 thippe even worse than an occasional outbreak. 
 There is nothing more irritating to a violent temper 
 than coolness in an antagonist, and especially cool 
 ness in one who ought to be angry ; just as we feel 
 a peculiar provocation at dexterity and grace in an 
 otherwise awkward person. If Socrates had thrown 
 the basin at Xanthippe's head when she scolded him 
 so furiously, he would have escaped his drenching, 
 and we should not have been entertained with his 
 famous remark about thunder followed by rain. The 
 self-restraint for which Socrates was so distinguished, 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 243 
 
 and which was to the Greek what humility is to the 
 Christian, the essence of virtue, was to be attained on 
 Socratic principles by an intellectual process, and his 
 own life was an exemplification of his doctrine that 
 ' virtue is knowledge '. It was perhaps as fair fruit 
 as such principles could produce, but as compared 
 with the fruit of the Spirit, it is utterly insipid. ' The 
 fruit of the Spirit is love ', and from that, as from a 
 sweet fountain, flow 'joy, peace, long-suffering, gen 
 tleness, goodness (kindness), faith, meekness, tem 
 perance (self-control).' The heathen philosopher 
 reverses the order of nature, which is the order of 
 God, and there is little trace of love. Compare, if 
 you have the courage to undergo the tedium of the 
 contrast, the glowing eulogy of the Christian agape 
 in St. Paul with the Socratic views of love and 
 friendship as they are faithfully presented in that 
 weary, weary second book of the Memorabilia, and 
 you will say with Kochly that even regarding the 
 inspired writings as human compositions, those 
 eight short verses are worth a thousand times as 
 much as all these tedious and tasteless, shallow and 
 frigid ratiocinations, in which ' the offices of love 
 are weighed in the gold-balance of utility ', and in 
 which friends and brothers are compared by Soc 
 rates with horses and dogs, just as he had else 
 where compared his wife with geese. 
 
 That his views on all this class of subjects were 
 revolting to the correct instinct of the Athenians, is 
 evident from the elaborate defence into which his 
 apologist Xenophon enters against the common 
 opinion that Socrates taught his pupils, in the pur 
 suit of the ' knowledge that puffeth up ', to heap 
 
244 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 contumely on their parents ; and of all the scenes in 
 the ' Clouds ', the deepest and most abiding impres 
 sion seems to have been made by the closing act in 
 which the enlightened disciple of Socrates beats his 
 father and proves to the old man by highly Socratic 
 arguments that he is perfectly right so to do. 
 Strepsiades, the father, beat his son, when that son 
 was a boy, with a view to his betterment. Pheidip- 
 pides, the son, only returned the compliment with 
 the same due regard to the moral improvement of 
 his father. There was good will in the one case as 
 in the other. Pheidippides was a child when his 
 father beat him. Strepsiades was a child when his 
 son beat him (for are not ' old men twice children ' ?). 
 Then the legislation was partial, for it was the 
 fathers, and not the sons, that made the law against 
 father-whipping; and the basis of the new law 
 ought to be ' universal amnesty and impartial flagel 
 lation '. And finally, with a genuine Socratic stroke, 
 the learned flogger defends his position by the 
 analogy of cocks, which punish their paternal 
 chanticleers without any regard to the claims of 
 blood. Is this indeed a baseless caricature, or is it 
 not rather a legitimate consequence of the doctrine 
 which resolves morality into intellectuality ? 
 
 From the preceding exhibit it is tolerably evident, 
 we think, that Socrates could not have been what 
 we should call in modern times a loving husband. 
 Indeed, much love could not be expected from the 
 connection, if he really formed it for the purpose 
 alleged in the Symposium of Xenophon. In this 
 dialogue, Socrates is represented as maintaining 
 that woman's nature is not inferior in quality to 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 245 
 
 man's, but lacks only judgment and strength ; and 
 hence every married man is to train his wife in 
 whatsoever he may want her to know. Here An- 
 tisthenes puts in a home-thrust : Why do you not 
 train Xanthippe, the most shrewish woman in the 
 world nay, in Antisthenes' humble opinion, the 
 most shrewish of all women that have ever been or 
 ever will be ? Socrates replies that he married her 
 as those who wish to become horsemen choose not 
 gentle but mettlesome horses, thinking that if they 
 can manage them they can manage all. And so he 
 thought that if he could endure her, he could easily 
 get on with anybody. It will be observed that this 
 is no reply to the question of Antisthenes, unless 
 we are to suppose that Socrates preferred training 
 himself to training his wife, and so accounted for 
 the conjugal supremacy of the * dun mare ', if we 
 may so translate Xanthippe's name. But what is 
 here evidently meant as an evasive jest is gravely 
 inserted as an historical fact in the biography of 
 Socrates by Diogenes of Laerte ; and this supposed 
 conduct of Socrates was imitated by a Christian 
 lady, ' who desired St. Athanasius to procure for 
 her out of the -widows fed from the ecclesiastical 
 corban an old woman, morose, peevish and impa 
 tient, that she might by the society of so ungentle a 
 person have often occasion to exercise her patience, 
 her forgiveness and charity.' Modern husbands 
 often allege in jest a thousand absurd reasons for 
 their choice of a helpmeet, and no one is ridiculous 
 enough to believe them ; but let an ancient husband 
 assert in fun that he selected his wife as a moral 
 dynamometer, or as we should say, as a ' means of 
 
246 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 grace ', and straightway the declaration is recorded, 
 commented on and haply followed. To cite but 
 one objection : Is it at all likely, in view of the 
 secluded life of the Athenian maidens of the period, 
 that Xanthippe should have acquired before her 
 marriage a reputation like that of Kate the Curst of 
 Shakespearian memory? 
 
 Xanthippe's worst fault was her scolding pro 
 pensity, and this it would be futile to deny. But 
 her high temper found its vent chiefly in words, 
 and we discredit the stories about the table-turning 
 and the cloak-pulling. She was a good mother, and 
 Lamprocles, her eldest, can bring nothing against 
 her in the way of deeds. His father, as reported by 
 Xenophon, expostulates with the lad about his un- 
 filial bearing, and gives him a long and dismal cate 
 chetical lecture about the obligations of children to 
 parents. Lamprocles grants that she had been a 
 good mother to him, that she did not kick him, that 
 she did not bite him ; but to him her tongue was 
 worse than her teeth, her bark than her bite. ' Any 
 where, anywhere out of the world', rather than 
 endure that tongue-lashing, thinks Lamprocles ; 
 and at the 1 end, instead of yielding gracefully to his 
 father's advice, he preserves a moody silence. A 
 passage of Seneca mentions among the troubles of 
 Socrates his children liberos indociles et matri 
 quam patri similiores ; but to our mind Lamprocles 
 does not seem so very much to blame, and at all 
 events it is hard measure to judge poor little So- 
 phroniscus and Menexenus by Lamprocles' fit of 
 the sulks. 
 
 The passionate temper of Xanthippe was as vehe- 
 
XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 247 
 
 ment in grief as in anger, and when the time of her 
 husband's execution came, all the floodgates of 
 emotion were opened. Plato observes a singular 
 reticence with regard to Xanthippe, and it is curious 
 to note that when forced to speak of her, he speaks 
 as cautiously as if she were an avalanche that an 
 imprudent cry might bring about his head 
 
 Und willst Du die schlafende Lowin nicht wecken, 
 So wandle still durch die Strasse der Schrecken. 
 
 Phaedo, in the dialogue that bears his name, says 
 that when the friends of Socrates entered the jail 
 they found Xanthippe ' for you know her ' with 
 the baby in her arms and sitting by her husband. 
 There is a world of meaning in that little paren 
 thesis ' for you know her ' as it reads in the 
 Greek. 'As you know her, it is needless for me to 
 say more ; if you did not know her, it would be 
 useless for me to attempt a description.' When 
 she commenced the usual feminine lamentations, 
 'Ah, Socrates ! this is the last time that your friends 
 will speak to you and you to them,' her husband, 
 wishing to put an end to the painful scene, cast a 
 glance at Crito, and said What did he say? 
 Positively as if to keep up the mystery, the manu 
 scripts vary in two of the four important words he 
 said. The tense and the pronoun make the subtle 
 difference between harshness and gentleness, which 
 in English would be expressed by the tone of the 
 voice. Was it, ' Crito, let my wife be taken home,' 
 or was it, ' Crito, home with this woman ' ? So poor 
 Xanthippe went home under a guard of Crito's ser 
 vants, crying aloud and beating her breast as she 
 went. In after years, if she appears at all, she 
 
248 XANTHIPPE AND SOCRATES. 
 
 appears only as a witness of her husband's serenity 
 of countenance and temper during the political 
 troubles of Athens ; and no doubt she discovered 
 other virtues innumerable in her good old man, 
 after he had passed away. Implacable posterity 
 has found none in her, and tradition keeps her ever 
 fretting, ever scolding, upsetting tables, emptying 
 basins, and gadding about with her husband's cloak 
 on in that Hades of disreputables, into which we 
 have endeavored to throw a few gleams of light, 
 with a consciousness of certain and perhaps de 
 served failure. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 1 
 
 The first artistic form of philosophic composition 
 in Greek prose was the dialogue, the last was bio 
 graphy ; and in both periods, so entire was the sub 
 mission to the established norm, that when Xeno- 
 phon wished to vindicate the life of his master he 
 made him talk ; when Porphyry wished to advocate 
 the doctrines of his teacher he wrote his life. 
 Whence the popularity of this biographical form in 
 the later centuries of Greek literature ? Here, as 
 often, the difficulty of the answer lies in its readi 
 ness, for every bias of this sort may be explained in 
 so many ways, every movement may be the re 
 sultant of so many forces, that the puzzle is which 
 explanation to drop, which force to exclude from 
 the count. The biographical mania may have been 
 imported from the East ; or the pressure of the Em 
 pire may have made the individual of more import 
 ance in the history of thought; or the Gospel 
 incorporated in the life of our Saviour may have 
 provoked the antagonists of the Christian faith to 
 set up their ideals of the Way and the Truth in the 
 
 1 i. Apollonius de Tyane par Philostrate. Avec Introduction, 
 Notes et Eclaircissements. Par A. Chassang. Paris : 1862. 
 
 2. Apollonius von Tyana. Eine culturhistorische Unter- 
 suchung. Von Dr. Eduard Muller. Breslau : 1861. 
 
 3. Hellenismus und Christenthum. Von Dr. H. Kellner. 
 Koln: 1866. 
 
252 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 Life of this or that hero of pagan philosophy. Any 
 one of these lines of causation may be easily de 
 fended ; but the last has for us a peculiar interest 
 and importance, as we are righting on the same 
 battle-field and the parties are to all intents the 
 same. Hellenism and Christianity are grappling 
 now as they grappled seventeen centuries ago ; and 
 if the shape of the weapons has varied in the long 
 struggle, the strategic points are unchanged. Cata 
 pults and blunderbusses and needle-guns find the 
 same shelter, occupy the same rest, take the same 
 aim. The pagan of the third century puts Jesus of 
 Nazareth and Apollonius of Tyana on a level ; the 
 English free-thinker of the seventeenth argues the 
 necessity of accepting or rejecting together the 
 miracles and the divinity of Apollonius and Christ ; 
 and towards the close of the eighteenth a heavy 
 German threw his contribution of mud at the reli 
 gion of Christ in the form of a system of Apollonian 
 Apologetics after the fashion of the advocates of 
 Christianity, wherein he proved by prophecies 
 drawn from Homer and Hesiod, Pindar and Plato, 
 Vergil and Horace, that Apollonius was as much 
 the Messiah of heathendom as Christ was the Mes 
 siah of the Jews. In the effulgence of this blessed 
 time, such pleasantry would appear too coarse and 
 crude. 1 ' World-historical ' personages are to be 
 approached with due respect ; and we must learn 
 to evolve the real Apollonius out of the romance of 
 
 1 Nothing could be too coarse or crude for the author of the 
 latest attempt I have seen to glorify the Tyanite at the expense 
 of the Nazarene, D. M. Tredwell, A Sketch of the Life of 
 Apollonius of Tyana. New York : 1886. B. L. G. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2$$ 
 
 Philostratus and the real Christ out of the narra 
 tive of the Evangelists. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana is a great name ; but if it 
 had not been for Philostratus, he would not be even 
 the puzzling shadow that he is now. Some Sitz- 
 fleischius might have collected the stray notices of 
 him scattered through various authors of the first 
 centuries after Christ ; but his real historical im 
 portance he owes to the romancer who made him 
 the hero of the most curious literary performance 
 of that time. The aforesaid Sitzfleischius might 
 have told us that Apollonius of Tyana in Cappa- 
 docia was born about the same time as our Saviour, 
 and departed this life soon after the death of Do- 
 mitian (96 A. D.) ; that he was a Pythagorean 
 philosopher, a prophet of great repute, an arch- 
 magician. If Sitzfleischius had been skeptical he. 
 would have pronounced him a charlatan ; if devout, 
 he would have looked on him as one that had a 
 familiar spirit. We should still have known that 
 Caracalla raised a monument in his honor, that 
 Alexander Severus set up his image in the Imperial 
 chapel by the side of Abraham, Christ, and Or 
 pheus, and that Aurelian made vows to him of 
 temples and statues. But of all his wonderful 
 travels we should have known as little as Apollo 
 nius himself; of his miracles we should be almost 
 wholly ignorant. One historian would have pre 
 served one specimen of his gift of second-sight 
 and this might have been cited once in a while ; 
 but blot out Philostratus and the traditional Apol 
 lonius is blotted out with him ; and instead of the 
 ample canvas, the rich details, the warm coloring, 
 
254 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 the life-like posturing, we should have a bald out 
 line with the sole, paltry recommendation of truth. 
 
 It is to Philostratus, then, that Apollonius owes 
 his reputation ; his other biographers seem to have 
 fallen into speedy oblivion, and their names are pre 
 served to us chiefly by their successful rival. It 
 was Philostratus that kept the ideal Apollonius 
 before the minds of men ; so that everybody had 
 heard and read of this wonderful sage, his pure life, 
 his imposing presence, his miraculous deeds, his 
 strange power of clairvoyance. So decidedly is 
 Apollonius, as we have him, the creation of Philo 
 stratus, that here and there a scholar has been 
 found to deny his historical existence ; and although 
 such a view is untenable, still we might for the 
 special purpose of this essay abstract altogether 
 from the moot point as briefly presented by Gibbon, 
 ' whether Apollonius was a sage, an impostor, or a 
 fanatic '. In the Apollonius of Philostratus we have 
 the best that the Hellenism of the Christian centu 
 ries could do, in the way of an incarnation of divine 
 wisdom and goodness. As an idealized man, he 
 serves to show the conscious craving of that time ; 
 as a mere exemplar, his impotence shows that the 
 great want was a Saviour, not a pattern. It is from 
 this point of view that we design to treat especially 
 of the work of Philostratus, not excluding such 
 glimpses of the historical Apollonius as we catch 
 from time to time through the bad rhetoric and 
 absurd extravagailcies of the philosophic Romancer- 
 in-Ordinary to Her Majesty Julia Domna. 
 
 Julia Domna, the Syrian wife that Septimius 
 Severus wedded because the stars had promised her 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2$$ 
 
 a royal husband, never forgot that she owed her 
 crown to her horoscope, and never lost her passion 
 for the mysteries of divination and astrology. Like 
 Catharine the Second of Russia, she united a fierce 
 sensuality with a powerful intellect; and as Catha 
 rine gave her days to etymology, Julia gave her 
 nights to philosophy. Like Catharine she sur 
 rounded herself with rhetoricians and philoso 
 phers ; and one of these literary courtiers she com 
 missioned to write the life of Apollonius of Tyana. 
 This courtier, Philostratus, began the work at the 
 instance of the Empress, but she died before he had 
 finished it, and so he continued it on his own 
 account. Philostratus was a sophist, a professed 
 rhetorician ; not a sophist after the order of those 
 great innovators whom Grote has so brilliantly 
 vindicated, but one of the later school. Those 
 earlier sophists may have been narrow men, but 
 through that channel came in moral science and 
 dialectic method. In these shallow vessels the 
 thought of centuries evaporated. The older sophists 
 were rhetoricians, but men for all that ; while these 
 sophists of the later Hellenistic period were rhetor 
 icians and nothing more; and judging Philostratus 
 by his age, by his fellow-professors, by his other 
 works, we may safely say that he undertook the 
 task, not so much to do justice to his subject, as to 
 give full play to his versatile fancy. He was to be 
 to Apollonius what Plato was to Socrates ; if not 
 his creator, his transfiguring genius. His powers 
 were not to be hedged in by a prim array of authori 
 ties. He was to write a romance which should 
 admit every species of prose composition ; he was 
 
256 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 to produce a work which should fascinate the 
 reader by the variety of its contents and the liveli 
 ness of its style ; at once a biography and a volume 
 of travels ; a fairy tale and a history ; a treatise of 
 zoology and a manual of morals ; a picture-gallery 
 of human characters and a show-case of natural 
 curiosities. What with debates and orations, curt 
 letters and graphic descriptions, half-comic scenes 
 and magic apparitions, the reader is not suffered or 
 at least not supposed to grow weary ; and so far as 
 the object of the author was to make an interesting 
 book, his work is a success, for no one can read 
 Philostratus and forget him. But so far as he 
 intended to set up in his imaginary Apollonius an 
 ideal of Hellenic wisdom and virtue, his failure, as 
 compared with Christian standards, is as ludicrous 
 as anything can be that is so sorrowful. For it is 
 sorrowful to see the futility of a struggle, no matter 
 how feeble, toward light and life ; and if we shall 
 seem in this essay to have overcharged the hu 
 morous element in Philostratus, it has not been 
 because we do not really appreciate the seriousness 
 of the questions which his book suggests. Of all 
 sad writers the jester Lucian is to us the saddest, 
 sadder even than the elder Pliny in his blank despair ; 
 and somehow Philostratus reminds us of Lucian. 
 He is a Lucian that has forgot his grammar and 
 ceased to grin, and is trying to be good. But 
 enough of preface. Let our readers see for them 
 selves what manner of god-man was the result of 
 that wisdom which spurned the foolishness of the 
 Cross ; and let them compare for themselves the 
 pagan's Christ of fiction with the Christian's Christ 
 of the Gospel, who is the Christ of history. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 Apollonius was born at Tyana in Cappadocia, 
 about the beginning of our era. Visions heralded 
 his birth, portents accompanied it. Instead of the 
 prosaic storks that bring German babies, a flock of 
 swans surrounded his mother ; instead of a prosaic 
 parsley-bed, the meadow about a temple received 
 the wonderful child. At the moment of his birth a 
 flash of lightning came down from the sky and re 
 turned to heaven again. Some said that he was the 
 son of Jove ; but Apollonius himself laid no claim 
 to divine origin. He was content to be Apollonius, 
 the son of Apollonius. When the lad outgrew his 
 Cappadocian teachers, he was sent by his father to 
 college at Tarsus in Cilicia, where he may possibly 
 have seen a Jewish young gentleman of that city, 
 Saul by name, and have watched with him the 
 people of Tarsus sitting on the banks of the cool 
 Cydnus 'like so many water-fowl', says Apollo 
 nius. Against this aquatic dissipation Apollonius 
 set his face like a flint, and sternly bade the men of 
 Tarsus ' forswear thin potations ', or, to use his own 
 language, ' cease from getting drunk on water '. 
 Disgusted, for this reason and various others, with 
 Tarsus, he withdrew to ^Egae, a neighboring town, 
 and there gave himself up to the study of the doc 
 trines of Pythagoras, abstained from animal food 
 and wine, left off his shoes, wore garments of linen 
 only, and suffered his hair to grow. His fame 
 grew with his hair ; he came gradually into notice, 
 and, like many American philosophers, began his 
 career as a temperance lecturer with some applause. 
 'His style of speaking', says Philostratus, 'was 
 simple and unaffected. He did not indulge in 
 
258 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 great, swelling words; his sentences were not big 
 with poetic expressions, nor stuffed with rakings 
 and scrapings of glossaries ; while at the same time 
 he avoided the extreme of the Attic purists.' That 
 is what Philostratus says ; but if we are to judge by 
 what Philostratus quotes, the main characteristic of 
 the style of Apollonius is an affected laconism, in 
 which owlish gravity alternates with undignified 
 spite, vulgar insolence with mock grandeur; and 
 whenever he makes a formal speech and forsakes 
 his oracular tone, he is nothing more nor less than 
 our friend Philostratus over again. 
 
 In his twentieth year Apollonius lost his father, 
 and coming soon afterwards into a considerable 
 property, he gave his brother half of his own share 
 and divided the rest among his needy kinsmen, 
 took a vow of perpetual chastity, and served his 
 period of silence. Still he did not cut himself off 
 from all fellowship of his kind, but went about 
 doing inexplicable dumb-show for the good of men. 
 This voluntary poverty and this self-imposed chas 
 tity are supposed by many to have been borrowed 
 directly from the Christian system; and these are 
 two of the points in which Philostratus is thought to 
 have had the model of our Saviour before his eyes. 
 But the peculiarity of Christianity does not lie in 
 its repressive virtues, a fair assemblage of which 
 might easily be culled from sources which Christian 
 influences could not have reached. The essence of 
 Christianity lies in its motive power. 
 
 After Apollonius had completed his period of 
 silence, Philostratus sends him on his travels, and 
 thus gets an opportunity to give free rein to his 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2$$ 
 
 own fancy. For our part we have no inclination to 
 criticise his impossible geography and his fabulous 
 zoology. It is all in keeping with the character 
 and scope of the book. What if he makes Apollo- 
 nius take Nineveh on his way from Antioch to 
 Zeugma, as one should say New York on his way 
 from Richmond to Washington ? What if he makes 
 a couple of rivers exchange courses ? What if he 
 builds up Nineveh and Babylon from their ruins ? 
 What if he introduces us to a menagerie of marvel 
 lous monsters, the griffins of India, the original 
 phcenix, the colossal dragons, thirty cubits long, 
 with flaming crest, golden beard and jewelled eyes ? 
 Every step of our path leads through fairy-land, 
 and the only thing that we cannot forgive in Philo- 
 stratus is an occasional attempt to disturb our peace 
 of mind by the suggestion of critical doubts. Are 
 we who swallow the parti-colored lady, black above 
 and white below, to boggle at the Sciapods that use 
 their feet as umbrellas and their legs as handles of 
 the same ? Are we who hold converse with the 
 shade of Achilles to doubt the existence of the 
 martichora ? The man who reads Philostratus and 
 does not prefer believing in the martichora is unfit 
 to appreciate the book. But perhaps some of our 
 readers have not heard of the martichora. Here is 
 its faithful portraiture : ' The martichora is a four- 
 footed beast, with the head of a man, and of the big 
 ness of a lion ; and sports a tail furnished with 
 eighteen-inch bristles, which it discharges at its 
 pursuers.' There must be some advantages in 
 being a martichora as well as in believing in it. 
 The destination of Apollonius in his first philo- 
 
260 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 sophic journey was India; for India was to the 
 philosopher of that day what Germany is to the 
 philosopher of this. On his road to the home of 
 the Brahmins, Apollonius suddenly disappears 
 from Antioch to turn up at Nineveh. At Nineveh 
 he met the man who was to be the faithful com 
 panion of his journeyings, most modest of philoso 
 phers, most unreserved of admirers, most uncritical 
 of travellers, Damis by name, a Ninevite in whom 
 there was no guile and no sense, as childlike as any 
 of ' the six score thousand that could not discern 
 between their right hand and their left hand ' in 
 the days of Jonah, the son of Amittai. Ill-natured 
 people have gone so far as to deny the existence of 
 this Damis ; and it is not a little strange that we 
 should know nothing of him except through Philo- 
 stratus, and that Philostratus should have known 
 nothing of him except from the manuscript given 
 to him for buck-washing by Julia Domna. But if 
 indeed he be a creation of the fancy of Philostratus, 
 he is a credit to his maker. Apollonius needed just 
 such a foil, just such an easy-going, affectionate, 
 timid follower, now to worship HIM afar off, now to 
 furnish HIM with the background for his pretentious 
 wisdom. Damis's book on Apollonius, if there 
 ever was such a book, bore the modest title ' Broken 
 Meats, or Crumbs from the Table of Apollonius ', 
 and his whole demeanor was poodleish in the 
 extreme. When the two met in Nineveh, Damis 
 offered his services to Apollonius as a guide and 
 interpreter on his way to Babylon. ' I know all 
 the tongues you have mentioned ', said Apollonius, 
 ' without having learned any of them. And marvel 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 26 1 
 
 not that I know all that men say, for I know also 
 all that they say not.' And thereupon Damis wor 
 shipped Apollonius as a god, and staggered not 
 through unbelief when Apollonius chose to employ 
 an interpreter, as he did now and then. Very soon 
 an intimate relationship established itself as inti 
 mate as it could be between the stilted idol and 
 the flat-footed worshipper ; and sometimes the great 
 man would have his little joke at his Sancho some 
 times he would condescend to make a little fun for 
 him. 
 
 Scene: Zeugma, a city of Mesopotamia. Dra 
 matis persona : Apollonius, Custom-house officer. 
 
 C. H. 0. Well, sir. Sharp's the word. What 
 have you got to declare ? What are you import 
 ing? 
 
 Apollonius. Let me see. ( Counts on his fingers?) 
 There's Grace, there's Temperance, there's Faith, 
 there's Hope, there's Charity, there's 
 
 C. H. O. (Writes^ Be quick about it. Are 
 those all your slaves ? 
 
 Apollonius. Slaves indeed ! They are my vir 
 tues 
 
 To tell the truth, Apollonius was not a shy 
 person, and if it had pleased him he would have 
 made merry over much more awful dignitaries than 
 custom-house officers awful as they have been 
 through all generations ; and so we find him, 
 further on in the narrative, serenely meeting the 
 stern question of a Parthian ' man under authority '. 
 ' Who are you ', asked the Parthian, ' that you are 
 thus entering the territory of the great king ? ' 
 ' Mine ', replied Apollonius, ' is all the earth, and I 
 
262 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 have a right to go just where I choose ! ' Arrived 
 in Babylon, Apollonius showed the same haughty 
 spirit. If he snubbed the officer of the king, he 
 treated the king himself like a school-boy. To the 
 magi he accorded grudgingly a certain degree of 
 wisdom, and paid the splendor of the palace of 
 Babylon only the implied compliment of pretending 
 not to notice it. When invited to join the king in 
 sacrifice he said : ' Do thou sacrifice, O king, in thy 
 way and let me sacrifice in mine '; and instead of 
 bloody sacrifice he offered up incense, and instead 
 of prayer, the following strange ejaculation : f Sun, 
 send me as far as seemeth good to me and to thee ; 
 and may I know good men ; but let me not know 
 bad men nor bad men me.' Cover up the spiritual 
 pride of the first clause by the spiritual humility of an 
 entire submission to the divine will, and there still 
 remains the petition that sunders the Greek, so con 
 fident in his selfish perfection, from the Friend of 
 publicans and sinners. Indeed it is very evident 
 that Apollonius went to Babylon not so much to 
 learn as to teach ; but the specimens of his wisdom 
 which Damis brought back are all of the home 
 spun sort; the finer fabrics having been worn out in 
 their long journey.- Not very novel is the wish: 
 * Grant me, ye gods, to have little and to want 
 nothing/ Not very profound his advice to the 
 king : ' Honor many, trust few.' However, the 
 king was delighted with his guest, and is said to 
 have embodied his satisfaction in the declaration 
 that Apollonius had relieved him not only of all 
 concern about his kingdom, but also of all con 
 cern about death. The liberal offers which this 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 263 
 
 mythical king made his mythical visitor were tempt 
 ing, and Damis, who, like Sancho Panza, had an 
 eye to the main chance, would have had Apollo- 
 nius accept them ; but Apollonius read him a lec 
 ture on the evils of avarice, and the poor fellow 
 apologized in great shame and confusion of face. 
 ' Never mind ', said Apollonius with benignity, ' I 
 did not mean to scold you, but merely to show you 
 what a model I am.' 
 
 The journey from Babylon to Taxila gives Philo- 
 stratus a welcome opportunity to display his attain 
 ments in zoology and mythology and the fine arts, 
 and we are called on to trace the wanderings of 
 Bacchus, to study the natural history of the ele 
 phant, to submit to a discourse on love of offspring, 
 and to yawn over a lecture on imitation. Certainly 
 Julia Domna was to have enough for her money. 
 The only relief to him who, like Socrates, prefers 
 the study of human nature to everything else, is 
 friend Damis, whose half-vision of his own block- 
 headedness and whole enjoyment of the good things 
 of this life bring him nearer to our hearts than his 
 superb teacher ever gets. As they go puffing up 
 the mountain, Damis remarks, after profound medi 
 tation, ' I shall go down on the other side no wiser 
 than I came up '; and Apollonius for once approves 
 of his pupil's conclusion. When the shepherds 
 offered them palm-wine, Damis tried to coax Apol 
 lonius into a little tippling, on the ground that it 
 was not grape-wine. He little knew his man. With 
 more resolution than most temperance advocates 
 of our day would show, Apollonius brushed away 
 the flimsy pretext, and poor Damis began to fear 
 
264 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 lest he might be in honor bound to follow the 
 example of his chief. But with more lenity than 
 most temperance men of our day, Apollonius 
 accords to Damis and his other attendants a gra 
 cious permission to drink wine and to eat meat ; for 
 they, poor creatures of a lower sphere, were not to 
 be bound by his exalted example. And so Damis, 
 being ' one that was nourished by his victuals ' and 
 cheered by his drink, fell to with exceeding relish, 
 thinking, and very sensibly thinking, that he ' would 
 get along better on his travels with his stomach 
 full'. Another little stroke highly characteristic of 
 Damis is his sudden fancy for buying an elephant- 
 driver. So violent was that fancy that Apollonius 
 had to reason the notion out of the foolish noddle 
 of his humble friend by a formal process of argu 
 mentation, and we have our private misgivings as 
 to his real success. Damis stinted, but the longing 
 never left him. 
 
 According to a law of the country, Phraotes, king 
 of those parts, could not entertain Apollonius more 
 than three days, 1 but in that time they managed to 
 become very much enamored of one another; and 
 in after years Apollonius took occasion to annoy 
 Euphrates, the philosopher, by parading his friend 
 Phraotes, just as Mrs. Gamp provoked Mrs. Prig to 
 jealousy by the mention of Mrs. Harris. It is to be 
 supposed that Phraotes returned the compliment. 
 But, for our purposes, we can make no use of the 
 interview at Taxila between the philosopher on the 
 
 1 Compare the rule of the Teaching of the Apostles, which 
 limits hospitality to two days (xi. 5), and adds significantly : 
 rpcis 8e eav fJ-eivr) \jsvdoirpo(f)r)Tr)s ecrriv. B. L. G. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 26$ 
 
 throne and the philosopher on the camel. There 
 is a long story about the birth, life and fortunes of 
 Phraotes, a long screed about the promotion of true 
 visions by abstinence from wine ; but of all the 
 brilliancy which one would have expected from the 
 attrition of two such sages, only a few sparks seem 
 to have struck the dull optics of Damis. Not bad, 
 however, is the remark of Phraotes, that whereas in 
 the time of Homer the Greeks used to ask every 
 stranger ' Are you a pirate ? ' in the time of Phraotes 
 the common question was ' Are you a philo 
 sopher ? ' and, in point of fact, philosopher and 
 pirate were more alike than might be supposed ; 
 both clad in stolen clothes and both given to all 
 manner of sensual indulgence. Not unworthy of 
 note as characteristic of Apollonius is his decision 
 of a case submitted to his judgment by Phraotes ; 
 in which case he makes good luck and piety syn 
 onymous, considers a man a sinner because he had 
 lost in a business transaction, and shows Apollo 
 nius the Tyanite to be no better a judge than Bil- 
 dad the Shuhite. When the parting came, Apol 
 lonius would receive nothing from his generous 
 host. Even in reply to a question as to the state of 
 his camels, Apollonius was mute. ' Gracious good 
 ness, my lord king ', said Damis, ' this man does 
 not know anything about travelling. The camels 
 are in such wretched plight that we shall have to 
 carry them rather than they us ; and we must have 
 others. If they give way in the Indian desert, we 
 shall have to sit down and frighten off the buzzards 
 and the wolves from them, and there will be no 
 body to frighten them off from us ; for we shall 
 
266 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 perish too.' ' I will see to that/ said the king : and 
 so he sent them on their way well equipped. 
 
 But we cannot travel at so leisurely a pace with 
 this knight-errant of philosophy and his faithful 
 squire, and we must hurry past sea-serpents and 
 pepper-picking monkeys to the home of the Brah 
 mins. As Apollonius and his attendants were 
 about to turn in at a village some furlong or so 
 from the Hill of the Wise Men, a messenger met 
 them and said to Apollonius : ' Let your compan 
 ions put up here, but do you come on just as you 
 are ; for this is what They order.' This mysterious 
 Pythagorean They delighted Apollonius, and he 
 followed the messenger gladly up the hill, which 
 was covered with a cloud, wherein the Brahmins 
 lived ' visible and invisible'. Of these men Apol 
 lonius himself says, in a speech to the Egyptians, 
 ' I have seen the Indian Brahmins, living on earth and 
 not on earth, fortified without fortification, possessing 
 nothing and possessing all things.' Now if this is the 
 way in which the real Apollonius talked, commend 
 us to the fictitious Damis instead. For if we may 
 be allowed to use this lingua Apolloniana, we don't 
 like, though we do like, wise unwisdom, and leave 
 to others, while we keep for ourselves, the poor 
 wealth of such transparent puzzles. Commend us, 
 we repeat, % to Damis instead, who tells us in lan 
 guage that we can understand, though not believe, 
 that he saw those Brahminical gentlemen dancing 
 on nothing two cubits from the ground ; that the 
 fire which they drew from the sun floated about 
 with them in the air, that they had sunshine and 
 shadow and rivers of wine at their beck and call. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 267 
 
 As Apollonius drew near, the Brahmins went 
 to meet him, all save larchas, their Patriarch, who 
 kept his seat. Welcoming his guest in Greek, 
 larchas asked him for his letter of introduction, 
 and, without reading it, told him the name of the 
 writer told him that a D had been omitted, told him 
 all about his family, his journey, about his friend 
 Damis, about his own exalted genius ; so that Apol 
 lonius, astonished at such power, reverentially recog 
 nizes a greater than himself, and craves permission, 
 which is readily granted, to learn all the wisdom of 
 the Indians. ' Ask what question you will ', said the 
 modest Patriarch, ' for you have come to men that 
 know everything.' ' Do you know yourselves ? ' 
 asked Apollonius. ' We know everything, because 
 we know ourselves first,' was the reply. ' What do 
 you deem yourselves to be ? ' ' Gods.' ' Why ? ' 
 ' Because we are good men.' Apollonius thought 
 this very fine, and made use of it in his speech 
 before Domitian. Eve thought something like this 
 very fine, and doubtless made use of it in her speech 
 to Adam. 
 
 Of course, such eminent transmigrationists as 
 Apollonius and larchas could not come together 
 without exchanging ' experiences ' and ' reminis 
 cences '. larchas had been a king, Apollonius only 
 an Egyptian skipper and a lying one to boot; 
 but the incidents of their former condition had 
 given rise to a philosophic discussion to which 
 Damis was listening with an intent dulness pecu 
 liarly his own, when the king of the country came 
 in with the mien of a suppliant. Why the king was 
 introduced at all, to mar the harmony of this sage 
 
268 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 conversation, it is at first hard to see. But after 
 a while the intention becomes plainer. The king is 
 a rude, passionate, unphilosophical creature, who is 
 brought in to be snubbed, first by the Brahmins and 
 then by Apollonius. Of all the features of Brah- 
 minical life, the one that the Greek philosophers 
 admired most was the reverence with which the 
 Indian sages were treated by Indian kings ; and a 
 favorite text with them was the respect due to 
 wisdom from power. In this interview the king is 
 treated very coldly by the native philosophers, and 
 is put to shame by the foreigner, who converts the 
 blundering monarch, by a rapid course of argu 
 ment, from an ignorant hater to a tearful admirer of 
 the Greeks. The king begins by thinking that the 
 Greeks are ' corrupt scoundrels, insolent varlets, the 
 trash and offscourings of creation, confusion worse 
 confounded, story-tellers, miracle-mongers, poor 
 devils and thieves ', and winds up by pronouncing 
 them, on very insufficient grounds, ' good men and 
 true, gentlemen and scholars '. These electric con 
 victions are among the greatest miracles of the 
 book. After a fairy banquet, at which automata 
 act as tables and waiters, the king withdraws, and 
 Damis is allowed to come in to pick up some of the 
 crumbs of the wisdom which was broken so freely 
 at this philosophic feast. For all he profited, he 
 might as well have stayed away; for the grand 
 doctrine of the Cosmos which he brought back was 
 the same old pantheism that is the first and the last 
 word of Greek philosophy. But in this, as in the 
 introduction of the king, there is perhaps a deep 
 design. The Hellenic faith was to be strengthened 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 269 
 
 by the proof that there was no essential difference 
 between the highest form of Oriental belief and the 
 creed of Pythagoras. When the king tells Apol- 
 lonius by way of rebuke, 'You are full of Phra- 
 otes ' ' I have travelled to some purpose ', he re- 
 joins, 'if I am full of Phraotes ', 'but', he adds 
 with significant self-reliance, ' if you should meet 
 with Phraotes, you would say that he is likewise 
 full of me.' And while Apollonius tacitly acknowl 
 edges larchas as his superior, Damis takes care to 
 call attention to the marvellous likeness between the 
 greater and the lesser light. This assertion of the 
 claims of Hellenism is one of the leading points in 
 the work of Philostratus. 
 
 Apollonius spent four months with the Brahmins, 
 learned all that they tad to teach him, admired their 
 short method of dealing with distant devils by 
 writing letters to them, and witnessed many of their 
 wonderful cures. Much of their talk was about 
 astrology and divination ; about the secret power of 
 the gem pantarbe and the pigmies that live under 
 ground. Many animals of Greek fable they sneered 
 or denied out of existence, but they swore to the 
 truth of the gold-digging griffins and the flaming 
 phoenix. 
 
 But the last lesson was at last given. larchas 
 bade his promising scholar farewell, with the assur 
 ance that he would be considered a god in his 
 lifetime as well as after death ; and Apollonius 
 returned to startle the world with proofs of his 
 divinity. In Ionia the philosopher was welcomed 
 by shoals of admirers, whose admiration was only 
 
2/O APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 heightened by his words of wisdom. Both Smyrna 
 and Ephesus had reason to remember the great 
 man ; but it was in Ephesus especially that he 
 showed forth his power. It was there that he dis 
 played his knowledge of the language of animals, a 
 science which he had acquired in Arabia. It was 
 there that he appeared as a father and a saviour 
 of the people. To use the tumid language of 
 Philostratus, the tide of pestilence was swelling and 
 its waves were creeping up toward Ephesus ; and 
 Apollonius perceived its approach, and perceiving, 
 foretold it. He would often stop in the midst of 
 his discourses and cry aloud with threatening ges 
 ture, ' Earth, abide like unto thyself.' ' Save these.' 
 ' Thus far shalt thou go and no further.' When the 
 plague came Apollonius was at Smyrna. Recalled 
 to Ephesus by an embassy, he said, ' Let us go/ 
 and straightway was at Ephesus ; just like Pythag 
 oras, who was at one moment in Thurii and at the 
 next in Metapontum. Thus miraculously trans 
 ported to Ephesus, Apollonius told the people, 
 ' Be of good courage ; to-day I will put an end to 
 the plague,' and so saying, he led the crowd to the 
 theatre, where they found the phantom of an old 
 beggar. His eyes were shut in feigned half-blind 
 ness, his wallet held but a crust of bread, his clothes 
 were in rags, his face begrimed. ' Pelt the enemy 
 of the gods,' cried Apollonius, ' pelt him with all 
 the stones you can.' The old man besought the 
 multitude to have mercy on him; but Apollonius 
 urged them on, and they began to obey. As the 
 first drops of the shower fell, the blind beggar's 
 eyes opened, flaming with fire, and the Ephesians 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2? I 
 
 * 
 
 at once recognizing the demon, covered him thick 
 with stones. After the wretch was killed, Apollo- 
 nius ordered the mound of stones to be removed, 
 that the Ephesians might see what manner of 
 monster they had slain and lo! the old man had 
 vanished, and in his stead the mangled carcass of a 
 mastiff as big as a lion, with the foam of madness 
 frothing from its jaws. 
 
 Passing over his curious interview with the 
 shade of Achilles, we next accompany the philo 
 sopher to Athens. His reception was highly flat 
 tering. On his way from the port to the city he 
 stumbled on one company of ten young men who 
 were just about to take ship for Ionia in order to 
 listen to his instructions. Everybody turned round 
 to look at him ; everybody admired his person, his 
 bearing, his wisdom. But though the common 
 people and the philosophers heard him gladly, the 
 priests would none of him ; and when he applied 
 for initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, he was 
 refused on the ground of being a magician and an 
 impostor. ' My greatest crime ', said Apollonius to 
 the hierophant, ' is this that I know more about 
 the rite of initiation than you do.' The multitude 
 applauded for the multitude loves impudence 
 and the hierophant ' changed his tune ', and ac 
 corded permission, which Apollonius in his turn 
 declined. ' I shall be initiated hereafter ', he said, 
 * and such and such a one shall initiate me.' And 
 so it was. 
 
 In reading the account of the sojourn of Apol 
 lonius at Athens, it is impossible to thrust out of our 
 minds a far more illustrious pilgrim. Here, as at 
 
2/2 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 Tarsus, as at Ephesus, the image of the great 
 apostle to the Gentiles rises before us, and as we 
 think over the wonderful sermon on Mars Hill, we 
 feel how paltry in comparison is the work of the 
 Gentile apostle. Paul gave a new and higher con 
 secration to the altar which the Athenians had 
 reared To THE UNKNOWN GOD; and laid hold of the 
 hands that were feeling after the Lord, and strove 
 to guide them where they might find him. When 
 Apollonius saw the Athenians at their devotions, 
 he did not try to change the direction of their wor 
 ship, he only tried to change the manner of it ; 
 and, while complimenting them on their receptivity 
 for all sorts of deities, gave pedantic instructions 
 about the kinds and seasons of sacrifice, libation 
 and prayer partly to show off his knowledge, 
 partly to rebuke the man who had rejected him at 
 Eleusis. Less personal feeling, less personal 
 vanity, nay, a certain degree of moral dignity is 
 shown in his sermon against the wanton celebra 
 tion of the games in honor of Bacchus, and in his 
 stern denunciation of gladiatorial exhibitions. But 
 especially famous is his adventure with the young 
 man possessed of a devil, a scene which is sup 
 posed to be modelled after the Gospel narrative. 
 Apollonius was lecturing one day about libations, 
 and how important it was to have handles made to 
 the cups, so that the wine could be poured out from 
 the side of the handles, as people were least in the 
 habit of drinking from that side. A jolly young 
 fellow in the audience, who was not of a ritualistic 
 turn, broke out into a horse-laugh at this refinement, 
 and thus attracted the attention of Apollonius. ' It 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 is not you ', said Apollonius, ' that insult me thus ; 
 but the devil you are ridden by unawares.' Up to 
 that time the young man had not suspected that he 
 was devil-ridden, nor, in fact, had any one else. 
 True, he was subject to fits of uncontrollable 
 laughter followed by floods of tears, and had a way 
 of talking to himself; but it was generally supposed 
 that all this was due to a lively, excitable disposi 
 tion, and not to any indwelling devil. Thus de 
 tected, the poor devil whimpered and bullied by 
 turns, but finally promised Apollonius to leave his 
 comfortable abode and never to enter the body of 
 any human being. Apollonius bade him begone 
 and give some outward sign of his going. ' I will 
 cast down yonder statue,' said the devil ; and with 
 that the statue nodded and fell. Rubbing his eyes 
 as if waking from sleep, the young man was over 
 whelmed with shame at seeing the gaze of all fixed 
 upon him ; and now being rid of the devil, left off 
 his wild habits and his fine clothes, and fell in love 
 with philosophic shabbiness and philosophic dirt. 
 We leave the reader to decide whether the resem 
 blance of this story to any of the similar Gospel 
 narratives is due to the elements which are neces 
 sarily common, or to a direct appropriation of 
 material. 
 
 On his way to Corinth from Athens, Apollonius 
 uttered a prophecy which Philostratus gravely 
 records or gravely invents. It is a fair sample of 
 all the prophecies of Apollonius, and is too absurd 
 for caricature. Imagine one of the Old Testament 
 prophets lifting up his voice, crying aloud and 
 sparing not, saying, ' The burden of the Isthmus. 
 
2/4 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 This neck of land shall be cut, or rather it shall not 
 be cut/ Of course this prophecy was ' fulfilled '. 
 At Corinth he released a young philosopher from 
 the meshes of an Empusa, a sort of vampire Venus, 
 such as we find in the unsentimental legends of the 
 middle ages. At Sparta he cast out of the entire 
 people the devil of luxury, and brought them back 
 to the institutions of Lycurgus. ' Sparta' and ' Ly- 
 curgus ' have a strange sound in the first century 
 after Christ, and it was of course a sham Sparta 
 and a sham people that Apollonius reformed ; but 
 it is true that about that time Nero allowed the 
 Greek states a kind of mock independence ; and 
 we read that Vespasian offended the philosopher 
 mortally by putting an abrupt end to the farce. 
 One of these papier-mache imitations of the iron 
 Spartans asked Apollonius how the gods were to 
 be worshipped. 'As masters.' 'How heroes?' 
 'As fathers.' ' How men ? ' ' Your question is un- 
 Spartan,' he replied ; and un-Spartan was the 
 excitement of the people when a scolding letter 
 came from Nero. Fight they could not; to beg 
 off they were ashamed ; and a saucy reply was 
 more than they dared send. In their extremity 
 they applied to Apollonius. Apollonius gave them 
 his counsel in his usual pithy and affected style. 
 ' Palamedes ', he said, * invented letters to teach men 
 not only to write, but also what not to write.' They 
 caught at his'meaning as if one were to say how 
 ' Jonas Hanway introduced the umbrella to teach 
 men not only to shelter themselves from the rain, 
 but also when not to shelter themselves from the 
 rain.' 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2/5 
 
 In obedience to a vision, Apollonius took Crete 
 on his way to Rome, and while there he was the 
 witness of a terrible earthquake. Thunder re 
 sounded from the earth beneath, and the sea 
 receded some seven stadia from the shore. All 
 were frightened, but Apollonius stood firm t * Be 
 of good courage ', said he, 'the sea hath given birth 
 to land.' And it turned out just as he said. The 
 sea had brought forth a fine island, and both 
 mother and child were doing well. 
 
 Before Apollonius reached Rome, all but a faith 
 ful few forsook him and fled; for Nero had just 
 published an edict against philosophers, and the 
 gentlemen of that profession were hurrying out of 
 town with most unphilosophic speed. The day 
 after his arrival, Apollonius was summoned before 
 the consul, who was of a pious turn of mind, and 
 readily granted him permission to live in the tem 
 ples. But Tigellinus, the prefect of the Praetorian 
 guard, had his suspicions roused. The philosopher 
 was evidently a magician and an astrologer, and 
 showed a marvellous insight into the future. ' There 
 had been', says Philostratus, 'an eclipse of the sun, 
 and thunder with it ; a thing that very rarely happens 
 during an eclipse : and Apollonius, looking up to 
 the sky, said, " A great thing shall come to pass, and 
 it shall not come to pass." And those who were 
 present when he said this could not yet make out 
 what was meant, but on the third day after the 
 eclipse they all understood the oracle. For as 
 Nero was dining, a thunderbolt struck the table, 
 passing through the cup, which was in his hand and 
 not far from his mouth. Now it was this narrow 
 
2/6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 escape of Nero's from being struck that Apollonius 
 meant by saying that something great should come 
 to pass and should not come to pass.' But even 
 after this wonderful fulfilment of prophecy, Tigel- 
 linus contented himself with having Apollonius 
 watched, and did not summon him until he heard of 
 a sneering remark that the philosopher had made 
 about Nero. Apollonius appeared: Tigellinus opened 
 the bill of ' delation ' ; it was a blank. Frightened 
 at this, the prefect took the accused into a private 
 chamber, where the philosopher frightened him still 
 more by his mysterious answers, until he was but 
 too glad to get this terrible stranger out of Rome. 
 
 However, Apollonius did not leave Rome without 
 giving another signal manifestation of his divine 
 power. He met a funeral procession, a maiden 
 borne to the grave, the expectant bridegroom follow 
 ing the corpse with loud lamentations, and Rome 
 joining in the grief, for the maiden was of a consular 
 house. 'Set down the bier', said Apollonius, ' for 
 I will dry your tears for the maiden. Tell me her 
 name.' And then merely touching her, and saying 
 a few words in an inaudible tone, he woke her from 
 her seeming death. The parents offered him mag 
 nificent presents. He gave them back as a dowry for 
 the girl whom he had brought to life. Philostratus 
 himself leaves it undecided whether Apollonius 
 really rekindled an extinguished life or found a vital 
 spark remaining ; for they said that it was drizzling 
 at the time, and that her face sent up a steam from 
 the contact with the air, thus showing that her body 
 was not cold in death. The resemblance to the 
 Gospel story of the young man of Nain is striking, 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2// 
 
 but Philostratus seems rather to have had in his 
 mind the pagan story of Alcestis ; and the dramatic 
 points of meeting the procession and ordering the 
 bier to be set down are so natural that the coincid 
 ence is not to be insisted on. Did Shakespeare 
 borrow the scene in which Richard III meets the 
 funeral procession of Henry VI and orders the bier 
 to be set down ? 
 
 We must pass over the short sojourn of Apol- 
 lonius in Spain, his visit to Sicily, and his return to 
 Greece, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian 
 mysteries in accordance with his prediction. In 
 Egypt Apollonius appears in a new capacity. He 
 reached Alexandria in a time of great political 
 excitement, and this simple philosopher rode trium 
 phant on the whirlwind unseen to vulgar eyes, who 
 beheld him only as a sage and a prophet. In fulfil 
 ment of a Sicilian prophecy of Apollonius, Galba 
 had fallen before Otho, Otho before Vitellius, and 
 Vespasian was expected to put an end to the 
 inglorious rule of the last of the three. While 
 waiting to give Vespasian his orders, Apollonius 
 awed the frivolous Alexandrians by his imposing 
 presence and by his wonderful wisdom. Here too 
 he was a reformer and a saviour. He rescued from 
 execution a poor creature who had borne false witness 
 against himself through fear of torture. He read 
 an Egyptian priest a pedantic lecture about the 
 proper method of sacrificing. He fulminated against 
 the foolish love of chariot-racing, which led the 
 Alexandrians so often to bloody fights. But much as 
 the Alexandrians respected Apollonius, they could 
 hardly have been prepared for the reverence which 
 
278 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 the emperor that was to be paid the great philoso 
 pher. It was the Indian king and larchas over 
 again. Scarcely had Vespasian finished his sacri 
 fices, scarcely had he given an answer to the 
 deputations of the different cities, when he addressed 
 Apollonius in the form of a suppliant : ' Make me 
 Emperor.' ' I have done so/ replied Apollonius 
 graciously. ' In begging the gods for an Emperor 
 that should be a just man and a gentleman, adorned 
 with grey hair, and a true father in begging for 
 such an Emperor I begged for you.' In response 
 to this compliment, Vespasian raised his hands 
 toward heaven and prayed : ' May I be ruler over 
 wise men, and wise men rulers over me.' The wise 
 men who were in Vespasian's train seemed dis 
 posed to secure the latter half of this prayer, and 
 not disinclined to share the rule with Apollonius. But 
 in the course of a great discussion which took place 
 in the privy council, the philosophers of the house, 
 Euphrates and Dion, were injudicious enough or 
 honest enough to speak in favor of reestablishing 
 the republic, while Apollonius, dropping his pithy, 
 sententious style, harangued in favor of the assump 
 tion of the empire. As this advice tallied with 
 Vespasian's own inclination, Apollonius became 
 omnipotent, and Euphrates envious. This was the 
 beginning of hostilities that were never intermitted. 
 A large proportion of the letters of Apollonius are 
 devoted to the rasping of this rival, who was an 
 historical personage, and, according to high author 
 ity, one of the purest of characters and one of the 
 most agreeable of companions. But agreeable and 
 pure as he was, according to Pliny, he was very 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TV ANA. 
 
 malevolent, according to Philostratus, and did all 
 that he could to injure the credit of Apollonius in 
 Egypt, and years afterwards sent information against 
 him to Rome. But between Vespasian and Apol 
 lonius no shadow of trouble arose while they were 
 together; and indeed the whole account of the 
 interview is ludicrously sentimental. Imagine that 
 tough, stingy old sinner of a Vespasian protesting 
 against the root of all evil and throwing his heart 
 wide open to Apollonius ! Imagine him begging 
 Apollonius to remember him in his prayers, in very 
 much the tone in which Hamlet addresses Ophelia! 
 Alas ! the harmony of these two beautiful souls was 
 not to be of long duration. Vespasian withdrew 
 from the Greek states the independence they had 
 forfeited, and Apollonius withdrew from him his 
 personal friendship, as may be seen from some of 
 his waspish letters. 
 
 Apollonius To the Emperor Vespasian: You 
 have enslaved Greece, they say, and you think that 
 you have done more than Xerxes. You do not 
 know that you have done worse than Xerxes ; for 
 Nero might have done it, but would not. Farewell. 
 
 From the same To the same : You, who are on 
 such bad terms with the Greeks as to reduce them 
 to slavery what do you want with my society ? 
 Farewell. 
 
 From the same To the same: Nero liberated 
 the Greeks in sport. You enslaved them in earnest. 
 Farewell. 
 
 The greater part of the sixth book of Philo 
 stratus is taken up with an account of the journey of 
 Apollonius to the Gymnosophists, or naked philo- 
 
280 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 sophers, whom Philostratus has transplanted without 
 hesitation from their home in India, where they are 
 known as Fakirs, to the region of the Nile. The 
 word gymnos does not necessarily mean mother- 
 naked; and as these Egyptian philosophers wore 
 light summer clothes, we might, if dignity allowed 
 it, translate the title for the benefit of our un-Grecian 
 readers by ' Sages of the Shirt', These Gymno- 
 sophists, we are told, were much further below the 
 Indians in wisdom than they were above the Egyp 
 tians ; and Apollonius seems to have started on his 
 journey with a feeling of resignation to his own 
 superiority. Even before his arrival he spoke dis 
 paragingly of the Gymnosophists for not cleansing 
 a suppliant of theirs from blood-guiltiness, and 
 showed his reprobation of their course by per 
 forming the purification himself; and prepared as 
 he was to think lightly of them, we can readily 
 understand that their cool reception of him was not 
 suited to flatter the lively susceptibilities of a man 
 so jealous of his divinity. Euphrates, his arch 
 enemy, had, by means of an emissary, poisoned the 
 minds of the Gymni against their coming guest, and 
 while they did not decline his visit, they postponed 
 the conference. Meantime they asked him what 
 his object was, and invited him to repose under a 
 portico which they had built solely for the accom 
 modation of strangers as they themselves lived in 
 the open air. Apollonius most pettish of apos 
 tles answered abruptly : ' Why do you ask me 
 what I want ? The Indians knew without asking. 
 Don't talk to me about your roof. You have got a 
 climate in which any man can live without clothes.' 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 28 1 
 
 It is to be hoped that he felt more comfortable after 
 getting in those neat little blows. 
 
 The next morning the Gymni came to see him 
 in a body. 'And well you might,' said Apollonius, 
 ' I came all the way from the coast to see you.' 
 This was a snappish prelude to the debates between 
 Apollonius and the Gymni ; and in fact these long 
 discussions are interesting chiefly as they show a 
 very bad temper on the part of the disputants. 
 The Head-Gymnus and Apollonius try each to 
 play the tutor to the other. His High Nakedness 
 or Naked Highness begins his discourse by run 
 ning down the magic arts of the Indians. ' True 
 philosophy ', said he, ' dispenses with outside shows. 
 Not that we have not the power. Elm, salute Pro 
 fessor Apollonius.' The elm saluted him in a clear, 
 articulate, female voice. ' It is not, then, that we 
 have not the power. We can do such things, but 
 we despise them. Our philosophy needs no mere 
 tricious ornament. Such bedizening we leave to 
 the Indians. Before you stand the two systems as 
 Vice and Virtue stood before Hercules. Choose 
 you this day which you will serve.' Apollonius 
 did not and could not contain himself for indigna 
 tion. Had he been one of the vulgar he would 
 have said, ' You are teaching a dolphin how to 
 swim,' which was the Greek way of teaching one's 
 grandmother how to suck eggs. As it was, he was 
 pointed enough. ' Whom are you lecturing ? ' he 
 said in substance. ' I am older than any of you, 
 except his High Nakedness. I have already chosen 
 for myself, and I am better fit this day to teach you 
 than you to teach me. I am now what I was at 
 
282 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 first a Pythagorean. Desirous of going back to 
 the sources of that sublime philosophy, in my 
 youth and ignorance, I was about to turn to you. 
 But my teacher told me that you had your wisdom 
 at second hand from the Brahmins, and so I went 
 to them first. Now, mark you, not a word against 
 the Indians ; nay, I would rather advise you to 
 recant what you have said already. All have the 
 wish to rise from earth and be lifted up together 
 with God. All have the wish the Indians alone 
 have the power.' At the conclusion of his master's 
 harangue, poor affectionate Damis drew a long 
 breath of relief, and his High Nakedness Thespe- 
 sion blushed ' a blush that could be seen through 
 his black skin'. Apollonius followed up his ad- 
 vantange by berating the Gymni soundly for put 
 ting any confidence in the calumnies of his enemy 
 Euphrates, and told them that by their credulity 
 they had forfeited the title of philosophers. The 
 half-apologies of the Gymni did not soothe the 
 irritated spirit of Apollonius, and the philosophic 
 discussions which ensued were far different from 
 the sweet interchange of genius and admiration that 
 made the sojourn among Brahmins so delightful. 
 There is something peculiarly feline in the sputter- 
 ings of the self-conceited disciple of the Indians 
 and the self-conceited Sages of the Shirt, and we 
 rejoice to leave their cataracts of words for the 
 cataracts of the Nile. But before Apollonius left 
 Ethiopia, by way of a parting fling at the Gymni, 
 he performed the miracle of taming a satyr who had 
 proved unmanageable by all the arts of the naked 
 philosophers. For this frolicsome rascal, who had 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 283 
 
 been maltreating some of the Ethiopian ladies, 
 Apollonius laid a trap by having the sheep-trough 
 of the haunted village filled with wine. The wine 
 disappeared mysteriously, and Apollonius led the 
 villagers to a cave of the nymphs, where they found 
 the satyr asleep. ' Don't b^at him or curse him,' 
 said Apollonius. ' He has stopped his nonsense.' 
 But if the satyr had stopped his nonsense, not so 
 Philostratus, for he assures us with the utmost 
 seriousness that there are such beings as satyrs, 
 and that the mother of one of his friends used to 
 receive the visits of one of these gentlemen, who 
 appeared in a fawn-skin overcoat that grew out of 
 his back, while the fore-legs lapped over his satyric 
 chest and made a dainty collar for his neck. 
 
 At the time when Apollonius left Egypt, Titus 
 had just taken Jerusalem ; and Apollonius compli 
 mented him on his giving God all the glory, and 
 on his refusing to be crowned for shedding human 
 blood. ' I have taken Jerusalem,' replied Titus ; 
 ' you have taken me ' ; and in a personal interview 
 with the future Emperor, Apollonius seems to have 
 taken him literally ; for he treated Titus with the 
 same arrogant assumption with which he had 
 treated his father Vespasian, talked to him as if he 
 were a boy, set him some excellent copy-book 
 maxims, and commended him to the tutorship of 
 one Demetrius, a philosopher of the Cynic sect. Of 
 course, during the whole interview, Titus is as 
 humble in the presence of Apollonius as the poor, 
 besotted king of India in the presence of the Brah 
 mins. 
 
 After his return from Egypt, Apollonius confined 
 
284 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 himself to a narrower circle of travel, and the ac 
 count of his performances between the meeting with 
 Titus and the trial before Domitian is very meagre. 
 To-day he cures a crazy passion for a statue of 
 Venus ; to-morrow the bite of a mad dog ; and 
 every now and then he brings an obstreperous 
 earthquake to its senses. Here a young man is 
 diverted from a foolish fancy for teaching birds to 
 talk ; and there an old man is directed to a hidden 
 treasure, which enables him to marry off his 
 daughters ; but the biographer is evidently growing 
 weary of the catalogue of marvels, and after sum 
 ming up the wonderful works of his hero, gathers 
 together all his rhetorical faculties for the grand 
 tableau, ' Apollonius before Domitian '. 
 
 Apollonius was suspected, and not unjustly 
 suspected, as it seems, of an inclination to political 
 intrigue. In Nero's time he had been privy to the 
 plans of Vindex ; and he was known to be intimate 
 with Nerva, whom Domitian had banished from the 
 city and was seeking an opportunity to destroy. 
 The bold expressions of Apollonius in regard to 
 Domitian could not be kept from the knowledge 
 of the Emperor, and one speech particularly was 
 duly reported by Euphrates, his old rival. ' Fool ', 
 cried Apollonius, apostrophizing a statue of Domi 
 tian at Smyrna , ' fool ', he cried, ' how little you 
 understand the Fates and Necessity. For he who 
 is destined to reign after you shall live again even 
 if you kill him.' For the utterance of this predic 
 tion Apollonius was summoned to appear before 
 Caesar's judgment-seat, but 'by a divine insight' 
 anticipating the summons, he went of his own accord 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 28$ 
 
 to Italy, landing where Paul landed, at Puteoli. 
 There he met his friend Demetrius, the same man to 
 whose philosophic care he had commended Titus ; 
 and this Demetrius urged him to avoid the certain 
 death that awaited him at Rome. This advice 
 tallied with the bent of Damis, a faithful soul but a 
 cowardly, whose faithfulness through all his coward 
 ice reminds us again of his antitype, Sancho. At 
 this crisis, Damis musters up courage to show his 
 lack of it ; and his speech is a masterpiece, which 
 must be marred in any translation, still more in our 
 partial reproduction. ' Thank you ', said he, in 
 substance, ' good master Demetrius, for your kind 
 ness in coming here. Nobody minds me, and if it 
 had not been for you, I should never have known 
 what this journey meant, for I stick to my master 
 closer than his shadow ; and if anybody were to ask 
 me where I am going to or what I am going for, 
 what a ridiculous figure I should cut ! Whereas, if 
 I knew, I should at least have the comfort of saying : 
 Why, Apollonius is dead in love with death, and I 
 am his rival. Now, if I should come to grief, small 
 loss would that be to philosophy. I am nothing 
 but the humble squire to a valiant knight. But, if 
 he is killed, philosophy itself is vanquished. Now, 
 I believe in dying for the good of philosophy ; but 
 as for dying to the hurt of philosophy, that is a 
 thing I don't desire either for myself or for any one 
 who is a friend to philosophy and Apollonius/ No 
 wonder that after this simple-hearted, affectionate 
 speech, Apollonius pardons the ignorance of Damis, 
 and restricts his reply to the refutation of the argu 
 ments of Demetrius. Of course, both Demetrius and 
 
286 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 Damis were overcome by the prevalent eloquence 
 of Apollonius. Demetrius bade his friend farewell 
 with a tear, sorrowing for fear he should not see his 
 face again ; but Damis would not desert his master. 
 Apollonius gave him his choice between going and 
 staying. Without a moment's hesitation he decided 
 upon going. 
 
 Reaching Rome, Apollonius found a friend at 
 court in the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who 
 had tried to calm the Emperor down before the 
 arrival of the accused, and who gave Apollonius 
 valuable hints as to the character of the charges and 
 the conduct of the trial. The main count of the 
 accusation was a very common one in those times ; 
 and in memory of the good old days of martyrdom, 
 the charge was often trumped up in the middle ages, 
 by the Christians against the Jews. Apollonius 
 so ran the accusation had gone to Nerva's country- 
 seat, and there, at dead of night, when the moon 
 was on the wane, had cut up a boy for Nerva ; and 
 by the favorable indications of the victim had 
 encouraged the aspirant to the throne, who was at 
 the time sacrificing against Domitian. After giving 
 Apollonius this information, the prefect left him 
 closely guarded ; assuming, as he went away, the 
 appearance of great indignation, in order to avert 
 any suspicion of good will toward the accused. On 
 the return of the prefect, Apollonius was put in a 
 sort of gentlemen's prison, where he was not sub 
 jected to the indignity and discomfort of irons, and 
 where he had the satisfaction of lecturing on moral 
 philosophy to his fellow-prisoners. One morning 
 early, after several days of detention, he was ordered 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 287 
 
 to appear before the Emperor at noon. Instead of 
 thinking about his defence, he made an allegorical 
 joke or two to Damis, took a nap and started for 
 the palace, attended by four guards, who kept at an 
 unusually respectful distance. As they drew near 
 the palace, he said, ' Why, Damis, this looks like a 
 public bath. Those who are out are trying to get 
 in, and those who are in are trying to get out 
 the great washed and the great unwashed.' ' I wish ', 
 remarks Philostratus hereupon, ' I wish people 
 would not steal this good thing from Apollonius 
 and ascribe it to Tom, Dick and Harry. It is most 
 certainly his, and he has used it in one of his letters.' 
 We must say that this great ado about so feeble a 
 joke, if joke it may be called, reflects as much on 
 the credit of Philostratus as on the wit of Apollonius. 
 When Apollonius was introduced into the pres 
 ence of the Emperor, Domitian was thrown off his 
 balance by the external appearance of the wonderful 
 personage, and cried out to the prefect, ' You have 
 brought me in a demon.' Of course Apollonius, 
 with his irresistible passion for playing the school 
 master, began to read the Emperor a lecture on his 
 blindness of mind ; but Domitian was not to be 
 trifled with in that way. He was no Damis, no 
 Indian king. ' I know all about you/ he said. ' I 
 know how you carried on with Nerva, just as well 
 as if I had been there myself.' ' It is disgraceful,' 
 said Apollonius in reply, ' disgraceful and illegal to 
 try a case about which you have made up your 
 mind, or to have made up your mind about a case 
 which you have not tried ' : but this apt antithesis 
 Domitian disposed of by having the philosopher's 
 
288 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 beard and hair shorn off, and by ordering him to 
 be fettered in a dungeon with the vilest malefactors. 
 While in this dungeon, Apollonius showed his 
 insight into human character by detecting a spy who 
 came to sympathize with him in his troubles, and 
 manifested his divine power by slipping his leg out 
 of the irons with which he was bound. But as 
 Damis saw through the designs of the informer, and 
 as many a jail-bird has performed the trick of get 
 ting his irons off and on, we are not much amazed, 
 unless it be at the gravity with which Philostratus 
 insists that this latter feat is to be attributed to the 
 divine nature of Apollonius and not to any magic 
 art. 
 
 Before the second hearing came on, Apollonius 
 sent his faithful squire to Puteoli, there to await his 
 appearance. 'Alive or what?' asked Damis. 
 ' Alive, as I think,' replied Apollonius, with a smile, 
 ' as you think, come to life again.' But the great 
 trial turned out to be a great farce. Ail the prepa 
 rations were made for a grand scene. The Emperor 
 was there. In his feverish excitement he had eaten 
 nothing for twenty-four hours. The emissaries of 
 Euphrates were there to bear witness against his 
 arch-enemy. A large crowd was there to hear the 
 trial of the arch-magician. Apollonius was there, 
 * or rather was not there ', for he looked at the ceil 
 ing with apparent unconcern, and took an absent- 
 minded want of notice of all intimations that he 
 was to look at the Emperor. The accusation con 
 sisted of four counts. As each count was presented, 
 Apollonius put it aside with a few words, and aston 
 ished the audience by the ease and completeness of 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 289 
 
 his refutations. Domitian himself dismissed the 
 case. 'I acquit you/ he said, 'but remain here 
 until we have had a private interview.' ' Thank you, 
 sire/ he replied. 'These miserable informers have 
 ruined the cities of your empire, have filled the 
 islands with exiles, the continent with lamentation, 
 the army with cowardice, the senate with suspicion. 
 Give me, too, a chance to speak my mind, or else send 
 and seize my body, for my soul cannot be seized 
 and even my body you cannot seize. " For ", in the 
 words of Apollo : 
 
 " For me you never shall destroy ; I was not born to die." M 
 
 And so saying, he vanished from the court-room, 
 leaving what his biographer would never have 
 done a written speech undelivered. But, of course, 
 Philostratus has no intention of letting his reader 
 off as cheaply as Apollonius did the Emperor, and 
 presents us with a formal oration, which we shall 
 avoid by clinging to the skirts of Apollonius as he 
 is spirited off to Puteoli. Damis, who had been 
 sent back to Puteoli, took nearly three days to 
 make the journey ; and yet, on the very day of the 
 trial, as he was making his moan to Demetrius and 
 saying ' Shall we ever see our noble friend ? ' 
 Apollonius appeared and said, ' Ye shall see me, or 
 rather ye have seen me/ ' Or rather ', of itself, 
 would have been proof enough for us, but Deme 
 trius was not satisfied. 'Are you alive?' he in 
 quired, 'for if you are dead, we have not got 
 through weeping for you.' Thereupon Apollonius 
 extended his hand and said, ' Lay hold of me. If 
 
 1 ov yap fj,e KTveis, fivf> oti rot fj.6po-ifj.6s flp-i. II. xxii. 13. 
 
2QO APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 I escape your grasp, I am a shade from the realms 
 of Proserpine. If my body resist the pressure, per 
 suade Damis that I am alive and have not laid 
 down my body.' Tableau. 
 
 The remaining adventures of Apollonius add 
 little or nothing to the characteristics of the man, 
 and we have but one famous story to reproduce 
 before we dismiss the hero of this religious ro- 
 man ce. This story is confirmed byother testimony 
 than that of Philostratus. It is the celebrated 
 vision of the assassination of Domitian. 
 
 Domitian was assassinated at Rome. The assas 
 sination was seen by Apollonius at Ephesus. 
 Attacked by Stephanus, the Emperor, though se 
 verely wounded in the thigh, turned on his assailant 
 and grappled him. A vigorous man and in the 
 prime of life, Domitian was a formidable antago 
 nist. He got his assassin down, choked him, 
 gouged his eyes, and battered his jaws with the 
 bottom of a golden cup that was at hand, and all 
 the while kept calling on Minerva to help him. 
 The body-guard, hearing that he was in a bad way, 
 rushed in, and when they found that he was fainting, 
 despatched the tyrant. All this time, undisturbed 
 by the slight difference in longitude, Apollonius 
 was gazing from Ephesus at the animated scene. 
 In the midst of his noon-day talk he stopped, as 
 one frightened, and lowered his voice; then he 
 went on with less than his usual vigor, as people do 
 when they look away at something while they are 
 talking. Then he stopped altogether, like a man 
 who has lost the thread of his discourse staring 
 wildly at the ground advancing two or three steps 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 2gi 
 
 and crying out, ' Strike the tyrant ! strike him ! ' not 
 as if he saw in a glass darkly, but as if he saw 
 the very actions themselves. And all Ephesus was 
 amazed, for all Ephesus was present at his lecture. 
 Then he paused, as men pause who are waiting to 
 see what will be the issue of a doubtful undertaking ; 
 and then ' Be of good courage, my friends/ said 
 he, 'the tyrant has been slain this day. Why 
 should I say this day? This moment this mo 
 ment, at the very instant that I stopped speaking.' 
 The Ephesians thought him cracked, and while they 
 wished his announcement to be true, they were 
 afraid of the risk of listening to it if it were false. ' I 
 do not wonder ', said Apollonius, ' that you do not 
 believe what all Rome does not know yet. But see ! 
 They know it ! They are running all over the 
 town ! Ten thousand believe it ! Twice ten thous 
 and are leaping for joy ! Twice as many ! Four 
 times as many ! Everybody ! And this news shall 
 reach us too. You may postpone your thanksgiving 
 for this until the message comes. But / am going 
 to adore the gods for what I saw.' 
 
 Nerva, the successor of Domitian, invited Apol 
 lonius to come to Rome and aid him with his coun 
 sels, but Apollonius merely replied, .' We shall 
 soon be with one another for a long, long time ; 
 during which we shall neither rule others nor be 
 ruled ourselves.' On second thoughts, however, he 
 determined at least to send Nerva a letter of advice 
 by Damis, thus fulfilling his duty to one friend and 
 banishing another from his side, for he felt that his 
 end was nigh, and he wished that end to be hidden. 
 Damis did not suspect his object. * Damis ', said 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 Apollonius at parting, ' when you undertake to 
 philosophize by yourself, keep your eyes on me.' 
 But this was the last time that Damis ever was to 
 lay eyes on Apollonius, and the guileless Ninevite 
 disappears from our view. With these words the 
 narrative of Damis ends. 
 
 The reader is doubtless, ere this time, thoroughly 
 exasperated by the toughness of Apollonius. Born 
 in the reign of Augustus, he was famous under 
 Nero, and now, under Nerva, he was somewhere 
 between eighty and a hundred years of age. He 
 had outlived all his male attendants except Damis, 
 and was nursed in his last illness by two female 
 servants. According to this account, he gave up 
 the ghost prosaically. According to another, he 
 disappeared in the temple of Minerva, at Lindus. 
 According to yet another, he vanished in a temple 
 of Diana on the island of Crete, and a voice, as 
 of singing virgins, was heard saying, ' Rise from 
 earth, rise to heaven, rise ! ' But this was not the 
 end of him. In his judgment, the immortality of 
 the soul could not be better proved than by an 
 a fortiori argument drawn from the immortality of 
 the tongue; and so, after his death, he appeared in 
 a vision to a young man who was an obstinate un 
 believer, and convinced him by half-a-dozen bad 
 verses. ' No man knoweth his sepulchre to this 
 day,' says Philostratus, ' but he has a temple at 
 Tyana, for the emperors have thought him not 
 unworthy of the honors of which they themselves 
 were deemed worthy.' 
 
 As was said in the beginning, we must leave to our 
 readers themselves the detailed comparison of this 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 293 
 
 heathen Christ with the Christ of the Gospel. And 
 yet, what has this affectation to do with that sim 
 plicity ; the man who is sent to seek the righteous, 
 with Him who came to seek sinners ; the man who 
 prays to God, ' Pay me that thou owest,' with Him 
 who teaches us to pray, ' Forgive us our debts '; 
 the man who says that neither he nor God can wash 
 away the pollution of murder, with the Son of Man 
 who has power on earth to forgive sins ? Yet, far 
 apart as the two characters are, the comparison 
 may be profitable to those who have a weakness for 
 the mythical theory. Let them evaporate both 
 ' myths ' and see how it is with the residuum. But 
 for our part we have only room to consider as 
 briefly as may be the question : Was this Life of 
 Apollonius intended to be an offset to the history 
 of our Saviour ? It has been so used. Was it so 
 intended ? The learned are pretty evenly divided 
 on this point, so that the unlearned may venture on 
 either side of the balance. In our judgment, a 
 deliberate biographical antagonism to Christianity 
 on the part of Philostratus is more than doubtful. 
 The most that can be maintained with plausibility is 
 a designed parallelism ; but even that is open to 
 grave objections. Remarkable is the lack of any 
 allusion to Christ or the Christian religion ; which 
 silence is attributed by some to the absence, by 
 others to the cunning concealment, of hostile 
 motives. But, however it may be explained, it is 
 impossible to explain it away, and on any theory 
 falls very heavily into the count against the as 
 sumption of a direct imitation of the Gospel nar 
 rative. Let us briefly run over the points which 
 
294 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 are supposed to prove that Apollonius is a pagan 
 copy of Christ. 
 
 The life of Apollonius, like the life of Christ, has 
 three periods : that of preparation, ministry, suffer 
 ing ; and is three times as long, and the periods are 
 in far different proportions. His birth, like that of 
 Christ, was accompanied with signs and wonders ; 
 and so was the birth of a thousand other worthies. 
 In his youth, Apollonius loved to linger in the 
 temples ; Christ in His boyhood remained once in 
 the temple at Jerusalem : and whereas Apollonius 
 commenced his career as a temperance lecturer, the 
 first miracle of Christ is a stumbling-block to tem 
 perance lecturers even unto this day. Apollonius, 
 like Christ, has power over devils, who expostulate 
 but obey. Apollonius rouses from the sleep of 
 death the maiden of Rome ; as Christ awakes the 
 young man of Nain as ^Esculapius called the dead 
 to life. He goes to Rome in the face of death, as 
 Christ goes to Jerusalem. Euphrates was a former 
 friend of Apollonius, Judas a disciple of Christ's, 
 and both were lovers of money. Two of the counts 
 of the accusations were the same. Both were 
 accused of setting themselves up to be gods and 
 stirring up sedition ; only Christ was the King of 
 the Jews and Apollonius merely the friend of 
 Nerva. Both stood firm before their judges ; only 
 Christ's demeanor was sublime; Apollonius, as' 
 Philostratus himself intimates, was almost impu 
 dent. Both were shamefully entreated ; only the 
 circumstantial statements are entirely unlike. Apol 
 lonius spoke to the companions of his prison, Christ 
 to the thief on the cross ; but the one preached a 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 295 
 
 sermon or sermons, the other uttered an edict of 
 power. Christ is certain of His resurrection ; Apol- 
 lonius of the issue of his trial. Christ sends His 
 disciples to Galilee ; Apollonius sends Damis to 
 Puteoli. Both appear suddenly to their friends, 
 and Demetrius plays the part of the unbelieving 
 Thomas ; the unbelieving youth, the part of the 
 persecuting Saul. And, finally, to wind up the long 
 list of more or less frivolous points of comparison, 
 Christ gave His name to the Christians ; Apollonius 
 gave his to the Apollonians. 
 
 Now, without denying the striking character of 
 some of these resemblances, we must withhold the 
 conclusion which is so often drawn. Whoever 
 seeks resemblances of that sort can find them. 
 Why not compare Apollonius and Paul ? The re 
 semblances are striking, nay, the coincidences are 
 absolutely startling. Paul was educated at Tarsus ; 
 so was Apollonius. Paul fought with wild beasts 
 at Ephesus; so did Apollonius. Paul preached at 
 Athens ; so did Apollonius. Paul noticed the 
 altar to the unknown God ; so did Apollonius. 
 Paul's bonds were loosed in prison ; so was it with 
 Apollonius. Paul appeared before Caesar's judg 
 ment-seat ; so did Apollonius. Paul, on his way to 
 Rome, landed at Puteoli ; so did Apollonius. Paul 
 was suffered to dwell by himself; Apollonius was 
 at first treated with similar civility. Paul withstood 
 Peter ; Apollonius withstood Euphrates. Paul had 
 a thorn in the flesh ; Apollonius had Damis. Paul 
 woke Eutychus, who had fallen asleep ; Apollonius 
 woke the Roman maiden. There are various tra 
 ditions of Paul's death, and no one knows the end 
 
296 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 of Apollonius. Finally, the Corinthian disciples of 
 Paul assumed his name, and the Greek disciples of 
 Apollonius took upon them the name of their 
 master. 
 
 ' But this is sheer trifling. Read the Acts read 
 the Epistles of Paul, and ask yourself if there is any 
 trace of real likeness between that soul of fire, that 
 mind of light, that least yet chiefest of the Apostles, 
 and this thing of mist and vapor, with its sickly 
 lightning and its impotent thunder, a cloud-man, 
 not a god-man, not a man at all.' 
 
 We grant this and more besides. How, then, 
 shall we suppose that Philostratus could have imi 
 tated the loftier exemplar of Christ ? To have had 
 such a model and to have produced such a copy is 
 a heavier charge than we should like to bring 
 against the ingenious author of such a romance. It 
 was reserved for a still later period of Hellenism 
 and a modern phase of infidelity to draw a parallel 
 which shows how utterly outworn was the one, how 
 utterly heartless is the other. 
 
LUCIAN 
 
LUCIAN. 1 
 
 One of Aristotle's most famous scholars put 
 together a raft-like book, which he freighted with 
 all manner of precious wares, with a cargo far more 
 curious and costly than the gold and silver, ivory 
 and apes and peacocks, that the navy of Tarshish 
 brought once in three years to King Solomon. A 
 few planks, a few scattered bales, have reached us, 
 and with them the suggestive name of the lost 
 vessel, ' The Life of Greece '. For, as the great 
 master had arranged in a vast store-house the 
 polities of the various Greek commonwealths, so 
 the disciple had endeavored to send down to after 
 times an inventory of the riches of private life. 
 Aristotle and Dicaearchus were alike administrators 
 of a dead nationality. What Greece was to effect 
 thereafter, it was to effect, not as a political, but as 
 an intellectual and moral power. Such nation 
 ality as it had, held together just long enough to 
 
 J i. Luciani Samosatensis Opera. Ex recognitione Caroli 
 Jacobitz. Lipsiae : 1852. 
 
 2. Ausgewahlte Schriften des Lucian. Erklart von. Julius 
 Sommerbrodt. Berlin : 1853-1857. 
 
 3. Art. 'Lucian'. Preller, in Pauly's Realencyclopadie. 
 Stuttgart : 1846. 
 
 4. Zur Charakteristik Lucians und seiner Schriften (Gesam- 
 melte Abhandlungen). Von K. F. Hermann. Gottingen : 1849. 
 
 5. Hellenismus und Christenthum. Von Dr. H. Kellner. 
 Koln: 1866. 
 
3OO . L UCIAN. 
 
 explode and ferment in the mass of barbaric peo 
 ples ; and to him who watches narrowly the history 
 of the world, that fermentation is not over yet. But 
 the old ' life of Greece ', which those sages of the 
 time of Alexander strove to preserve for us, was so 
 highly organic that we can better restore it in out 
 line and in detail than that other life under Roman 
 rule ; and as few historians have deemed it worth 
 their while to trace the Greek coloring of modern 
 thought, so no one has succeeded yet in isolating 
 the Greek current that mingled with the Oceanus 
 of the Empire. 
 
 Of all the Greek writers of the Empire, Lucian 
 presents the most fascinating problems to the 
 student of history. 1 Not Plutarch, the philosophic 
 washerwoman of Chaeronea, not Antoninus, the 
 introspective keeper of a pathological peepshow, 
 gives us half so much to think about, gives us half 
 so many glimpses of that world which lived such a 
 varied life, which moved under the impulse of such 
 a complex of forces. But the very suggestiveness 
 of Lucian, the very multiplicity of the figures of his 
 canvas, increases the difficulty of the study. How 
 
 1 Ten years after this study was written it was published 
 in the Southern Review for Oct. 1869 I spent much time on 
 Lucian, and those who worked with me then might expect a 
 more advanced treatment of the subject, but I have not the 
 courage to recast a paper which is animated by a more sympa 
 thetic and therefore juster spirit than would be possible forme 
 now. Those who desire to know more about Lucian are 
 referred to the elaborate and attractive work of Maurice 
 Croiset, Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Lucien, Paris, 1882, 
 in which will be found confirmations and corrections of the 
 views presented in my rapid outline. B. L. G. 
 
L UCTAN. 3O I 
 
 far is Lucian's picture of his times a portrait ; how 
 far is it a caricature ? Were it not easier to find the 
 mirror that will draw into a clear image all the 
 blurs and blotches that we find elsewhere, than to 
 determine how far these sharp lines of his have been 
 distorted by perversity, how much these brilliant 
 colors of his have been heightened by rhetorical 
 art ? But we do not set ourselves so hard, we had 
 almost said so impossible, a task. Wider reading, 
 deeper reflection, may hereafter lead us to more 
 definite results ; but as those results would, in all 
 likelihood, be the outcome of other men's observa 
 tion and other men's thoughts, we have preferred a 
 more independent course have read for ourselves 
 and judged for ourselves. It is true that Barrow 
 and Calamy were better preachers than Sir Roger 
 de Coverley's chaplain ; yet it might have been well 
 for Sir Roger to have deviated once in a while from 
 his rule, and to have given the chaplain a chance to 
 air his native crudities ; and so it may be well, in 
 this case, to shut up Wieland and Jacob for a while, 
 and trust a far inferior guide. 
 
 If people had any gratitude they would not forget 
 their first introduction to a favorite author any 
 more than their first introduction to the future wife 
 or husband. Some insignificant tea-party, some 
 insectiferous picnic, often becomes invested or in 
 fested with portentous interest when connected 
 with a love-affair, while, for the most part, men 
 remember their first reading of a pet writer much 
 less vividly than their first assumption of a tail-coat 
 or their first absorption of a sherry-cobbler. But, 
 as Goethe has said somewhere, ingratitude is a 
 
302 L UCIAN. 
 
 common fault in high-strung natures, and in 
 claiming to be an exception to the observation just 
 made, we are confessing the baseness of the slave 
 that pays a debt. 
 
 Our first acquaintance with Lucian dates back to 
 an obsolete collection called the ' Collectanea 
 Graeca Minora '. Now, school-books are things to 
 be hated in after years by every well regulated 
 mind ; and every author of a school-book is blessed 
 just in proportion as he is cursed. Nor do we hesi 
 tate to say that we still cherish a mortal grudge 
 against the little boy that roasted cockles, in the 
 first fable of the Collectanea still detest Palsephatus 
 and his attempts to plane away the salient figures 
 of Greek mythology, and still yawn at Hierocles 
 and the scholastici, him who carried a brick with 
 him as a specimen of his house, and him who 
 lashed himself to the anchor in a storm. But from 
 this sweeping censure we must except the dialogues 
 in the ' Collectanea ', which first made Lucian known 
 to us, and gave us the first relish for an author, so 
 often mentioned and so little read by the great mass 
 of literary people. Of course your true scholar 
 reads Lucian ; for, besides the insight which Lu 
 cian gives into the strange life of the second cen 
 tury, no author is so important as an expositor of 
 the secrets of Hellenic diction. The Syrian bar 
 barian learned his Greek ; and as he did not learn 
 it, parrot-like, by rote, but thought and analysed 
 before he combined, he who has eyes to see can 
 gather many a lesson from the stone-cutter's appren 
 tice. Even his deviations from Attic usage show 
 that if he has erred he has erred on principle, and 
 
L UCIAN. 303 
 
 he never drops the clue of Greek thought. But 
 while Lucian is especially interesting to the Greek 
 scholar, there are but few of his pieces which are 
 interesting only to the Greek scholar, such as the 
 * Lexiphanes ', the ' Solecist ', and the ' Great Suit of 
 Sigma against Tau '. Apart from these, there are 
 not many ancient authors that retain for modern 
 times so much of their essential oil ; and Lucian's, 
 we hope, will not be altogether evaporated in our 
 transfusions. 
 
 Philostratus, the author of that strange romance, 
 Apollonius of Tyana, passed Lucian by in his 
 ' Lives of Eminent Professors ' ; why, we cannot 
 tell ; perhaps because he was greater than all their 
 tribe. Slighted by his contemporaries, Lucian was 
 treated still worse by posterity ; for the later Chris 
 tian centuries had no love nor mercy for a man 
 whom they counted to be a contemner of their 
 creed. So Suidas, the old dictionary-maker, calls 
 him a blasphemer and a broken-down lawyer, sneers 
 at the infinite number of his writings, rejoices in the 
 report that he went to the dogs at last by dying of 
 hydrophobia, and winds up his notice with the com 
 forting reflection that this arch-enemy of Christi 
 anity will be an heir of everlasting burnings, with 
 Satan to bear him company. In these circum 
 stances of neglect and hatred, our safest guide to 
 the history of Lucian must be Lucian himself; and 
 some of his pieces give us glimpses of his life and 
 his training, which are of no little importance for 
 the proper appreciation of his restless and varied 
 activity. Of these pieces, ' The Dream ' is generally 
 put at the beginning of Lucian's collected works, 
 
304 LUCIAN. 
 
 and has often been published separately as a school- 
 book. It tells us that a family council was held 
 over the lad just as he was emerging from boyhood. 
 His father was poor, a higher education was ex 
 pensive, and his uncle was ready to take him as an 
 apprentice to the statuary's craft ; and though it 
 was not a gentlemanly profession, even in its 
 highest branches, Lucian was not disinclined to the 
 trade, and his imagination was busy with the little 
 figures which he was going to make for his friends. 
 And the boy had a genius for it, they said. Why, 
 he used to make very nice cows and horses and 
 men out of the wax which he scraped off his tab 
 lets ; and thus the naughty trick for which his 
 teacher had thrashed him appeared at this crisis as 
 the prophecy of future distinction. And although 
 the distinction did not come in the expected direc 
 tion, still it was not in vain that the boy moulded 
 little figures in wax, for the arts are all interactive, 
 and as Pheidias copied his Zeus from Homer, so the 
 later poets copied their Zeus from Pheidias. It is 
 not necessary that the writer be a virtuoso in 
 painting or in sculpture ; and Goethe is a notable 
 warning against misdirected energies. But who 
 shall say that Goethe's power of representation was 
 not increased and his perception of situation inten 
 sified by his assiduous practice in drawing; and 
 who can study Lucian's characters and Lucian's 
 groups without recognizing the trained eye of the 
 connoisseur, if not the skilful hand of the sculptor? 
 But a sculptor Lucian was not to be. His first 
 morning's experience disenchanted him. He broke 
 a marble slab which he was set to chisel, and, as 
 
L UCIAN. 305 
 
 the Greeks would say, his uncle rubbed it into him 
 soundly. That night he cried himself to sleep, and 
 in a vision he saw Sculpture and Scholarship con 
 tending for him. Of course Scholarship overcame ; 
 and at the close of the piece, Lucian congratulates 
 himself on his choice, as he reflects how he left 
 Samosata a poor boy ; how he returned, to say the 
 least, with no less reputation than any of the tribe 
 of sculptors. 
 
 And thus the little Syrian boy of Samosata, on 
 the far-off Euphrates, began a career as brilliant and 
 as unsatisfactory as any in the annals of those times. 
 His ' Dream ' was written in the first flush of his 
 return to his native country. When that flush dies 
 away, we shall have to listen to another story ; and 
 the rhetorician will revile rhetoric as sharply as the 
 sculptor's apprentice denounced sculpture. Mean 
 while we will review with him his course of life as 
 a lawyer and as a lecturer in the masterly dialogue 
 entitled ' The Double Indictment'. Zeus opens this 
 piece, which is one of Lucian's best, with a long 
 complaint about the hard life the Immortals lead ; 
 and he, above all, as stage-manager and property- 
 man of the Olympic Theatre. Especially does he 
 grumble at the vast number of suits which have 
 accumulated in heaven's chancery ; for, what with 
 raining and hailing, thundering and lightening, 
 watching the martial bustle in Babylon, and dining 
 with the ' blameless Ethiopians ', he has not time 
 to sleep, or to give himself up to the enjoyment of 
 nectar and ambrosia ; much less to hear the thou- 
 sand-and-one quarrels of men. But Hermes tells 
 him that the plaintiffs are importunate and must be 
 
306 LUC I AN. 
 
 despatched ; and Zeus resigns himself to the dis 
 charge of his wearisome judicial functions by proxy. 
 Justice is sent to Athens to decide a number of 
 cases, the last of which on the docket is that of a cer 
 tain Syrian, in whom we recognize Lucian himself. 
 The first accuser is Rhetoric. ' I picked up this 
 fellow ', she says, ' a mere lad, a barbarian in lan 
 guage and a barbarian in dress, when he was 
 knocking about Ionia and did not know what to do 
 with himself. I took him and made a man of him. 
 I had other loves enough, rich and handsome and 
 high-born. I left them all and married this poor, 
 young obscurity. I brought him a fine dowry, and 
 gave him the freedom of the republic of letters. I 
 went with him wherever he wished to parade his 
 lucky match to Greece, to Ionia, to Italy, to Gaul. 
 For a long time he was faithful, and never slept a 
 night away from me; but when he got rich and 
 prosperous, he took up with one Dialogue, reputed 
 son of Madam Philosophy, and now he stays with 
 him altogether. He has chopped up his fine, flow 
 ing sentences into short, comic questions. Instead 
 of thundering applause, he prefers the nods and 
 grins and the " hear, hear " of *his auditors ; and 
 instead of being touched by my fidelity, he has no 
 eyes for any one except his old billy-goat of a friend, 
 whom, by the way, he is said to treat very badly. 
 In view of all this, I charge this Syrian husband of 
 mine with desertion and maltreatment; and if he 
 dare answer, let him answer, if he can, not with the 
 art which I taught him, but according to the precepts 
 of his beloved Dialogue.' In his reply, Lucian 
 acknowledges all the past kindness of Rhetoric to 
 
L UCIAN. 
 
 him, but denies her fidelity. Instead of adhering 
 to her native simplicity and wearing the graceful, 
 modest garb of the time of Demosthenes, she must 
 needs play the fine lady, dress her hair after the 
 fashion of the lorettes of the day, rub paint into her 
 face, and blacken her lower eyelids. Lovers began 
 to multiply. The street was full of drunken suitors, 
 and Madam, highly delighted with her popularity, 
 would peep at them from the roof, or slip out 
 to them through the door. However, with a due 
 sense of her early love, he would not put her away 
 openly, and was content to withdraw to the house 
 of a quiet friend of his, one Dialogue. * The fact 
 is ', said he, ' I am forty years old and more. I am 
 tired of the noise of the real courts and the trouble 
 of cajoling real juries. I am weary of tirades 
 against fictitious tyrants and laudations of supposed 
 heroes, and I want to spend the rest of my days in 
 cosey chat with friend Dialogue in the groves of 
 Academe or in the walks of the Lyceum.' Ac 
 quitted of this charge by an almost unanimous 
 vote, Lucian finds himself confronted with a new 
 and unexpected accuser. That very Dialogue, 
 whom he had praised so highly, turned against 
 him. Dialogue complains that Lucian had dragged 
 him down from the lofty regions of the sky, in 
 which he was wont to disport himself, and had 
 forced him to act a comic part ; had changed him 
 from a soaring eagle to a funny dog, and with a 
 peculiar malice had left just enough of the original 
 form to make people stare at the droll hybrid. To 
 this, Lucian replies that all these changes have 
 been so many improvements; that he had made 
 
308 L UCIAN. 
 
 Dialogue walk on earth like other reasonable folk, 
 washed his dirty face, taught him to laugh, given 
 him some popularity, suggested common-sense 
 subjects for discussion, and, barbarian as he was, 
 had not robbed him of the robe of Hellenic diction. 
 From this it appears that up to his fortieth year 
 Lucian had devoted himself partly to the practice of 
 law, partly to the display of his brilliant talents as 
 a rhetorician and a lecturer. He had returned to 
 his old home, prompted by a pardonable desire 
 to dazzle the eyes of his fellow-citizens with his 
 wealth and fame ; and now we find him at enmity 
 with his old profession and glorying in a new 
 career. Let us see whether we can fill up this gap. 
 And first, we find among his papers his ' Farewell 
 to Rhetoric ', under the title ' Complete Rheto 
 rician ', a masterpiece of irony. Now irony is but 
 too apt to overreach itself; and no figure of rhetoric, 
 when unsuccessful, is so utterly unsuccessful. Plain 
 people cannot appreciate in the depression of the 
 intaglio the relief of the cameo, and we have often 
 seen the most absurd embarrassments arise from 
 the injudicious employment of this Socratic mode 
 of illustration. The consolation one derives from 
 the stupidity of the antagonist is cold comfort for 
 the failure. Lucian's fun it may be possible to mis 
 take at times, and grave editors shake their heads at 
 sheer nonsense, which is simply meant to be sheer 
 nonsense ; but his irony is clear and cutting, and 
 the ' Complete Rhetorician ' is perfect in its kind. 
 In this tract he contrasts the laborious painstaking 
 way in which he himself acquired the art, with the 
 ' Rhetoric in One Day ' which so many pretenders 
 
L UCIAN. 309 
 
 professed to teach ; and although we have lost some 
 of the points, which were evidently directed against 
 some particular enemy, the piece is barbed from 
 beginning to end. And here we may mention in 
 passing a tract of similar tendency which probably 
 belongs to the same period ; and as we have called 
 the ' Complete Rhetorician ' a masterpiece of irony, 
 so we see in the ' Familiar Letter to an Uneducated 
 Bibliomaniac ' a most brilliant specimen of direct 
 invective ; and we recommend the study of both to 
 those who can recognize the common features of 
 this age and the age of the Antonines. 
 
 If the ' Complete Rhetorician ' is a Farewell to 
 Rhetoric, the ' Nigrinus ' is a Greeting to Philo 
 sophy, and marks a turning-point in Lucian's 
 career. In this dialogue he represents himself as 
 having gone from Athens where he had resided 
 after his return from Samosata to Rome, in order 
 to consult an oculist. While there he availed 
 himself of the opportunity to visit Nigrinus, who 
 opened the eye of his understanding, and caused 
 the parti-colored life of Rome to pass before him in 
 review a striking contrast to the simplicity of 
 Athenian life as he saw its pomp and its mean 
 ness, its luxury and its depravity. The author 
 gives us no reason to complain of any lack of acute 
 observation, of vivid coloring ; but he is not yet 
 master of the dialogue form. The continued oratio 
 obliqua becomes fatiguing; and, if read after the 
 other pieces of this period, the ' Nigrinus ' produces 
 the effect of a table of contents to the richer em 
 broidery of the same themes. Hence it is, perhaps, 
 that Immanuel Bekker, with his fine critical sense, 
 
3IO LUC I AN. 
 
 has pronounced the piece spurious; a judgment 
 which we can understand, but which we cannot 
 accept. One thing in this dialogue deserves special 
 notice for its psychological truth. Lucian speaks of 
 his almost ecstatic emotion at the revelation of Ni- 
 grinus ; and no religious enthusiast could have had 
 more copious sweats, more faltering a tongue, 
 more abundant tears. Then follow, in due succes 
 sion, rapturous joy, spiritual elevation, tranquil 
 happiness. The negative intoxicates as well as the 
 positive ; and many a man has felt as blissful when 
 he was annihilating ' shams ' and exploding ' wind 
 bags ', as if he had risen to a new life and were 
 revelling in a new creation. 
 
 We have noticed Lucian's ' Farewell to Rhetoric'. 
 We have now to attend the closing-out sale of his 
 philosophic studies in the 'Auction of Philoso 
 phers '. It was at best a slender stock, for Lucian's 
 nature was pre-eminently artistic; and he had 
 already appropriated all that he could work up the 
 critical attitude of the New Academy, the elegant 
 scholarship of the Stoa, the grin of the Cynic, the 
 fine observations of the Peripatetics, and the easy 
 going temperament of the Epicureans. What re 
 mained over was, in his eyes, mere refuse. In this 
 'Auction of Philosophers', Zeus is represented as 
 selling off the head men of the various sects all of 
 them set in a row and nicely furbished up. Terms, 
 liberal. Twelve months' credit, with good security. 
 Most of the fun lies near enough Pythagoras and 
 his beans, Aristippus and his bottle, Chrysippus 
 and his puzzles, Socrates and his ideas, whose 
 absolute existence is conditioned by relative non- 
 
L UCIAN. 3 1 1 
 
 existence. But what is this the auctioneer says of 
 Aristotle ' If you buy him, you will find out how 
 long the gnat lives, to what depth the sea is lighted 
 by the sun, and what sort of a soul oysters have ' ? 
 So runs the world away. Too great a man for 
 ancient or for modern times and standing astride of 
 both, the pigmies of either side say that Aristotle 
 has but one leg, because they can see but one. 
 What music to the ear of Grote, the great vindi 
 cator of the Sophists, to hear such a man called by 
 that once opprobrious name. 1 
 
 Close upon the heels of the Auction followed 
 the ' Fisherman, or The Resurrection ', which is 
 also of some importance for the understanding of 
 Lucian's history. The philosophers, indignant at 
 having been sold, get permission to come to life 
 again and assail the sacrilegious mocker. The 
 trial takes place on the Acropolis at Athens. Philo 
 sophy herself is the presiding justice. Diogenes 
 is the accuser. Lucian defends himself, and proves 
 in the most satisfactory manner that his ridicule 
 had been aimed, not at the great philosophers of 
 the olden time, but at their degenerate representa 
 tives. Acquitted by a unanimous verdict of the 
 plaintiffs themselves, Lucian is declared their friend 
 and benefactor, and is appointed Inspector-General 
 of Philosophers. The title, ' Fisherman ', is taken 
 from the fishing scene which closes the dialogue. 
 Lucian borrows a fishing-line from the priestess of 
 Athena, and, baiting the hook with gold and figs, 
 draws up one after another of the philosophic 
 lazzaroni, and submits these queer fish to the 
 
 1 Dialog. Mort., xii. 3. 
 
312 LUC I AN. 
 
 examination of the great thinkers to whose sects 
 they claim to belong. This piece, which must 
 remind the English reader of Praed's famous poem, 
 is one of Lucian's happiest in every sense happiest 
 in its artistic finish, happiest in its tone. He has 
 renounced Philosophy, but he is not yet embittered 
 against her. Although he has lost all faith in the 
 results of thinking, he respects the thinker, and he 
 is not very gouty yet. He can still be merry over 
 any criticism, unless it attack his language; and 
 when a reviewer calls him a literary Prometheus, he 
 gives an honorable explanation of the title, and 
 claims creative power for his art ; although, as he 
 says himself, less flattering interpretations suggest 
 themselves at once, and, like Prometheus, he may 
 have offered an unacceptable sacrifice the mocking 
 bones of comedy under the fat of philosophy ; but 
 in any case, unlike Prometheus, he was no thief. 
 The poor thing was his own. 
 
 In his ' Account of the Death of Peregrinus ', 
 which must have been written after A. D. 165, 
 Lucian's tone is perceptibly more bitter ; but the 
 ' Hermotimus ' is evidently intended to sum up his 
 creed of unbelief and to justify it. The 'Hermotimus' 
 is one of the most Voltairian of Lucian's works ; 
 and indeed, Lucian has been called the Voltaire of 
 the second century. The ready wit, the sparkling 
 style, and the negative polemic of both famous 
 authors suggest a comparison ; and yet the resem 
 blance vanishes as we look more closely at the two. 
 We miss in Voltaire that fertility of fancy that 
 fills the writings of Lucian with the most varied 
 figures. With all their excellences, Candide, Zadig, 
 
LUC I AN. 313 
 
 Micromegas, L'Homme aux quarante Ecus, are 
 not Lucianic, and we are of those who think that it is 
 far more just to compare Lucian with Rabelais than 
 with Voltaire. The pictures which Rabelais draws 
 of the sixteenth century are gigantesque, but they 
 are Lucianic in their outline ; only, instead of the 
 subtle, life-like painting which we admire in Lucian, 
 it is a vast and grotesque shadow that we see cast 
 on the ample canvas of the joyous cure of Meudon. 
 And then again the world is beginning to find out 
 that there was far more of the positive in Voltaire 
 than was popularly supposed, 1 and Lucian's skepti 
 cism became at last a universal solvent, and a uni 
 versal solvent it is in the ' Hermotimus '. In this 
 dialogue Lucian's skepticism reaches its acme, and 
 the blankness of his own nihilism seems to have 
 affected the spirits of the great wit. Step by step 
 he leads Hermotimus who has been studying from 
 forty to sixty and has not yet attained until he 
 brings him to the conviction that no proper choice 
 of a philosophic sect can be made without going 
 through all the systems critically, that no human 
 life would be long enough for such a journey of 
 inspection, and that after all it is but too likely that 
 no existing sect has hit upon the right way. Nay, 
 even if the seeker should attain the goal, the enjoy 
 ment of perfect virtue for the brief remnant of life 
 were hardly worth the long and unremitting toil, 
 unless, perhaps, there be another life beyond the 
 present a chance which Lucian sneers at. What 
 
 1 Sous les mines de 1'edifice qu'il renverse on apercoit les 
 contours de celui qu'il veut batir. G. Boissier, Revue des deux 
 Mondes, ier Janvier, 1879. B. L. G. 
 
314 LUC I AN. 
 
 philosophers call virtue is a mere abstraction. 
 Real virtue lies in virtuous action ; and those wise 
 acres let the fruit of the tree of knowledge go while 
 they dispute about the bark and pelt one another 
 with the leaves. They are fighting the air, quarrel 
 ling about the ass's shadow, and pounding water 
 with a pestle. Even the mathematicians, who deem 
 themselves so secure within their magic circle, do 
 not escape this skeptic. He laughs to scorn their 
 line without breadth and their point without thick 
 ness, although he uses mathematics himself to show 
 that correct deductions from false principles are as 
 false as the principles themselves. ' If you say 
 twice five is seven, it follows, as the night the day, 
 that four times five is fourteen.' 
 
 It is to this period of partial and total skepticism 
 that most of Lucian's works belong. Of his earlier 
 writings we have still some of his sophistic plead 
 ings, his show-pieces. One of these speeches is 
 called ' The Disowned '. A young man who had 
 been disowned and disinherited studied medicine, 
 and when his father went mad healed him, and in 
 return for this service was restored to membership 
 in the family. But his step-mother next went mad, 
 and when he refused to heal her he was again 
 thrust out, and Lucian pleads his imaginary case. 
 Another speech is entitled ' The Tyrannicide ', in 
 which a man who slew the tyrant's son, and thus 
 occasioned the suicide of the tyrant himself, claims 
 the reward for liberating the people. For us mod 
 erns such themes as these, which men like Libanius 
 labored over with painful art, have no more taste in 
 them than the white of an egg ; and it is painful to 
 
L UCIAN. 3 1 5 
 
 see Lucian returning in his old age to these 
 beggarly elements. It is painful to see him begin 
 a wandering life again a melancholy spectacle, 
 whether it was the thirst for fame or the need of 
 money that drove the tottering actor on the stage 
 once more. Again he recites and declaims ; again 
 the poor old jester makes faces before a public to 
 whom he is nothing but an antiquity. The old wit 
 flashes out every now and then, but his theatrical 
 lightning is well-nigh exhausted. The two pieces in 
 verse, the 'Tragedy of the Gout ' and ' Nimble-foot ', 
 if they are really his, show that he retained his ver 
 satility ; and even when he was standing ' one foot 
 in Charon's boat ', in expectancy of the summons 
 over which he had made merry so often, he had 
 strength enough to rap his antagonists over the 
 knuckles with Charon's paddle. His last days 
 were spent in Egypt, in the enjoyment of a lucrative 
 judicial position ; but in his heart of hearts he felt 
 himself a slave. The man who laughed at led 
 philosophers became a led philosopher himself. 
 Lucian died under Commodus precisely when, we 
 do not know ; in any case at an advanced age, as 
 his birth is set down in A. D. 120, under the reign 
 of Hadrian. Nor do we know the manner of his 
 death, for the dogs which Suidas sets on him are 
 purely mythical hounds of the Cynic breed.i 
 
 Before turning from the painter to his paintings, 
 from the author to his writings, we must again 
 remind the reader that the satiric element by no 
 means exhausts the significance of Lucian. It was 
 at first an honest indignation that made him a 
 
 1 Comp. de Morte Peregr. 37, Nigrin. 38. 
 
316 LUC I AN. 
 
 satirist an honest contempt of the shams and 
 unrealities and hypocrisies of the world. But he 
 was an artist before he was a satirist, and he often 
 forgets his satire over his art. In his picture of life 
 and manners, the coloring and the attitude are often 
 more to him than the moral ; some of his pieces are 
 almost wholly descriptive, some of them purely fan 
 tastic. Like his great model Aristophanes, he often 
 writes with a purpose, but that purpose is fused into 
 his work ; and like his great model, he often writes 
 without any purpose save the joyous exercise of 
 genius. Any estimate of Lucian which should 
 leave out the ' Imagines ', with its exquisite plastic 
 power of representation, or the ' True Story ', with its 
 frolic grace, would give but a one-sided view of 
 him. Of course the limits of our article preclude 
 the possibility of analysing all the works of Lucian 
 some eighty-two in number, genuine and spurious ; 
 but we shall endeavor to present at least some of his 
 principal phases ; and as we have mentioned the 
 ' True Story', it may be as well to begin with that. 
 Let us first premise that the ' True Story a Vera 
 cious Narrative in Two Parts ', is a comic sequel to 
 a brilliant essay entitled 'How to write History'. 
 After a long peace the Romans had a real war, and 
 the four years' struggle with Vologesus, which 
 ended so brilliantly for the Roman arms in A. D. 
 165, called out a numberless horde of scribblers. 
 The servile adulation, the utter disregard for truth, 
 the want of true culture, of correct views of histor 
 ical composition, so glaringly manifest in most of 
 these would-be historians, provoked from Lucian 
 this essay, which, in spite of its title, does not 
 
LUCIAN. 317 
 
 pretend to be an exhaustive treatment of the theme. 
 Indeed an exhaustive treatment of so comprehen 
 sive a subject could hardly be expected from a 
 writer of Lucian's impatient nature, and the first 
 section of the essay, ' on the faults that are to be 
 avoided ', is wrought out with much more spirit 
 than the second, which sets forth ' the excellences 
 that are to be sought after'. But what grace is 
 suffused through the whole! How he lights up 
 his didactic discourse by apposite illustration, now 
 drawn from the stage-struck Abderites, now from 
 Diogenes trundling his jar which moderns call his 
 tub at the siege of Corinth ! What scorn he heaps 
 on those who turn history into a panegyric and 
 depreciate conquest by depreciating the conquered ! 
 How playfully he reminds corporals and surgeons 
 that their note-books are not annals ! How he 
 lashes the servile imitators those who copy the 
 phrases of Thucydides or the diction of Herodotus, 
 and think that they are equal to Xenophon because 
 they parody the opening of the Anabasis ! How 
 he ridicules the minute narration of details and 
 the hasty dismissal of important events, the dis 
 torted geography, the incongruous language, half 
 poetry, half slang, and above all how he abhors the 
 sacrifice of historic truth to dramatic effect ! How 
 noble is the closing advice : ' Write not merely for 
 present praise and present honor, but write for all 
 time to come, and seek your reward from posterity, 
 that it may be said of you : Be it with others as it 
 may, he was a free man and outspoken ; no flattery 
 nor servility in him ; but in all circumstances the 
 truth itself.' Now the composition of this little 
 
3 1 8 L UCIAN. 
 
 treatise falls about the time when Lucian was 
 engaged in earnest study ; and as the ' True Story ' 
 was confessedly undertaken as a relaxation from 
 hard work, we think that the common arrangement, 
 which puts it after the essay on history, is suffic 
 iently justified. In the ' True Story ' Lucian has 
 anticipated Rabelais, Gulliver, and Munchausen, 
 and so rapidly do the slides of his magic lantern 
 follow one upon the other that we seem now to be 
 gazing at the Oriental world of the Thousand-and- 
 One Nights, and now peering into the mistier re 
 cesses of German legend. To enjoy the show prop 
 erly, it is far better for the reader to give himself up 
 to this play of Lucian's fancy than to endeavor to 
 unriddle whatever satire of contemporary literature 
 may lie concealed in its allegory just as Rabelais 
 is most enjoyable when his sense is so complicated 
 with his nonsense as to defy the effort to draw 
 either out entire. There may be profound meaning 
 in the war which breaks out between the Sunburgers 
 under Phaethon, and the Moonburgers under En- 
 dymion, which begins with the attempt of the Moon- 
 burgers to found a colony on the desert planet of 
 Lucifer, and which ends with the victory of the Sun- 
 burgers, Lucifer being declared common property 
 and the vanquished compelled to pay an annual 
 tribute of ten thousand amphoreis of dew. But so 
 elastic are all such allegories that they can be 
 stretched to fit anything, and the war of these 
 Heliotes and Selenites would answer to describe the 
 conflict between orthodoxy and rationalism, and 
 Lucifer would stand for the coming man. But how 
 much better to look with childlike interest on the 
 
LUC I AN. 319 
 
 marshalling of Horsevultures and Chickpeashooters 
 and Garlickfighters and Flea-archers and Wind- 
 runners, and to watch the huge spiders spin their 
 web from the moon to Lucifer ! Nor do we trouble 
 ourselves about the occult meaning of his Lych- 
 nopolis or Lamptown, which may have suggested 
 to Rabelais his Pays de Lanternois and his Lych- 
 nobiens. It is a graceful conception, this town of 
 lamps and lanterns of all sorts and sizes and condi 
 tions, hardby the Cloudcuckootown or Nephelococ- 
 cygia of Aristophanes, ' a wise and truthful man ', 
 says our author, ' whom people disbelieve on idle 
 grounds.' After thus traversing uncritically the 
 wonders of the air, we allow ourselves to be trans 
 ported unquestioning to the chambers of the deep, 
 and with the heroes of the story Lucian and his 
 men we get ourselves swallowed by a whale a 
 creature 1500 stades in length, in whose inward 
 parts we find another world. It is a somewhat 
 circumscribed world, but not uncomfortable, were 
 it not for the warlike tribes that inhabit it, the Crab- 
 hands and the Tunnyheads and the rest of them, 
 who must first be exterminated. By degrees we 
 familiarize ourselves with our great prison, mark the 
 quarters of the sky by head and tail, right gill, left 
 gill, and mark the time by the hourly opening of 
 the monster's mouth. We live there comfortably 
 a year and eight months. But a jail is a jail, and 
 we try to cut through the walls. After advancing 
 five stades (a stade is 600 feet) we give up this plan, 
 and resolve to kill the whale by setting the forests 
 on fire. Seven days and seven nights the fire 
 burns, and the monster takes no notice, gives no 
 
320 LUC I AN. 
 
 sign. The eighth day and the ninth he becomes 
 uneasy. By the twelfth he is dying. As he opens 
 his mouth we seize our chance to put a prop be 
 tween his jaws, in order to keep them from closing 
 on us forever. Once out of the whale why should 
 anybody say it is Jonah's ? our ship's crew has a 
 pleasant voyage, until a cold spell comes on that 
 freezes the water to the depth of four hundred 
 fathoms. In no wise disconcerted by this, we dig a 
 cavern in the ice and live on the fish embedded in 
 the frozen ocean. When these provisions are ex 
 hausted, we rig up the ship and sail along the 
 smooth surface until the ice melts. Passing by the 
 Milk Island, sacred to Galatea (which is, being inter 
 preted, Milcah), and ruled by Tyro (Chester) an 
 evident thrust at etymologizing historians and the 
 Cork Islands, whose denizens have feet of cork, we 
 reach at last the Islands of the Blessed. Much of 
 this scene is familiar from other sources, for the 
 land of Cocagne is no novelty in literature. We' 
 have all smelt its odors and heard its music and 
 breathed its fragrant air. We all know its golden 
 capital with its emerald wall. Yet Lucian's fancy 
 and, as some say, Lucian's reading of the Christians' 
 books, have suggested new particulars. The ground 
 is of ivory, the temples of beryl, the altars great 
 amethysts. The bath-houses are of glass, the baths 
 are heated with cinnamon wood. The soul is 
 dressed in purple spider-webs, and wears a shad 
 owy likeness of the body. There is no night there, 
 neither light of the sun. The light is that of the 
 morning twilight ; there is but one season, spring ; 
 one wind, the zephyr. The grape-vines bear every 
 
LUC I AN. 321 
 
 month, bread grows already baked, and there are 
 three hundred and sixty-five springs of water about 
 the city, and as many of honey. In fact the island 
 is as convenient as Charles Reade's island in ' Foul 
 Play '. Glass trees furnish cups, nightingales shower 
 down flowers, clouds rain perfumery, and the two 
 fountains of Laughter and Delight provide for the 
 flow of soul. And now the satirist peeps out. The 
 Epicureans and the followers of Aristippus are in 
 high feather, but the Academicians are still in 
 suspense, and the Stoics are still climbing the steep 
 ascent of virtue. Of especial interest is the inter 
 view with Homer, who declares that he is a Baby 
 lonian, that he composed all his spurious verses 
 himself, that his critics are a pack of jolterheads 
 and simpletons, and that he began the Iliad with 
 the wrath of Achilles, because that was the first 
 thing that came into his head. We are amused to 
 see that the owlish gravity of some commentators 
 can make nothing of this admirable fooling. The 
 short stay of our party is richly diversified by a 
 series of games, a pitched battle with the damned, 
 and the elopement of Helen ; and ^ we are fain to 
 linger, but Rhadamanthys is inexorable, and we 
 are obliged to content ourselves with sailing direc 
 tions and the good wishes of our hosts. As Helen 
 remained faithful to her infidelity, so Ulysses is true 
 to his adventurous nature, and as Lucian goes on 
 board, the much-enduring hero gives him a letter 
 to Calypso all unknown to Penelope, who had 
 doubtless bestowed on her husband a new claim to 
 his title. The Hell Islands, by which the mariners 
 pass, are of the most orthodox type. The smell is 
 
322 LUC I AN. 
 
 of bitumen and sulphur and pitch, and a steam rises 
 as of roasting sinners. The air is dark and misty, 
 and the dew is pitch. Cliffs on every side ; no tree, 
 no water, anywhere on these Islands of the Ac 
 cursed. The pavement of the prison had broken out 
 into swords and stakes. Two streams run round 
 the enclosure, one of liquid mud and one of gore ; 
 and through the middle of it flows a river of fire. 
 Guides go about with the visitors, and name the 
 culprits and the crimes. Of these, the most severely 
 punished are the liars, among whom figure Ctesias 
 and Herodotus. ' As I saw them ', says Lucian, ' I 
 had good hope for the next world. / never told a 
 lie.' Our party next land on the Island of Dreams, 
 which is tricked out with poppy and mandragora, 
 with bats, with gates of horn and of ivory, and all 
 the other theatrical properties of sleep. At Ogygia, 
 the abode of Calypso, we get a peep into Ulysses* 
 letter, in which he tells his sweetheart, what we had 
 long suspected, that he is very sorry for having left 
 her, and only awaits an opportunity to rejoin her. 
 Calypso ' ne pouvait se consoler ', as we all know, 
 and after she has wiped her tears, questions the 
 travellers straitly about Ulysses, and most straitly 
 about his wife, whether indeed she was as chaste 
 and fair as he had boasted ; whereunto our unscru 
 pulous travellers answer as they think would best 
 please their hostess. But we have written enough 
 to show that the ' True Story ' is a narrative well 
 worthy of Dore's pencil, and we will spare the 
 reader the account of the naval combat between the 
 Big Pumpkins and the Hardshells, the marvellous 
 story of the Halcyon, which is first cousin to the 
 
LUC i AN; 323 
 
 Eastern Roc, the fights with the Oxheads, and the 
 final adventure with those she-assassins, the She- 
 ass-shins. 1 
 
 The ' Lie-fancier ' (Philopseudes) has a deeper and a 
 clearer meaning than the ' True Story '. If it means 
 anything, it means that philosophy does not save 
 from superstition, and that men who play with lies 
 end by believing in them. In the introduction to 
 the ' Lie-fancier ', ample allowance is made for those 
 falsehoods that have some useful end in view, and 
 for those inventions that lend variety to poetry, or 
 a lustre to the origin of princely houses or ancient 
 cities. But what are we to say of the lie-fancier 
 pure and simple, who breeds lies as one breeds 
 pigeons, and rejoices in every fresh monstrosity of 
 pouter and tumbler ? To exemplify this mania, we 
 are presented to a group of philosophers, with 
 Eucrates as their centre, a gouty old reprobate, who 
 concealed a monkey nature under a flowing beard 
 and a venerable mien. The talk is all of marvellous 
 cures, of witchcraft, of magic rites. A sovereign 
 remedy for the gout is the tooth of a shrew-mouse, 
 wrapped in the fresh skin of a lion, and bound 
 around the leg. A snake-bite is cured by incanta 
 tion formula not given ; and a story is told of a 
 Babylonian enchanter, who not only healed his 
 patient, but brought out of the field all the poisonous 
 reptiles found within its borders. One old serpent 
 did not come at first, but the magician sent a young 
 snake after him, and he too came to be consumed, 
 with the rest, by one breath of the potent wizard. 
 Another of the company had seen an Hyperborean 
 
324 LUCIAN. 
 
 fly through the air, walk on the water, and pass 
 through the fire ; bring up the dead, bring down the 
 moon, and bring in to a despairing lover a distant 
 sweetheart. Among the great magicians is a Syrian 
 professor from Palestine, famous for casting out 
 devils ; and ' when he stands over the patient, as he 
 lies on the ground, and asks the devil whence he 
 came into the subject, the patient himself says never 
 a word, but the devil replies, in Greek or barbaric 
 tongue, as the case, may be, and then the magician 
 brings his exorcisms to bear, and casts out the 
 unclean spirit.' Of .course this reminds every one of 
 the Gospel narrative, but there is not the slightest 
 reason to suppose that there is any allusion to that 
 narrative. Syria l was a famous land for sorcerers 
 and sorceresses, and this magician is represented as 
 still extant. Next comes an account of the won 
 derful statue of Pelichus, the Corinthian general, 
 evidently a lineal ancestor of the Commander in 
 Don Juan ; and then we have a Vision of Hecate 
 and the lower world, a dream and a warning of 
 death. At this point the sons of Eucrates come in, 
 and their entrance seems to remind the old gentleman 
 of a prodigious lie : * So help me/ says he, ' as 
 I will tell you the truth. You all know how I loved 
 the sainted mother of these lads. I treated her well 
 while she lived, and when she died I burned on her 
 funeral pyre all her jewelry, all her favorite clothes. 
 But on the seventh day, as I was consoling myself 
 by reading Plato on the Immortality of the Soul, in 
 came Demaeneta. I put my arms around her and 
 began to weep. But she would not let me. " Why 
 
 1 Dialog. Meretr., iv. 4. 
 
LUC I AN. 325 
 
 didn't you burn both of my gold sandals ? " she 
 asked. " I couldn't find but the one," I replied. 
 " The other was lost." " I know that," she said ; 
 " it slipped down under the trunk." Was ever any 
 thing more exquisitely feminine ? " Why didn't you 
 burn it?" " It was lost." " Why did you let it be 
 lost, then ? " Just then an importunate Maltese 
 lap-dog began to bark, and the ghost disappeared.' 
 The slipper was found and consumed, and the weary 
 Demaeneta was no longer recalled to earth by her 
 golden sandal, which had doubtless often done 
 matronly service on the persons of the little Eucra- 
 teses. Of the other stories, the most remarkable is 
 that of the Egyptian wizard, from whom his disciple 
 caught the art of turning a broomstick or a pestle 
 into a man, but, unluckily, did not learn the art of 
 unmanning the pestle or the broomstick. But is 
 not this the subject of Goethe's charming poem, 
 ' The Magician's Prentice ' (Der Zauberlehrling), and 
 may we not read in his wonderful rhythm how the 
 transformed broomstick persists in bringing water 
 after the bath is full, how the disciple in despair 
 cuts the broomstick in two, and how the master 
 surprises the pupil watching from the depth of his 
 watery wretchedness the hydraulic antics of the two 
 imps he has made out of one ? 
 
 This coquetry of philosophy with magic is all the 
 more remarkable, because it is the preliminary of 
 an important wedlock, the fusion of the Greek with 
 the Oriental, the rise of that Neo-Platonic school, 
 which may be called the Great Pagan Revival, with 
 Plotinus, Porphyry, and lamblichus for its preachers, 
 and Julian for its secular champion. To the same 
 
326 LUCTAN. 
 
 phase as the ' Lie-fancier ' belongs, in part, the 
 romance entitled ' Lucius, or the Enchanted Ass', 
 which is always printed with Lucian's works ; but 
 as its authorship is disputed, and its relation to the 
 ' Metamorphoses ' of Apuleius is a matter of much 
 debate, we reserve the whole subject for further 
 study, and pass over to the next section of our 
 present theme. 
 
 Among the figures of the crowded procession 
 in ' the Nigrinus ', no little prominence is given to 
 the hireling philosopher ; l and the miseries of the 
 learned Greeks, who were employed about the per 
 sons of wealthy Romans, form the subject of one of 
 Lucian's most elaborate treatises, which we have 
 selected as a specimen-picture out of his long gal 
 lery. Graeculus esuriens we all know the rest. It 
 is a lucky thing that we can see and hear the other 
 side, and learn to temper with pity our contempt 
 for the hungry Greekling. And Lucian might well 
 claim to speak for the Greeks. There is scarcely 
 anything Syrian about him, except his birthplace. 2 
 Nay, he forgets so entirely that he is a Syrian that 
 he actually sneers at somebody's Syrian brogue. 
 How thoroughly Greek he is appears very strik 
 ingly in the ' Anacharsis ', in which he defends, under 
 the person of Solon, the Greek view of gymnastics 
 
 1 T&V 67ri p.icrBw (j)i\o(ro<povi>T<t>v. Nigr. 25. 
 
 2 Yet of all the barbarians, the Syrians had the closest affinity 
 to the Greeks, from whom they differed, however, in unctuous- 
 ness ; and, while Lucian was an excellent copy of a Greek, the 
 transformation on which he prided himself was, as M. Croiset 
 says, perhaps not so profound as he himself supposed. ' Le 
 Syrien est naturellement ardent et leger, et Lucien a ete Syrien 
 a cet egard jusqu'a. son dernier jour.' B. L. G. 
 
LUC I AN. 327 
 
 against the attacks of the Scythian philosopher. 
 But it is in the tract ' De mercede conductis ' that his 
 sensitiveness for Greek honor, for the honor of 
 the people as well as for the honor of the literary 
 class, manifests itself in a way to do infinite credit to 
 Lucian's heart. Luckily, the sketch has lost the 
 pungency which it must have had for the family 
 tutors and the Grub Street writers of the last cen 
 tury ; but even now that those two calamities of 
 authors, ' the patron and the jail ', are alike over 
 past, the truthfulness of some of the features of the 
 picture may still be verified by every-day experi 
 ence. Bad as domestic service is for any one 
 says Lucian, addressing a friend, who thinks of 
 making an engagement bad as domestic service is 
 for any one, it is especially bad for the man of 
 gentle birth and philosophical training. Lower 
 professions may well serve as vessels of dishonor, 
 but these are of finer clay, and are shivered under 
 the weight of brutal insolence. And, after all the 
 humiliation, the darling object is not gained by this 
 voluntary servitude ; the dreaded poverty is not 
 avoided ; and after years and years of endurance, 
 the wretched self-deceiver finds himself a poor and 
 needy hireling still. Nor is the life of one of these 
 led philosophers the life of luxury which the novice 
 dreams of, when his eyes are dazzled by the gold 
 and silver of those princely houses, and his appe 
 tite is whetted by their rich viands and their costly 
 wines. Ah me! thinks Lucian, the Lotus-eaters 
 in Homer have more excuse, for they forgot the 
 noble over the sweet, the decorum over the dulce ; but 
 imagine the stupendous folly of a fellow that stands 
 
328 LUC I AN. 
 
 starving away in utter forgetfulness for the pleasure 
 of seeing another stuffing himself with lotus, him 
 self without the hope of even a little taste. Count 
 over your tenter-hooks. First comes the misery 
 of making the acquaintance of the great man, the 
 early levers, the pushing and shoving at the street- 
 door, the insolence of the porter, and the surliness 
 of the Libyan usher (nomenclator), who has to be 
 paid for remembering your name, the expense in 
 dress out of all proportion to your means, the 
 observance of your future patron's taste in colors, 
 so as to avoid disagreeable contrasts and all this 
 that you may form part of his ' tail ', that he does 
 not even deign to look at for many days together. 
 And when at last he asks you a question, you break 
 out into a profuse sweat, your head swims, you are 
 shaking and quaking at the wrong time. And 
 when you ought to say who was the greatest gen 
 eral of Queen Anne's day, you answer, she was 
 the daughter of King James. 1 After long waiting, 
 weary days and sleepless nights, you are presented 
 and examined. Old fellow though you be, with a 
 long beard and grey pate, you are put through 
 your paces for the amusement of the patron. Then 
 there is diligent inquiry made into your previous 
 life; and if you pass this severe ordeal successfully, 
 and his lordship likes your style, and the lady of 
 the house be willing, and the head-servants have no 
 objection, then you are taken into the retinue and 
 invited to dinner. Upon the reception of this 
 honor you must fee the servant that brings the invi 
 tation a horribly large sum for an Athenian, five 
 
 1 Tiff r\v 6 jSao"iXfVff TO)V 'A^aiwy, on ^tXtai vrjfs %(rav avroty. 
 
LUC I AN. 329 
 
 drachmae at least and you must get yourself up 
 elaborately, fearing all the while that you will get 
 there either too early or too late, the one inelegant, 
 the other vulgar. Everybody is watching you, the 
 servants, the guests, the master. ' Lord ! ' says one, 
 ' he never dined anywhere in his life. A napkin is 
 a novelty to him, and he drinks out of his finger- 
 bowl/ The host gives the attendants instruction to 
 see whether you look round too often at the lady 
 of the house, and then, to put your breeding to the 
 test, he drinks your health. In your embarrass 
 ment you do not know what to answer, and all the 
 other dependents, angry at this preference, unite in 
 reviling you. ' Eleventh-hour favorite ! Rome is 
 not open to anybody but Greeks. Did you ever 
 see such an eater ? or such a drinker ? He never 
 had his fill of white bread before, much less of 
 pheasant ! I should think not. He has left us 
 nothing but the bones. Ah well ! he is a new shoe. 
 Wait till he is run down and twisted out of shape 
 by the mud. He, too, will be a castaway under 
 the sofa, a prey to bugs and all manner of vermin.' 
 However, you are the cock of the walk just now, 
 and may console yourself. 1 But you lose your bal 
 ance. You drink too much and get into a bad way. 
 It is not elegant to rise nor safe to remain, and you 
 wait and wait no eyes, no ears, for all the fine 
 display the host is making. You wait and w r ait, 
 praying for an earthquake, praying for a fire. We 
 pass by the dreadful night and that awful state of 
 indigestion for which the English language has no 
 
 (frOopos* Pindar, Pyth. i. 85. 
 
33O LUC I AN. 
 
 word, which only the Persian bidamagbuden^ can 
 fitly express. Next day is scarcely better, for next 
 day you must have the dreaded discussion of terms. 
 Two or three friends are called in. ' Take a seat. 
 You know how simply we live. We wish you to 
 consider this house your home. But something 
 definite must be determined on. You do not come 
 to us to make money. " Good treatment is of more 
 importance to you than pecuniary compensation." 
 Just so. Fix your own price ; but while you are 
 fixing it, it may be as well for you to remember the 
 perquisites of your position, the holiday presents 
 and the like, and I am sure you will be moderate. 
 Cultivated people are above filthy lucre and, I am 
 confident, we shall have no trouble.' As your 
 patron goes on, your hopes crumble, your talents 
 shrink to oboli, and your farm sinks into a quag 
 mire. You half perceive the fellow's meanness, and 
 yet you cannot but cling to some of his straw 
 phrases. 
 
 Suchlike wetteth the lips, but never, ah ! never, the palate. 2 
 
 And so for sheer shame you leave the matter 
 of compensation to him. He in turn leaves it to a 
 friend, a hard-hearted old reprobate and a flatterer 
 in grain. ' Lucky dog ! ' cries he, ' to have been 
 received into the intimacy of such a family. Such 
 an honor is more worth than all the talents of 
 
 1 Welch ein Zustand ! Iferr, so spate 
 Schleichst du heut aus deiner Kammer ; 
 Perser nennen's Bidamagbuden 
 Deutsche sagen Katzen jammer. 
 
 Goethe, W. 6. Divan, ix. 14. 
 2 x'Aea p.ev r edirjv, vTrepwyv &' OVK edirjvev. II. xxii. 495. 
 
LUC IAN. 331 
 
 Croesus, all the wealth of Midas. And to think that 
 you are to be paid into the bargain. Well ! well ! 
 If you are not an out-and-out spendthrift, I think 
 that such-and-such an amount will be amply suffi 
 cient ' naming a sum out of all proportion to your 
 soaring hopes. But it is too late ; you are caught ; 
 you shut your eyes ; the bit is in your mouth and 
 you give yourself up to the new control. Every 
 body sees that you are in the magic circle. Every 
 body congratulates you. ' For your part ', says 
 Lucian, as many a newly-married man has said to 
 himself, ' you can't see quite yet why people think 
 you so happy,' and you feel, as the proverb has it, 
 that you are coming out of the little end of the 
 horn. 1 Those golden hopes prove to be nothing but 
 gilded bubbles ; the hardships are real and grievous 
 and implacable and unremitting, especially if you 
 take into account the humiliation and the servility. 
 From that moment you cease to be a gentleman, 
 and leave freedom, family, ancestry, behind you. 
 Unused to servitude, you are slow to learn how to 
 obey, and the ghost of your lost liberty haunts you 
 and makes you kick out of the traces at times. And 
 yet a slave in all but the name, you hold out your 
 hand every month, like other household drudges, 
 and receive your monthly wages. And this is the 
 fate that you have brought on yourself; and that at 
 a period of life when, if you were a slave by birth, 
 it were time to earn your freedom ! You, the coun 
 tryman of Plato, of Chrysippus, of Aristotle, pitting 
 yourself against flatterers and vulgarians and buf 
 foons ; you, the only Greek in a crowd of Romans, 
 
 1 eVi MavSpoftovXov X^P^ r< * 
 
332 LUC I AN. 
 
 miserably murdering the Emperor's Latin ; you, a 
 philosopher, joining in noisy banquets, in vulgar 
 laudation, immoderate potation, and super-ridicu 
 lous saltation, what time the bell arouses you from 
 your slumbers, and you have to shake off the 
 sweetest corner of sleep's blanket, and run about 
 with that delectable society, while yesterday's mud 
 is still sticking to your legs. And all this for what? 
 For delicate entremets which you never get, and 
 wine of exquisite bouquet which you never taste ! 
 Nor are you to console yourself with the thought 
 that your employment is a high one. Your patron 
 cares for literature as much as the ass for the lyre, 
 the cat for the riddle, the cow for nutmegs. You 
 have got a long beard, you have a reverend face, 
 you wear your Grecian mantle becomingly, you 
 are known as a literary gentleman, as a public 
 lecturer, as a philosophic writer, and he keeps you 
 as he keeps a monkey. You must trot about in his 
 suite all day, you must stand on your legs without 
 a morsel to eat or a mouthful to drink. You come 
 to dinner after time and ten chances to one you are 
 pushed into a corner for a new arrival, and get a 
 bone to gnaw or are fain to fill your belly with the 
 garnishes of vanished dishes. No eggs for you, no 
 fat capon to line your inner man withal ; at most, 
 half of a starveling chicken, or a tough old pigeon ; 
 and even that is snatched from your hungry gaze 
 if a stranger comes in, and the foul fiend of a 
 waiter whispers : ' You know you are one of the 
 family.' The other guests drink the old wine and 
 you some wretched stuff, and yet you are ashamed 
 to show how little prized you are ; and so you swig 
 
LUCIAN. 333 
 
 your villanous tipple out of a golden cup such as 
 it is and what there is of it for even that is scant. 
 Comes in some teller of improper tales, some singer 
 of erotic songs. Good-bye to you, philosophers. 
 Go and bewail your fate. But, worst of all, you 
 must needs stay and praise the favorites of your 
 mistress, when they dance or strum on the guitar. 
 Poor perspiring frog, you have to croak their 
 praises from your dry-land perch, whilst your own 
 throat is parched ; and then, should your master be 
 the jealous lord of a pretty wife, you must keep a 
 watch over your eyes, and make a covenant with 
 them that they look not on maid or matron. What 
 sad reflections come into your mind as you wake 
 at cock-crow and review your fate, as you look up 
 from the pit into which you have plunged yourself, 
 and see the clear sky above you and hear the 
 whistling of the liberal breeze ! ' Is this my pay ', 
 you ask, ' for all my efforts ? ' And, worst of all, 
 these efforts are abortive. I am a botcher at this 
 trade. I am no boon companion, no fun-maker.- If 
 I stand on my dignity, I am a nuisance. If I stoop 
 to wreathe my face into smiles, I am, so to speak, 
 spit upon. I am a comic actor in a tragic mask 
 and there's the bell that calls me to the stage.' So 
 you go on from day to day, until at last your con 
 stitution is undermined and you gallop yourself 
 into a consumption, sweat yourself into a pneu 
 monia, or guzzle yourself into gout. When you 
 accompany your owners into the country, there is 
 never any room for you in the family carriage, but 
 you are stuffed into a wagon with the cook or the 
 hairdresser. And thank your stars if you do not 
 
334 LUCIAN. 
 
 fare as ill as did Thesmopolis, the famous Stoic. 
 Madame la Duchesse wanted him to take charge of 
 her Maltese pet. ' Dear little Florine, sweet little 
 Florine ', she cried, ' won't you take care of my 
 dear little, sweet little Florine ? The servants are 
 so negligent. I can't trust them. There's a good 
 old lovey of a Thesmopolis. Bye, bye, Florine.' 
 Sweet little Florine sticks her muzzle out from 
 under the flowing beard of the philosopher. Dear 
 little Florine licks off the relics of yesterday's soup 
 from his moustache ; and dear little, sweet little 
 Florine, that loved ' not wisely but too well ', shows 
 herself as lively as the Hebrew women, and when 
 the philosopher reaches the villa, he finds that his 
 robe has become a cradle for Florine's pups. 
 
 As you become tamer, the demands become 
 higher, and your talents are debased to buffoonery 
 and flattery. And even if the claims of the men 
 were endurable, the women are not to be borne, for 
 some of them have the mania for being literary 
 ladies, she-philosophers, poetesses ; and, as such, 
 keep a number of literary gentlemen, he-philoso 
 phers, and poets, in their train. But as their time 
 is precious, they only lend their ears to you while 
 they lend their hair to the curling-tongs, and, as it 
 were, combine Cosmos with cosmetics, the glacial 
 theory with ices, and stop a discourse on ' Virtue ' 
 to write a note appointing a rendezvous. 
 
 After a long time of watching and waiting, here 
 comes a wretched cloak or sleazy shirt as a present, 
 and every member of the household makes you his 
 compliment and insinuates the value of his services. 
 Your wages are doled out a few pence at a time, 
 
LUC i AN. 335 
 
 and to get that you must fawn upon the master and 
 be attentive to the steward ; and then you have 
 nothing to put up, for your pay is all overdue to 
 the tailor, the doctor, and the cobbler. But by this 
 time your master has stripped you of flower and 
 fruit and foliage, of soul and mind and body. He 
 has made a riddled rag of you, and looks for some 
 convenient dunghill to cast you on. Some charge 
 is trumped up, and you are hustled out head fore 
 most at dead of night, your guerdon gout, your 
 benison a potent paunch. Your faculties are gone, 
 or, at all events, your reputation is lost. You are 
 a Greek, and that makes against you, even if your 
 enemy were to hold his peace. And no wonder, 
 when you remember how many rascals of your race 
 are roaming the world, masters of occult sciences, 
 soothsayers, astrologers, poisoners, whose pre 
 tended philosophy and mock scholarship bring all 
 the Greeks into discredit. But the truth is that 
 these Roman grandees hate the Greek inmates of 
 their houses because they are supposed to know 
 the secrets of their lives, to know how they are 
 hiding murder and incest and adultery under a fair 
 outside, as books conceal beneath their gilding the 
 story of a Thyestes, an CEdipus, a Tereus. 
 
 Behold now this picture of the life you are about 
 to lead. See those lofty gilded Propylaea. They 
 are not built on the level earth, but high up on a 
 hill. The approach is steep and slippery. If your 
 foot slides, you are gone. Within sits Plutus, all 
 made of gold. There stands the lover, all amaze 
 ment as he stares at the brilliant metal. Fair- 
 visaged Hope receives him herself attired in 
 
336 LUC r AN-. 
 
 dazzling raiment and leads him onward, onward. 
 Next, Fraud and Bondage take him, and pass him 
 on to Toil, who works him well, and hands him 
 over to Old Age. Hope flies away, and from some 
 obscure back-door the poor old man is thrust out, 
 naked and paunchy and ghastly pale, with his left 
 hand for raiment and his right hand for a halter. 
 Repentance meets him, and her weeping only 
 hurries him on to ruin. Behold and be warned, and 
 whatever you do, remember the saying of the wise 
 man : God is not to be blamed ; the blame lies with 
 the chooser. 1 
 
 Another picture, of surpassing power and living 
 energy, is the ' Banquet, or the Lapithse '; or, as we 
 might translate the title freely, the Kilkenny Philo 
 sophers. In this piece Lucian spreads a feast, to 
 which philosophers of the various sects are invited ; 
 and as the banquet advances, these sages come to 
 loggerheads with one another, and display a trucul- 
 ence, a savagery, a superfluity of naughtiness and 
 filthiness, sufficiently indicated by the title Lapithse. 
 Well may the narrator draw the conclusion that 
 there is no earthly use in scientific and philosophic 
 attainments if the life is not harmonized by these 
 higher principles to a nobler standard ; and well 
 may the student of history pause to reflect on the 
 failure of all human systems to transform the nature. 
 But Lucian's picture is too Teniers-like in its details 
 for these pages, and we must devote the rest of our 
 space to some remarks on the Dialogues. 
 
 Of these, by far the best known are the ' Dialogues 
 
 1 fobs dvairios, alrta de fXopevov. Plato, Republ. x. 681 E. 
 
LUCIAN. 337 
 
 of the Dead ' and the ' Dialogues of the Gods ' the 
 former, especially, having been imitated scores of 
 times, and both having been introduced into the 
 cycle of school-books. The Greek scholar of the 
 present day need hardly be reminded that Lucian 
 is not a proper author for schoolboys to learn 
 Greek from. His use of the negatives varies so 
 much from the classic standard that even good 
 Grecians seem puzzled to account for some of his 
 deviations ; and the teacher must give the boys 
 vacation from many important distinctions, if he is 
 to make any headway at all. The other particles 
 are not always employed in conformity with Attic 
 usage ; the optative mood has too wide a range, and 
 the compounds too often make us feel the composi 
 tion ; the parts do not grow together as in the 
 native period of the language. But apart from 
 these objections, which apply more or less to all 
 Lucian's works, these two sets of dialogues hardly 
 give a fair idea of Lucian's genius. ' Charon on 
 his Travels', 'Timon', * Chanticleer', are all better 
 specimens. The canvas is larger, the characteriza 
 tion finer, the fancy more elastic, the moral more 
 profound. ' Chanticleer ', especially, is one of our 
 favorites. For elegance of style, for vivacity of 
 dialogue, for dramatic effectiveness, it is Lucian's 
 masterpiece. It is true that the springs of its 
 movement have been borrowed for modern works, 
 and we recognize at once our old friends the 
 Scholar of Alcala and the Devil on Two Sticks ; 
 but such is Lucian's freshness, so lively and vigorous 
 is the Greekdom of the piece, that we can hardly 
 realize that we are reading a twice-told tale when 
 
338 LUC i AN. 
 
 Micyllus the cobbler is conducted by Chanticleer, 
 as Don Cleofas by Asmodeus, behind the scenes of 
 life. ' Charon ', also, has peculiar merits. What 
 happier conception than to bring the old fellow out 
 for a holiday to the upper regions, and how well our 
 author depicts the grim old waterman as he begs 
 Hermes to act as his guide, philosopher, and friend ; 
 and how delicately the line is drawn between the 
 unconscious humor of the infernal ferryman and 
 the more subtle playfulness of the Guide of Souls ! 
 This dramatic individuality of Lucian's characters 
 is worthy of especial study. Diogenes and Men- 
 ippus are both cynics, but Diogenes makes you feel 
 that he is a man of authority ; Menippus is as airy 
 as Lucian himself. Other great artists had attempted 
 the portrait of a misanthrope, but none could have 
 succeeded better than Lucian in his ' Timon '. Doubt 
 less he had ample materials for his study materials 
 that have been lost to us. But is is clear, from 
 internal evidence, that Lucian stamped the character 
 anew. This Timon lived during the time of the 
 Peloponnesian war, and built himself a sort of mar- 
 tello-tower, far from the habitations of men, and 
 even in death had his resting-place on a steep and 
 solitary and almost inaccessible cliff. The chorus 
 of women in the ' Lysistrata ' of Aristophanes says 
 of him (in substance) : 
 
 Timon was a restless creature, 
 Bantling of the Furies born, 
 And his face had every feature 
 Girt about with hedge of thorn. 
 Carried off by hatred, Timon 
 Did a lonely tower climb on, 
 
LUC IAN. 339 
 
 Whence he cursed with breath unbated 
 All the rascals that he hated. 
 Hated men but, be it noted, 
 To the girls he was devoted. 
 
 In the ' Birds ', Prometheus says : 
 
 I hate the gods each mother's son of them, you know 
 I am a perfect Timoii pure. 
 
 The ' Odd-fellow ' of the comic poet Phrynichus 
 says: 
 
 I lead a Timon's life 
 
 No wife, no servant, verjuiced, unapproachable; 
 I laugh not, talk not, cork myself within myself. 
 
 Antiphanes, one of the chiefs of the Middle Comedy, 
 made this eccentric misanthrope the hero of one of 
 his numerous pieces ; but it was reserved for Lucian 
 to transmit the type to modern times for modern 
 times to misunderstand the type transmitted. Your 
 misanthrope is never himself a faultless character ; 
 his hatred is an inverted love of self; his morality 
 is pharisaical. This man Timon lived during the 
 Peloponnesian war, and never felt it. He never 
 bore his portion of the burden of the state ; he 
 never shed a drop of blood for his country ; and 
 not insignificant is the hint which Aristophanes 
 gives us that his virtuous indignation was levelled 
 exclusively at the male sex. Now, while Lucian 
 employed Timon as a catapult for shooting at the 
 follies and frailties of the times, he did not neglect 
 the accurate draught of the engine that he employed, 
 and bestowed special pains on the elaboration of 
 Timon's character. Whether Shakespeare made 
 any use of Lucian's Timon we shall let Shakes- 
 
34O L UCIAN. 
 
 peare scholars discuss, but certain it is that 
 between the Timon of Lucian and the Timon of 
 Shakespeare there is almost as wide an interval in 
 character as in time. 
 
 In order to understand properly the * Dialogues 
 of the Gods ', the ' Marine Dialogues ', the ' Dialogues 
 of the Dead ', and the ' Hetseric Dialogues ', we must 
 regard them as so many studies of form. He who 
 should suppose the antique epigram to resemble 
 the modern would be disappointed at the absence 
 of point and piquancy in a large proportion of the 
 epigrams of the Greek Anthology ; he who should 
 look for nothing but irony and satire in these 
 dialogues of Lucian would be puzzled to find 
 irony or satire in many of them. Not a few resist 
 analysis. Complete and rounded they are, but 
 complete and rounded as is the soap-bubble, and, 
 like the soap-bubble, they mirror for a moment sky, 
 and sea, and earth, and then vanish in an iridescent 
 collapse. Not a few seem to have been composed 
 merely for plastic effect merely to show a rare 
 power of representation and so belong to the 
 same class as the ' Imagines ' of our author and the 
 ' Imagines ' of Philostratus. So the dialogue between 
 Aphrodite and Selene (D. D. n) exists simply for 
 the figure of Endymion ' sleeping on a rock, with 
 his chlamys under him ; in his left hand holding 
 his javelins, which are just gliding out of his 
 grasp, while his right, bent above his head, forms a 
 becoming frame to his face, and, all dissolved by 
 sleep, he breathes his ambrosial breath.' So the 
 main thing in the dialogue between Aphrodite and 
 Eros (D. D. 12) is the animated description of the 
 
LUC I AN. 341 
 
 procession of Magna Mater, with Cupid mounting 
 her lions, catching hold of their manes and putting 
 his head in their mouths. So the twentieth dia 
 logue merely serves to frame the picture of Gany 
 mede carried off by Zeus. It is true that Lucian 
 loves to get human fun out of the legends of the 
 gods. So Aphrodite spanks Eros as Xanthippe 
 spanked Lamprocles. So Hera a celestial Mrs. 
 Caudle accounts for the excessive lenity which 
 Zeus shows toward Ixion by his former intimacy 
 with Ixion's wife ; and the same jealous goddess 
 displays an exquisite malice when, vexed at La- 
 tona's boasting of her children, she says that Apollo 
 overcame Marsyas by fraud, and that Artemis set 
 her dogs on Actaeon to keep him from telling how 
 ugly she was. But there is really no more harm 
 in this than in Homer. Lucian's Zeus, his Hera, 
 his Hephaestus, are miniature reproductions of the 
 figures in the great frieze of the Epic, and if the 
 mellow light of the Homeric sun has faded into 
 white, the light is a steady one and the noble feat 
 ures of the old mythology are not distorted. In 
 this regard Lucian is pre-eminently Greek, and not 
 Syrian ; for herein we see a wide difference between 
 Hellenic and Semitic. What strikes us as peculiar 
 in the relation of the Greek to his gods is its imme- 
 diateness. It was hard to convince the Hebrews 
 that God was a god that was near. It would have 
 been hard to convince the Greek that his gods were 
 gods that were afar off. He gazed into the face of 
 Zeus, the Prince of the Power of the Ether. He 
 laid his hand on the mane of Poseidon's horses. 
 He looked into the bright eye of Pallas, or watched 
 
342 LUCIAN. 
 
 the glancing of her lightning spear. His gods lead 
 an easy life, and their joyousness pervades all who 
 approach them. Call this frivolous, if you choose, 
 but it is undeniably national, and the irreverence of 
 Lucian in the earlier stage is not to be com 
 pared with the irreverence of Voltaire. The 
 sportive treatment of mythology would have been 
 no evidence of unbelief to the countrymen of 
 Homer and Aristophanes, to the students of the 
 Satyr-drama, to the readers of the Middle Comedy. 
 Far different is the case with some of the later dia 
 logues of Lucian with ' Zeus Cross-examined ', and 
 ' Zeus Stage-struck ' in which cynicism and epi 
 cureanism alike issue in blank atheism. 
 
 The ' Dialogues of the Dead ' seem to belong to a 
 more advanced stage of study than the ' Dialogues 
 of the Gods ', although they do not reach the 
 artistic height of the ' Chanticleer ' or of the ' Double 
 Indictment '. They form a comedy of human life 
 not unlike the mediaeval Dance of Death, for in 
 Lucian's time death was no longer the brother of 
 sleep, but a grim and ghastly skeleton ; and an 
 interpreter of the show, Diogenes or Menippus, 
 appears in more than half the pieces, to point the 
 moral with the bony finger of scorn. The text is 
 vanitas vanitatum, with Charon's boat for a pulpit, 
 and a cynic for a preacher. The theme is an 
 nounced in the very first dialogue, in which the 
 rich, the great, the wise, the strong, are to be taught 
 how brief and how slender is the tenure of their 
 advantages. Not a little remarkable, as character 
 istic of the Graeco-Roman world, is the large pro 
 portion of pieces which set forth the miseries and 
 
L UCIAN. 343 
 
 disappointments of legacy-hunters. The aversion 
 to philosophy and philosophers is evident enough, 
 but the hostility is not so bitter as in the ' Lapithae ', 
 and the despairing contempt not so profound as in 
 ' Hermotimus '. He makes Pythagoras beg for beans, 
 represents Socrates as making a prodigious ado as 
 he goes down to Hades, and gives a full-length 
 portraiture of a philosopher in the longest of the 
 dialogues, which is absurdly like one of Bunyan's 
 allegories. But those of our readers who know 
 Lucian at all know the ' Dialogues of the Dead ', and 
 we cannot stop to analyse. Those who do not know 
 Lucian may be entertained by some specimens of his 
 grim humor, taken at random from these and other 
 works of his. When Menippus goes down to the 
 dead, he asks for Socrates. ' You see that bald 
 pate,' says his guide. ' They are all bald pates.' 
 ' I mean that fellow with a flat nose.' ' They have 
 all flat noses,' replies the Cynic. Charon builds 
 rafts to take the extra passengers over in Alexan 
 der's time, and talks contemptuously of the green 
 ghosts of babies. Often the sententious brevity 
 reminds us of Shakespeare. ' This skull is Helen ', 
 recalls to our mind the grave-digger's scene in 
 Hamlet; and when Hermes says to Prometheus, 
 ' Mount up now, like a good fellow, and have your 
 self nailed to the mountain ', we seem to hear the 
 clown saying to Barnardine, ' You must be so 
 good, sir, to rise and be put to death.' Almost too 
 ghastly for fun is the passage in which Menippus 
 says that his death is not unnoticed, ' the dogs are 
 howling piteously over him, and the ravens are 
 beating their breasts with their wings as they come 
 
344 L UCIAN. 
 
 together to bury him.' Some of Lucian's fancies 
 are so weird that we seem to be standing upon the 
 German Brocken, and not upon the Greek Helicon ; 
 and his images are often as grotesque as any of the 
 gargoyles that spit their spite from the roofs of 
 mediaeval churches. Peter Schlemihl, or the man 
 without a shadow, even if the idea were entirely 
 original and it is not, for Dante's friend Vergil 
 casts no shadow 1 is not a more striking fancy than 
 Lucian's notion that our shadows, when we die, tell 
 on us before the high court of Hades ; credible 
 witnesses they, and well informed. Nor is this play 
 of the imagination without its deeper meaning; as 
 where he speaks of the invisible brands of vice, 
 invisible here, but blazing out in the lower world ; 2 
 as where he tells us that the bed and the lamp are 
 called to bear witness to the crimes of Megapen- 
 thes, whose punishment is the remembrance of his 
 sins. 
 
 The ' Hetaeric Dialogues, or Colloquies of She- 
 fellows ', are not in use as a school-book for 
 manifest reasons ; and it may, perhaps, be best to 
 pass them by in decorous silence. Like the rest of 
 Lucian's dialogues, they are full of keen wit, of sly 
 humor, of droll situations, of vivid pictures. But 
 those of our younger readers that press forward 
 toward the forbidden would be very much disap 
 pointed in them. There is hardly one halfpenny 
 worth of indecency to an intolerable deal of clever- 
 
 1 See also Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 77, 388. 
 
 2 Borrowed from Plato, Gorg. 524 C, and borrowed by Plato 
 from the world of popular belief. See G. L. Kittredge in 
 American Journal of Philology, viii. 165. B. L. G. 
 
345 
 
 ness. To the man of thought and experience they 
 are sad reading as sad, we say it gravely, as 
 Defoe's ' Moll Flanders '. We see worldly wisdom, 
 or rather hellish cunning, warring against the 
 better instincts of maidenly nature. We see the 
 pure flower of true love peeping forth shyly from 
 amid the rank luxuriance of sensual indulgence. 
 Jealousy, without which, says one of the heroines, 
 there can be nothing but a surface love, throws its 
 lurid light over these miniature pictures, and there 
 is no lack of lovers' quarrels, of tempestuous scenes, 
 of sorcery and witchcraft. Our old friend, the 
 Pyrgopolinices of Plautus, turns up under a new 
 name, and admirable is the dialogue in which one 
 of these swaggering soldiers tries to excite the 
 admiration of his lady-love by the recital of his 
 bloody exploits puts her to flight instead, and, in 
 order to win her back, is forced to send a messenger 
 to tell her that it was all a lie. But we do not pur 
 pose to detain our readers in the neighborhood of 
 * Kisskin (Philemation) the Coffin, otherwise called 
 Mantrap ', and her sisters. Grave as the subject is, 
 there is one still graver before us, which we must 
 discuss before we close this study. 
 
 We have already seen that the mocking genius 
 of Lucian had called down on him the unmeasured 
 wrath of Christian grammarians. In vain they 
 might have been told that Lucian's shafts were 
 directed against nonentities. Their Ens was the 
 legitimate successor of these heathen nonentities, 
 and he who had been disloyal to one set of masters 
 would have been disloyal to the true monarch. It 
 must have been the utter want of veneration, the 
 
346 LUCIAN. 
 
 utter nihilism of the still-denying spirit der Geist 
 der stets verneint that offended them so ; for, apart 
 from the confessedly spurious dialogue, Philopatris, 
 there is really no formal opposition in Lucian to the 
 Christian religion. Lucian floats with the current 
 of disintegration ; he has no sympathy with any 
 attempt to restore the old faith. Philostratus gives 
 an apotheosis of Apollonius of Tyana. Lucian 
 delights in holding up to the contempt of all sober- 
 minded men the false prophet Alexander, a successor 
 of the famous Tyanite. Lucian wanted a heathen 
 ideal as little as he understood the reality of the 
 Christian faith. To him the Christian religion was but 
 one of the strange elements let loose in the breaking 
 up of the fountains of the great deep ; and the lively 
 satirist of the second century, and the saturnine his 
 torian of the first, alike failed to recognize the 
 Saviour of the world in the man whom they called 
 ' one Christus ', ' a sophist '. It is only in a sketch 
 of Alexander, and in a remarkable account of the 
 death of Peregrinus, that Lucian makes any direct 
 mention of the Christian religion. We have already 
 noticed what some have considered an allusion to the 
 Gospel, in the ' Lie-fancier ', and there is a striking 
 resemblance to the Heavenly City of the Apoca 
 lypse in the description of the Island of the 
 Blessed, in the ' True Story '. But both of these 
 allusions, the former perhaps more readily than the 
 latter, may be otherwise accounted for; and we 
 must look to the passages in ' Alexander ' and in 
 ' Peregrinus ' for Lucian's views. The ' Alexander ' 
 is a vivid portraiture of the miracle-mongers and 
 oracle-peddlers of the age, and had we not already 
 
LUC IAN. 347- 
 
 outrun the lines of our sketch we should be 
 tempted to give the reader at least a glimpse of 
 the impostor's life. The great field of Alexander's 
 operations was Cappadocia, the inhabitants of which 
 were noted for their laziness and stupidity. As 
 Cappadocia was one of the foci of early Chris 
 tianity, some apologists have' thought it worth their 
 while to defend the character of the Cappadocians, 
 and at least one of them has done Ireland the gross 
 injustice of comparing her people with those imper 
 fect Christians. Yet, very much to the credit of 
 those imperfect Christians, we learn that Alexander 
 found them a serious stumbling-block in the way of 
 his success, and classed them with the Epicureans in 
 his ukase against the skeptics, and that he was 
 wont to open prayers by saying, ' Out with the 
 Christians ! ' And all the people answered, ' Out 
 with the Epicureans ! ' Somewhat inconsistent 
 with this wise incredulity is the character given to 
 the Christians in the ' Death of Peregrinus ', one of 
 the most curious documents of* that age. This Per 
 egrinus Proteus, 1 who burned himself alive at the 
 Olympic games in A. D. 165 Lucian being present 
 had been a Christian before he became a Cynic. 
 
 1 Since these pages were first published, the whole subject 
 has been handled with the masterly grasp peculiar to him by 
 my friend and teacher, the late Jakob Bernays, in his Lukian 
 und die Kyniker, mit einer Uebersetzung der Schrift Lukians 
 iiber das Lebensende des Peregrinus; Berlin, 1879. The 
 study of this monograph stirred a certain rebelliousness in me 
 at the time, but it is always easier to rebel against Bernays's 
 conclusions than to meet them. The French scholar, cited 
 above, dissents from Bernays on the ground of the dates of the 
 several dialogues. See M. Croiset, 1. c. p. 36. B. L. G. 
 
348 LUCIAN. 
 
 After strangling his father he ran" away from 
 his Armenian home, and learned in Palestine the 
 strange wisdom of the Christians from their priests 
 and scribes. In a short time they were all children 
 to him. He was their prophet, the manager of 
 their feasts, the chief of their assemblies, and their 
 all in all. Some of their books he interpreted and 
 expounded ; many of them he composed ; and they 
 looked up to him as a god and obeyed him as a 
 law-giver, and inscribed his name on their records 
 as their president. These people, by the way, adore 
 that great personage 1 that was crucified in Palestine 
 for introducing this new worship into the world. 
 On the charge of adhering to this sect, Peregrinus 
 was arrested and thrown into jail, a circumstance 
 that of itself was of no small service in helping on 
 his marvel-mongery and his itching for notoriety. 
 When he was put in prison the Christians took 
 the matter very much to heart and tried every 
 means to get him out; and when this proved 
 to be impossible, they showed him all manner of 
 attention. Early in the morning you might have 
 seen old women and widows and orphan children 
 waiting outside the jail, and the church officers 
 bribed the jailors to let them sleep inside with the 
 prisoner. All kinds of viands were taken in to him, 
 their sacred writings were read aloud, and our 
 worthy Peregrinus was called by them a second 
 Socrates ; and actually commissioners were sent by 
 the communities in Asia Minor to help him, to act 
 as his counsel and to minister consolation. Extra 
 ordinary is the activity which these people show 
 
 1 peyav is critically uncertain. 
 
L UCIAN. 349 
 
 when anything affects the community, and they 
 spare nothing ; and in this way much money came 
 in for Peregrinus on account of his imprisonment, 
 and he made himself a fine income from that source. 
 For these poor devils have brought themselves to 
 believe that they will be immortal, body and soul, 
 and live forever. Therefore they despise death, 
 and, in most cases, give themselves up to it. And 
 then their first law-giver persuaded them that they 
 were brethren one of another, when they once go 
 over and renounce the gods of the Greeks and 
 adore that crucified professor (sophist) and live 
 according to his laws. So then they despise 
 everything alike and deem all things common 
 without any clear ground for the acceptance of 
 such tenets. If, then, any impostor or juggler, 
 who understands management, goes over to them, 
 he gets rich in a trice and leads his innocent 
 friends by the nose. However, Peregrinus was 
 released by the governor of Syria, a person of a 
 philosophic turn of mind, who saw that the fellow 
 had a crazy ambition to die, and frustrated his hopes 
 by discharging him without punishment. After 
 his discharge he was abundantly supplied by the 
 Christians, who were regular satellites of his, until 
 he ate some forbidden food and was cast out of 
 the brotherhood. 
 
 Imperfect as this representation is, it is evident 
 that the light has begun to shine, though the 
 darkness comprehends it so imperfectly, and that 
 Lucian's view of Christianity is clearer than the view 
 of Tacitus. Indeed some have seen in the adjective 
 ' wonderful ', which we have translated ' strange ', in 
 
35O LUC I AN. 
 
 this ' wonderful wisdom of the Christians ', a note 
 of admiration, forgetting that a few pages further on 
 Lucian uses the same adjective of his hero's subse 
 quent mode of life, shaving half his head, besmear 
 ing his face with mud, and indulging in unmen 
 tionable indecencies. No! The mocking spirit 
 that called Christ 'a professor ', and the Christians 
 ' unfortunates ', had no appreciation or admiration 
 of our faith. ' It was to him ', says a writer on this 
 subject, correctly enough, * only one parti-colored 
 stone the more in the mad kaleidoscope of the 
 times.' Yet we can see that the brotherhood of 
 Christians was beginning to be recognized as an 
 important agency ; and we observe the growth of 
 a two-fold hate, the hate of the populace directed 
 against the atheism of the Christians, the hate of 
 the politicians directed against their socialistic 
 organization. 
 
 But we must close, and not without a feeling of 
 sadness. For Lucian is really, as we have said 
 elsewhere, one of the saddest of authors. If you 
 read him from time to time, if you take a peep from 
 time to time at his puppet-show, you may enjoy 
 his comic force. But if you read him, as we have 
 done, consecutively for days and days, then the 
 whole head becomes sick and the whole heart faint. 
 You can ride for weeks and months on the ocean 
 of Homer. You can float for weeks and months 
 in the ether of Plato's speculations. But Lucian 
 wearies, as the theatre wearies, as the pantomime, 
 as the circus. The whole age which he represents 
 is a painful sham, the mock philosopher, with his 
 long beard, his rough cassock, his knotty staff, his 
 
LUCIAN. 351 
 
 ragged wallet, the pretentious rhetorician, with 
 his rich apparel, his mincing gait, his cooing voice, 
 the ignorant parvenu, the ignominious parasite, 
 the magician, and the charlatan. Above the motley 
 crowd hang suspended by too evident wires the lay 
 figures of the Immortal Gods. In the background, 
 in the vitae poscaenia we descry the only part of the 
 show that seems to have any reality Charon and 
 the shades of the dead. And what sadder figure 
 than the showman himself, wandering from Rhetoric 
 to Philosophy, from Philosophy to Comedy, from 
 Comedy back to Rhetoric ; what real purpose of 
 life he ever had, blunted or warped ; what faith he 
 ever had, gone. No hope, no love. No good God 
 for him but good Greek. 
 
 Plainly the end of the old world is at hand. The 
 Stoic may simulate religion, but he cannot satisfy 
 the cravings of the heart, as he is powerless to 
 direct the life. The Epicurean may bury the 
 spiritual nature under a thick layer of materialistic 
 reasoning, but the spirit will not down. Magic rites 
 appeal to the powers of the unseen world. Strange 
 gods are evoked from the mystic East ; Mithras and 
 Derceto, the purer forms of Persian religion, the 
 coarser symbolism of Syria. The old systems of 
 faith and philosophy are dropping to pieces. New 
 combinations are forming. The 'activity ' of those 
 ' unfortunates ', the Christians, is becoming not only 
 ' extraordinary ' but portentous. A great struggle 
 is preparing. Lucian has swept the arena. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN.' 
 
 Midway between the Black Sea and the Mediter 
 ranean rises the country of Cappadocia proper, a 
 land neither blessed by nature nor improved by 
 art. 2 Its barren steppes are exposed to the rays of 
 the burning sun, and its high table-land is swept by 
 the unresisted wind. Cold in winter and hot in 
 summer, it combines with uncomfortable impar 
 tiality both extremes of temperature. Here and 
 there, by diligent search, the traveller may find a 
 fertile valley hidden away among the mountains ; 
 but these green strips are narrow, and narrow are 
 the streams to which their verdure is due. The 
 mountains above are rugged and bare, and such 
 wealth as the land has is not in its fields, but in its 
 flocks and herds. In olden times the face of this 
 
 1 i. Flavius Claudius Julianus. Nach den Quellen. Von J. 
 F. R. Mucke. Gotha : 1866. 
 
 2. Etude sur Julien. Par Eugene Talbot. Paris : 1863. 
 
 3. Ueber Kaiser Julianus Apostata. Von Karl Gutzkow. 
 Dresden: 1857. 
 
 4. Kaiser Julianus im Kampfe mit dem Kirchenvatern seiner 
 Zeit. Geschildert von Dr. J. E. Auer. Wien : 1855. 
 
 5. Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Caesaren ; oder 
 Julian der Abtrtinnige. Von David Fr. Strauss. Mannheim : 
 1847- 
 
 2 This paper is the earliest of these essays. Prepared as a 
 lecture in 1857, but never delivered, it lay in my desk ten years, 
 and after a slight revision was published in the Southern 
 Review for January, 1868. B. L. G. 
 
356 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 uninviting country was pimpled over with castles ; 
 for the inhabitants were a rascally race and had to 
 guard against each other what little there was to 
 guard. Like their climate, they united opposite 
 vices in a peculiarly unhappy amalgam. Fierce 
 and cowardly, stupid and sly withal ; as lazy as they 
 were stalwart and as awkward as they were lazy, 
 the Cappadocians were for ages the butt of the 
 Roman satirist and of the Greek wit. Cappadocian 
 slaves were a drug in the market of Rome ; and the 
 last kings of Cappadocia, who had nothing to sell 
 except their serfs, are cited by Cicero and Horace 
 as the poorest of the poor. Old exaggerations were 
 piled up again for their sake ; old epigrams furbished 
 up for their benefit. Your Cappadocian orator was 
 a rarity like a white crow or a winged tortoise. 
 A viper bit a Cappadocian, and lo ! 
 
 The man recovered from the bite, 
 The ' snake ' it was that died. 
 
 Nor did Christianity, at least to all appearance, 
 better these incorrigibles much. Violent heathen, 
 when they were heathen, they were no less violent 
 Christians when they became Christians ; and even 
 their saints have not been suffered to have a quiet 
 canonization or to enjoy a comfortable niche in the 
 calendar. The Cappadocian St. George, an Arian 
 saint, whom Gibbon maliciously identifies with the 
 champion of England, was a holy man after a 
 peculiar pattern. A fraudulent pork-commissary as 
 a layman, a truculent tyrant as a prelate, he deserves 
 more attention than he has received at the hands of 
 his unconscious imitators in these latter days. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 357 
 
 More than fifteen hundred years ago to be exact, 
 in the year of our sera, 345 one of the many castles 
 of this country was turned into a respectable jail for 
 the reception of two young gentlemen of high rank. 
 No less personages as the Court Journal would 
 say than the cousins of the reigning Emperor and 
 the nephews of Constantine the Great. The elder 
 of the brothers was a comely youth, of noble pres 
 ence and well-knit limbs, with handsome features 
 and soft silky hair. The younger was like his 
 brother in his strong build and fine hair, but his 
 figure was less symmetrical, and the ugliness of the 
 lower part of his face, with its drooping, uncertain 
 lip, was redeemed only by the preternatural bright 
 ness of his eyes, in which there shone the light of 
 genius, or, as some say, the fire of madness. The 
 reader thoroughly conversant with the history of 
 the house of Constantine, as all readers are sup 
 posed to be, has already divined that this boy was 
 Julian ; nor need we say that at this early period 
 of his life, Julian did not know what a figure he 
 was to make in the world, nor that his pretty name 
 was to go down to after ages coupled with the 
 disfiguring title of Apostate. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to say that his enigmatical 
 character has provoked discussions innumerable. 
 If ever a poor mortal has been raised to the skies, 
 it is Julian ; now tossed in a blanket by sturdy 
 ecclesiastics, now floating on a cloud of perfume 
 from the censers of ' good old pagan gentlemen '. 
 True to her traditions, the Catholic Church has 
 followed him with relentless hatred through all 
 these centuries ; and only a few years ago, one Dr. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 Auer of Vienna took up his parable and cursed 
 Julian's day in a volume of 450 pages, with an 
 energy which reminds us of Job. If we turn to the 
 Protestants, we find that, by a singular whirligig of 
 fortune, some of the most decided Christians of 
 modern times have been his encomiasts ; some of 
 the most decided heathen have been lukewarm in 
 praising him, or bitter in ridiculing him. Neander, 
 the historian of the Church, is charged with 
 elevating him to an ideal height beyond the ken of 
 the narrow-minded Fathers ; while Gibbon, though 
 forced at times to compliment the hero, turns with 
 comparative coldness from the enthusiast; and 
 Strauss, who has made Christ a mythical evolution 
 and evaporated the Glad Tidings of Great Joy, 
 sneers at the reactionist of those days as he sneers 
 at the conservatives of these. Of parallels a mur 
 rain on the man who invented them! there is 
 absolutely no end. At one time he is a Hadrian, 
 with a shade less of this and a shade more of that; 
 at another a Marcus Aurelius, with a little more 
 Cynicism and a little less Stoicism. Now he is 
 compared to James the First of England, the pedant 
 on the throne ; now to Mr. Carlyle's Friedrich and 
 other people's Frederick the Great, the warrior, the 
 statesman, the infidel ; now to Napoleon the Third, 
 the crowned adventurer. A Catholic writer sug 
 gests a parallel with Gustavus Adolphus, the Pro 
 testant hero ; and worse than all, a clever pamphlet 
 by Strauss, entitled ' The Romanticist on the 
 Throne', was intended to hold up to ridicule, in 
 the person of Julian, His Majesty of Vinous 
 Memory the late King of Prussia, Frederick Wil- 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 359 
 
 Ham the Fourth. Poor old King Clicquot! as 
 Punch used to call him who can bear him any 
 malice now ? A good, amiable, accomplished gen 
 tleman, witty, too, it is said, after the Teutonic 
 standard, and, in fact, an excellent fellow until he 
 fell into the weakness of prevaricating about consti 
 tutions and drinking too much champagne cer 
 tainly his sad end stops the mouth of the critic. 
 American clergymen were always charmed with 
 his pious sentiments ; and, though he was a trifle 
 too High Church for some of them, we can imagine 
 with what horror all of them would regard such a 
 parallelism as Strauss has suggested. But though 
 Strauss's work is adroitly done, his success is indif 
 ferent ; for Julian's nature is too decided, too mas 
 culine, to be caricatured into any resemblance to 
 the flabby texture of Frederick William. It is one 
 thing to be a patron of mediaeval fripperies in reli 
 gion, in government and in art ; another thing to 
 attempt the upholding of the whole structure of a 
 national life of centuries : and this effort was made 
 by Julian, made consciously, made fruitlessly, made 
 for the last time. And just here lies the charm that 
 attracts the student of history to the scrutiny of 
 that problematic character. The man himself is 
 repellent; the more we study him and the more 
 we admire him, the less we love him ; the more we 
 pity, the less we embrace. It is only as the last 
 champion of a great system that we can sympathize 
 with him as we sympathize with the dying throes 
 of the Empire. For, in his eyes, the old religion 
 of the Roman state was the mainstay of its exist 
 ence ; and foreseeing as he did the destruction of 
 
360 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 the whole fabric, he rises to heroic dignity in his 
 struggle with the inevitable. That he challenged 
 destiny but heightens the interest. The match, 
 which Seneca deemed worthy of a god, is not 'a 
 good man struggling with adversity ', but ' a brave 
 man pitted against ill-fortune especially if he is 
 the one that gave the challenge ' Vir fortis cum 
 fortuna mala compositus utique si et provocavit. In 
 this voluntary duel the imperial actor stands alone. 
 Himself alone in earnest, he tries in vain to make 
 himself believe that those who claim to be his 
 supporters are in earnest too ; and this wilful self- 
 deception is not the least tragic feature in this 
 strange drama. But, unlike those great masterpieces 
 of Greek art which agitate the warring elements of 
 merciless fate and stubborn will only to reconcile 
 them at last in a divine harmony, Julian's tragedy 
 has no peaceful close. There is no divided right 
 and wrong here, for the power of Christianity was 
 neither dead nor asleep even in that inane period of 
 phrase-makers and trope-mongers ; and if Julian 
 was not a Christian, it was because he did not like 
 to retain God in his knowledge. The Empire was 
 his God. 'A traitor to his God ', says Prudentius, 
 ' though none to Rome '; 
 
 Perfidus ille Deo quamvis non perfidus Urbi 
 
 little understanding that Julian deemed an allegi 
 ance to the God of the Christians incompatible with 
 the service of the Eternal City. But we are far 
 from asserting that this view exhausts the signifi 
 cance of Julian as an historical character ; and if it 
 did, the maintenance of such a theme would require 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 361 
 
 a space disproportioned to any possible interest on 
 the part of our readers. It is not the political but 
 the religious side of the controversy that presents 
 the most piquant situations ; and our little essay, 
 written * without anger or partiality', is not well 
 adapted to tickle the itching ears of religious dis 
 putants. We have no desire to use Julian's sceptre 
 as a ferule to rap the Fathers over the knuckles, 
 nor shall we defile Julian's philosophic beard in 
 order to cast discredit on conservatism. Simply 
 wishing ourselves to know a little more about 
 Julian than the ordinary manuals furnish, we have 
 made from time to time holiday incursions into the 
 debateable ground of his age ; and if the reader 
 imagines that the results of these expeditions have 
 a meaning for the present times, he is welcome to 
 be filled with his own devices. 
 
 The period in Julian's life at which we have intro 
 duced him cannot be despatched with a passing 
 notice. Our maturity is not all; and the clear 
 record of riper years has no such charm as the dim 
 shadows that genius has now and then evoked 
 from the recollections of early childhood. Indeed, 
 the genuine life of a child would be the greatest 
 accession to our knowledge of human character and 
 motives ; but the child has not the power of repre 
 sentation, and the man has lost the material: So 
 the autobiography of Goethe, in which he endeavors 
 to reproduce the first years of his life, gives us, 
 after all, nothing but an idealized picture. Thus it 
 is that we remain strangers to ourselves ; and we 
 may each say as Austin said of his youth : Behold 
 my infancy is dead and yet I live. If we could but 
 
362 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 read the true record of the six long years which 
 Julian spent in that Cappadocian castle, we should 
 understand far better his subsequent course. We 
 can only gather from his own writings that he 
 looked back with horror upon those days of dreary 
 confinement those years without playmates. Not 
 that his seclusion was absolute. He had one com 
 panion, his brother Gallus, and no end of attendants 
 as befitted his rank ; but those attendants, under 
 the guise of servants, were spies and enemies, and 
 he was too old and too shrewd not to suspect. But 
 whilst Julian became morbid, Gallus became feroc 
 ious, and his wild nature was embittered into sav 
 agery by his long imprisonment. The picturesque 
 historian of the period always speaks of him as an 
 animal now as a lion battening on corpses, now as 
 a serpent writhing in impotent rage against the fatal 
 missiles ; and before he left his cage he doubtless 
 gave signal proofs of his hunger for mischief. Still 
 Julian felt his kindred. It was not only the soft 
 hair that they had in common, but the hot blood 
 also ; and the harshest acts of Julian's reign were 
 caused by the desire of avenging his brother's mur 
 der. The teachers appointed to instruct him for 
 his education was not wholly neglected in his 
 prison were drillmasters, whose office it was to 
 prepare the young prince for the monastic profes 
 sion to which he was destined ; and the subtleties 
 of theological dogmas, and the minute details of the 
 martyrologies, were as little to his taste then as the 
 catechism is to that of most unregenerate boys at 
 the present day. Much of his time was doubtless 
 spent in private study ; and we gather from one of 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 363 
 
 his letters that he was in the habit of borrowing 
 and copying books. But still much of his time 
 he was left to himself most dangerous company 
 for his ardent mind and to such consolation as 
 nature might afford. Unfortunately, the wild and 
 barren steppes that surrounded his prison could 
 only enhance his misery ; and if every line of Char 
 lotte Bronte's writings reflects the dreary landscape 
 of her Yorkshire home, and Tennyson is incompre 
 hensible without the fens of Lincolnshire, it is not 
 altogether fanciful in us to assert that we can see 
 and feel the desolation of Cappadocia in the hard 
 ness of a style which all the acquired graces of 
 classic expression could never soften. Nor is it 
 improbable that by the sky-gazing and star-gazing 
 of these six long years his mind was prepared for 
 the reception of a mystic religion of light, which is 
 variously symbolized in his writings. Perhaps, too, 
 he spent no small part of his prison life in thinking 
 over the past, which in his case must have cast an 
 ominous shadow into his future. Let us sum up 
 that past. 
 
 Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, 
 was, as is well known, a sorry Christian in theory 
 and in practice. He has his admirers, doubtless 
 who has not ? but there are few who will go the 
 length of John Fox in praising 'the noble Acts and 
 heavenly Vertus of this most famus Emperor, a 
 singular spectacle', quoth John/ for all Christian 
 Princes to behold and imitate, and worthy of Per 
 petual Memory in all congregations of Christian 
 Saints.' A singular spectacle, indeed, if history is 
 to be half trusted: a Christian from policy, his 
 
364 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 religion, such as it was, tainted with heathenish 
 superstition ; a pagan pontiff and a Christian cate 
 chumen with a stain of blood on his hands such 
 as would almost make Christian and pagan alike 
 despair of forgiveness. This singular spectacle 
 this great and good man died in the year 337, and 
 left his memory to be canonized by the Christians, 
 deified by the pagans, and his kingdom to be 
 divided among his three sons. But the division 
 was ushered in with blood ; and Constantius, who 
 finally became ruler of the whole empire, put the 
 father, uncle, and eldest brother of Julian to death. 
 Julian's father was the half-brother of Constantine 
 the Great, the adherent of Constantine the younger ; 
 either count of the indictment would have been 
 enough in those remorseless times, in which Ori 
 ental cruelty was grafted on Roman and bore 
 abundant fruit. Gallus and Julian would have 
 shared the fate of their brother; but Gallus was 
 saved by sickness, Julian by his tender years. Born 
 at Constantinople and hence he calls himself with 
 his usual affectation a Thracian born in 331, he 
 was little more than six years old at the time of the 
 massacre, but not too young to have some appre 
 ciation of the misfortune which had beiallen him. 
 His mother had died when he was a baby, and now 
 fatherless too, he was left to the tender mercies of a 
 man who was weak, and, by reason of his weakness, 
 cruel. True, Constantius has been unfortunate in 
 his biographers. Pagans abused him ; he was a 
 Christian. Christians abused him ; he was a her 
 etic. But indeed there is little good in the man. 
 He was feeble and vain, false and tyrannical. A 
 
THE. EMPEROR JULIAN. 365 
 
 certain kingly dignity he had, a certain grace of 
 manner which was denied to his successor ; but his 
 end was not sufficiently tragic to save his memory, 
 and every passer-by flings a stone at him. At first 
 Constantius did not give himself much concern 
 about the education of his young cousin, who was 
 confided to the care of a domestic tutor, Mardonius 
 by name, a man whose influence determined the 
 direction of Julian's mind. Years afterwards the 
 Emperor attributed his love for all that was Greek, 
 for the Greek language, philosophy, and religion, 
 to the instructions of his humble teacher, who 
 guided him through the picture-gallery of Homer, 
 who taught his boyish imagination to struggle 
 up towards the dreams of Plato, who made him 
 familiar with the undying forms of Hellenic myth 
 ology, and regulated his conduct according to the 
 precepts of pagan morality. He was a Greek in his 
 feelings and a, Greekling in his manners. If he was 
 ostentatious and talkative, so were the Greeks. For 
 this is the great defect of the Greek character as 
 viewed with modern eyes. Their souls seem to live 
 out of door ; and as legislation is an index and not 
 a remedy of depravity, so the numerous precepts 
 of Greek philosophers show only that the disease 
 was common, not that it was ever cured. 
 
 After some years of this happy neglect, Con 
 stantius bethought him of the boys, who were now 
 becoming old enough to attract attention as pos 
 sible successors to the Empire, and relegated them 
 to the castle in Cappadocia, where we found them. 
 But as time went on and it became evident that 
 Constantius could have no hope of heirs by his 
 
366 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 wife, the Emperor began to regard his childlessness 
 as the punishment of his crimes; and in 351 he 
 showed his purpose to make some amends to the 
 children of his murdered kinsman by opening their 
 prison doors and appointing Callus Caesar. Callus 
 went out of his cage, with his naturally fine appe 
 tite for blood whetted by his long confinement, 
 devouring and to devour. Julian went first to 
 Constantinople and thence to Nicomedea, a famous 
 city on the high-road to the East, where the Ori 
 ental element mingled with the Greek in philo 
 sophy, religion and manners. It was here that the 
 Neo-Platonic school of philosophy had one of its 
 most flourishing seats ; and here Julian, already 
 imbued with the love of Greek literature, and weary 
 of the letter, and rebellious against the spirit, of the 
 Christian religion, threw himself with all his native 
 fervor into the arms of a system which, unlike the 
 Christian, violated none of the traditions of the 
 past, and yet addressed itself to the deeper wants 
 of a nature which those traditions could not satisfy. 
 For who in that age could be satisfied with the dead 
 figures of the old mythology ? Who believed in 
 the jocund deities of Homer, or the starch personi 
 fications of the Romans ? All but the names had 
 been borne away by the tide that began its sweep 
 with the conquests of Alexander and reached its 
 flood with the advent of our Saviour. The Mer 
 cury to whom Julian prayed so fervently after his 
 conversion was a far different character from the 
 huckstering God of Traffic of the Italians, or even 
 the more mystic Guide of Souls of the Greeks. 
 Everything is spiritualized, etherealized. A new 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 367 
 
 significance is imparted to every old observance. 
 A new light illumes the beautiful monuments of 
 Greek poetry. Opaque before, they are translucent 
 now, to those that have eyes to see ; and so Homer, 
 no longer a master-singer merely, becomes a mystic 
 oracle, full of meanings too deep for unhallowed 
 eyes, of philosophy too high for even Plato's reach. 
 Nay, in their zeal these allegorical interpreters 
 often make savage assaults on the very man from 
 whom the Neoplatonists derived their name for 
 banishing Homer from his ideal republic. Of 
 course everything that was symbolical before be 
 came doubly symbolical now. The charge of 
 idolatry which the Fathers urged with so much 
 vehemence and persistency, these illuminated 
 pagans laughed to scorn. ' No wonder ', says Por 
 phyry, the most profound and philosophical among 
 the heathen controversialists, ' no wonder that the 
 ignorant regard the sacred images of the gods 
 as stocks and stones ; just as the unlettered see 
 nothing in monuments but stones, in tablets 
 nothing but wood, in books nothing but paper.' 
 How much of the transcendental doctrines of this 
 mystic school was due to the general Oriental influ 
 ence, how much to a direct incorporation of Chris 
 tian ideas, we cannot stop to examine. Enough 
 that the system appealed to all the elements of 
 Julian's nature uninformed by the spirit of the 
 Christian faith, although he had followed ' the way ' 
 mechanically for twenty years. We need not sup 
 pose that Julian was led to renounce the Christian 
 religion in a childish pet, simply because it was the 
 creed of his oppressor ; or because of his disgust 
 
368 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 at his Christian catechists ; or on account of the 
 squabbles between the various Christian sects. 
 Opposition to Christianity as such, no matter in 
 what form, has its source deep in the human heart ; 
 and the deeper the heart, the more earnest the nature, 
 the further down we must sink the shaft of our 
 investigation. Julian was a thorough Greek in his 
 pride ; and the doctrine of the Cross could never 
 have been other than foolishness to him. 
 
 In addition to all this, a powerful personal influ 
 ence was brought to bear on a mind already pre 
 pared for the reception of the mystic doctrines of 
 the Neo-Platonic school. Julian fell into the hands 
 of a man as enigmatical as himself; a philosopher 
 and a charlatan, a man who condescended to work 
 miracles like Cagliostro, and who showed in the 
 midst of tortures the composure of a St. Lawrence. 
 The ascendancy which this Maximus acquired over 
 Julian's mind he retained during all the memorable 
 career of his neophyte, and despite his insolence 
 and his avarice, was, to the last, a master-spirit in 
 Julian's eyes. The stories of the magic rites into 
 which Julian plunged so eagerly have little interest 
 except as so many illustrations the more of the 
 utter desperateness of the old religion. The gen 
 eral tendency to fantastic superstition had shown 
 itself long before, even in those early days when 
 the Christian faith, in the eyes of men, was only 
 one of the countless foreign religions with which 
 Orontes and the Nile had flooded the city of the 
 Tiber. The astrologers, the magicians, the fortune 
 tellers and miracle-mongers of all sorts become 
 of more importance for history as the old belief 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 369 
 
 dies out ; for they supplied some food at least for 
 the cravings of the atheistic world; and many men, 
 like Julian, mistook for the pious impulse which 
 springs from conviction, the spurious excitement 
 which only over-persuades the dissatisfied heart. 
 
 And so Julian became a convert to the ' old ' faith 
 a faith old as error, and so far ' old ' but so 
 manipulated, so interpenetrated with foreign ideas, 
 that Julian's orthodoxy would not pass muster in 
 a synod of heathen priest^ of the best ages. Of 
 course, this great moral catastrophe, which took 
 place when he was twenty years old, is a signal for 
 explosive rhetoric. The Christian fine writer tells 
 us that Julian washed off the sacred stream of bap 
 tism with the impure blood of his sacrifices ; the 
 heathen fine writer tells us that he washed off the 
 salt water of the Christian doctrine with the pure 
 spring-water of true philosophy ; and neither Gre 
 gory nor Libanius would have had it otherwise, for 
 neither of them would have lost a figure of speech 
 or a Platonic reminiscence for a kingdom. A hollow 
 age at best ; and hence, doubtless, the mild judgment 
 of so many in this day on the few who in that day 
 really meant what they said. Julian's conversion was 
 a secret that every one knew who cared to know. 
 
 Gallus, it is said, heard the report, and manifested 
 great distress at the lapse of his brother ; and we 
 find that, although Julian conformed to the external 
 observance of the Christian religion for nine long 
 years afterward, and practised his heathen rites in 
 private only, his personal opinions were generally 
 known. 
 
 It might seem strange that Constantius did not 
 
370 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 interfere ; but doubtless in the plenitude of his self- 
 conceit he despised the dreaming boy, and after 
 wards, when the dreamer became Caesar, interference 
 would have become dangerous, and he contented 
 himself with sundry spiteful edicts against apostates, 
 some of which Julian himself was forced to sign. 
 
 At this stage he interposed only to forbid his 
 attendance on the lectures of Libanius, a super- 
 elegant sounding-board of a man, who was regarded 
 as a prodigy in those d#ys, and finds admirers of 
 his style even now. And yet whips could hardly 
 force most men of our generation to read Libanius 
 except for Julian's sake; and Julian's own writings 
 have a pith and marrow denied to the compositions 
 of the shallow rhetorician, whose lectures his in 
 fatuated admirer managed to study, despite the 
 Emperor's prohibition, in the form of manuscript 
 notes. But all such evasions have a deleterious effect 
 on the character ; and even the most transparent 
 disguise is a degradation to a man. 
 
 In an elaborate defence of his course, which he 
 addressed with a characteristic anachronism to the 
 senate and people of Athens, Julian represents his 
 whole line of conduct toward Constantius as a well- 
 considered plan to escape death that he might serve 
 the gods. In that sophistic age and under those 
 sophistic influences we cannot wonder that he 
 thought the crown of the Caesars cheaply bought 
 by servile flattery and fawning; in that age nay, 
 in what age ? 
 
 A document of this policy of self-abasement 
 remains in a grand oration by Julian in honor of 
 Constantius ; and the author doubtless gloried in 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 3/1 
 
 the elaboration of so fine an essay on so mean a 
 subject. A modern in like circumstances would 
 have destroyed the memento of his own humiliation, 
 but Julian was too much of a rhetorician to throw 
 away so pretty a piece of work. 
 
 While one brother was finding his way back to 
 the fold of the old religion, the other, a devoted 
 adherent of the new faith, was trying his hand on the 
 work of government. His fierce nature was linked 
 to one scarcely less fierce, in the person of his wife 
 Constantia ; and this royal pair ranged their domain 
 for victims of their insatiable hunger. Constantius 
 watched with concern this growing appetite, and 
 fearing lest the next lordly dish should be himself, 
 entrapped the handsome wild beast, who was as dull 
 as he was cruel, and put him to death like a com 
 mon malefactor in 354. ' So perished Callus,' says 
 the historian of the times, ' by an untimely death, 
 and weary of himself in his twenty-ninth year.' A 
 fearful epitaph : weary of himself in his twenty-ninth 
 year ! ' an epitaph which foolish young men may 
 covet, but none other. The death of Callus made 
 Julian the heir-apparent to the imperial throne, and 
 from that time forth his course became more difficult. 
 To arouse suspicion was to invoke his doom ; and 
 his conduct had already given rise to the gravest 
 doubts in the mind of the Emperor. Contrary to 
 orders, he had gone to meet his brother Callus ; 
 and those who were parties to the murder were 
 eager to remove the future avenger of blood. Julian 
 was summoned from his literary studies and his 
 magical rites, to the imperial court at Milan. 
 Surrounded by spies and enemies, ridiculed for his 
 
3/2 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 awkward demeanor, forced to suppress his mental 
 agony, forced to bow before the murderer of his father 
 and his brother, Julian's life at court must have been 
 a hideous torture. But even here he found a friend 
 the beautiful and intellectual Eusebia, the wife of 
 the Emperor. The pent-up tenderness of her heart, 
 which found no sympathy in the cold nature of 
 Constantius and yearned in vain for children, took 
 its course toward the young kinsman. Her love 
 for Julian was lofty and pure; that it was selfish 
 even to jealousy seems not improbable ; but that it 
 ever led her to the crime of tampering with the health 
 of Julian's wife is a monstrous conjecture which 
 few consent to entertain. Eusebia's affection was 
 returned by Julian, and his praises of her, which are 
 still on record, came from the heart. She pleaded his 
 cause with the Emperor, she obtained pardon for 
 his disobedience, and gave him in her fellow-feeling 
 with his passion for reading a handsome collec 
 tion of books. But Julian did not remain long at 
 Milan to endure the mockery of the courtiers or to 
 receive the consolations of Eusebia. His life was 
 not safe there, surrounded as he was by men whose 
 interest lay in destroying him, and he was removed 
 to the village of Como, where he remained in honor 
 able captivity for six months. At last, by the 
 intercession of Eusebia, he was set free and obtained 
 permission to prosecute his studies at Athens. 
 
 At Athens Julian was in a congenial atmosphere. 
 He was a bookman from head to foot. He prided 
 himself on his inky nails ; he boasted that he had 
 read as much as any one of his age. In him the 
 bookworm never dies. He gives away a pretty 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 373 
 
 little farm, and in an exquisite description of the 
 view which it commands, he does not forget to 
 mention how the prospect will refresh the eye in the 
 intervals of studying books. He chides the Alex 
 andrians severely for their murder of George 
 perhaps secretly pleased at such an occasion for 
 eloquence but in his righteous indignation he does 
 not forget George's books; and the prefect of 
 Egypt is especially charged to get those books, for 
 ' some love horses, and some love birds, and some 
 love wild animals, but I of a little boy have had an 
 ingrained weakness for books. Get them all 
 Galilaean and all. Let George's notary go scot-free, 
 if he tracks out the books. If he play the rascal and 
 find them not to the torture with him.' Quocunque 
 modo books. Ah ! deep is the significance of those 
 lines by one of the world's ' illustrious ignoramuses ' : 
 
 Study is like the heaven's glorious sun 
 That will not be deep searched by saucy looks ; 
 Small have continual plodders ever won, 
 Save base authority, from others' books. 
 
 And not only did he love books, but his language 
 was book language. His Greek is too artificial, too 
 reminiscential. His prodigious memory seems to 
 have held in solution all Plato ; and his reading 
 precipitated itself upon his thinking, so that his style 
 resembles the seamed and cracking paint on the 
 face of some excitable old belle. His pedantry is 
 undeniable. He is as full of saws and proverbs as 
 Sancho Panza ; as full of literary geography as fifth- 
 rate scribblers. Sensible people now-a-days say 
 Shakespeare and not the ' Bard of Avon '; Dante, 
 
374 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 and not the ' Poet-Exile of Florence '; but if Julian 
 were so unfortunate as to be alive now, he would 
 call Boker 'the Bard of Philadelphia', and Walt 
 Whitman 'the Yawper of Washington ', just as he 
 calls Callimachus the Poet of Cyrene, and Herod 
 otus the Thurian Historian. Even his best letters 
 are disfigured by allusions. A very pretty note of 
 consolation cold heathen comfort at best is iced 
 by the sleeping draught which Helen prepared for 
 Telemachus in the Odyssey. He sends some dried 
 Damascus figs to a friend only a miserable hundred 
 and makes up for the meagreness of the gift by 
 the bulkiness of his eulogy on figs, wherein he 
 proves very satisfactorily by Aristophanes, Herodotus 
 and Homer, that figs are sweet; by Hippocrates, 
 that they are readily digested ; by Theophrastus, that 
 they are easy to graft on ; by Aristotle, that they 
 are a preventive of poison ; until we are fain to cry 
 out a fig for Aristophanes, Herodotus and com 
 pany ! and do not stop to read his ingenious praise 
 of the number 100, which he shows to be a most 
 excellent number, by the testimony of Homer and 
 Pindar and Simonides and the rest of them. He 
 goes into a garden, a respectable garden, but instead 
 of saying that it is a respectable garden, he says 
 that it is more like the garden of Laertes than 
 the garden of Alcinous. Anywhere you can find 
 an admirable compendium of Greek literature and 
 mythology. So he has crammed into a letter of 
 some fifty lines, I. Ulysses; 2. Telemachus; 3. 
 Pindar; 4. Democritus ; 5. Orpheus; 6. Argus ; 7. 
 Proteus; 8. ^Esculapius; 9. Homer; 10. Jupiter 
 Servator; II. Hermes Logios ; 12. Plato, and 13. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 375 
 
 Socrates. Nor is he pedantic only. A large part 
 of his letters are addressed to sophists, as one 
 should say, professors ; and in these he exults and 
 abounds in affectations and extravagances of all 
 sorts. Such compliments ! such exclamations ! 
 ' O speech ! O genius ! O intellect ! O distribu 
 tion ! O argument ! O arrangement ! O introduc 
 tion ! O language ! O harmony ! O composition ! ' 
 O Gemini ! O Julian ! His letters to lamblichus 
 are almost furibund in their enthusiasm. 1 'As 
 soon as I recognized Sopater, I jumped up and 
 made for him and threw my arms round his neck 
 and wept for joy, for I knew he had a letter for me 
 from you. And when I got it, I kissed it and 
 put it up to my eyes, and I held on to it like grim 
 death, fearing, as it were, that while I was reading it, 
 your dear image would flit from my soul ' and the 
 rest of it. ' I would rather receive one letter from 
 lamblichus than all the gold of Lydia.' ' I should 
 like to pin myself to your shirt, and never no 
 never desert my lamblichus.' But fine writing was 
 the disease of the age; and it is no little to Julian's 
 credit that there is so much sense even in his most 
 ornate flourishes, and that we find in his works so 
 goodly a number of simple, unaffected passages. His 
 rhetorical letters are his worst compositions by far ; 
 and if he could have foreseen what a handle would 
 be made of some of his figures of speech, the number 
 of those simple, unaffected passages would have 
 been greatly increased, to the relief of his readers 
 and the benefit of his own reputation. For instance, 
 
 1 The genuineness of Julian's letters to lamblichus has been 
 vigorously attacked of late. B. L. G. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 in that extravagant letter to lamblichus there is a 
 sentence which has given the enemies of Julian 
 abundant occasion to blaspheme. It runs, ' When 
 the foster-father of my babies came home again, I 
 began another letter to you '; and we must confess 
 that such an expression as ' the foster-father of my 
 babies ' looks very ugly for a man who had no 
 children by his wife, and whose chastity was the 
 admiration of his age. The plea has been set up 
 that this foster-father or keeper of his babies was his 
 confidential secretary, and that his babies were the 
 children of his brain ; and though Dr. Auer rejects 
 the interpretation as revolting to common sense, we 
 cannot but think that it is very much in consonance 
 with the cheap rhetoric of that time and of all time. 
 Who started the figure it is impossible to tell. It 
 is found in Aristophanes, who compares his first 
 comedies with love-children ; it is found in Plato ; 
 and that this very expression of Julian's was con 
 sidered a very dainty one is shown by a spurious 
 letter in which it recurs. Surely the trope is not 
 dead even now, as many ' prolific pens ' and ' teem 
 ing brains' testify to the present day. Julian was 
 the very man to speak of his books and scriptiun- 
 culae of all sorts in that affectionate vein ; and we 
 seem to hear him say, in the words of Euripides 
 read backward by Madame Cornelia Gracchi 
 
 ' These be my treasures in the stead of puling brats.' 1 
 
 And, what is singularly to the point, Julian's friend 
 
 1 This is a Montaignesque perversion of Heracleidae 591 : 
 rdd avrl Traldav fori IJLOL Ket/zqXia, for which I desire to make 
 atonement by anything short of giving it up. B. L. G. 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 377 
 
 and eulogist and idol, Libanius, speaks of him as 
 the ' father of many discourses '. 
 
 But, for fear of losing ourselves in the detailed 
 discussion of Julian the author, let us turn again to 
 Julian the man, and see whether we can recall the 
 image of him as he lived and moved before the eyes 
 of the world. There is no lack of material. We 
 have numerous coins of his vice-regency and of 
 his reign, and three pen-and-ink sketches, one by 
 himself, one by an admirer, one by an old school 
 fellow and enemy. The coins at least as figured 
 in the books to which we have access are puzzling. 
 On one, his head is long and narrow ; on another, 
 full and broad. On one, his nose is thin and 
 straight ; on another, massive and crooked. Spirit 
 and expression are sought in vain. The profile of 
 the heathen Emperor glares as vacantly at nothing, 
 as the image of any of the Georges, or the death-in- 
 life of an old-fashioned daguerreotype. If we turn 
 from the coins to the descriptions, we find that 
 while the general likeness is preserved, the expres 
 sion is changed according to the temper of the 
 author. Of least value is Julian's own description 
 an affected caricature of himself in which he talks 
 about his beard, as if it were a new thing with him. 
 The beard was the badge of the Greek and of the 
 philosopher. As such, it was worn by Hadrian 
 with the unphilosophic side-motive of hiding his 
 warty face ; as such, it was worn by Julian. Lu- 
 cian, the great jester of antiquity, abounds in jeers 
 at the immense volumes of hair which the would-be 
 wise of his day thought it necessary to lug about 
 with them in attestation of their sapience; and 
 
3/8 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 Julian's satirical pamphlet, in which his self-carica 
 ture is found, bears the title of ' Misopogon ' or 
 ' Beard-hater '. To begin, then, as Julian himself 
 would have had us begin, with the insignia of his 
 philosophic rank, Julian's beard was coarse and 
 shaggy, but his hair was singularly fine ; his nose 
 was straight, but his nostrils were wide ; his eyes 
 were of piercing brilliancy, but restless, uneasy; 
 his face was intellectual, but his lower lip hung 
 down, and his mouth was distorted by extravagant 
 grimaces ; his neck was massive, but it rolled 
 disjointedly from side to side; his shoulders were 
 broad and muscular, but they shrugged perpetually ; 
 his trunk was well proportioned, but his stature 
 was low, his feet unsteady and his knees knocked. 
 His voice was bad, his enunciation interrupted by 
 gasps for breath, his speech confused and nervous, 
 his words tumbled over one another, his sentences 
 were half-finished, his questions contradictory. In 
 this description, which combines the portraits 
 drawn by the Christian bishop and the heathen his 
 torian, the irregular character of Julian is singularly 
 reflected ; the union of vigor with weakness, soft 
 ness with coarseness, beauty with ugliness. His 
 body lacked grace as his mind lacked poetry. 
 There is something hard and cold in most of his 
 writings, as there was something angular and 
 constrained i n most of his actions. A creature of 
 contrasts, without such balancing he cannot be 
 represented; with all this balancing, how can he 
 be understood ? 
 
 In the autumn of the year in which he went to 
 Athens (355) Julian was recalled to Milan. The 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 3/9 
 
 condition of the western portion of the Empire 
 was critical ; the Germans had risen in arms ; the 
 presence of some higher personage than a mere 
 general was deemed necessary ; Eusebia advocated 
 with feminine tact the elevation of Julian, and 
 Constantius proclaimed his cousin Csesar. At the 
 same time, in pursuance of a fatuous policy which 
 is as perennial as stupidity itself, he endeavored 
 to bind Julian to the throne by the marriage -tie 
 and presented him with a wife. The bride selected 
 was the Emperor's sister Helena, a maiden lady 
 somewhat older than her bridegroom. The mar 
 riage was not a very happy one; Julian's nature 
 was rhetorical rather than poetical, and he had too 
 little creative imagination to appreciate the charms 
 of the smaller sex ; and his wife bore him no 
 living child, and seems to have spent a large 
 portion of her time away from him at court in 
 Milan. Julian accepted his bride philosophically; 
 not so the Caesarship. When he assumed the 
 purple, the Homeric oracle gave the ominous re 
 sponse: 
 
 ' Seized by impurpled death and the grasp of a violent Dooms 
 day ';! 
 
 and at every stage of his journey toward his new 
 destination he heard fresh tidings of misfortune ; 
 and the fear began to grow strong within him that 
 he had been sent to meet his death. But after all it 
 was in Gaul and Germany that he acquired his best 
 titles to greatness. As first his want of experience 
 forced him to confine himself to a subordinate 
 
 1 II. xvi. 334 : eXXa/3e vropffivpfos da.va.Tos /cat polpa Kparairj. 
 
380 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 position in the council of war, but he worked his 
 way up by assiduous study and constant practice 
 to the front rank. It is not the man of routine 
 that succeeds best as a general ; and when grand 
 combinations are necessary, native genius tells. 
 Julian's bravery is unquestioned. Why should 
 anything so common be so often questioned ? The 
 type of it was that of a Prince Eugene rather than 
 that of a Marlborough; or still better, it was the 
 student type, so terrible because inspired by such 
 exalted models. One property of a great com 
 mander he possessed in an eminent degree. His 
 military movements were as rapid as thought, and 
 his combinations were carried out with a speed that 
 stupefied the rebellious barbarians. A reputed 
 dreamer, he showed by his minute attention to the 
 details of the service that he understood the impor 
 tance of thorough discipline, and the unpractical 
 scholar became a first-class drill-sergeant. Nor 
 was he less respected among the people he was 
 sent to govern than among those he was sent to 
 subdue ; and in after days he used to sigh for his 
 Kelts and his Germans, who made his name great, 
 who were not offended at his eccentricities, who 
 valued him for what he was. His Kelts and Ger 
 mans indeed ! Depend upon it, such a love of 
 savages means nothing more than a hate of one's 
 own people, or, at best, a factitious admiration of 
 primitive culture, such as literary gentlemen have 
 always had a way of getting up. So, for instance, 
 Thucydides pets the Scythians, Tacitus extols the 
 Germans, Chateaubriand admires the red man, and 
 Charles Sumner stalks on his rhetorical stilts at the 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 381 
 
 head of the procession to the shrine of Sambo. 
 Julian's longing for his Kelts and his Germans was 
 purely rhetorical. 
 
 His mode of life was simple to ostentation, and 
 he has himself trumpeted his hard couch, his cold 
 room, his negligent attire, his vegetable diet. But 
 he has left to others the praise of his real virtues. 
 True, those virtues were not spontaneous what 
 virtues are? and like all his fine qualities seem 
 to be studied ; but the chastity of his life and his 
 ardent love of justice ought to receive their due 
 meed of praise, though the one has been assailed 
 and the other was at times beclouded. ' Who shall 
 be punished, if it be enough to deny ? ' asked an 
 impatient prosecutor. ' Who shall escape, if it be 
 enough to accuse ? ' replied Julian. But Julian's 
 popularity in the army was due not only to his 
 justice, but to his beneficence. In his blindness, he 
 could see but few good points in the madness of the 
 Galilseans, and among those were their charity and 
 hospitality, which he emulated himself and desired 
 his followers to emulate. He watched over his 
 soldiers as if they had been his children, and they 
 loved him as a father. How much popularity- 
 hunting, how much insincerity there was in all this, 
 we shall not undertake to say : our best qualities 
 do not bear analysis, and if it is charged that 
 Julian prided himself on tinsel virtues as the Byzan 
 tine emperors prided themselves on their gilt-paper 
 money, we can only answer that all spiritual pride 
 does its banking business on a fictitious capital. 
 
 Julian acquitted himself well of the task imposed 
 on him, and at the same time managed to avoid 
 
382 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 giving any cause of complaint to the jealous and 
 exacting Emperor. He bent his impatient soul to 
 the duty of reporting plans and awaiting instruc 
 tions. His most brilliant successes were attributed 
 to the genius of the Emperor and the good fortune 
 of the Caesar, and the assassin and the spy dogged 
 him throughout his career. Can we wonder that 
 his activity under all this constraint was feverish, 
 that the flush of victory was the flush of disease ? 
 Angry with himself at his miscalculation of Julian's 
 powers, and incensed with Julian for presuming to 
 be successful, Constantius endeavored, in accord 
 ance with the tortuous policy of the age, to injure 
 his viceroy through the army. He withheld the 
 rewards for which Julian had pledged himself, he 
 impeded promotions that had been promised, and 
 finally ordered off to the East a large portion of the 
 forces that had enlisted under Julian's assurances to 
 serve only in the West. The soldiers were indig 
 nant and showed signs of rebellion. Julian urged 
 them to remain true to their duty. Was he honest 
 in his endeavor, or did he incite the mutiny which 
 he tried to quell ? At all events, only a part 
 obeyed his orders ; the rest revolted and proclaimed 
 Julian Emperor. This memorable event took place 
 in the winter of 360-1, in Julian's dear little town 
 of Paris, of which he has given us a description, of 
 a simplicity that is charming, even if it be affected. 
 It is built, he tells us, on a modest island in the 
 river Seine, and connected with the opposite shores 
 by wooden bridges. An equable stream, that river 
 Seine, flowing summer and winter without much 
 change. Its water is clear and sweet, and the 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 383 
 
 simple inhabitants use it as their beverage. The 
 climate is mild and pleasant ; good grapes grow on 
 the islet, and some luxurious people have intro 
 duced fig-trees, which they protect by matting from 
 the winter's cold. This was Julian's darling Lu- 
 tetia how changed at present we need not say ; 
 changed but not ungrateful : and many of our 
 readers have doubtless stood in the Thermes de 
 Julien and tried to reproduce that stormy scene, 
 when armed men surrounded the palace and called 
 forth their general. All night long the clashing of 
 arms and the hoarse cries of the soldiery roared 
 round those walls, and there toward the break of 
 day the last of the famous line of Constantius 
 Chlorus was proclaimed Emperor. We do not 
 pretend to say that Julian was entirely guiltless of 
 this sedition. The conventional signs of reluctance 
 to accept the diadem prove nothing; but we must 
 consider that the chances were against him, and 
 that the outbreak of the plot was premature ; unless 
 indeed we accept the baseless suggestion that 
 Julian had made his preparations to remove Con 
 stantius by poison. At all events, the step once taken 
 there was no retreat. The fate of his father and 
 his brother warned him that no mercy was to be 
 expected except such strained mercy as fear might 
 extort, and Julian's confidence increased with his 
 strength. At first he behaved modestly and made 
 modest claims, but Constantius rejected his pro 
 posals with indignation, and prepared to return 
 from the East and crush the rebel in person. Open 
 war was declared. Julian met with little resistance 
 in his southward progress, but suddenly changed 
 
384 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 his course and struck across, by a bold march, to the 
 banks of the Danube, and effected a junction with his 
 lieutenants at Sirmium in Dacia. Here he lingered 
 irresolute ; the great captain, philosopher, and pro 
 fessor, parleying with the messengers of Constan- 
 tius, writing elegant essays to dead nationalities, 
 and consulting the augurs and the soothsayers. 
 Surely Constantius, who pretended at least that the 
 war was nothing but a hunting party, must have 
 congratulated himself on finding his game at bay ; 
 and for our part we have little doubt of the issue 
 of the struggle. Julian was lost, had not the 
 Emperor suddenly sickened and died in Cilicia. Of 
 course, Julian succeeded without resistance to the 
 throne, and the amazed inhabitants went out to 
 meet their Emperor, ' who had dropped down upon 
 them, as it were, from the skies '. His arrival pro 
 duced no little consternation among his adversaries ; 
 and well it might, for he made the weight of his 
 hand felt, and several of his own enemies, and of 
 the murderers of his brother, were sent into exile, 
 two burnt alive none much regretted by the world 
 except one, ' over whose fate Justice herself is 
 supposed to have wept'. Julian declared that he 
 was not chargeable with that crime, and historians 
 believe him or not, according to their prejudice. 
 
 But more terrible in the eyes of the people 
 than any possible massacre of innocents was the 
 onslaught which Julian made on the household 
 of the palace. The court of Constantinople had 
 followed the Oriental fashion of employing, or pre 
 tending to employ, a host of officers ; and Julian 
 decapitated as we say in our sanguinary political 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 385 
 
 slang his thousands of barbers and his tens of 
 thousands of cooks. Small need had the unshorn 
 Emperor of artists in hair, or the distinguished 
 vegetarian, of Byzantine Soyers. His simple couch 
 required no careful attendance; his attire was 
 plain, his use of water limited ; and so he sent 
 packing Grooms of the Stole and Keepers of the 
 Imperial Umbrella, Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber 
 and Lords of the Wash-basin. Did he dream that 
 he had put an end to the follies of the court show ? 
 Short-sighted reformer ! The Imperial scullion and 
 Imperial bootblack survived the Byzantine Em 
 pire, and the faint shadows of those absurd titles 
 still live; or did we read only in a vision the 
 appointment of an Upper Court-Chimney-sweep to 
 His Majesty of Prussia? Short-sighted reformer 
 again, if he thought that even his own world was to 
 be changed by his example. He had only shorn 
 himself of his majesty by not shaving off his beard, 
 and made enemies of the hirelings who had been 
 such an ornament to the court and such a satisfac 
 tion to themselves. And the pets who took their 
 place were not comely to look upon. Long- 
 bearded philosophers of more than dubious cleanli 
 ness, haughty magicians, pretentious soothsayers, 
 babbling rhetoricians, rushed in to fill the void ; 
 and there was the Emperor, trying to outdo them 
 all, philosophizing with the philosophers, puzzling 
 the magicians, taking first-class diplomas in the art 
 of divination, and pitting his Imperial self against a 
 regiment of shallow praters. Verily Constantius 
 had a more royal presence ; he, who never moved 
 a muscle of his closely-shaven face, who never 
 
386 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 forgot his dignity, but clothed himself with it as 
 with a garment. What a contrast to this hairy, 
 frisking, jabbering prince, with his lolling head and 
 his snorting nose, his frantic gestures and his odd 
 grimaces, sputtering and stammering, blurting out 
 witticism after witticism now a sublime sentence, 
 now a wretched pun ! The proprieties, whose name is 
 legion, fled aghast before this monstrous innovator; 
 and imagination alone can tell us how many old- 
 fashioned courtiers sickened and died of 'the Julian V 
 The time was come to drop the transparent 
 mask, and Julian proclaimed himself a heathen. 
 The Christian religion ceased to be the religion of 
 the state, and the privileges secured to its ministers 
 were forfeited. In a despotism in which Church and 
 State are united, the faith of the monarch is the faith 
 of the Empire ; and Julian's antagonism to Chris 
 tianity was strengthened by his position as absolute 
 ruler. Or rather, having long believed that he had 
 been chosen by the gods as the great restorer of 
 their worship, he entered with zeal upon his mis 
 sionary work. The Roman Empire was his idol. 
 He desired to maintain the integrity of its traditions 
 and the unity of its religion ; and a struggle with 
 the Christian element was inevitable. Other forms 
 of faith were less exacting, less intolerant. The 
 various creeds of Oriental paganism fell readily 
 into the ranks of the Greek system, which opened 
 wide to receive all comers. Even the chosen people 
 showed an elasticity in adapting themselves to the 
 pressure of the times, and, while they did not yield 
 their faith, were content with a recognition of the 
 
 1 * God help the noble Claudio ! if he have caught the Bene 
 dick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured.' 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 387 
 
 claims of their great prophet Not so the followers 
 of 'the Galilaean ', ' the dead Jew'. As Calvin says, 
 Christum dimidium quisquis habere vult, totum 
 perdit. No statue for him by the side of any other. 
 He must reign alone : and so there arose in the 
 heart of Julian a feeling of personal enmity to the 
 Saviour, which exhibits itself not only in the use 
 of such names as we have cited with natural 
 reluctance, but even more strikingly in the studied 
 avoidance of the common appellation which must 
 have been so often on his lips as a catechumen. A 
 signal exemplification of this feeling of hostility is 
 found in His intentional petting of the Jews, whom 
 he openly favored on every occasion as the profes 
 sors of the older and purer creed of which Christi 
 anity was only a corrupt form. Hence his famous 
 attempt to restore the Temple of Jerusalem, which 
 was defeated, as is said, by elemental disturbances. 
 We do not pretend to decide whether the balls of 
 fire which burst from the foundation were due to 
 accident or to trickery. The result is certain that 
 the work was soon stopped ; but we cannot triumph 
 over that result as the vindication of prophecy, 
 simply because there is no prophecy to be vindi 
 cated. Julian may have had most probably did 
 have the design of glorifying himself by such a 
 monument of his reign ; he could not have had the 
 design of glorifying himself by refuting a prophecy 
 which was never made, for the words of our 
 Saviour refer only to the destruction of the temple, 
 and nothing is said of the restoration. 
 
 Julian took his duties as the supreme pontiff of 
 the Empire seriously to heart. He built again the 
 
388 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 temples of the gods, he multiplied sacrifices until 
 jesting doubts were heard as to the sufficiency of 
 the herds and flocks of his dominions. With the 
 pedantic particularity which was the characteristic 
 of the man and the age, he engaged personally in 
 the rites of heathen worship, and exposed himself 
 to ridicule, which, like other enthusiasts, he seemed 
 rather to court than to shun. But while he revived 
 the splendors of the old ceremonial, he was not 
 unmindful of his mission as a religious reformer ; 
 and there is no more painful chapter in the history 
 of human error than his attempt to breathe life 
 into the corpse of the old faith. There is a fearful 
 incongruity between the body of that death and 
 the purity which Julian required of the mouldering 
 carcase. So long as he remained in his artificial 
 world of professors and students, he might imagine 
 that the new light was beginning to irradiate the 
 darkness ; but so soon as he came down to the 
 level of ordinary humanity, even his romantic mind 
 found it impossible to keep up the illusion, and he 
 has made grim merriment over his disappointment 
 The people remained plunged in a dull sensuality, 
 from which they were to be roused only by super 
 stitious fears. His reforms, even with a longer and 
 fairer trial, could have been nothing more than the 
 failures they were. The pagans had no ears for all 
 his fine talk about purity of life, fasting and praying, 
 abstaining from meats like the Jews, and singing 
 hymns like the Christians. Had Julian lived a few 
 years longer he would have demonstrated still more 
 signally and perhaps to his own consciousness 
 the utter hopelessness of the old religion. The 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 389 
 
 chosen few might galvanize it into a false life, and 
 make it do duty as an exponent of moral ideas. As 
 the religion of the people, it was dead. 
 
 But there is yet another aspect of Julian's antago 
 nism to Christianity. It is commonly said that he 
 dreaded the republican element of the Christian 
 religion. Let us rather say that he dreaded the 
 influence of the Christian hierarchy, and strained 
 many a point to break it down. Offensive to his 
 personal pride, it was dangerous to the Imperial 
 power. Under the guise of non-resistance to the 
 secular arm, there was a spiritual independence 
 which would not brook control. The leaders of 
 the Christian Church were supported by the strong 
 cohort of the middle class, and in the increasing 
 importance of the Christian bishops Julian saw the 
 waning power of the Imperial throne. His very 
 affectation of contempt, as in the matter of Athana- 
 sius, the exiled bishop of Alexandria, is a very thin 
 disguise for his apprehension. No wonder that he 
 did all that he could do to repress the growth of a 
 religion which owed a higher allegiance than that 
 which was due to the Emperor, and refused to 
 blend the Church with the State, only to make the 
 Church the State. The only wonder is that he 
 proceeded with so much gentleness. For, after all 
 that has been said about it, it appears that perse 
 cution formed no part of his Imperial plan, and 
 his enemies are forced to admit either the genuine 
 mildness of his philosophic temper, or the shrewd 
 ness of his insight into the history of religion. Cer 
 tainly he was the only pagan emperor of any real 
 worth who recognized the political dangerousness 
 
390 THE EMPEROR JULIAN". 
 
 of the Christian religion and did not use active 
 remedies. He knew the contagious influence of 
 martyrdom, and set out with a firm resolve to with 
 hold that coveted crown. One of his first acts was 
 to proclaim entire freedom of religion, and the 
 martyrologists have had hard work to rake up a 
 couple of victims for his reign. Small thanks has he 
 received for this forbearance ; and perhaps he does 
 not deserve much, if his forbearance was all policy ; 
 but on the other hand it must be admitted by the 
 candid student, that no human actions could stand 
 the artifices of interpretation which have been 
 employed in Julian's case. If he decrees universal 
 toleration, it is that he may have the satisfaction of 
 seeing the wrangling of the contentious Christian 
 sects. If he urges his representatives to have full 
 proof of the criminality of a Christian before they 
 condemn the man, lest a felon be transfigured into 
 a martyr, straightway it is said that he ordered his 
 subordinates to persecute Christians under false 
 pretences. If he deplores the fanatic rage of the 
 heathen populace, it is set down to the charge of 
 contemptible hypocrisy. If he dismisses a Chris 
 tian from his presence, an ecclesiastical historian is 
 found who adds, without a shadow of authority, 
 sans doute a la mort. Read his edicts backwards, of 
 course. Displace an inconvenient comma, of course. 
 
 Close around him and confound him, the confounder of us all, 
 
 Pelt him, pummel him and maul him, rummage, ransack, over 
 haul him, 
 
 Overbear him and outbawl him ; bear him down and bring him 
 under, 
 
 Bellow like a burst of thunder, Robber ! harpy ! sink of 
 plunder ! 
 
 Rogue and villain ! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat! 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 39! 
 
 So says (Frere's) Aristophanes of Cleon ; and if 
 such language has raised up a defender of such a 
 character as Cleon, we cannot wonder that a nature 
 as noble as Julian's was, in so many respects, has 
 found champions even among the devoted believers 
 in the religion which he so bitterly opposed. Still, 
 it cannot be denied that he overstepped the bounds 
 of his own philosophy in his eager efforts to gather 
 proselytes into the fold ; and the Fathers have 
 much to say about the petty devices by which he 
 endeavored to entrap the conscience of his Chris 
 tian subjects, and especially his Christian soldiers. 
 But these statements must be taken with some 
 grains of allowance, for we must remember that 
 Julian was adored by his soldiers, and living, as 
 such men live, on the breath of applause, he would 
 not have willingly alienated the affections of so 
 large a portion of his army. Undeniable is his sys 
 tematic elevation of pagans to high positions in the 
 Empire, and, no doubt, orthodox heathenism was 
 an overstrong recommendation in his eyes ; but we 
 can admit all this without drawing the hateful infer 
 ence that his object was to persecute the Christians 
 by proxy without compromising his reputation for 
 fairness. On this reputation, by the way, he prided 
 himself greatly, and yet by a singular maladroit- 
 ness he has managed to excite the liveliest com 
 ments on his character as a judge. He was too 
 fond of experimenting on himself, and letting others 
 in to see the show. He would heap up religious 
 causes of dislike against the accused, in order to 
 acquire more moral glory by the acquittal. He 
 would analyse every particular of an offence against 
 
392 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 himself, and gloat over every new phase of a per 
 sonal insult, in order that the triumph over his fiery 
 temper might be the more resplendent An un 
 healthy nature, if you choose, but not an ignoble 
 one. 
 
 Highly characteristic of Julian is the celebrated 
 edict in which he forbade the Christian professors 
 to lecture on the monuments of Greek literature. It 
 is a curious production, this edict, which appears 
 in a fragmentary form as a kind of letter ; and were 
 we not rapidly approaching our limit, we might 
 hope to interest the reader in a full consideration of 
 the various points which this elaborate composition 
 presents. It is very spiteful in its tone, and at first 
 spite seems to be the chief ingredient. What the 
 real base is, we cannot pause to examine. ' Educa 
 tion ', says Julian, ' does not consist in fine words 
 and elegant phrases, but in sound sense and just 
 judgment on moral questions. If the Christians 
 were right in condemning the religious views of 
 the great pagan authors ' (inventory of Greek litera 
 ture), ' they were wrong in using them in their 
 instructions, and showed that they were willing to 
 do anything for a few shillings. If they really 
 believed in the gods why, the period of persecu 
 tion was over, the temples were open, and they were 
 now free to emulate the piety of Homer and the 
 rest ' (second inventory of Greek literature). ' If they 
 did not believe in Homer's gods, let them march 
 to the churches of the Galilseans and expound 
 Matthew and Luke.' The Christian Fathers con 
 sidered themselves very much complimented by this 
 edict, and some of them showed how little they 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 393 
 
 deserved the compliment by getting up an opposi 
 tion Greek literature. They flattered themselves 
 that Julian was afraid of their ridicule and their 
 dialectics, and on that account forbade them to 
 study the models of classic composition and to draw 
 from the resources of ancient thought ; and they 
 reported him as saying : ' We must not sharpen the 
 tongues of the Galilaeans on our whetstone ; for ', 
 said he, quoting the old proverb 
 
 " We nurse the pinion which impels the steel." ' 
 
 But it was not simply on religious grounds that 
 Julian opposed Christianity. The Christian pro 
 fessors, as well as their pagan colleagues, claimed 
 to be not teachers of rhetoric only, but also of 
 ethics and political philosophy, and such claims 
 were enough to alarm a man bent on a reaction. 
 This possibly gives a somewhat more satisfactory 
 solution of his motives, if indeed any solution be 
 needed outside of his morbid temper. But, of 
 course, history is unanimous in condemning this act 
 from any point of view. His eulogist, Ammianus, 
 is quite ashamed of his hero just here: 'a harsh 
 proceeding ', quoth he, ' and one to be buried in 
 perennial silence r - a perennial silence which the 
 perennial loquacity of such fluencies as Gregory 
 was not very likely to accord. A harsh proceeding, 
 Ammianus ? An infamous proceeding, Gregory ? 
 The plan of a dreamer and an enthusiast : as well 
 might he have ordered his subjects not to look on 
 the sun, which he adored ; or on the stars, which 
 were the symbols of his divinities. The literature 
 of the classic past is the inalienable property of 
 
394 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 humanity. Bigots may denounce it. ' Scientists ' 
 and sciolists may rain down fiery indignation 
 on it. Many dish-waters of eloquence cannot 
 quench it ; neither can floods of useful knowledge 
 drown it. The world will not be robbed of a herit 
 age which -has been recognized in the Scriptures 
 themselves. Is it altogether insignificant that a 
 fragment of pagan morality, ' Evil communications 
 corrupt good manners ', should have imbedded itself 
 in the most sublime exposition of our hopes of im 
 mortality ? 
 
 The winter following Julian's accession was not 
 lost to literature, and it is to this date that the 
 most popular of his extant works is assigned ' The 
 Csesars ', a satirical piece written for the Saturnalia 
 or Christmas holidays, in which the Emperor passes 
 in caustic review his predecessors on the throne. In 
 its conception and in some of the details, this biting 
 satire is Lucianic; but Julian lacked the grace 
 and the frivolity of the earlier farceur. In the very 
 opening sentences he himself acknowledges the 
 unfitness of his nature for real fun ; and the clown 
 (Silenus), who ' does the comic', is a very heavy 
 father of poor jokes. The machinery of the piece 
 is simple. Romulus celebrates the Saturnalia, and 
 invites the emperors to meet the gods at dinner; 
 as the guests come in they are criticised by Silenus, 
 and very few escape the lash, not even ' the delight 
 of the human race ', Titus ; not even the pattern 
 philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. A dispute ensues 
 for the prize of merit a dispute which a genuine 
 Roman would have limited to the Romans; but 
 Julian was too much of a Greek to leave out 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 395 
 
 Alexander, and so, after Caesar, Alexander speaks, 
 then Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Con- 
 stantine the last merely to show how ridiculous his 
 pretensions to greatness are. After the speeches 
 are over, each of the contestants is required to state 
 his aim in life ; and they are then distributed among 
 the gods, except Constantius, who falls into the arms of 
 Asotia (Scapegracehood), a personification intended 
 to represent the corrupt morals of the Christians. 
 ' But, to thee ', said Hermes, addressing Julian, ' to 
 thee I have given to know Father Mithras, and do 
 thou cleave to his commandments ; make him thy 
 bower-cable and safe anchorage while thou livest ; 
 and so when thou shalt depart hence, thou shalt go 
 with good hope to his propitious guidance.' 
 
 The stray rays of light which this composition 
 throws on some of the more enigmatical characters 
 of the Empire it is not our business to gather up. 
 Important for the appreciation of Julian is the 
 Greek conception of the Roman state ; the Greek 
 leaning to Alexander, as opposed to Caesar; the 
 Greek preference for the Greek philosopher, Marcus 
 Aurelius. Still more important is the tone in which 
 he speaks of the old gods. Even to him they 
 are but shadows, and the Pantheon a columbarium. 
 Saturn and Rhea, nay even Jupiter and Juno, were 
 little more to him than the lay-figures they are to 
 us. For his own salvation he turns not to Jupiter 
 Optimus Maximus, but to an outlandish Mithras, 
 a Persian god of the sun. 
 
 But the mention of the Persians warns us to reel 
 off more quickly the mingled yarn of Julian's life. 
 Two great objects he had in view : the restoration 
 
396 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 of the pagan religion, the conquest of the Persians. 
 The war against Persia was an historical legacy, 
 dating back to the time of the Argonautic expedi 
 tion and the siege of Troy. Every generation had 
 taken its turn in fighting the East. The ineradi 
 cable hatred of race put up fresh shoots from age 
 to age. This is that wrath of man that is made to 
 praise God ; and he who has eyes for Sebastopol 
 and India and Candia ought to have eyes for 
 Jamaica and the Negro Dominion. Still, there was 
 no pressing necessity for the war against Persia. 
 The Empire was exhausted, and Sapor desired 
 peace. But Julian was just the man to go to war 
 for an idea, and for an historical idea sooner than 
 any other ; and so he set out to meet his doom. 
 After the fatal termination of the expedition, Chris 
 tians and pagans discovered all manner of omens 
 that foretold the result. For instance, a heathen 
 professor asked a Christian saint mockingly, ' What 
 is the son of the carpenter doing?' and the Chris 
 tian saint, in no very saint-like temper, answered, 
 ' He is making a coffin for your Emperor '; and the 
 angry retort was afterwards regarded as an inspired 
 prophecy. 
 
 Julian spent most of his reign in the preparation 
 and execution of his plans against the Persians. 
 Especially noteworthy was his sojourn at Antioch, 
 a gay and luxurious capital, in which the old 
 religion had few followers and Julian found little 
 sympathy. An abiding monument of the feud 
 between the monarch whose missionary labors 
 failed so signally, and the people whose ribald jokes 
 succeeded so handsomely, is preserved to us in 
 
THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 the ' Misopogon ' or ' Beard-hater ', in which Julian 
 out-Antiochs the Antiochenes in ridiculing himself, 
 and, while making a mock confession of his faults, 
 takes occasion to rasp his detractors with a severity 
 worthy of Juvenal, and with as little effect. In the 
 light which it throws on the rottenness and disloca 
 tion of the state and the wrongheadedness of the 
 man who thought himself divinely commissioned 
 to purify it and set it right, the ' Misopogon' is an 
 interesting study ; and we are sorry for such students 
 as Gibbon, who merely divide their sneers between 
 the orthodox sensualists of Antioch and the fanatic 
 reformer on the throne. 
 
 Last scene of all. A sweltering day in June, 
 363. The Roman army was ploughing its way 
 back from an unsuccessful expedition, sinking in 
 the sand, blinded by the dust, scorched by the 
 sun. Julian rode in the van, his breast unprotected. 
 Suddenly an alarm was heard ; the rear was attacked. 
 Julian snatched a shield from one of his attendants 
 and hurried to the rescue. Recalled to the front by 
 a new alarm, he plunged into the thick of the fight, 
 urged his men on by mad gesticulations and frantic 
 cries, and turned the tide against the assailants. 
 But as he pressed his advantage too eagerly, a lance 
 from an unknown hand grazed his arm and entered 
 his side. The sharp steel severed the muscles of 
 his fingers as he tried to draw the weapon out, and 
 he fell swooning. As soon as his pain was somewhat 
 assuaged, he called for his horse and his arms but 
 his campaigns were over. There is a fable that 
 as Julian fell Christ appeared to him in a vision, 
 and that the apostate filled his hand with his life's 
 
398 THE EMPEROR JULIAN. 
 
 blood and cast it toward the sky, crying, ' Take thy 
 fill of blood, O Galilsean !' < Take thy fill of blood, 
 O Cyrus ! ' O Tomyris, what a plagiarism ! Still 
 more current is the rumor that his last words were, 
 ' Thou hast conquered, O Galilaean ! ' and there is 
 yet another that he cried out in reproach of the 
 lying oracles that had misled him ' Thou hast 
 destroyed me, O Mithras ! ' To what end these 
 dramatic lies ? 
 
 Julian remained true to himself in the last hours 
 of his life. He was a bookman to the last. He 
 knew how great men had died in books ; he had 
 studied their dying speeches. The lesson was well 
 learned, and in the few hours which he had to live 
 his demeanor and his words were grand. No 
 regret for the past, no lamentations for his untimely 
 end, no fear for the future. A long conversation 
 with his professorial friends on abstruse philosophic 
 and theosophic subjects a draught of cold water 
 and in the chill of midnight he was t released from 
 life to live again, he said, among the constellations. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 1 
 
 Once upon a time Callimachus, the great librarian 
 of Alexandria, had a fierce quarrel with his pupil 
 Apollonius, and by dint of invective and intrigue 
 drove him into exile. But when Callimachus died, 
 Apollonius returned in honor, became the second 
 in succession to his old master and enemy, and, 
 according to malicious tradition, the poet of the 
 Argonauts was buried in the same tomb with the 
 relentless author of the ' Ibis '. Little does posterity 
 care for literary feuds. While they last, it may be 
 necessary to take sides. Whoever says a word in 
 behalf of Gibber is a sworn foe of Pope ; whoever 
 is for Byron is against Bowles. But the next gen 
 eration quietly accords to each worthy his crown of 
 glory or his blanket of oblivion ; and if certain old 
 rivals could be recalled to life, they would be as 
 astonished to see each other established in Parnas 
 sus, or soaking in Lethe, as Sublapsarians and 
 
 1 i. Geschichte der deutschenLiteraturim neimzehnten Jahr- 
 hundert. Von Julian Schmidt. Leipzig : 1855. 
 
 2. Gesammelte Werke des Grafen August von Platen. 
 Stuttgart und Tubingen : 1848. 
 
 3. Graf von Platen, als Mensch und Dichter. Von Jo 
 hannes Minckwitz. Leipzig : 1838. 
 
 4. Briefwechsel zwischen August Graf von Platen und 
 Johannes Minckwitz. Leipzig: 1836. 
 
 5. Poetischer und litterarischer Nachlass des Grafen August 
 von Platen. Leipzig : 1853. 
 
4O2 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 Supralapsarians to meet in heaven or elsewhere in 
 the future world. This equalization, which the 
 lapse of time is sure to effect, is not unfrequently 
 brought about by distance in space ; and to those 
 who have been initiated into the jealousies and 
 squabbles of European scholars, it is not a little 
 amusing to see an American student making alter 
 nate salaams to men whose object in life, next 
 to proving themselves everything, is to prove each 
 other nothing. Now if you add distance in space 
 to lapse of time, the controversies which agitated 
 literary Europe forty years ago will seem very 
 trifling to literary America of the present day ; we 
 can admire a 'classicist' without despising a 
 ' romanticist ' ; we can taste the perfume of Heine's 
 flowers without defiling Platen's memory with the 
 rank subsoil of Heine's hot-bed; and we can enjoy 
 Platen's artistic creations without joining in Platen's 
 injustice to Immermann. 
 
 It is in this tolerant spirit that we would ask the 
 reader to accompany us as we go back to the study 
 of an author who fascinated our ingenuous youth 
 by clothing modern thought with the purple light 
 of antiquity. But as we look over the once familiar 
 pages of Platen, we are seized with the profound 
 discouragement which every one has felt who has 
 attempted to interpret to another the charms of the 
 scenes of his own early happiness. The landscape 
 dims in the eye of him who would fain point out 
 its beauties. So here we cannot reproduce for our 
 selves the fascination of a once favorite author, 
 much less for others. Not for ourselves, because in 
 youth the recognition of the beautiful in form gives 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 403 
 
 a feeling of proprietorship which maturer years will 
 not admit. Not for others, because we may well 
 despair of giving to an English translation the fin 
 ished perfection of language which is to many the 
 highest, to some the sole charm of Platen. And 
 then the life of a scholar or of a poet has seldom a 
 dramatic interest except for those who can sympa 
 thize with the active play of emotions in sensitive 
 and refined natures, the hot flush of the first strug 
 gles, the glow of the first successes, the chill of the first 
 disappointments, the alternations of hope and fear, the 
 bitter tang that rises up, no matter with what roses 
 the cup is crowned, the half-consciousness of failure 
 that haunts genius and the end lacet ecce Tibullus. 
 Just such a life was Platen's, and we cannot hope 
 to invest it with dramatic interest unless we go into 
 details which would interest only the student of 
 German literature, and not the general reader, for 
 whom alone this paper is written, and who in all 
 likelihood never heard of Platen since he was born. 
 For after all we have not emancipated ourselves yet 
 from English influence, and it is not often that a 
 German writer makes a reputation on this side of 
 the water without undergoing the baptism of the 
 Channel. And the English have never taken to 
 Platen ; partly because they lack the artistic sense 1 
 
 1 This relates, of course, primarily to the metrical form of 
 Platen's poems, and although the strictures made in 1868 may 
 not be wholly apt in 1890, yet it is still true that too little 
 attention is paid to such matters in England, and that it is still 
 possible there to edit Aristophanes, Platen's model, without so 
 much as a conspectus metrorum, to say nothing of any interpre 
 tation of the meaning of the rhythms ; and without an apprecia 
 tion of the meaning of the rhythms, Aristophanes might as 
 well be written in prose. B. L. G. 
 
404 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 which is necessary to appreciate the exquisite finish 
 of his work, and partly because they want that gen 
 erosity which Continental wit and humor demand. 
 An Englishman can understand a French joke, 
 because it is an Irish joke right end foremost; but 
 not one Englishman in fifty can see any fun in Ger 
 man wit. There is too much raison demonstrative 
 about the English even in their nonsense, and if 
 Platen, as a poet, has found no acceptance with 
 them, Platen, as a wit, has found even less. Popu 
 lar, Platen never was and never can be, even in his 
 own country. Some of his minor poems have 
 found their way into the readers, and are repeated 
 at school declamations in Germany. His two chief 
 comedies, ' The Fateful Fork ' and ' The Romantic 
 QEdipus ', have made themselves a permanent place 
 in the history of German literature. But he holds 
 nobody's heart-strings ; he only plays about the 
 brain. His divining-rod might tickle the fancy, it 
 is impotent to call forth tears. And yet every page 
 of his life, every page of his letters, shows a noble 
 and sympathetic nature ; and we have been tempted 
 to publish this study, not so much to express a 
 present admiration of Platen as to satisfy an old 
 desire to commend to the hearts and minds of 
 others a poet whose lofty and melodious verses bring 
 back to the reviewer, in spite of his conventional 
 impersonality, the golden music of the past, blend 
 ing with the roll of the Rhine and lingering among 
 the echoes of the Seven Mountains. 1 
 
 1 1 became acquainted with Platen's poems at Bonn in 1852, 
 having been introduced to them by my fellow-student and dear 
 friend, Emil Hiibner, whose friendship has known no more slack- 
 
PLATENS POEMS. 405 
 
 Augustus, Count of Platen-Hallermunde, was 
 born of an ancient North German family at Ans- 
 bach, a town which the reader of Carlyle's Fried- 
 rich will remember in connection with the marriage 
 of Friedrich's sister. When Platen came into the 
 world, Ansbach was Prussian ; but in one of Napo 
 leon's unsettlings it fell into the hands of Bavaria, 
 and in one of Bismarck's unsettlings it may get 
 back to Prussia again. Born in 1796, Platen was 
 sent, as soon as he was old enough, to the Royal 
 Military Academy at Munich an unremarkable 
 boy, except that he was rather bookish and reserved. 
 From the Military Academy he was transferred to 
 the Royal Institution for the Education of Pages, 
 which seems to have afforded greater leisure and 
 more ample facilities for the kind of culture that he 
 craved. Commissioned lieutenant in 1814, he was 
 called upon the next year to take part in the last 
 brief campaign against Napoleon, and this military 
 experience, short as it was, inspired him with the 
 most faithful of all loves the love of travel. The 
 tenacity of this love the old Greeks knew full well 
 when they talked of the wise man Sisyphus and his 
 rolling stone. So long as he trundled that stone 
 over the wide world, like his by-blow Ulysses after 
 him, he was happy ; but in Hades he was doomed 
 to a narrower compass, and his philosopher's stone 
 became an instrument of torture. In his time, 
 
 ness in all these years than has his work, and what that work has 
 been, no scholar needs to be told. Several of our set knew 
 long stretches of Platen's poems by heart, and never were his 
 ' lofty and melodious verses' more lustily declaimed than on 
 our trips to Heisterbach and the Siebengebirge. B. L. G. 
 
406 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 Platen played both parts, but he was always fettered 
 by his military obligations, and no matter how poetic 
 a man may be, a lieutenant on furlough is a prosaic 
 object in a period of profound peace. In 1818 
 he went to the University of Wiirzburg, and 
 thence to Erlangen. His industry was great, and 
 the list of languages that he learned is, to say the 
 least, respectable for a military man. Besides 
 Latin and Greek, French and English, Spanish and 
 Italian, which we might expect, we find Persian and 
 Arabic, Dutch and Swedish. His favorite teacher 
 was the philosopher Schelling, for whom he enter 
 tained the greatest reverence and affection; but 
 beyond Schelling and a few intimates, he cared for 
 no one. He was all his life shy and reserved. His 
 vacation trips brought him into contact with some 
 of the great poets of Germany, with Goethe, with 
 Uhland and with Ruckert. Riickert was a won 
 derful poet he is not long dead far more mascu 
 line than Platen, and gifted with a far easier mastery 
 of the language. His playfulness is more sponta 
 neous ; his serious verses are deeper ; his satiric 
 knout takes out the flesh at every stroke. Platen 
 felt the influence of the stronger genius, and, inspired 
 by Riickert, he attempted to transfer to the German 
 language the form as well as the spirit of that 
 Persian poetry which Goethe's ' Divan ' had made 
 so popular. Platen's little volume of ' Gaselen ' 
 appeared in 1821. The compass of the ghazel is 
 limited to a few verses ; its sphere is confined to 
 love and wine and friendship, and the graver 
 thoughts that rise now and then must not betray the 
 depth from which they have come to the surface. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 407 
 
 The metre of the ghazel is peculiar. Its melody 
 does not strike every ear at first ; but it gains on 
 the lover of poetical forms more and more until it 
 haunts the ear like an importunate tune that will 
 not let itself be forgotten. The first two verses 
 rhyme, and then every alternate verse repeats the 
 consonance of the first distich, so that we have a 
 symbolism which it is not hard to divine a perfect 
 concord of feeling broken up and yet renewed from 
 time to time, love and disappointment, missing, 
 meeting and yearning the very measure for joy 
 that falls short of ecstasy, and for all the sweet 
 vexation of love. A few years ago an anonymous 
 writer published in a forgotten magazine 1 some 
 American ghazels, evidently reflexes of Platen. 
 We will reproduce a couple of them here instead of 
 attempting to translate from our author, because 
 they serve to give the reader a more correct idea of 
 the structure, inasmuch as they are not bound by 
 the fetters of a translation which are peculiarly irk 
 some when the purity of the form is a matter of so 
 much importance. 
 
 The prison'd spirit is set free at last, 
 The seed upspringeth to a tree at last; 
 The truant brooklet wanders through the mead, 
 But runs to meet his lord the sea at last ; 
 The honey-bee collects all day her store, 
 Yet homeward turns the weary bee at last ; 
 The clouds that hide the beauty of the sun, 
 Stretch out their fleecy wings and flee at last. 
 
 1 The Southern Literary Messenger, then edited by John R. 
 Thompson neither periodical nor editor yet forgotten by the 
 men of the Old South. The anonymous writer B. L. G. 
 
408 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 The stubborn lock defends the treasure-house, 
 But cunning locksmiths find the key at last ; 
 My soul hath sought for bliss in ev'ry clime, 
 And finds its only bliss in thee at last. 
 
 Whatever fortune gives, in haste collect, 
 And seize the moment whilst thou mayst collect ; 
 Misguided pilgrims fainting sore for food, 
 A meal of berries from the waste collect ; 
 Disporting children on the shore the shells 
 The scornful sea has thither chased collect; 
 The penetrating bees the hidden sweets 
 13eep in the lily's bosom placed collect ; 
 Unwearied scholars bend them o'er their books, 
 And words which Time had nigh effaced collect ; 
 So too doth she to whom my songs are due, 
 The lines my fever'd hand hath traced collect. 
 
 But neither form nor matter of Platen's ' Gaselen ' 
 was so well received as was expected by the poet, 
 who was always very much in love with his last 
 effort and went on from illusion to illusion. In 
 his first ghazels, Platen was too much absorbed in 
 the study of his Persian original, and had to con 
 tent himself with having gained at Munich the 
 reputation of a scholar. The novelty of the form 
 and the intense Orientalism of the thought repelled 
 instead of attracting the masses; and one of Platen's 
 correspondents remarks sensibly enough, that ' if 
 Goethe had commenced with his ' Divan ' if indeed 
 that had beenpossible he would hardly have become 
 the favorite of the Germans.' And not only was 
 the general public cold, but the few scholars that 
 might have enjoyed the reproduction of the East 
 were disturbed by details borrowed from Ansbach 
 rather than from Ispahan. His second effort in 
 this direction was more successful. ' These new 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 409 
 
 ghazels have more sterling worth ', says the author, 
 ' than the earlier collection '; and he wishes them 
 to be regarded as his first essays in this line. In 
 these poems he gave up the pedantic adherence to 
 Oriental form and Oriental expression, took a wider 
 range of thought, and breathed through the ghazels 
 his real feelings, not the simulated passions of a 
 Persian. But Goethe's kindly mention of the young 
 poet was not a passport to immortality ; and Im- 
 mermann only expressed the idea of a large class 
 when he said, with a coarseness peculiarly German, 
 that the ghazels were the reproduction of a surfeit 
 of fruit from the gardens of Shiraz. 1 
 
 As Platen reflected in the ' Gaselen ' his study of 
 Persian poetry, so his close occupation with the 
 Spanish drama mirrors itself in his first complete 
 dramatic piece, a little comedy entitled the ' Glass 
 Slipper ', in which the familiar fairy tales of Cin 
 derella (Aschenbrodel) and the Sleeping Beauty 
 are curiously blended. 'A lady observed that the 
 piece united English wit with Spanish fire '; but 
 the director of the Court Theatre at Munich 
 observed that ' while the piece was excellent, there 
 was nothing to be made by it '; and a few months 
 afterwards, in May, 1824, Platen records with the 
 proud satisfaction of an unrecognized genius that 
 * the Glass Slipper has been refused by no less than 
 five theatres '. The * Glass Slipper ' was followed 
 by the ' Treasure of Rhampsinitus '; the subject 
 taken from the famous story in Herodotus (ii. 121), 
 
 1 Von den Friichten die sie aus dem Gartenhain von Schiraz 
 
 stehlen, 
 Essen sie zu viel, die Armen, und vomiren dann Gaselen. 
 
410 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 the whole cast intensely modern and designedly 
 so. There are good touches here and there, but 
 the poet was dissatisfied with his work and thought 
 of remodelling it. As is stands it marks a transi 
 tion from his Spanish to his Greek studies, and 
 forms a preparation for the two comedies which 
 constitute Platen's claim to a permanent position 
 among the classic dramatists of Germany, or rather 
 among the classic satirists ; for the ' Fateful Fork ' 
 and the ' Romantic GEdipus ' are not to be acted, 
 and a drama that cannot be acted is none at all. As 
 a dramatist proper, Platen failed utterly, or, at most, 
 attained what the French call by a droll euphemism, 
 a success of esteem. ' Berengar ', 'Aucassin and 
 Nicolette ', ' The Tower with Seven Gates ', and ' The 
 League of Cambrai ', may 'continue to be printed, 
 they will not continue to be read, except perhaps 
 to prove that the most complete mastery of the 
 language and the most just conception of the 
 requirements of the drama will not avail where the 
 creative faculty is wanting. The bitterness of 
 Platen's early failures had perhaps as much to do 
 with his attack on the reigning dramatists of the 
 day, as had his outraged sense of artistic truth. 
 Indeed, as we have already intimated, all Platen's 
 early dramatic compositions belong essentially to 
 the romantic school. They were all put together 
 under the double influence of Shakespeare and the 
 Spanish poets ; and if we escape the interminable 
 lists of stars and flowers and colors which oppress 
 us in Calderon and Lope, we do not escape a 
 strange cross between the official fun-maker of the 
 Spanish drama and the fool of the Shakespearian. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 4! I 
 
 But Platen's fooling is not like Sir Toby Belch's ; 
 it is not ' admirable ' ; nor is he like Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek ; he does not * do it natural '. His puns 
 are as bad or as good as Shakespeare's, but there 
 the likeness to Shakespeare stops. Shakespeare's 
 clowns are for the most part spontaneous ; Platen's 
 never. Shakespeare's nonsense is the surplusage 
 or sublimation of sense; Platen's too often the 
 refuge of poverty. But why speak of Shakespeare ? 
 In this whole field Tieck is immeasurably the superior 
 of Platen. 
 
 But Platen indubitably had high gifts, or w we 
 should not have bespoken for him the reader's 
 attention. He had keen intellect, wonderful com 
 mand of language, an earnest love of art, and the 
 moral consecration of his calling as a poet. But if 
 we regard the poet as a maker, as a creator, Platen 
 disappoints us. He has left no character to call 
 him father. He has not enriched the world by one 
 grand conception. His lyric poems commend 
 themselves by their exquisite beauty of form, and 
 some of his minor pieces quiver with suppressed 
 sensibility. 1 But apart from the gratification of the 
 
 1 Witness these lines : 
 
 happy time in which a man can love his fellow-man : 
 Upon my heart there lies a curse, upon my soul a ban. 
 
 Once bitter anguish was my lot, I've love and fortune now; 
 But how can I return the love ? Alas ! I know not how. 
 
 All calmness and all joylessness, from East to West I go, 
 Unutterable frost succeeds unutterable glow ; 
 
 And if a light and loving hand but chance my hand to press, 
 
 1 feel at once a sudden pain and deep rebelliousness. 
 
 Why, then, in all your beauty's light upon my senses burst, 
 As if my life were warm and full as was my youth at first ? 
 
412 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 artistic sense in the one case, and common sym 
 pathy in the other, Platen is chiefly remarkable as 
 the assailant of an ephemeral school the School of 
 Destiny. 
 
 The mutterings of Platen's anger are heard first 
 in the prologue to the 'Glass Slipper', in which he 
 says: 
 
 Of horrid murder and outrageous crime, 
 And deeds of lamentable Destiny, 
 You've heard abundance in these latter days, 
 Deliver'd from our modern German stage. 
 
 in the ' Treasure of Rhampsinitus ', one of 
 the characters cries out : 
 
 * Guilt ' is a foul abortion of the times. 
 
 Now ' Guilt' (Die Schuld) is the title of Milliner's 
 most famous drama ; and against Miillner, though 
 not solely against him, nay, as Platen himself says, 
 only in passing against him Platen's first Aristo- 
 phanic comedy was directed. Miillner is one of 
 those dramatists that Carlyle stamped out so 
 unmercifully in his famous article on ' German 
 Playwrights ', which put an end to anything like a 
 success of the Destiny school beyond the Channel. 
 
 And again from one of his sonnets : 
 
 My soul by inner contest rudely jarred, 
 Hath felt so oft in this short life of mine, 
 How easily I could my home resign ; 
 
 But ah ! to find a second home, how hard ! 
 
 This is like Alfieri : 
 
 Domo or da lunga esperienza e mite 
 Dai maestri anni ai peregrini guai 
 Prepongo i guai de le contrade avite. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 413 
 
 In those days Carlyle was high authority in such 
 matters, and his emphatic peroration seems to have 
 had its effect. 'As Foreign Reviewers', he says, 
 ' we stand on the coast of the country as a sort of 
 Tide-waiters and Preventive-service men, to con 
 tend with our utmost vigor that no improper article 
 be landed. These offices, it would seem, as in the 
 material world, so also in the literary and spiritual, 
 usually fall to the lot of aged, invalided or other 
 wise decayed persons; but this is little to the 
 matter. As true British subjects, with ready will, 
 we are here to discharge that duty. Movements, 
 we observe, are making along the beach, and sig 
 nals out seawards, as if these Klingemanns and 
 Mullners were to be landed on our soil ; but 
 through the strength of heaven this shall not be 
 done till the " most thinking people " know what it 
 is that is landing ! ' 
 
 The very year in which Carlyle published his 
 essay Miillner died, and he is to all intents as 
 entirely forgotten in Germany now as he was un 
 known in England then ; so that a man whose 
 poems were at once studied as if he were an 
 ^Eschylus or a Sophocles, is completely buried in an 
 oblivion which seems to be of forty centuries rather 
 than of forty years. Of a different and a higher 
 type is Grillparzer ; but in spite of Grillparzer the 
 Tragedy of Destiny is one of the bygones. 
 
 To quote again from Carlyle, here is Milliner's 
 recipe : ' That a man, on a certain day of the month, 
 shall fall into crime, for which an invisible Fate 
 shall silently pursue him, punishing the transgres 
 sion, most probably, on the same day of the month 
 
4H PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 annually, unless, as in the Twenty-ninth, it be leap- 
 year, and Fate in this may be, to a certain extent, 
 bilked ; and never resting until the poor wight 
 himself, and perhaps his last descendant, shall be 
 swept away with the besom of destruction ; such, 
 more or less disguised, frequently without any 
 disguise, is the tragic essence, the vital principle, 
 natural or galvanic we are not deciding, of all Dr. 
 Milliner's dramas.' Far different is this Fate from 
 the Fate of the Greeks. ' The Fate of the Greeks, 
 though a false, was a lofty hypothesis, and harmo 
 nized sufficiently with the whole sensual and material 
 structure of their theology ; a ground of deepest 
 black on which that gorgeous phantasmagoria was 
 fitly enough painted. Besides, with them the aveng 
 ing Power dwelt, at least in its visible manifestations, 
 among the high places of the earth, visiting only 
 kingly houses and world's criminals, from whom 
 it might be supposed the world, but for such 
 miraculous interferences, could have exacted no 
 vengeance or found no protection and purification. 
 Never, that we recollect of, did the Erinnyes be 
 come sheriff's officers, and Fate a justice of the 
 peace, hauling poor drudges to the treadmill 'for 
 robbery of hen-roosts, or scattering the earth with 
 steel-traps to keep down poaching.' Again, the 
 Greek Fate makes sin the punishment of sin until 
 it destroys itself; but each successive stage is a 
 growth, and the fruit of crime ripens to seed, the 
 seed to new fruit. The Greek Fate is a mill of the 
 gods, as their own proverb has it. This German 
 Fate is a blind donkey-power that grinds out a 
 murder or an incest with each revolution of the 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 415 
 
 wheel, until there is nothing more to grind. It 
 destroys individuality, it makes character impos 
 sible, it substitutes the machinist for the poet, and 
 oil (midnight or other) for inspiration. Such was 
 the school against which Platen came forth in his 
 comedy, ' Die verhangnissvolle Gabel ', or the 
 ' Fateful Fork '. 
 
 The scene of the ' Fateful Fork ' is laid in Arcadia, 
 and the play opens in the house of Damon, J. P., 
 who is in the act of receiving the complaint of one 
 Phyllis, wife of the swain Mopsus. The establish 
 ment of the rustic couple has been robbed of all the 
 tableware except one ancestral fork, with which the 
 husband, at the time of the theft, was picking his 
 pastoral teeth after the Arcadian and German 
 fashion. Suspicion has fallen on a vagabond Jew, 
 whom Sirmio the beadle is at once sent to arrest. 
 After a short colloquy, Phyllis makes her reverence 
 and Sirmio appears with the delinquent, who 
 answers to the name of Schmuhl (Samuel). But 
 though the pedlar's pack rattles with the stolen 
 goods, the Justice will not listen to the charge. It 
 is all a mistake, for Schmuhl turns out to be an old 
 college friend, and the two fall into very confidential 
 chat which shows that Schmuhl has been pursuing 
 with undiminished ardor the study of alchemy and 
 magic so happily begun at Leipzig. In Gottingen, 
 however, he was forced to be more careful and do 
 himself all the good he could by stealth, ' for a man 
 of thought is deemed a fantastical fool there.' But 
 though Gottingen is so sober-sided, the neighboring 
 ruin, the Plesse, is romantic ; and it was on the 
 ruins of the Plesse that a most startling adventure 
 
416 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 befel this Schmuhl, who is the real hero of the 
 piece, and who loves to spout anapaestic tetrameters 
 which we may well despair of reproducing prop 
 erly in English. We feel with Platen that the 
 English is a poor language for such a metre : 
 
 ' No fulness of accent, confusion of tongues, and short mono 
 syllables always.' 
 
 But if the good-natured reader will occasionally 
 accept a trochee for a spondee, and vice versa, we will 
 venture upon the measure. Here is the vision : 
 
 I was sitting one night by the light of the moon, on the Pless 
 with its ruins romantic, 
 
 And the zephyr was roving above the fields through the branch 
 ing tops of the beech-trees, 
 
 When a ghost appeared I had summoned her long 'twas a 
 ghost with Treasury warrants, 
 
 Of Arcady she, Salome her name, and her style of the An 
 cestress ' order. 
 
 She began, and I listened with all my ears, for she spoke in 
 Viennese German : 
 
 ' You are wasting your time on alchemical stuff and neglecting 
 actual treasures ; 
 
 For in Arcady lies three feet underground a treasure that's not 
 to be sneezed at ; 
 
 And if you would know where it is, I reply 'tis enclosed in a 
 casket of metal, 
 
 In the farm-yard of Mopsus the shepherd and sheep you'll 
 find it just under the kennel.' 
 
 But a moment she paused, and then she went on in her talk to 
 the following purport : 
 
 ' Yet you must beware of the treacherous hoard blood-guilti 
 ness cleaves to the treasure, 
 
 Too deep for a cure, and it comes from the blood ah me ! 
 from the blood of my husband ; 
 
 For I, his own wife, to the other world in my innocence gave 
 him a passage. 
 
 From my childhood up, as in ghosthood now, I've felt an invin 
 cible horror 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 4-1 / 
 
 Of spiders, and feared the disgusting things far more than 
 
 the seventh commandment. 
 One evening I sat by the side of my lord who was comfort 
 
 itself at the table, 
 When down from the ceiling plumped into my mouth a most 
 
 horrible beast of a spider ! 
 
 I screamed just as if I were spitted alive ; but alas ! my unfor 
 tunate husband 
 Was alarmed, and he pierced his throat with the fork with 
 
 the which he was eating potatoes, 
 And he died ; and the tooth of a cruel remorse ever gnawed 
 
 this susceptible bosom, 
 And though I got married three times after that, to smother the 
 
 thought of my husband, 
 Yet nothing went right ; I was under a cloud from the time of 
 
 that fatal disaster. 
 Whenever I rouged one cheek for a ball I was sure not to 
 
 think of the other ; 
 When I threaded my needle 'twas all in my eye, and not in 
 
 the eye of the needle ; 
 When I wanted to season my soup I would take the sand-box 
 
 instead of the caster ; 
 And it all went wrong, or all right to the dogs, by Destiny's 
 
 visible vengeance. 
 And now I am dead, I must wander the earth until my unlucky 
 
 descendants, 
 Who are heirs of the woe of the Fateful Fork, have all to the 
 
 uttermost perished. 
 
 But my great-grandson woe woe is me ! has a dozen chubby- 
 faced children 
 O ! the horrible brood !' and she cried ' Woe's me !' and she 
 
 heaped ' woe's me ' upon 'woe's me ', 
 ' Go dig for the treasure,' she told me at last, 'and the devil 
 
 be all my salvation.' 
 She vanished, the veil of the night was rent and the mists sank 
 
 down to the valley. 
 Next day in the office I booked myself for an inside seat to 
 
 Arcadia. 
 To be sure all the fellows made merry at me and called me a 
 
 subject for Bedlam, 
 ' But eminent men ever seem,' thought I, ' absurd to pro- 
 
 saical dullards.' 
 
41 8 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 Damon promises Schmuhl his good offices, and 
 the first act closes with a parabasis, a feature of the 
 Old Attic comedy of which Platen makes free use. 
 In the parabasis the poet speaks to the public 
 through the leader of the chorus, and drops all 
 disguise of his own views. The parabases of Ari 
 stophanes are among the most brilliant continuous 
 passages of his plays, and Platen bestowed especial 
 labor and thought on these satirical expectorations. 
 In this play it is, of course, Schmuhl that throws 
 aside his false beard and his cloak and holds forth 
 in the name of the poet, against the state of the 
 German stage. We translate a few lines : 
 
 Yes, my verses dare to blame you, blame you roundly too at 
 
 that, 
 
 For your judgment so uncertain, for your taste so false, so flat. 
 You applaud the mediocre, merely suffer what is grand, 
 Till you've almost driven all that is not brainless from the 
 
 land. 
 
 Till your marrowless and boneless public only craves as food 
 What is pulp of its own pulpy, mushy frog-molluscitude. 1 
 You, too, poets tragic, comic, any who would undertake 
 Something great, I bid remember that your life must be the 
 
 stake. 
 
 Do you wish to get the laurel ? Then you must not hurry on 
 In the morning to your office, go at night to Helicon. 
 Art says : I will yield me wholly if you wholly yield to me, 
 With a greater love of freedom than a dread of poverty. 
 
 This entire consecration to art is a favorite theme 
 with our poet, and he felt keenly enough even the 
 slight restrictions to which he was himself subjected. 
 
 1 Froschmolluskenbreinatur. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 419 
 
 The second act of the ' Fateful Fork ' discovers 
 Mopsus soliloquizing about the desirable fertility of 
 his ideal plantation on the Cape of Good Hope and 
 the undesirable fecundity of his real wife in Arcadia. 
 As he is meditating the expediency of sending his 
 six pair of twins to the Foundling Hospital, he is 
 interrupted by Phyllis with a demand for house 
 keeping money, a demand unwelcome at any time 
 to any husband, but especially to Mopsus, whose 
 temper has been soured by his repeated failures 
 to find the hidden treasure of his ancestress. His 
 ironical refusal leaves Phyllis in a rage, and of this 
 rage the tempter is not slow to avail himself, and 
 Sirmio, who has overheard the conversation between 
 Damon and Schmuhl, comes in to make coarse love 
 to Phyllis and to propose an elopement with the 
 treasure. His proposition is accepted with little 
 coyness, but while the red-headed gallant is engaged 
 in unearthing the casket, Mopsus returns, and in 
 spite of the representations of his wife, enters the 
 house. In anticipation of the discovery of her lover 
 and the stolen goods, Phyllis breaks out into the 
 following strain : 
 
 O cosmical woe ! O fatefullest day 
 
 He is gone he'll discover the gold poor me ! 
 
 And the carrot-head chap ! 
 
 And he'll worry my chap, and he'll conquer the gold, 
 And he'll seize with the right hand the savage the scalp 
 Of my lover alack ! and the left all the while 
 
 Will be greedily clutching the ducats. 
 
 Ha ! shall I indeed vouchsafe him such luck 
 
 And abandon such treasures and tresses at once 
 
 My ducats and duck ? 
 Ne'er shall it take place ! Ne'er shall it take place ! 
 
420 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 Or first shall return and destroy our world, 
 The Titanical brood and infinite Night, 
 And Chaos that ruled the beginning ! 
 
 But how shall I save It for Him and for Me ? 
 A terrible project starts up in my soul 
 
 A most horrible wish 
 O Medea ! thy form is so present to me, 
 With thy great heart stabbing thy serpent-race, 
 Then darting aloft to the welkin amain, 
 
 In a coach with a tandem of dragons. 
 
 Mistress Judith, however, was saucier still ; 
 Holofernes ascended her bridal bed, 
 
 Yet had she the bag 
 
 Already prepared for her consort's head ; 
 And I methinks for money may do, 
 And for Sirmio's sake, what Judith did 
 
 For the sake of a parcel of Hebrews. 
 
 Only Sirmio must know nothing of this, 
 For his bosom is still but childish and soft ; 
 
 Yet shall my lord 
 
 Be despatch'd this night to his long, long home, 
 And the two-tined fork of the family tree 
 Shall pierce my husband's insatiable breast, 
 
 Like unto the breast of a roast goose. 
 
 Detected in his attempt to appropriate the casket, 
 Sirmio is ignominiously hustled out of the house 
 by Mopsus, but not before he had made an appoint 
 ment with his mistress, who is packed off by her 
 husband with as little ceremony as he had packed 
 off her lover. Now left alone, Mopsus meditates on 
 the uses to which he will put his treasure-trove, and 
 groans over the expensiveness of wife and children. 
 The project of murdering the whole batch is begin 
 ning to dawn in his soul when Schmuhl enters on a 
 reconnoitering expedition. The sly pedlar repre 
 sents himself as a traveller fresh from the Cape of 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 421 
 
 Good Hope ; and a plantation on the Cape of Good 
 Hope being all Mopsus' desire, Schmuhl is urged 
 to give a description of that favored region, which 
 he does somewhat after this fashion : 
 
 The Cape of Good Hope is the land of Cocagne and the coun 
 try of pleasure and plenty, 
 
 Where the soil is like velvet, the heavens like glass, and the 
 clouds are as flakelets of purple ; 
 
 And the sun how he smiles with unceasing light ! Yet shad 
 owy vaults are extended 
 
 From bosket to bosket, from tree unto tree, and the roses 
 incline to each other, 
 
 And the foliage bourgeons forever, and there the paroquets 
 swarm and the pheasants, 
 
 And the peacock stalks through the silvery sand, proud spread 
 ing his golden-eyed circlet, 
 
 And the swan dives down, and the humming-bird sleeps in the 
 flaming cup of the tulips, 
 
 And the terebinth spices the pregnant air and the jessamine's 
 delicate fragrance, 
 
 And the aloe blossoms, while round unfold the gigantic fans of 
 the palm-tree, 
 
 And the fountain fills in its ceaseless sport alabaster basins 
 with gold foam. 
 
 Soft prattles around the melodious wave, and the flute's sweet 
 murmuring rises, 
 
 Dispersed by the wind in its gentle approach with a train of 
 balsamical odors, 
 
 Which shakes from the limb in its gracious advance the golden 
 ball of the orange, 
 
 And the cooling fruit of pomegranate withal, for the future 
 thirster providing. 
 
 No pain torments in that happy land and the bitterest pang is 
 a love-sigh : 
 
 Friend leaneth on friend in a close embrace, nor dread they a 
 coming divorcement ; 
 
 And the ivy entwines its unfading wreath in the waving locks 
 of the poet. 
 
 Old age and Death are the only lies, and they call the Impos 
 sible Real. 
 
422 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 Transported by this description, Mopsus pro 
 poses that they should at once betake themselves 
 to that promised land, and intimates that means 
 would not be wanting for the long journey. 
 Schmuhl begins to suspect that Mopsus had found 
 the casket, and closes the act with another parabasis, 
 from which we extract the portion that relates to 
 Kotzebue, once the most popular dramatic writer 
 in Europe, whose ' Stranger ' still keeps the stage, 
 whose ' Pizarro ' is still remembered. 
 
 Why, Public dear, is genius so ill-appreciated, 
 
 And poets sent to Coventry who once were celebrated ? 
 
 So Kotzebue, I hear, with you has got into miscredit, 
 
 Who, if man ever had the stage, indubitably had it. 
 
 You clapped his men and women too, you liked each witticism, 
 
 He was the poet to your taste, above all criticism. 
 
 The Muses nine for you might go to grass with that Apollo ; 
 
 On every stage, in every barn, he beat all others hollow. 
 
 No poet boasts of such success ; and so no longer linger, 
 
 But crown the German ^Eschylus, the nation's greatest singer ! 
 
 He blacked his sheets as men black boots, with ease that was 
 
 terrific, 
 
 And Calderon nay, Lope's self was hardly more prolific. 
 'Tis true he seldom wrote in verse, but that's 110 harm, as you 
 
 know, 
 You are but mortal ; would you hear the tongue of Jove and 
 
 Juno ? 
 He talked like you ; that suited you ; and so as not to wound 
 
 you, 
 
 His characters were chosen from nonentities around you. 
 And you this Kotzebue of yours have not yet quite forsaken ; 
 He's dead, but still his progeny it is his place have taken. 
 The lawyer man of Weissenfels 1 with all his crew 's descended 
 From him, for like him, they are dull as men, as poets 
 
 splendid. 
 
 1 Milliner. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 423 
 
 In the third act the knot of the action is drawn 
 tighter. Phyllis attempts to stab Mopsus with the 
 Fateful Fork just as Mopsus is on the way to put 
 an end to her ; and as she sees him she utters the 
 pious wish : 
 
 O would I had studied anatomy well 
 When I was a girl, for then I should know where the blow 
 
 would prove the most fatal. 
 Where, where is the heart? on the right? on the left? that 
 
 the stab may not fall on his stomach, 
 For his stomach digests so infernally well that the fork would 
 
 itself be digested. 
 
 But as Phyllis raises the Fateful Fork to deal 
 the fatal blow, Salome appears in thunder and 
 lightning, and Phyllis drops the fork, which Mop 
 sus takes up at the bidding of his ancestress, 
 and, inspired by her, prepares his soul to commit a 
 baker's dozen of murders. In these bloody mus 
 ings he is disturbed by Schmuhl, who climbs over 
 the garden wall and finds to his disgust that 
 Mopsus has really discovered the treasure, so that 
 there is nothing left for him but to offer his services 
 as travelling companion. These services are ac 
 cepted, and while Mopsus goes in to bid his wife and 
 children good-bye, Schmuhl, as usual, pours out the 
 poet's soul to the public this time in beautiful ottava 
 rima which we dare not attempt to reproduce. 
 
 In the fourth act Mopsus appears before his 
 house. He has murdered his wife and his zodiac 
 of children, and now deliberates with Schmuhl as 
 to the disguise which he is to assume. Schmuhl 
 proposes at first the part of a bagman, then a musi 
 cian, then an actor, then a journeyman, and finally 
 
424 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 an Englishwoman, which last strikes the fastidious 
 fancy of Mopsus. At the sound of footsteps, the 
 two confederates withdraw, and Damon, J. P., 
 enters. While he goes into the house to look for 
 Schmuhl, Sirmio comes singing to the rendezvous. 
 But scarcely has the joyous song died on his lips, 
 when the Justice rushes out of the house, fork in 
 hand and dismay on his countenance. Sirmio enters 
 the house to see what is the cause of the dismay, 
 and Damon tells us : 
 
 Lord ! my limbs are all a-tremble ! Was it Schmuhl ? The 
 
 case is solemn : 
 
 I should hardly like to see a college friend suspens. per collum, 
 Who sat by me in the moral lecture-room and slumbered in it ; 
 But the best of people sometimes may forget themselves a 
 
 minute. 
 Still this crime was too momentous for a paltry minute's 
 
 ticking ; 
 
 Hour after hour was needed for this awful lot of sticking. 
 But still may I not defend him ? What's the use of all my study ? 
 May it not be said the thing's a joke albeit somewhat bloody ? 
 That the children were but changelings, fittingly annihilated, 
 And that forks as deadly weapons nowhere are enumerated ? 
 Even Raupach in his dramas does not use them for impaling ; 
 Then who knows but venesection with these children was a 
 
 failing ? 
 May not blood of internecine fight for bread and butter stain 
 
 them? 
 May they not have had ideas and have perished to maintain 
 
 them? 
 
 Furthermore, is death an evil ? Is it nothing but destruction ? 
 Can the best of men do better than to die, by strict induction ? 
 
 While Damon is thus thinking how to deliver 
 his friend from the meshes of justice, Sirmio rushes 
 out and charges the crime on his master, whose 
 thoughts are thus disagreeably diverted from 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. . 42$ 
 
 Schmuhl to himself, and unable to appease the 
 righteous indignation of Sirmio by giving up the 
 treasure, in his despair he resolves on flight. As 
 Sirmio raises the hue and cry of Thief! and Murder ! 
 Damon falls into the following gloomy reflections : 
 
 Diabolical fate that has brought me here at the most unfor 
 tunate moment ! 
 How can I escape ? How can I avert the suspicion that speaks 
 
 so distinctly ? 
 I'll take to my heels, for by rare good luck I'm near the Ar- 
 
 cadiaii frontier 
 But ah ! on foot, and alas ! no cash, and alackaday ! lacking 
 
 in credit, 
 How shall I prolong that thing called life by physiological 
 
 scholars? 
 
 Perhaps by that other thing that is called by police-commis 
 sioners begging. 
 Ah me ! how romantic I fancied me once the jocund life of the 
 
 beggars, 
 All free from business, so lazy and fat, and extorting alms 
 
 from compassion, 
 As they roved all careless through town after town, through 
 
 sunlit village and hamlet, 
 And devoured their spoil straightway, and retained not a cent 
 
 in the rags of their pockets. 
 Light-hearted and joyous, I thought, they would rest in the 
 
 flourishing shade of the lime-trees, 
 And there the most serious business would be the catching of 
 
 parasites nimble. 
 But now it appears an oppressive fate to be begging so hotly 
 
 for coppers. 
 Yet I must be gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, or they'll chop off 
 
 my head from my shoulders ; 
 But when I'm away they may nail me up in effigy fast to the 
 
 gallows, 
 Just as soon as they choose, and make me the theme for a 
 
 tragical drama in German, 
 And the people will praise it, although they possess ' Pandora ' 
 
 and ' Iphigenia '. 
 
426 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 The sound of footsteps frightens Damon off in 
 his turn, and Schmuhl and Mopsus enter and hold 
 discourse about their future journey. This gives 
 the poet occasion to deal satirical blows at the 
 various literary towns of Germany, and the usual 
 parabasis follows in glorification of the author and 
 abuse of the idols of the people. At the close of 
 the act, Platen expresses his yearning for Italy : 
 
 O may fate but grant the poet that for which his bosom glows, 
 Refuge in a land where art aforetime blossomed like the rose, 
 'Till at last the German language has to him a foreign tone, 
 Who enriched its native beauty with an art that was his own. 
 Then, as he before has told you, then he hopes that he may die, 
 Many lances in his bosom Winkelried of poetry ! 
 
 The fifth act opens in the Inn at the sign of the 
 Golden Fork. The landlord soliloquizes in iambic 
 trimeters, which in Platen's hands are not alexan 
 drines : 
 
 This foreign lady is suspicious to my mind ; 
 She talks so little and she never lifts her veil. 
 She m^y be rich, nay, if her valet tells the truth, 
 As rich as gold ; but ugly she must be as sin. 
 Perhaps 'tis something even worse than ugliness : 
 We have examples in these latter days enough 
 Of travell'd monkeys and orang-outangs that seek 
 A higher culture, and attempt the author's trade. 
 Such cattle always hide their faces carefully, 
 And, like reviewers, keep themselves anonymous. 
 Perhaps the lady is that great celebrity, 
 The pig-faced princess who exhibited herself 
 Some years ago in Germany, although 'tis thought 
 That she was merely meant to be symbolical 
 An incarnation of the reigning German taste. 
 For what is common passes still from hand to hand : 
 Sublimity never can hope to serve as currency. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 427 
 
 And yet another supposition comes to me : 
 Perhaps the poor good lady's mother got a shock 
 From looking at a radical, and brought to light 
 Some demagogue's rhinocerotic smeller-face, 1 
 A paragon of never-ceasing snuffledom. 
 
 This mental darkness of mine host is in no way 
 enlightened by Schmuhl, who appears at this point, 
 but only to throw additional obscurity about 
 the subject, and leaves the landlord to additional 
 conjectures, which we cannot translate without dis 
 gusting the English reader. Scenes like that at the 
 opening of the ' Peace ' of Aristophanes are even 
 more to the German taste than they were to the 
 Greek. Tired of musing, the landlord is about to 
 go to bed, when a new guest asks shelter our 
 friend, the Justice of the Peace, who has fled from 
 the prosecution of his ungracious subordinate, 
 Sirmio. ' The chambers are all full/ says the land 
 lord, ' but you can have a sofa in the parlor. Only 
 you must not snore too loud, for the richest lady 
 in the world sleeps next door. Here lies her 
 casket, chokefull of gold ; but that is a mere trifle 
 in comparison with the rest of her wealth.' As 
 Damon is settling himself for a night's rest on the 
 sofa, his mouth begins to water for the British gold, 
 and he resolves to enter the lady's chamber and 
 rob her, and if need be, stab her with the Fateful 
 Fork which he has still on his person. But before 
 he can go in Mopsus comes out, haunted by the 
 sense of guilt. At the sight of Damon with the 
 Fateful Fork in his hand, Mopsus knows that his 
 time has come, and he calls on the Justice to stab 
 home ; but Damon has not the courage, and hands 
 
 1 Demagogenriechernashornangesicht. 
 
428 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 the fork to Mopsus, who inflicts on himself the 
 fatal blow. The whole house is raised, and 
 Schmuhl and Damon begin to quarrel about the 
 treasure. Mopsus dies. The lid of the casket 
 opens and Salome appears, surrounded with a halo 
 of glory, proclaims her liberation from the curse, 
 and vanishes. This ends the play and leaves 
 Schmuhl to add as epilogue a final parabasis, in 
 which the poet praises his own production with 
 out reserve, after the manner of the ancients. 
 
 Such is an outline of the ' Fateful Fork '. Critics 
 may say that it is poor in character, and that Platen 
 took refuge in the Aristophanic form because he felt 
 that he was not equal to the creation of real beings. 
 But the piece is to be judged by its aim ; and 
 though the author showed no little vanity when he 
 said that the ' Fateful Fork ' was his introduction to 
 the circle of the Immortals, his vanity, in view of 
 the admirable finish of his work, is pardonable. 
 
 That this vanity of Platen's was not of that fatal 
 kind which makes many authors satisfied with a 
 mere repetition of themselves, is shown by his next 
 dramatic work, ' The Romantic CEdipus ', a play 
 composed to ridicule the Romantic school. It ex 
 hibits an increasing command of language and a 
 wider range of thought ; and the plot is constructed 
 with great ingenuity to bring out the false sublime 
 of the modern drama. Indeed, Goethe said that 
 Platen might have been a great tragic poet if he had 
 not forestalled success by ridiculing the elements 
 of success. 
 
 The ' Romantic CEdipus ' reminds us somewhat of 
 Sheridan's ' Critic '. It is a play within a play ; but 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 429 
 
 in the ' CEdipus ' the criticisms precede and follow 
 the interlude, and do not come in as a running com 
 mentary ; and it is perhaps better thus, for running 
 commentaries of this character, however amusing 
 they may be, are apt to irritate the reader by dis 
 tracting his attention and anticipating his own 
 reflections. The hero of the comedy proper is one 
 Nimmermann, a transparent pseudonym for Im- 
 mermann, whose epigram on the ' Gaselen ' Platen 
 never forgave. Let us call him ' Nevermind '. 
 The other persons are Mr. Public, a traveller, and 
 Mr. Goodsense (Verstand), an exile. The chorus 
 is formed by the ' Haidschnucken ' the popular 
 appellation of a desperately mean breed of sheep 
 and the scene is laid in the desolate moorland 
 where those sheep are kept the infamous Lunen- 
 burg heath. Enter the Public : 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 This is the heath of Lunenburg, a lovely spot, 
 To which Fame's trumpet has allured me from afar, 
 For here, they say, a famous verse-smith roams about 
 And blows romantic bellows always night and day. 
 Yet far and wide there's naught poetic I espy, 
 Save haply in the foreground here a flock of beasts. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 Who are you, stranger ? Be more modest in your tone. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 What ? Can you speak? What ? Do we live in yKsop's time ? 
 If you were horses I could then rest satisfied, 
 For Homer, if I err not, makes his horses talk. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Fie ! /Esop, Homer ! Keep away from all that's Greek, 
 For Homer was a blind man ; ./Esop's back was hunched : 
 We serve no cripple ! 
 
430 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 Tell me, who's the man you serve ? 
 
 CHORUS. 
 Why, Nevermind. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 What ! Nevermind ? And is it true 
 That bombast-pickling offspring of the sacred Nine, 
 The German Shakespeare, lives and moves among the sheep 
 I'm all amazement ! 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Why? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 Who would have thought of that ? 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 What, that an able man like him should pasture sheep ? 
 Why did not Paris, whom Olympians themselves 
 Of old gave office as an umpire, pasture sheep ? 
 Did not Adonis ? And what else should occupy 
 His leisure moments in this lone sequestered spot ? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 To speak my mind, he might play executioner. 
 
 I read his play Cardenio ' in ecstasy, 
 
 The greatest piece of o'er-disgusting butchery 
 
 The fat frog bombast ever spawned to fructify 
 
 Poetic frenzy's reeking jack-o'-lantern swamp ; 
 
 For that is what the critics tell me of the piece. 
 
 But just the things that have displeased the critics so, 
 
 To me appear ecstatic, and I've hither flown 
 
 To shake his hand, and beg you tell me where he is. 
 
 In reply to this question, the Chorus excuses the 
 poet for his temporary retirement by describing the 
 operation of the ' CEdipus Tyrannus ' of Sophocles 
 on the system of the German Shakespeare. Never- 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 431 
 
 mind had been reading the ' QEdipus ', but wearied 
 of its flatness, 
 
 He hurl'd the book into the heather, and exclaimed : 
 
 So this is what you people call a masterpiece 
 
 The tragic canon of your famous Stagirite 
 
 Poor pedants all ! Now I will make an CEdipus 
 
 Myself, and show you how that fellow Sophocles 
 
 His splendid subject should have handled and produced 
 
 An acting drama, all complete from A to Z, 
 
 A fine historical, family-murder tragedy. 
 
 That other piece is but a fragment. Where's the breadth 
 
 So absolutely needed in a tragedy ? 
 
 And where the extra-supernumeraries ? Where 
 
 Attendants, fools and little babies, abigails, 
 
 Tide-waiters, toadies, tumblers, pedlars, prostitutes, 
 
 Horse-jockeys, cowards, catch-polls, clerks of court, and all 
 
 The rabble rout of modern plays ? And tell me where 
 
 The frequent change of scenery ? And where, O where 
 
 Freischtitz-hydraulic-pyrotechiiicalities P 1 
 
 And where's the comic element ? And where, O where 
 
 Anachronism's artless aid ? Nor can I find 
 
 Gross blunders in geography, and other bulls, 
 
 Nor hobbling schoolboy verses, nor the flowery stuff 
 
 The public always takes to be the height of style. 
 
 After a while Nevermind himself appears and is 
 introduced to the Public. The usual interchange 
 of compliments ensues, and Nevermind says : 
 
 'Tis true that I am not a Mullner, who, as soon 
 As any stranger puts his foot within his door, 
 Begins to talk about the children of his brain ; 
 Yet I must tell you frankly and without reserve, 
 I'm working at no ordinary masterpiece. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 As always. But vouchsafe me more particulars. 
 
 1 Freischutzcascadeiifeuerwerkmaschinerie. 
 
432 PLATEAUS POEMS. 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 
 But first I must investigate your real belief. 
 What say you to the 'CEdipus ' of Sophocles ? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 I read it in my boyhood when I was at school 
 A failure in my judgment. 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 Nay, a botch-work quite, 
 
 Beyond compare. The theme is highly tragical, 
 Rife with all kinds of horror, incest, parricide, 
 The Sphinx, the plague, misunderstandings and mistakes, 
 And complications numberless. How little use 
 Of all these fearful elements the poet makes ! 
 He has actually ejected all that's horrible, 
 O'er-veiled in pretty language every turpitude, 
 The grand effect annihilated, from the list 
 Of dramatis personae struck the Sphinx the one 
 Best calculated to affect the public. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 Yes; 
 
 For wholly groundless is the rule the critics give, 
 That tragic art the hidden powers of hell discards, 
 And only bears the passions' pure humanity. 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 
 But do you know the cardinal mistake that spoils 
 That wretched piece ? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 I do not. 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 
 Don't you recollect 
 The Sphinx's riddle ? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 Yes, of course. She says : What is 
 The thing that goes on four feet early in the day, 
 On two at mid-day, and at eventide on three ? 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 433 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 
 The answer is : Man. Now, I admit, the poet lets 
 His hero walk on two feet in his manhood's prime ; 
 Nay, when he blinds him, I must still concede he gives 
 A staff to act as third foot. But in all the piece 
 Where does he show him crawling on all fours, I pray ? 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 O what acumen ! 
 
 NEVERMIND. 
 
 Thus has Sophocles himself 
 
 Destroyed his hero's much extolled ' humanity ' 
 For, as he never goes on four feet, CEdipus 
 Is either not a man himself, or else he failed 
 To guess the riddle, and in such a case deserved 
 Destruction at the Sphinx's claws. 
 
 PUBLIC. 
 
 O how profound ! 
 
 To show how far Sophocles has fallen short of 
 the true requirements of the tragic art, Nevermind 
 has himself treated the theme in accordance with 
 the Romantic standard, and the next three acts are 
 taken up with the interlude of the ' CEdipus ', which 
 gives the name to the entire piece. We presume 
 that every reader is familiar with the story of QEdi- 
 pus, and that it is not necessary for us to tell how 
 the exposed son of Laius and Jocasta unwittingly 
 slew his father and married his mother, and how he 
 went forth from the land he had saved, an exile in 
 self-inflicted blindness. Nor have we the space to 
 exhibit here if it were necessary the wonderful 
 articulation of the great play of Sophocles, which 
 seems to have grown rather than to have been 
 made ; which, once studied, makes every other 
 
434 PLATEN' 'S POEMS. 
 
 representation of the legend appear unnatural ; and 
 which, a hundred times studied, reveals a hundred 
 new and subtle beauties at every fresh examination. 
 But even those who do not know the story may learn 
 it from an outline of Platen's plot, and even those 
 who cannot contrast the fair image of the Greek 
 poem with this caricature of the Romantic school, 
 may find some amusement in the intrinsic absurdity 
 of the ' Romantic QEdipus '. 
 
 The play begins almost ab ovo. The scene is in 
 the palace at Thebes. Jocasta and the midwives 
 are discussing the approaching event. Everything 
 is in readiness : the forceps, the horoscope, the 
 caudle. Seven hundred caps lie in the basket and 
 seven hundred cock-horses are stabled in the ward 
 robe. A birch-rod peeps out from behind the 
 mirror, and educational works, some thousand in 
 number, are ranged in the library. But while 
 recapitulating these indispensable articles, the gos 
 sips are startled by the apparition of a bat, which 
 alights upon the head of the queen and becomes 
 entangled in her hair. This evil omen excites great 
 apprehension and fervent deprecation, in the midst 
 of which the queen is seized by the pangs of labor. 
 
 We are now in the palace at Corinth. Diagoras, 
 who is the lover of Zelinda, who is the wife of 
 Polybus, who is the king of Corinth, is discovered 
 imploring his hard-hearted mistress for pity. 
 Thirty years he has sought her favor and sought it 
 in vain. He is fifty, she sixty, and yet she refuses 
 him the first look of love, and resolutely keeps her 
 self within the bounds of Platonic affection, although 
 her husband is a tyrant who is ever reproaching 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 435 
 
 her with her childlessness. At last Diagoras, worn 
 out with efforts to reduce that ancient fortress, bids 
 her an eternal farewell. 
 
 Fare thee well ! and let me perish. Still to Polybus be true : 
 Sooner would a dripping hay-cock break into a flame than you. 
 Yonder, yonder will I perish, where I saw you first, my love, 
 Where the green trees ever rustle, where the breezes ever rove, 
 On Cithaeron's lofty summit where, a maiden fancy-free, 
 You were hunting through the forest with your skirts above 
 
 your knee. 
 Spring was come with blooming myrtles ; swelling brooklets 
 
 roared, and ah ! 
 Nightingales were plaining sadly and the lambkins bleating 
 
 baa. 
 'Neath a pine-tree you were lying with your quiver 'neath your 
 
 head, 
 
 Round about your faithful beagles, at your side a hoopoe dead. 
 And I took you for a goddess, as you slept, and did not dare 
 Wake you up, but gazed upon your face with long-continued 
 
 stare. 
 
 Then I caught me a mosquito, and I set the game I got 
 On your nose's very tip end, where you have a scarlet spot. 
 You awoke, but in a passion. O forgive ', I stammered out, 
 And I felt my forehead, thinking that Actaeon's horns would 
 
 sprout. 
 But you smiled : ' I'm not Diana.' Then with half-offended 
 
 tone , 
 
 * I am chaster, for I never, never met Endymion. 
 If your love is but Platonic, it shall not be disallowed : 
 Fleeting is the vulgar passion, fleeting as the passing cloud ; 
 For the cloud is all inconstant now 'tis red, to-morrow grey, 
 Ever rising, ever falling, till it pass in tears away.' 
 Thus you spoke, and well I noted every word and every look, 
 And to-day that pine shall be my gallows-tree by hook or crook. 
 
 ZELINDA. 
 As you choose ! 
 
 DIAGORAS. 
 Ah ! cruel creature. Has it come to such a pass ? 
 
436 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 ZELINDA. 
 
 Yes ! 
 
 DlAGORAS. 
 
 Then, fare thee well, Zelinda. (Exit.} 
 
 ZELINDA. 
 
 Fare thee well, Diagoras. 
 
 I am sorry for the fellow, but his anguish can't be healed ; 
 Perish half a dozen like him ere my lofty virtue yield. 
 
 We return to Thebes. Jocasta refuses to show 
 Laius his new-born son, who is marked on the 
 breast with a bat. Laius makes light of this mis 
 fortune, but Tiresias the seer bursts in with horror 
 in his countenance and a horoscope in his hand. 
 The stars predict that this infant will murder his 
 father and marry his mother. Melchior, a servant, 
 is ordered to cast the child to the wild beasts of 
 Cithaeron, whither we too are transported to find 
 Diagoras walking about and soliloquizing of his 
 luckless love and intended self-murder. Diagoras 
 lies down and takes a nap by way of preparing 
 himself for a longer sleep, and Melchior enters 
 bearing the infant CEdipus, whose fate he bemoans. 
 He then binds the child to the limb of a tree and 
 leaves him to the tender mercies of Diagoras, who 
 is roused by his cries. Overjoyed at the sight, 
 Diagoras takes the child in his arms and hurries to 
 Corinth, where he tells Zelinda of his treasure- 
 trove, and makes a present of the infant to the 
 childless queen. This chaste lady, instead of 
 showing her lover any favor, expresses her suspi 
 cion that this is a love-child which Diagoras desires 
 to foist upon his mistress ; and while she accepts 
 the gift, banishes the giver from her presence for 
 
PLATENS POEMS. 437 
 
 the space of thirty years. As Diagoras vanishes, 
 Polybus enters, and Zelinda a second Sarah, as 
 she calls herself presents him with QEdipus, a 
 gift which he regards with just suspicion. In con 
 nection with this miraculous birth he narrates the 
 celebrated story of the snow-child, begotten in the 
 husband's absence by a flake of snow, and disap 
 pearing at a later day when exposed to the rays of 
 a tropical sun ; l and not satisfied with this, he 
 threatens further to murder Zelinda if she prove 
 not her innocence. She defers the proof until the 
 return of Diagoras, and leaves the stage with all the 
 dignity of an injured wife; but Polybus remains for 
 a moment to inform us that he is sinking shafts for 
 the arsenic that is to kill Diagoras thirty Easters 
 hence. 
 
 In Thebes again, where Laius relates a fearful 
 dream to Jocasta, and declares his intention to seek 
 an explanation of the vision at the oracular shrine 
 of Delphi. But Jocasta being a lady of strong 
 literary tastes, consoles herself with the prospect of 
 undisturbed entertainment with her two court-poets 
 Kind (Child a notorious manufacturer of opera- 
 texts) and Kindeskind (Grandchild an invention 
 of Platen's). 
 
 While he's absent, with my poets I can have a pleasant time, 
 I can make a Book of Beauties, I can build the lofty rhyme. 
 O ! I read just now in Houwald such a passage ! Never more 
 Will it leave my memory's chambers, never leave my bosom's 
 
 core ! 
 
 In a tragedy ' The Foeman ' is the title of the piece 
 There's a queen at midnight, wishing day to come and night 
 
 to cease, 
 
 1 Comp. Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, No. 19. 
 
438 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 And she says what I am certain genius alone could say : 
 ' I should like to be thy mother that I might awake thee, Day !' ' 
 What a daring trope how worthy of a being on the throne 
 What a tender wish this royal female utters of her own ! 
 She would like to be the mother of the Day but by my life, 
 If I had my choice, my Houwald, I should like to be your wife ! 
 
 Leaving Jocasta to her poets, we hurry back to 
 Corinth and listen to the complaint of Zelinda, 
 who leads a gloomy life. Her friend Diagoras is 
 banished, her husband Polybus spends all his days 
 in the Bureau of Mines, unjust suspicion clouds 
 her character and she is desolate ; and now her 
 adopted child CEdipus comes in to annoy her with 
 the question whether he is a bastard or not. She 
 refuses to answer the question, and he resolves to 
 seek a solution of his problem at the Delphic 
 oracle. The soliloquy of the Pythoness which 
 follows is one of the most beautiful passages of the 
 play, and the terza rima in which it is composed is 
 most exquisitely modulated. We have dropped 
 the double rhyme in our version, which halts but 
 lamely after the original. 
 
 To him who holds me to this tripod bound, 
 Unceasingly my sorrows forth I pour, 
 And show Apollo every bleeding wound. 
 
 1 Dass ich ware deine Mutter um zu wecken dich, o Tag. 
 Perhaps neither Houwald nor Platen was thinking who is the 
 mother of the day. In Aesch. Ag. 291, it is a being on the 
 throne, Clytaemnestra, or, as we must say now, 
 that says : 
 
 TTJS vvv TfKoixrrjs <j)>s ro' tv(f)p6vr)s 
 Coinp. Soph. Trach. 95. B. L. G. 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 439 
 
 This fane is splendid pillars tall a door 
 Of fine Corinthian brass, and e'en the roof 
 With precious glow of metal cover'd o'er ; 
 
 Yet have I here of bliss or joy made proof ? 
 What asker ever hath his thanks expressed 
 That I unrolled the Future's purple woof? 
 
 I'm grey from eld, pale, lean, and thus unbless'd, 
 How could I taste the life-blood of the vine, 
 Or how on downy cushions take my rest ? 
 
 The roses everywhere their stems entwine ; 
 Love sleeps on every brooklet's bank ; but I 
 Know Him and tremble ! Such a lot is mine. 
 
 And now that all my hair is silvery, 
 
 What comfort if, li'ke tempests in the north, 
 
 My oracles ring out resistlessly ? 
 
 There's not a garland no, not one that Earth 
 Weaves now for me ; and many would-be-wise 
 As story-telling trickster mock me forth. 
 
 vulgar rabble that I quite despise, 
 
 That lay their ban on every word I've spoke, 
 As if such thoughts as theirs to mine could rise ! 
 
 Their song is nothing but a raven's croak ; 
 But when I ope these lips so pale with grief, 
 It is as though the deep of Beauty broke. 
 
 1 warn the shipman, but from unbelief 
 He yields him to the dancing waters' lure, 
 Until he's wrecked against the rocky reef. 
 
 But why should I sing truth to fool and boor 
 
 Whose very gods to senseless idols turn, 
 
 And who must have their lies unmixed and pure ? 
 
 I wind my wreaths and ashes fill the urn. 
 
 After this sad strain the Pythoness withdraws into 
 the temple, whither she is followed by CEdipus, 
 eager to know who he is, whence he conies and 
 
44O PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 whither he is to go. Laius and Melchior then 
 appear on the stage. Laius is a fine old Theban 
 gentleman, who does not like the democratic man 
 ners of the present day, and is much scandalized at 
 the scant courtesy with which he has been treated 
 on his way to Delphi. Incognito or not, he wants 
 more respect. Already in a fume he accosts 
 CEdipus, as he reappears, with overbearing rudeness, 
 and in the rough encounter which ensues the old 
 king is killed. 
 
 In the Theban palace Jocasta is discovered con 
 versing with her two court-poets, Child and 
 Grandchild. Their discourse turns on the literary 
 gossip of the day, and then the Court of Love 
 is opened. Jocasta propounds a theme, and Child 
 and Grandchild produce glosses on it. But this 
 innocent pastime is interrupted by Tiresias, who 
 rushes in with news of dire import : 
 
 TIRESIAS. 
 
 O queen, upon this town of ours hath swoop'd a fearful Shape 
 
 of 111 ! 
 
 How glad I am to find you are surrounded by your poets still : 
 Let them redeem us. 
 
 JOCASTA. 
 
 What's to pay ? 
 
 KIND (Child). 
 
 Remember, arms are not my trade. 
 
 TIRESIAS. 
 
 We have no call for arms. We want a verse that is correctly 
 
 made. 
 
 Apollo hath in anger turned his favor from the Theban folk, 
 Because we all, instead of him, the idol Kotzebue invoke. 
 
PLATENS POEMS. 44! 
 
 To pay us off for this, the god hath sent on us a fearful minx 
 With winged breast and dragon-tail, whose name she says her 
 self is Sphinx. 
 Upon a rock beside the road this toll-gate keeper holds her 
 
 place, 
 Where everybody needs must pass, so strait and narrow is the 
 
 space ; 
 And, as she scruples not to swear, she's sent to get from every 
 
 soul 
 
 That passes by her station there, a faultless distich as the toll ; 
 And, as she hurls adown the steep the man whose distich has 
 
 a fault, 
 That gorge for nearly all the town is now become a burial 
 
 vault ; 
 
 But if one traveller shall bring a distich that is fair and true, 
 She'll plunge into the gulf herself, and peace will bless the 
 
 land anew. 
 
 JOCASTA. 
 
 Lord ! what is easier than that ? I'll send my brace of poets, 
 sir. 
 
 KIND. 
 
 But I would beg you, good my queen, remember, human 'tis to 
 
 err, 
 
 And poets are but human. So a sour reviewer rasp'd me hard 
 For treating as a dactyl once the combination 'back-court 
 yard '. 
 
 JOCASTA. 
 
 Such things as that have been in vogue since verses first were 
 
 made in Thebes : 
 ' Shame ' rhymes with ' lamb ', and ' throat ' with ' knot ', and 
 
 ' sheaves ' are bundled up with 'glebes '. 
 
 KINDESKIND (Grandchild). 
 
 And 'waif 'with < leaf '. We are not yet the hindmost. Brother, 
 
 let us go, 
 And thinking out a distich, try to make this dragon leap below. 
 
 As Child and Grandchild go out, Melchior comes 
 in and informs Jocasta of the murder of her hus 
 band. She receives the news with great equanimity, 
 
442 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 and proclaims that he who overcomes the Sphinx 
 shall receive Jocasta's crown and hand. We are 
 now brought into the presence of the Sphinx, who 
 declaims against the race of German bards. Poets 
 pass by in crowds, each holding in his hand a tablet 
 on which a distich is written, among them Child 
 and Grandchild. The Sphinx reads the distichs 
 and hurls the authors into the abyss. Finally 
 OEdipus appears, and, after a short colloquy, 
 presents his distich, 1 and the Sphinx plunges into 
 the pit of the theatre and delivers a discourse 
 against the Romantic mania prevailing in Germany. 
 
 In the fourth act we meet Diagoras, who has 
 returned to Corinth after an absence of thirty years, 
 and greets his old flame once more. But as she 
 desires of him an extravagant proof of his affection 
 in fact nothing less than his corporeal heart, of 
 which she wishes to make a present to her hus 
 band his love is suddenly changed into hatred, 
 and he calls her ' Hecuba ' and ' Cockatoo '. Un 
 ruffled by this want of gallantry, she calmly 
 expresses her determination to get hold of that 
 noble organ, and Diagoras, becoming alarmed, 
 prepares for flight. Just then the jealous Polybus 
 comes in, who describes with peculiar gusto his 
 mining operations, and drags the unhappy lover off 
 to empty the poisoned bowl. 
 
 Ten years have passed since CEdipus overcame 
 the Sphinx, and he sits in his festal hall and delib 
 erates with his grandees as to the ways and means 
 of stopping the pestilence and the famine which are 
 
 1 Moge die Welt durchschweifen der herrliche Dulder Odysseus, 
 Kehrt er zurtick, weh' euch, wehe dem Freiergeschlecht ! 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 443 
 
 devastating the land. Tiresias arises to explain the 
 origin of the plague. The poets, who had been 
 attracted to Thebes by the hope of winning the 
 crown, are the cause of this great misfortune. 
 Everywhere there is a smell of bad verses, of 
 tobacco, of salves. Apollo, it is true, has changed 
 all the poets into apes, camels, hoopoes, parrots, 
 magpies, and other appropriate animals ; but the 
 offensive matter still remains in the land. CEdipus 
 proposes to send Tiresias to Apollo's shrine to in 
 quire if there be any expiation. At this juncture 
 Balthasar enters and announces the death of Poly- 
 bus and Zelinda a slip of Platen's, by the way, for 
 such a Lucrezia Borgia scene ought not to have 
 been announced. That is too much in the style of 
 the classic drama. It should have been acted with 
 all the usual griping and gasping of the modern 
 stage. But the poet has lost his opportunity, and 
 we must content ourselves with Balthasar's descrip 
 tion. Diagoras had banqueted with Polybus, and 
 the wine was drugged with arsenic. But before 
 the poison had its effect, Zelinda's maids seized the 
 poor lover and cut out that often disappointed 
 heart. This much tried delicacy is served up to the 
 king on the following day, and after it is devoured, 
 Zelinda informs him that she has sacrificed her 
 lover to his jealousy. Enraged at the discovery 
 that he has been poisoned by his own act, Polybus 
 plunges his sword into the bosom of his wife and 
 thus both perish. With her last breath, Zelinda 
 acknowledges that CEdipus is a foundling. While 
 CEdipus is still quivering under this accumulation 
 of tortures, Jocasta appears and announces the 
 
444 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 response of the oracle. The murderer of Laius 
 must be punished, and, as the person is unknown, 
 recourse must be had to incantation, and Jocasta 
 expresses her great anxiety, which has been 'in 
 creased by Melchior's confession that he had not 
 exposed her infant son. Tiresias, CEdipus, and all 
 the train proceed to a churchyard which is fur 
 nished with cypresses and monuments of the most 
 approved cut. The seer evokes the ghost of Laius, 
 who points to CEdipus as his murderer. At this 
 supreme moment Jocasta enters and CEdipus bares 
 his breast to her that she may strike home and 
 avenge her husband's murder. She sees the mark 
 of the bat recognizes her son hurries away and 
 hangs herself in the background. CEdipus orders 
 a coffin to be brought, and after a speech of great 
 elegance of diction for somehow even in this trav 
 esty CEdipus preserves his tragic dignity he lays 
 himself down, and while the lid is closing, the 
 curtain falls to slow music. 
 
 The reader will doubtless pardon us for omitting 
 a minute analysis of the fifth act of the ' Romantic 
 CEdipus ' which contains a discussion of the tragic 
 interlude. Of course Goodsense is completely tri 
 umphant and the Public more than half convinced ; 
 and to satisfy all parties Nevermind is led off in 
 triumph to Bedlam, where he is sure to find an 
 audience capable of appreciating his crack-brained 
 fantasies. 1 
 
 The imitation of Aristophanes in this piece also 
 is very close, and many verses are a direct echo of 
 
 1 Obertollhausiiberschnappungsnarrenschiff. 
 
PLATENS POEMS. 445 
 
 the great original. 1 But while this close study 
 gives these compositions of Platen a peculiar charm 
 in the eyes of the classical scholar, the general 
 public, even in Germany, has little real relish for 
 such artificial reproductions ; and Platen's plays are 
 destined to become at no distant day mere literary 
 curiosities. As Platen's powers matured, he de 
 voted himself more and more to lyric poetry in 
 antique metres ; and as a master of the form, he 
 is still unequalled in this direction ; so that those 
 who are desirous of enriching our English poetry 
 by classic versification, would do well to study 
 Platen in order to see what has been done in a 
 kindred tongue. But we shall attempt nothing at 
 present in the way of translation from this inter 
 esting portion of his poems, and content ourselves 
 with one or two specimens of Platen's power as a 
 ballad-writer ballad in the German sense. In our 
 judgment, some of his pieces, though a little cold, 
 rank among the best of German literature. His 
 ' Harmosan ', for instance, is better and more dra 
 matic than Riickert's poem on the same subject. 
 
 HARMOSAN. 
 The throne of the Sassanidae now lay in dust, the ancient 
 
 throne, 
 And Moslem hands were plundering the treasur'd wealth of 
 
 Ctesiphon ; 
 Now Omar came to Oxus' strand 'twas after a many a hard 
 
 fought day, 
 Where Chosru's grandson, Jezdegerd, a corpse on piles of 
 
 corpses lay. 
 
 1 For instance : 
 
 1 O Grobian ! O Grobian ! O Grobian ! ' 
 is modelled on 
 
 G> Xapwi', 
 
446 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 As through the wide champaign he went, and countless booty 
 
 well explored, 
 A satrap, Harmosan by name, was brought before Medina's 
 
 lord; 
 The last that with the fearless foe among the mountains dared 
 
 to strive, 
 But ah ! the hand so bold before, was manacled by heavy gyve. 
 
 And Omar sternly vieweth him and saith, ' Perceivest now how 
 slight, 
 
 How vain against the God we serve the idol -servers' counter- 
 might ? ' 
 
 And Harmosan thus answers him, ' Thy hands the victory 
 have wrought, 
 
 Whoso gainsays a conqueix>r, gainsays from foolish lack of 
 thought. 
 
 I venture but a single prayer, well-weighing both thy lot and 
 mine : 
 
 Three days I've fought without a draught O ! serve me with 
 a draught of wine.' 
 
 The caliph beckons at his beck a beaker on the captive waits, 
 
 But Harmosan suspects a drug and still a while he hesitates. 
 
 ' Fear not,' outspeaks the Saracen, ' for treachery stains no 
 Moslem soul : 
 
 Thou shalt not die, my friend, until thy lips have drained this 
 glowing bowl.' 
 
 And then the Persian takes the cup, and quickly, with his 
 ironed hand, 
 
 Instead of drinking, hurls it down with instantaneous self- 
 command. 
 
 And Omar's followers fall on him and haste to venge the cun 
 ning plan, 
 
 Bright gleam their swords above the head of the all too crafty 
 Harmosan 
 
 ' His life be spared,' cries Omar then, while warding off the 
 threatening sword, 
 
 ' If aught be sacred on the earth, it is a warrior's given word.' 
 
PLATENS POEMS. 447 
 
 And there is no little movement in ' Zobir ' : 
 ZOBIR. 
 
 All eager for plunder, terrific and poor, 1 
 Abdallah has brought to the African shore 
 The Arabian host, 
 And suddenly stands upon Tripoli's coast. 
 
 Yet ere they lay siege to the wall and the gate, 
 
 The noble Gregorius cometh in state 
 
 The victor renowned 
 
 Byzantium sent out to make war on Mahound. 
 
 While bravely he stems the fanatical tide, 
 
 His daughter so winsome rides close by his side, 
 
 Her lance in its rest, 
 
 The golden-hair'd maiden with steel-covered breast. 
 
 She had taken upon her a warrior's part, 
 
 And wielded her spear and shot far with her dart 
 
 In the roar of the fight, 
 
 Like Pallas and yet like Cythere so bright. 
 
 Then up rose her father and looking about, 
 He fired with valor his warriors stout 
 ' Come cease with this game, 
 My men at Abdallah ! for that is your aim. 
 
 Whoever shall bring me the enemy's head, 
 To-day mine own lovely Maria shall wed, 
 With riches untold : 
 Beside her dear self, countless treasures of gold.' 
 
 Then thicker the shafts of the Christians they flew, 
 And the Moslem grew fainter in muscle and thew, 
 And Abdallah in gloom 
 Withdrew to his tent from the coming of doom. 
 
 Yet one in that host fought with spirit aflame, 
 
 A thunderbolt he, and Zobir was his name : 
 
 Off rides he in wrath, t 
 
 And his spur, as it rings, sprinkles blood in his path. 
 
 1 Platen is responsible for the anticlimax : 
 
 Raublustig und schreckenverbreitend und arm. B. L. G. 
 
448 PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 He speaks to his master and says : ' Will you miss 
 The fight like a boy ? What, Abdallah, is this ? 
 By the caliph you're sent 
 To conquer the world, and you dream in your tent ! 
 
 Let that which the Christian devised to unnerve 
 The Moslem, be made his own ruin to serve : 
 Your promises make 
 The equal of his, and the same be the stake. 
 
 Announce to your soldiers this guerdon of fight : 
 
 Whoever the enemy's leader shall smite 
 
 On his infidel head, 
 
 I'll grant him the lovely Maria to wed.' 
 
 Abdallah proclaims it new light in his eyes 
 His soldiers take heart at the glorious prize 
 Zobir in the van 
 With the whirl of his scimetar slaughters his man. 
 
 See ! the Christians they hide in the town their disgrace ! 
 See ! how the gaunt Moslems crowd into the place ! 
 See ! floats from the tow'rs 
 The flag of the prophet ' the city is ours ! ' 
 
 Long, long did Maria the foeman withstand : 
 
 Surrounded at last by a Saracen band, 
 
 On the tide she was swept 
 
 To the feet of Zobir, and she saw him and wept. 
 
 Then outspeaketh one from the midst of the horde : 
 
 ' We bring you your winsome, your lovely reward, 
 
 The beautiful fere 
 
 That you fought with us for, and you've gained her, Zobir !' 
 
 Then answers the hero with sneer and with jest : 
 
 1 Who tempteth the manhood that reigns in my breast ? 
 
 Catch me like a bird ? 
 
 I fight for my God and I fight for his word ! 
 
 For love of a Christian I vie with you ? I ? 
 Go, girl ! for thy freedom is granted thee, fly 
 What seekest thou here ? 
 Go, weep for thy father and curse thou Zobir.' 
 
PLATEN'S POEMS. 449 
 
 From the year 1826, the year in which he wrote 
 the ' Fateful Fork ', Platen spent much of his time 
 in Italy, where he sought a milder climate for his 
 delicate health, a softer air for his excitable nerves, 
 and the soothing influence of absence for the irri 
 tation of a wounded self-love. Many of his Odes 
 and Hymns were written in Italy, and are steeped in 
 the light of a southern sky. But the darts of satire 
 reached him even in his voluntary exile, and it was 
 from Italy that he sent back the * Romantic QEdipus ' 
 to punish his assailants. Immermann was good- 
 natured about it, but Heine, whom Platen called 
 ( the shamelessest of human kind ', heaped on his 
 enemy the vilest slanders, which it were a shame 
 even to mention. In 1832 Platen returned to Ger 
 many for a short time, and went backwards and 
 forwards between Italy and Germany, until April, 
 1834, when he left his native land for the last time. 
 He died of fever near Syracuse, whither he had fled 
 from the cholera, December the fifth, 1835. An 
 Austrian prince visited his tomb a few years ago 
 and wrote : ' What German passes through Syra 
 cuse without going to see Platen's grave? Our 
 carriage stopped at a shabby house, and we stum 
 bled and jumbled through an orchard after the 
 Italian fashion, pushed through branches and 
 through thorns by a narrow and steep path that 
 ran along the garden, and suddenly found our 
 selves standing by the grave of the great poet, who 
 showed the astonished world what can be done 
 with the German language in antique metre. The 
 tombstone has a Latin inscription that calls the 
 poet the German Horace, and the coat-of-arms of 
 
45O PLATEN'S POEMS. 
 
 the Platen family, already mutilated, has been let 
 into the garden-wall in mosaic. Poverty-stricken 
 cypresses stand on the right and on the left of the 
 spot.' And as we review this description, which 
 bears the impress of fidelity, we cannot help 
 thinking that our tribute to the memory of an old 
 favorite is something like that visit of Maximilian's 
 to the poet's grave : that we have dragged our 
 readers over a rough and thorny path to see a 
 neglected tomb an inscription in an alien tongue 
 a mutilated coat-of-arms, and a few cypresses 
 that have not borne transplanting very well. 1 
 
 1 A handsome monument was erected to Platen's memory in 
 1869, the year after this study was published, and a photograph 
 of it, which I owe to the kindness of President Oilman, reached 
 me while this volume was preparing for the printer. The 
 cypresses do not look ' poverty-stricken ' and the inscription 
 is in simple German ; only the stone-cutter has left out one ' r ' 
 in ' Errichtet', which the shade of the sensitive poet, who in 
 life wanted everything that belonged to him in the way of 
 honor, must assuredly resent. B. L. G. 
 
MAXIMILIAN; HIS TRAVELS 
 AND HIS TRAGEDY 
 
MAXIMILIAN ; HIS TRAVELS AND HIS 
 TRAGEDY. 1 
 
 The sceptre of the tragic art is a disputed sceptre, 
 and men adjudge it, according to their temperament 
 or their nationality, to this one or that one of the 
 three great names of antiquity ; but the most devoted 
 admirer of ^schylus will not deny to Sophocles 
 one peculiar excellence, the wonderful preparation of 
 the catastrophe. The poet lays down the meshes of 
 fate afar off. Every line of the drama is a line of the 
 great network ; each winged word carries its thread 
 as light as gossamer, but as strong as steel, to the 
 distant knotting-place ; and so the toils grow closer 
 and closer, and the struggles of the victim tighten 
 the cords, while his cries of anguish echo with cruel 
 significance every past utterance of joy, every past 
 
 'i. Aus meinem Leben : Reiseskizzen, Aphorismen, Ge- 
 dichte. Leipzig : 1867. 
 
 2. L'Empereur Maximilien, son Elevation et sa Chute. 
 D'apres des documents inedits, par le Comte Emile de Kera- 
 try. Leipzig : 1867. 
 
 3. Maximilian's Execution discussed in a Brief Review of 
 Mexican History. By Edmund Stephenson, twenty years resi 
 dent in Mexico. London : 1867. 
 
 4. Kaiser Maximilian I. Von T. A. Liegel. Hamburg : 
 1868. 
 
 5. Moderne Imperatoren. Diskretes und Indiskretes. Per- 
 sonliche Erinnerungen eines politischen Agenten. Napoleon 
 III. Maximilian I. Koln : 1867. 
 
 6. Le Mexique tel qu'il est. Par Emmanuel Domenech. 
 Paris : 1867. 
 
454 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 outburst of uncontrollable pride. To some this 
 cunning workmanship may seem too studied, too 
 artificial ; but the old poet was a man who looked 
 narrowly into the machinery of human life, and this 
 strain of unconscious prophecy is not intended 
 simply for theatrical effect, it is an artistic reproduc 
 tion of the real working of human destinies. For 
 every life is more or less of a tangle : to no one is 
 it given to reel off his allotted skein with perfect 
 smoothness ; and so far every man has his tragedy. 
 The mistakes and the cross-purposes of our personal 
 history are no laughing matter, and cannot be a 
 laughing matter to him who has any proper estimate 
 of the value of a human life. Yet few have the 
 patience or the courage to trace back their present to 
 their past, through all the minute lines of connexion ; 
 and most people are content with noting what they 
 consider the turning-points of their course of life, 
 incurious or afraid of a more subtle investigation. 
 Indeed, few have the material, for comparatively 
 few preserve any record of their thoughts and feel 
 ings ; and so all but the most vivid impressions are 
 effaced, and even those are refracted by the denser 
 medium of the present. But material or no ma 
 terial, we are all ready enough and willing enough 
 to study the tragic failures of others ; and few lives 
 have such interest for our time as the life that ended 
 the other day at Queretaro. 1 Such genius, such 
 
 1 Written in 1868. Maximilian was vivid enough to the 
 Southern people of that time, and many of our exiles knew him 
 well. Now he is a mere shadow, and if this volume had not 
 already been swollen beyond its legitimate bulk, a brief memoir 
 might appropriately be added to explain the allusions in the 
 text. B. L. G. 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 455 
 
 energy, such high purpose, such noble devotion, 
 have seldom made such utter shipwreck ; and we 
 must confess that, to our minds, the personal and 
 not the political fate of Maximilian is the topic of 
 absorbing interest. So tragic are the elements of 
 the drama that we might almost fancy the whole 
 scene shifted from the new world and modern times, 
 to ancient times and classic ground. We do not 
 ask what was the state of parties in Thebes. CEdipus 
 may have belonged to the Liberals, 'and Creon to 
 the Clericals of the period, and Eteocles and Poly- 
 nices may have cut each other's throats about a 
 matter of mortmain, for all we care ; and so in this 
 great tragedy we are almost tempted to let Mexican 
 politics roll down the abyss to which the atrabilious 
 Keratry consigns everything and everybody in that 
 ' accursed land, where the word " country " strikes 
 no responsive chord' ' un pays maudit ; le mot 
 patrie riy vibre plus! 
 
 This personal interest has led us to read the seven 
 volumes of Maximilian's works that have been 
 issued in rapid succession during the last few 
 months ; and unless we have been deceived by the 
 facility of aftersight, by the ease of a vaticinatio post 
 eventum, we think that we can see in the uncon 
 scious self-delineation of the young Austrian officer, 
 the prediction of the romantic career of the Emperor 
 of Mexico. Certainly, when read side by side, the 
 history of the Mexican Empire and the Travels of 
 the Archduke form most startling commentaries on 
 each other, and the most brilliant vindication of the 
 truthfulness of the tragic art of the ancients, which 
 seems at first too studied, too coolly calculated. 
 
456 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 But we are not equal to a purely aesthetic discussion 
 of so ' palpitating ' a theme, and if we were, it is cer 
 tain that most of our readers would be revolted by 
 so cold-blooded a dissection of the subject ; and we 
 have little fancy for the title of a ' fingering slave '. 
 Nor shall we presumptuously take on ourselves, 
 like too many of the historical guild, the preroga 
 tives of Him that not only searcheth the heart and 
 trieth the reins of the children of men, but who also 
 executeth judgment. Our simple task will be to 
 gather up and group the results of a comparison of 
 the works above cited, which, this time at least, are 
 not the mere conventional figureheads of an article. 
 The first four volumes of Maximilian's writings 
 are a reprint of an earlier edition, prepared several 
 years ago, for strictly private circulation, at the 
 Imperial office in Vienna. The present issue is 
 intended for the public at large ' the right of trans 
 lation is reserved' and if Queen Victoria's con 
 fidences are read, Maximilian's in an English dress 1 
 will doubtless find readers and admirers enough on 
 both sides of the water. These first four volumes 
 contain Sketches of Travel in Italy, Sicily, Spain, 
 Portugal, Algiers, Albania, in the years 1851-1853. 
 The last three contain a description of his expedi 
 tion to South America in the winter of 1859-60, a 
 collection of aphorisms, and a number of poems. 
 There is a wide gap between the two sets of vol 
 umes, just as there is a wide gap in time and devel 
 opment between the boy of nineteen and the man of 
 twenty-eight, and yet the personal identity is strik 
 ingly preserved ; for although we cannot coincide 
 
 'An English translation was announced in 1868. 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 457 
 
 fully with the reported opinion of Lord Brougham 
 that the fourth year is the grand climacteric of char 
 acter, still we are convinced that the great lines are 
 drawn much earlier than most persons suppose. 
 There is greater maturity of thought, greater com 
 mand of language, and, what is more important, a 
 manlier grasp of things, but the real self of his 
 poetic nature has changed but little. At Naples 
 and at Bahia, at Pompeii and in the Mato Virgem 
 he is the same ; though so much of life lies in those 
 seven years his marriage, his vice-royalty in Lom- 
 bardy. He is the same, although he considers 
 himself so strangely altered ; although he writes at 
 the close of 1859 ' I am sa< ^ when I compare then 
 and now then I was just waking up to life and 
 marched joyously to meet the future. In my pres 
 ent pilgrimage there is something weary. My 
 shoulders are no longer light and free ; they have 
 to bear no little of a bitter past.' 
 
 The title ' Sketches of Travel ' is not a promising 
 one, and if Maximilian had followed the example 
 of so many ' noble authors ', these volumes would 
 have been almost worthless for such a purpose as 
 ours. A re-hash of Murray or Badeker or Forster 
 or any other standard compiler of guide-books, 
 however flavored by the aristocratic spoiler of 
 broth, is very little to the taste of any sensible man. 
 But these books are really drawn ' out of his life '- 
 are really a part of an autobiography ; and a large 
 proportion of every day's record is devoted to his 
 feelings and reflections as well as to his experience 
 and observations. Yet on the other hand it must 
 not be supposed that Maximilian used the title of 
 
458 MAX I MIL IAN ; 
 
 traveller merely as a convenient text for the display 
 of his wealth of fancy and his facility of sentimental 
 rhetoric. Without such an overflow he could not 
 have lived, so exuberant was his nature ; but that 
 was not all. He was a traveller from passion and 
 gifted as few travellers are. The riches of but four 
 of his days in Bahia require no less than 282 pages 
 for their exposition ; and even if you omit the 
 moralizing and the sentimentalizing, and all the 
 postliminary cramming, there is enough of close 
 and accurate observation left to show the genius of 
 the man ; so that the majority of gaping dawdlers 
 who call themselves travellers may well be put to 
 the blush by this keen-sighted, energetic explorer. 
 Keratry endeavors to produce the impression that 
 Maximilian was a mere man of the closet a 
 bureau-worker, and makes a wry face at the 
 1 statuts ' which the unfortunate prince lugged with 
 him from Miramar. But throughout his life Maxi 
 milian appears a man of action, dreamer if you 
 will, at times, possessed of a dream, if you will, 
 always ; but still a man of real, waking and 
 working power thatkrdftig as became one of his 
 line. Of this energy in travel he has himself given 
 us with pardonable self-complacency a singular 
 illustration in the first pages of his twelfth sketch : 
 ' If everything hits, an incredible amount I am 
 speaking from experience can be seen in a short 
 time ; to be sure you must have energy, good 
 nerves and resolute will. Why, I went all over 
 Rome, the great, the eternal city, in three days, and 
 in those three days I was three times in the Coli 
 seum, three times in the Vatican, three times in St. 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 459 
 
 Peter's, and once in the ball on the top of the dome ; 
 visited all the churches, collections and monuments, 
 inspected the principal works of the magnificent 
 Vatican library, and have still the liveliest recollec 
 tion of the individual gems among the statues and 
 pictures ; had the proud satisfaction several years 
 afterwards when showing some photographic 
 views of setting a lady right, who had lived more 
 than thirty years in Rome; and yet had time 
 enough in those three days to visit the Holy Father 
 twice, to hear two masses with him, and then 
 breakfast with him, to attend a long High mass in 
 the Sistine Chapel, to eat several grand dinners, 
 [not more than three, it is to be hoped] ; and 
 finally, with all that, to pay and to receive a multi 
 tude of visits of ceremony. To be sure the mad 
 chase (Hetze) always began about five o'clock in 
 the morning and did not end thanks to the superb 
 full moon until after one o'clock at night.' How 
 ever deplorable the necessity of such haste, it is 
 impossible not to admire the energy which com 
 passed so much in so short a time ; and the recep 
 tivity which took in such distinct images, where 
 duller senses would have seen but confused 
 shadows. Most of the rapid school of travellers 
 that we have met seem to have had their brains 
 addled by the imperfect hatching of new ideas, and 
 we have often had occasion to pity the poor crea 
 tures who could not recall where they saw the Lion 
 of St. Mark's and where the Sistine Madonna : pic 
 ture-galleries and sculpture-galleries and churches 
 and opera-houses all jumbled together in a chaos 
 of confused half-memories. What Maximilian saw, 
 
460 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 he saw with an artist's eye and reproduced with 
 an artist's hand. His style is elegant ; for a boy 
 of nineteen or twenty the composition of his earlier 
 sketches is wonderful ; and yet we hesitate as we 
 pronounce our judgment. As a constant reader of 
 French becomes despite himself a fastidious critic 
 of awkward phraseology and lumbering periods, so 
 those whose profession requires a daily soaking in 
 German prose become careless about the greater or 
 less density of the fluid, or shall we say it boldly ? 
 of the mud-bath. Lessing shows that the German 
 language, capable of everything, is not incapable, 
 as some would have us believe, of the great virtue 
 of concinnity ; and we have often regretted that 
 there are so few imitators of that terse, neat, precise, 
 penetrating diction of his. But from a German 
 point of view, we need not fear being gainsaid. All 
 seem to agree that in grace and elegance Maxi 
 milian's style leaves little to be desired. But grace 
 and elegance are not everything ; and a miserable 
 anonymous diplomatic agent, who spells ' phlegm ' 
 persistently with a pf t miswrites all his French 
 words and tells us that he breakfasted with Prince 
 Louis Napoleon at the ' Travellers' Club ' on ' reetn- 
 steak ' deigns further to enlighten us as to the real 
 worth of the earlier sketches. ' Pretty, graceful, 
 hasty. Nowhere a deep idea, no striking expres 
 sion of an individual character; everything conven 
 tionally smooth and polished.' If the diplomatic 
 ra^steak-eater is right, we are hopelessly wrong ; 
 and yet we do not intend to yield the point that 
 Maximilian had an individual character, simply 
 because his style is not as ponderous as pumper- 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 461 
 
 nickel, and because his handwriting was rarely 
 beautiful with its long, straight, unshaded lines. 
 Start with the idea that his type was feminine 
 rather than masculine, that his was a mere dilet 
 tante nature, and you can satisfy yourself of that, 
 provided always you shut your eyes to everything 
 else. 
 
 For a boy of twenty, we repeat, his composition 
 is wonderful in grace and point. He shows from 
 the very beginning a painter's appreciation of pic 
 turesque effects; and few travellers have drawn 
 more vivid sketches of scenery. Especially re 
 markable, however, for this power are the later 
 papers, entitled the Mato Virgem (Virgin Forest), 
 which are full of all the tropical glory of South 
 America, and transport the reader, with a singular 
 facility of representation, into those wonderful 
 ' cathedrals of the Creator of all that is created, with 
 their living giant pillars, the green sunlit arches, 
 their fulness of forms and color,' until we seem to 
 walk with him on the springy carpet of moss and 
 mould, and look up with him along the strange 
 ladders of climbing vines to the leafy roof which 
 sifts the light through into the aisles below. But 
 his love of painting and the picturesque sometimes 
 misleads him; and we are not unfrequently re 
 minded that we have to do with the child of an 
 ' over-refined, over-civilized ' generation ; that, after 
 all his experiences, he is the same spoiled young 
 gentleman who complains that the colors of the 
 curtains and of the furniture of his cabin are in 
 too glaring contrast. It is Maximilian the painter, 
 not Maximilian the poet, that often and over again 
 
462 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 draws his comparison from the theatre ; and so fre 
 quent are the parallelisms that he makes between 
 the actual views before him and the pasteboard and 
 canvas of the stage, that one might take him for a 
 manager or a ' properties '-man on his travels. To us 
 there is something peculiarly ominous in all these 
 theatrical allusions ; and by their sinister light we 
 see in the future an invading army welcomed by 
 bouquets and fireworks that their sovereign had paid 
 for, a junta of notables dressed up for the nonce, a 
 farce of an election, a shadowy crown and the 
 end Queretaro. 
 
 We have called Maximilian a poet ; but he was a 
 truer poet in his prose than in the poetic form 
 proper. The verses are smooth enough, the lan 
 guage elegant, the thoughts not trivial, and yet 
 there is a want of that vis vivida which makes the 
 real poet. Of course, in view of his sad fate, there 
 are lines here and there that sink more deeply into 
 the heart ; but we all know how poor the poetry 
 may be and yet how electric the effect. The light 
 ning is not in the line, but only passes through it ; 
 whereas poetry is a growth, not a medium. Still 
 we must speak on this point also with due reserve ; 
 for holding with Goethe that ' recent (German) 
 poets put a great deal of water in their ink ', we are 
 no admirers of Lenau or Freiligrath, or any of the 
 still newer set, and Maximilian may be quite as 
 good as some of his models, for all we know. 
 
 If we turn from the exhibition of his skill as a 
 writer to his acquisitions as a student, we find that, 
 closing as his formal education did, at eighteen, it 
 left many gaps unfilled. A scholar, in the English 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 463 
 
 sense, Maximilian was not ; Austria has only re 
 cently begun to wake up to the importance of clas 
 sical education ; her best philologians are importa 
 tions ; and Maximilian's classical training seems to 
 have been of the most superficial. His allusions 
 are all of the tritest character ; his Latin quotations 
 come direct from the first pages of the Reader, and 
 are sometimes puzzlingly inapt ; in Greek he shares 
 the mania of American editors for interchanging 
 i and y spelling Sphinx and Piraeus, Phz'le and 
 Kallip/gos with all the independence of Kaiser Sig- 
 ismund, who, at the Council of Constance, declared 
 himself to be ' above grammar '; and his few elegiacs 
 are as horrible jumbles of syllables as ever dis 
 graced King Louis of Bavaria. 1 Far greater were 
 his attainments in modern languages a necessary 
 accomplishment for a man in his position and his 
 stock of general information was respectable, though 
 not vast. His taste in poetry was, as we have 
 already hinted, liberal beyond measure ; his reading 
 embraces the extremes of Shakespeare and Kot- 
 zebue ; his admiration stretches from Heine to 
 Grillparzer. As a painter, his practical skill, ac 
 cording to report, rose far above mere amateurship ; 
 he was passionately fond of music, and, as every 
 page of his later sketches shows, an enthusiastic 
 botanist. ' Let others turn to the grave studies of 
 mineralogy and geology ; I stick to blossom and 
 fruit.' But all these accomplishments were outside 
 of his profession, to which he was early destined, 
 to which he was sincerely devoted. He was proud 
 
 1 e. g. : Mit gehorigem Mass das Erlaubte alles versuchen, 
 Gibt dir Urtheilskraft in ungewohnlichem Mass. 
 
464 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 to be a sailor ; and to the best of his extraordinary 
 ability he made himself master of his trade. That 
 his exulting and abounding nature should have 
 rejoiced in the poetry of the profession was but 
 natural. How many grim captains have begun as 
 dreaming boys ! but it is a mere distortion of facts 
 to represent him as carried away with the romance 
 of swelling sails, manned yards, salutes of honor, 
 and all the other stuff that landlubbers think so 
 fine. From the very beginning of his actual service 
 on shipboard, he exhibited an earnest purpose to 
 learn his business thoroughly ; as Admiral of the 
 Austrian fleet he succeeded, despite much snubbing 
 from Vienna, in bringing life into the naval service ; 
 many of his plans, once sneered at as mere theories, 
 approved themselves in practice, and we can well 
 believe that among the few joyous moments vouch 
 safed to him in the last troubled months of his life, 
 foremost was that which brought the tidings of 
 Tegethoff's victory. 
 
 It is ill judging of a man's manners by his 
 writings ; and yet, even if we had no other evidence, 
 we should hardly be able to read these sketches 
 and resist the impression that their author possessed 
 a power of social fascination accorded to few. So 
 open, so sympathetic, so ready to share a sorrow, 
 to lend fresh zest to merriment ! It is true that he 
 shows rather too frequently a malicious pleasure at 
 the awkwardness and misadventures of his fellow- 
 travellers, and one or two practical jokes of his 
 verge on the cruel ; but generally he shows indi 
 rectly the greatest consideration for all about him, 
 and an absence, or rather abhorrence, of ceremonious 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 465 
 
 stiffness that would surprise those who fancy kings 
 and princes stalking about in coronation robes, 
 and did surprise some of his Brazilian hosts, who 
 expected at the very least a uniform and an order 
 of the Golden Fleece, and found their archducal 
 guest as simple in his attire as he was in his 
 manners. Of course we would not convey the 
 impression that Maximilian was in the habit of 
 appearing on the Prater of Vienna ' in a blue blouse, 
 with white linen trousers in an advanced state of 
 dilapidation, with coarse cavalry boots encasing 
 his legs, on his head a tall steeple of a night-cap 
 with the indispensable tassel, in his right hand a 
 knotty stick a perfect model of a suspicious char 
 acter.' Such primitive costumes were reserved for 
 the primitive forest ; but he really delighted in get 
 ting away from the restraints of etiquette, and in 
 displaying all the resources of his social nature. In 
 short, we can well believe the universal testimony 
 that there was no unseemly pride of manner in this 
 thorough gentleman ; no haughty Deigratiosity 
 (Keme Spur von hochmuthigetn Gottesgnadenthum, 
 says a humble German admirer). But the utmost 
 simplicity, frankness, and warmth of manner are 
 not inconsistent with pride of rank ; and Maximilian 
 himself says with considerable force : ' It is a pity 
 that sovereigns and princes who are clever wish 
 to produce an effect and shine by their cleverness 
 exclusively, and neglect the advantages of their 
 rank ; it is a crime against their weaker brethren 
 and successors.' And he stood by his order, as 
 was but natural. His views of his cousins, the 
 Italian princes, are not exactly our views. We 
 
466 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 have no Italian princes for cousins, and it was not 
 our 'white coats ' that restored order in the turbu 
 lent days of '48. With the infamous gagging- 
 machine called the cuffia di silenzio fresh in our 
 memory, we should not have thought of comparing 
 King Bomba to Abraham because he entertained 
 the Pope, nor should we give Her over-gracious 
 Majesty Isabel Segunda the advantage of so mild 
 a characteristic as this : ' Poor innocent Isabella has 
 certainly been treated by fate in the most extraor 
 dinary manner ; the football" of the most fearful 
 passions, she has grown up without principles in 
 the midst of seditions to make principles for herself; 
 a child of chance, she is gifted with varied talents, 
 and has had the good fortune to gain the love of 
 her subjects by great kindness of heart and winning 
 ways.' His pride of birth, which is apparent at 
 every turn, is pardonable, or at all events compre 
 hensible, in a scion of the House of Habsburg; not 
 an amiable House, not a progressive House, it is 
 true; but a House endowed with the very respect 
 able characteristic of toughness, as is shown by 
 the fact that its fortunes were established by 
 matrimonial alliances ; and, indeed, few can help 
 admiring the dogged courage with which the 
 Habsburgers and their people hold their own against 
 the foe. They get beaten, and that right often, 
 but they sell victory dear ; and if Prussia and the 
 needle-gun were too much for them at Sadowa, 
 they showed at Custozza and Lissa that they had 
 not forgotten Novara. Of this stubborn, indomi 
 table stock, Maximilian was naturally proud. His 
 ideal was Charles the Fifth ; though his character 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 46? 
 
 reminds us more of his namesake, Maximilian, the 
 grandfather of his great hero a flighty, adven 
 turous, poetic Kaiser, not over lucky in war, but 
 a gallant fellow and a gorgeous. But this Maxi 
 milian contents himself with a passing compliment 
 to the other, and saves his love, his veneration, we 
 may say his adoration, for the great Charles. 
 Indeed, it is impossible to resist the impression 
 that Maximilian fancied he recognized in himself a 
 modern likeness of his illustrious ancestor. He 
 admired in Charles what he found in his own 
 character, the blending of the practical with the 
 romantic. Had any other than Charles laid his 
 hand on the magic buildings of Granada, Maxi 
 milian would have treated the unfortunate wight 
 as Elgin was treated by Byron. But what does he 
 say now ? 
 
 ' Charles was an Emperor, but a poet too ; as he 
 travelled over his beautiful Spain he found Granada 
 and loved it. The freshness and verdure of his 
 northern realms and the luxurious glow that 
 enchained the romantic element of his nature, pre 
 sented themselves united here. Here would he 
 take up his abode. It was not the Emperor but the 
 poet that loved the Alhambra, the gardens of roses, 
 the courtyards with their myrtles, the marble basins 
 with their silvery fountains and the joyous pattering 
 of the fish, the forests of slender marble pillars, the 
 graceful festoons and the fairy arabesques, the 
 dreamy life of magic tale amid the perfume of the 
 roses and the song of the nightingales amid 
 melody and harmony such a life as was offered 
 by the inner world of the Moorish castle. For the 
 
468 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 master of the world, who durst not dream on his 
 throne ever lighted by the sun, all this loveliness 
 existed not. Mighty should the palace of the great 
 Charles be. He had the Moorish winter-palace 
 torn down to build up his Imperial castle on the 
 rubbish of the ruined world of faery. He perpe 
 trated a horrible crime against art, but his massive 
 palace, with its huge blocks of yellow stone, 
 embodies the idea of the sovereign, while the 
 remaining summer-palace of the Moorish kings 
 produces only a winsome, romantic effect. It is a 
 dwelling of the Elves, in which you can dream, but 
 not govern. Charles's palace is a prince with crown 
 and helmet on, in its grave majesty ; the abode of 
 the Caliphs, a siren with moist pearls in her flowing 
 silken hair. If I were a monarch and had to choose 
 between the two royal residences, I should choose 
 without hesitation the square-stone palace of 
 Charles.' Is not this the man that left the fairy 
 castle of Miramar to build a palace like the palace 
 of Charles, and to leave it, as did Charles, unfin 
 ished ? It would have been better, perhaps, if he 
 had let the poetic element rule in him, and dreamed 
 away his life in his beautiful Miramar or his 
 romantic Lacroma. Perhaps ? No, certainly not. 
 He himself would rather have chosen his terrible 
 end than to live a life of inglorious ease, or to 
 repeat the story of Boabdil, whose fairy home is 
 described with such glow of coloring, to whose 
 ' last sigh ' he devoted some significant verses. No. 
 Maximilian was indeed, like his great ancestor, not 
 a poet merely. Action was as necessary to him as 
 art; and, in the circle of his friends, his love of 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 469 
 
 adventure seems to have called forth ridicule and 
 remonstrance. ' Better ', he cries, ' real death than 
 dead reality '; and in more than one place he defends 
 himself with considerable adroitness against both 
 ridicule and remonstrance. Penetrated with the 
 conviction that he was destined to a high career, he 
 regarded his little expeditions, his little exposures 
 to danger as preparations for those great crises 
 through which he had to pass ; and to men of our 
 recent experience it is almost amusing to watch the 
 ' exaltation ' with which Maximilian gets ready for 
 a three days' trip into a tropical forest, and the 
 grand air with which he leaves his servants behind, 
 as one should say Alexander burning his bag 
 gage or Julian destroying his ships. 1 
 
 ' In such undertakings European domestics are 
 nothing but a plague; it is only the deepest 
 interest in the sights to be seen that can induce the 
 adventurer to bear the attendant fatigues, and as 
 these unavoidable hardships are not nominated in 
 the servants' bond, to require their attendance 
 would be a gross violation of the principle accord 
 ing to which no one should demand of another 
 what that other is under no obligation to perform. 
 Such expeditions are strictly individual undertak 
 ings. While they last there is no such thing as 
 rank or caste. In the face of primitive nature every 
 one is a primitive man ; and only fiery will of one's 
 own can induce the participant to endure danger 
 and toil. If a man wishes to engage in such adven 
 tures, he ought to make up his mind that all 
 
 1 Aug. Civ. Dei, v. 21 : Fretus securitate victoriae [apostata 
 Julianus] naves quibus victus necessariusportabatur mcendit. 
 
4/O MA XI MIL I A N ; 
 
 personal considerations are at an end, that each 
 individual is to be thrown upon his own strength 
 and sense, and that a cool egotism is the only law 
 in force. He who is not willing to put his shoulder 
 to the wheel, to be his own protector; he who looks 
 to others for help, had better stay at home. He 
 who wants to penetrate into the secrets of nature, 
 as she has been reigning undisturbed since crea 
 tion's dawn, must have two stout legs, two strong 
 arms and a clear head ; he must mark out his aim 
 distinctly and turn neither to the right hand nor to 
 the left.' Indeed he luxuriated in this self-reliance, 
 and in the same connection he says at least in 
 effect : 
 
 ' When a man is born to a position which exposes 
 him to the nuisance of having about him forever 
 and ever an ex-officio buzz-buzz of obsequious 
 assistance and tutelary protection; when a man 
 from his cradle has had somebody to chew for him 
 as nurses do for babies somebody to show him 
 how to walk, show him how to pronounce ; when 
 the iron rails of etiquette mark out the method 
 ical line on which he is to roll along, it is a 
 real blessing to such a man, if he has blood in 
 his "veins, to get into situations in which his sole 
 and only footing is his own strength and his own 
 
 will In the perfumed drawing-rooms at 
 
 home this tendency will be called a mania for 
 adventures ; but I think that such adventures are 
 very wholesome for the development of character, 
 nay, are a necessity to vigorous natures that desire 
 to work themselves out of an enervating life. If 
 you never have occasion to endure toils and danger, 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 4/1 
 
 when extraordinary events turn up, as they do even 
 in the course of an ordinary life, you are, without 
 any fault of your own, weak in body and unstrung 
 in soul.' 
 
 Such passages, which we might multiply if we 
 chose, show plainly enough that Maximilian con 
 sidered himself in training for great events ; he 
 knew his life was to be no ordinary one ; a revolu 
 tion such as had raised his brother to the throne, 
 might at any time call the brilliant liberal Archduke 
 to take the reins of the Austrian Empire, or, per 
 haps, even then the vision of Transatlantic glory 
 was hovering before his poetic eye. The man who 
 sent out the Novara to carry the Austrian flag once 
 more around the world, had doubtless had many a 
 dream of renewing the glories of his line beyond 
 the water. Read in this light, we cannot smile at 
 the record of his early fancies, his first movements 
 of ambition, when he stands a boy of nineteen at 
 the head of the magnificent flight of stairs at Ca- 
 serta and thinks how pleasant it must be to look 
 down on the rest ' foremost of all the sun of the 
 firmament '; when he moralizes by the coffins of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, and remembers that ' in 
 all Spain he was the next of kin to the poor dead 
 sovereigns, nearer than the rulers and princes of 
 the land, and that had it not been for Charles II, 
 our race would yet be sitting on the sunny throne '; 
 when he gazes at the regal insignia of Ferdinand 
 the Catholic, and bitterly asks the sexton if they 
 were to be had for money. ' With proud covetous- 
 ness and yet with a sad heart, I laid my hands on 
 the golden circlet and the once mighty sword. It 
 
472 ' MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 would be a fair and brilliant dream for a descend 
 ant of the Spanish Habsburgs to brandish the one 
 in order to gain the other.' 
 
 But while the dreams of young ambition are not 
 without their interest, there are other indications of 
 more direct bearing on the career of the future Em 
 peror. There is something peculiarly fateful in his 
 longing for America something strangely proph 
 etic in his words, that ' he was the first man of his 
 house to go forth into the new world, and that too 
 with the firm conviction that the end was not yet.' 
 But other youths have dreamed their day-dreams 
 of glory and waked up to the soberest prose, and 
 for one presentiment fulfilled there are thousands of 
 false conceptions. More important in our eyes are 
 those expressions which furnish the clue to par 
 ticular lines of conduct. Some affect to believe 
 that if Maximilian's poetic nature had not received 
 a definite impulse from the vigorous character of 
 his wife, the Archduke would be this day at Mir- 
 amar gazing out at his beloved Adriatic, or else 
 sunning himself in some far-away nook in the 
 tropics. Far more momentous than the assump 
 tion of the Mexican Empire was the management of 
 it; and we think that we can find foreshadowed in 
 these airy sketches of travel, the policy, or want of 
 policy, or conflict of policies, that marked his hand 
 ling of the clerical question. It is well known that 
 Maximilian was called to the throne by the Clericos, 
 accepted it, as they believed, in their interest, was 
 solemnly charged by the Pope with the protection 
 of the rights of the Holy See, and yet immediately 
 upon his accession broke with the leading men of 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 473 
 
 the Church party, and in his endeavors to nation 
 alize and liberalize his government, alienated his 
 original supporters, and then, by a sudden change 
 of plan, which is attributed to the prevailing influ 
 ence of skilful ecclesiastics, threw himself a corps 
 perdu into the arms of the Clericals. 
 
 Let us see if, without any affectation of a ' con 
 scientious analysis ', we can find in his own recorded 
 views any clue to this vacillating conduct. But 
 first let us carefully distinguish between the church 
 party and the church. They run parallel to a cer 
 tain extent : they do not coincide. The party of 
 Dios y orden would naturally be composed in large 
 measure of the more earnest Catholics. The party 
 that disgraces the legend of Libertad e Independencia 
 would naturally embrace all the infidel elements of 
 the population. But the fight was really about 
 the Church property. The Clericos determined to 
 regain the control of their immense domain, the 
 Liberals as earnestly determined to appropriate the 
 last candlestick and the last pyx. 
 
 Now, so far as the religious element is involved, 
 everybody knows that Maximilian was a Catholic, 
 an earnest Catholic, by education, by tradition, by 
 temperament. Infidelity could find no lodgment in 
 the soul of such a loving, glowing nature. To him 
 ' an atheist is horrible, a she-atheist loathsome '. 
 He delights in the recognition of God, and scourges 
 this * lean, dry -boned century ' of ours for its want 
 of faith. He laments that the beautiful old custom 
 of grace at meat has died out in Catholic countries, 
 ' as fashion, the only religion of the educated 
 classes, forbids us to show our fellow-man that we 
 
4/4 MAX I MIL I A N- ; 
 
 think occasionally of the old-time God '. Often and 
 over again does he take up the cudgels for the ' old 
 half-pay piety ' die, alte pensionnirte Religiositat 
 and claim for religion the motive power of all civil 
 isation. But he is not satisfied with these general 
 terms. He is specifically and enthusiastically a 
 Catholic a Roman Catholic, temporal power and 
 all. ' You can imagine my intense excitement ', 
 says the boy of nineteen, ' at seeing Gaeta, this 
 harbor in which the bark of St. Peter cast anchor 
 to seek protection against the storms of the world. 
 Now the wide-opened gates of hell thought they 
 had gained the victory over the glittering tiara ; 
 now they thought the head of Christendom had 
 fallen never more to rise ; but amid murky clouds 
 and fearful lightning there came a mighty peal out 
 of the heavens, and the vile slaves of the Prince of 
 this world trembled as they heard a voice saying 
 unto them : Tu es Petrus ', etc. Especially does 
 this fervent devotion come out in the sketch entitled 
 'A Bit of Albania ', in which he gives an account of 
 his mission to protect Catholics who were suffering 
 under the Turkish rule ; but we have already 
 allowed our extracts to encroach too much on our 
 allotted space and can find no room for diffusive 
 specimens. Salient enough is his antagonism to 
 Protestantism, and we cannot forbear presenting 
 one little piece of youthful philosophizing, which we 
 leave with our readers for amusement or for edifica 
 tion, as the case may be. ' Interesting', he writes 
 at Messina, in 1852, 'interesting is the white 
 marble pulpit in cinque cento style, for its artistic 
 execution as well as for the heads of Mohammed, 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 4?$ 
 
 Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, by which it is sup 
 ported. That these are historical portraits I cannot 
 guarantee; that the cicerone's idea in baptizing them 
 so would be a highly original one, is not to be 
 denied. A mute collection of professors of false 
 creeds, over whose heads the word of God thunders 
 daily ! It sounds paradoxical, indeed, perhaps too 
 severe, if I, speaking merely as an observer, con 
 fess that in this company, Mohammed seems to me 
 the most important. The prophet of Mecca, with 
 his southern fire, kindled into enthusiasm for his 
 own faith, and created a grand popular religion 
 based on feeling and heart, not on intellect. Luther, 
 Calvin, and Zwingli merely broke up by the spirit 
 of protest a religion in which men could find peace 
 on earth.' But, as we have already intimated, 
 Maximilian's faith did not bind him to reactionary 
 views ; nor does he deem it a derogation from his 
 respect for the Church to stigmatize the abuses 
 which he finds in her shadow. To him these abuses 
 are in her shadow, and not in her light ; and he 
 would have opened his eyes in amazement if any 
 Protestant divine, when preaching his annual ser 
 mon on the Apocalyptic couple known as the Man 
 of Sin and the Scarlet Woman, had quoted in vindi 
 cation of his cause the Archduke's rhetoric against 
 the Inquisition, or his rebuke of the clergy of Brazil. 
 Such abuses are rife enough in Mexico, if one- 
 fourth of M. Domenech's piquancies are to be 
 believed ; and the moral aspect of the Church 
 party could not have been very inviting to the 
 fastidious Austrian Prince. But it was certainly 
 not the alluring virtues of the Liberals that made 
 
476 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 Maximilian change his course so soon after his 
 accession ; for that course was doubtless marked out 
 in his own mind before he left Miramar. He had 
 deceived himself into a belief that the party which 
 called him to power was susceptible of expansion 
 into a nation ; for we can hardly suppose that he 
 was cheated by the popular vote any more than he 
 was by the * ghost of a junta '. It was not that he 
 betrayed his party, but that he attempted to raise 
 his party with him to a higher platform. It was a 
 fixed principle with him, and one to which he 
 recurs frequently, that * Princes should stand above 
 parties, for all parties in a well-regulated state ought 
 to be subject to them. Princes who are partisans ', 
 he says, * must not be astonished if they fall with 
 their party.' It was on this principle that he. acted, 
 hoping to nationalize his cause without doing any 
 real injustice to his party. Feeling that, as the 
 chosen of the nation, though only the chosen in 
 theory, it behooved him to be a national man, he 
 had no other course open than to shake off the 
 party ties that bound him. How immensely diffi 
 cult the situation was, may be seen from the fact 
 that Maximilian is blamed, now, for not sticking to 
 his party, and now for sticking to it. ' He ought 
 to have formed a truly national party,' says one. 
 ' That is the very thing he tried to do, and ought 
 by no means to have attempted,' says another. 
 ' Maximilian's confirmation of the sales of Church 
 property was a ruinous measure.' ' Maximilian's 
 revision of the sales of Church property was a 
 ruinous measure.' Alas ! for the poor man's motto, 
 Equitad en lajusticia, with its high-sounding impos- 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 477 
 
 sibility, which reflects so plainly the noble balancing 
 rather than the noble balance of the unfortunate 
 prince. The mistakes which he made in the man 
 ner of carrying out his great plan of nationalizing 
 his cause even if the plan itself was not a mistake 
 are evident enough ; and to every one we might 
 attach a motto from his own writings. ' Princes 
 should never forget that the persons of their suite 
 have a double importance : first as tentacles to feel 
 and absorb the ideas and opinions of the outside 
 world, and in the second place as a sign by which 
 the contents of the shop are judged '; and yet the 
 men who surrounded him were either too much 
 out of sympathy with the outside world, or else too 
 busy replenishing their inside world, to serve as 
 tentacles for anything but spoons, or as a sign of 
 any other than a pawnbroker's shop. ' Clemency 
 at the wrong moment is weakness, and nothing 
 avenges itself so speedily as weakness '; and yet 
 from a movement of sentimental generosity, he 
 connived at the escape of Porfirio Diaz, without 
 whose aid ' the grand old Indian ' might be smoking 
 his cigar to-day at Washington and not in the City 
 of Mexico. ' He only is followed who can com 
 mand '; and yet he thought to win over Juarez and 
 the most respectable of his party, by a decree which 
 was a complimentary order of the day in honor of 
 his antagonist, and which was received with shouts 
 of derision by all factions. But it is not generous, 
 and what is more to the dispassionate observer, it 
 is not just, to press such points. Maximilian's 
 cause was doomed by the fall of the Southern Con 
 federacy. Napoleon had missed his great chance, 
 
478 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 and, cool player as he was, he withdrew his stakes 
 instead of sending good money after bad. ' I am 
 swindled ', Maximilian is reported to have said, when 
 Napoleon announced the withdrawal of his troops, 
 ' I am swindled. There was a formal agreement 
 between the Emperor Napoleon and myself, with 
 out which I should never have accepted the throne ; 
 an agreement which guaranteed to me absolutely 
 the assistance of the French troops until the end of 
 1868.' ' He who breaks oaths ', says the Archduke 
 in one of his aphorisms, ' gets broken himself.' 
 But prophetic comfort at such moments is, at best, 
 but faint. Had Maximilian seen with American 
 eyes, he would not have troubled himself about 
 reviving the charms of Miramar at Chapultepec. 
 Not even M. Keratry's ' Confederate General 
 Slaugter with his army of 25,000 men* could have 
 saved the Empire no, not even if General * Slaugter ' 
 had recovered the ' h ' so necessary to his martial 
 name, and if his division had decupled itself to the 
 respectable proportions which it assumes on the 
 page of the documentary Frenchman. Without a 
 powerful military support from abroad, Maximilian 
 could not hope to maintain the balance between the 
 two parties ; or rather, if we use his own language, 
 to put himself above all parties ; and, that military 
 support withdrawn, he had to choose between abdi 
 cation and thorough identification with his old 
 party. It was a bitter thing to give up his great 
 experiment to make so pitiful an end. He had 
 said himself that ' when a man has played his part 
 he ought to leave the stage '; but, as if in anticipa 
 tion of this blank result, he had also written those 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 479 
 
 memorable words : ' It is a good thing to look for 
 ward in the beginning of your career to a great 
 future : better still, with a great past behind you, 
 and strong in the present around you, to go for 
 ward to a yet more brilliant future : fearful, on the 
 contrary, to be conscious of a great past and to 
 have no future left/ And it is to the feeling em 
 bodied in these sentences that Maximilian's critic, 
 M. Keratry) attributes his final and fatal resolution. 
 In view of future contingencies, he could not con 
 sent to annihilate all hope of a higher career by a 
 confession of nullity. But was this all ? Was 
 there no motive at work besides the calculation of 
 his own political prospects ? Was he nothing but 
 an adventurer, who thought that the acceptance of 
 the throne was a personal speculation, and regarded 
 the people of Mexico merely as the form of the 
 speculation ; or did Maximilian really believe he 
 owed this people the sacrifice which his enemies 
 suppose he made to his ambition or to his vanity ? 
 Maximilian undertook his task in no childish 
 spirit, and, fully conscious of the duties which he 
 had assumed, he worked with untiring energy at all 
 the details of administration. His life as a ruler 
 was a life of toil and self-denial. When the first 
 marked reverses came, he wrote (January 6, 1866), 
 ' I know that I have accepted a task of singular 
 difficulty ; but my courage is equal to sustaining 
 the burden, and / will go on to the end' And when 
 it became evident to him that he was to be deserted 
 by his great ally, he still refused to entertain the 
 thought of failure, and showed ' an energy that only 
 increased with adversity '. And now that the chances 
 
480 MAX I MI LI A N ; 
 
 were hopelessly against him, can we believe that there 
 was no higher motive at work than personal pride ? 
 Can we believe that Maximilian was so completely 
 duped by the desperate Clericos ? Leave a margin 
 for both these factors, and there is room enough 
 for the sacred sense of duty duty to the country 
 of his adoption, duty to those who called him to 
 the throne. Are we such strangers to faithfulness 
 that we cannot understand how men can be true to 
 a cause foredoomed ? Tirer son epingle du jeu is 
 fair advice at times in its way, but in a crisis of fate 
 it is not the height of sublimities. 
 
 But we have insensibly glided from the sunlight 
 of Maximilian's travels into the penumbra of his 
 tragedy, and one of the projects conjured up at the 
 close of his reign to conceal, rather than to postpone 
 the end, reminds us to return. Most of our readers 
 remember that there was much talk of a Congress 
 of Notables who were to be convoked from all ends 
 of the Empire, who should represent all shades of 
 opinion, and who should elect Maximilian Presi 
 dent, if the restoration of the republican form of 
 government were resolved on. Of course, the 
 project was utterly impracticable, and even if the 
 assembly had been held, what chance was there for 
 the foreign prince against a native thief? ' Death to 
 foreigners ! ' is a cry which Maximilian must have 
 heard in Italian. Muerte a los extranjeros is not 
 much more musical in manly Spanish than Morte 
 ai forestieri in soft Tuscan. And as we think of 
 this singular failure to appreciate the bent of the 
 Mexican temper, we go back to the conception of 
 the French Intervention, which took its rise in the 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 481 
 
 very doctrine which was set at naught by the pro 
 posers of this Congress. ' Nations and languages 
 against dynasties and treaties ', says Max Miiller ; 
 ' this is what has remodelled and will remodel still 
 more the map of Europe '; and living as we do, 
 according to our Max, ' in the century of King 
 Humbug', 1 the battle-cry is as good as another, 
 certainly better than that other slogan of ' manhood 
 and brotherhood ', which gets its form, if not its 
 warrant, from the mistranslation of a phrase in the 
 Greek Testament. 2 Now Napoleon's avowed object 
 in undertaking the Mexican expedition was to 
 restore to the Latin race on this side of the water 
 its power and its prestige, and so to check the inva 
 sions of the Anglo-Saxons. Of course France was 
 to reap profit and glory from this restoration, but 
 we do not believe that the ' Latin race ' was a mere 
 figure of speech in the eyes of Napoleon. ' Every 
 man ', says his unfortunate protege, ' has his private 
 madness ; if he were without it, he would not con 
 tribute as a motor to the progress of the world '; 
 and the Latin race may be Napoleon's crotchet. 
 Or we may perhaps still better account for this 
 infatuation by the common experience that men 
 who have had much demonstrative evidence of the 
 power of phrases are apt themselves to be misled 
 by a phrase, and we need not be surprised to find 
 the shrewd calculator the dupe of his own arith 
 metic. But who was the man that Napoleon 
 
 1 Wir leben im Jahrhunderte des gekronten Humbugs. 
 
 2 The famous cry, 'Am I not a man and a brother?' clearly 
 goes back to St. Paul's * Men and brethren', which is, of 
 course, a mistranslation. 
 
482 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 selected as the representative of this Latin idea, the 
 standard-bearer of this Latin movement ? The most 
 thoroughly German prince in Europe German in 
 his tastes, in his habits, in his prejudices, in his 
 sentimentality, in his 'many-sidedness'; a German 
 of the Germans, nay, more than a German, and 
 never more of a German than when he criticises 
 his own people. 'It is only when one travels 
 through the wide, wide world that he comes to a 
 realizing sense of the sad fact, how little the German 
 is honored, how he lacks everything that is neces 
 sary for grand political measures, and how he plays 
 everywhere an exceedingly mediocre part ; nay, 
 how he abases himself to be the servant of others, 
 to be the footstool of shrewder men. The German 
 will not guide the fates of the world so long as he 
 continues to be the mere philosopher, so long as he 
 wears out his intellect with unpractical theories ; 
 and, instead of firing his heart with pride and 
 enthusiasm, rocks it asleep into a sickly sentimen 
 tality. The Germans are the best of poets ; the 
 Germans are unsurpassable musicians and scholars ; 
 they shine in glee-clubs and poetic coteries, and 
 show skill in everything that adorns life ; but while 
 thus engaged they miss the main thing, and when 
 once in a while they come together to consult about 
 their own political existence, they are too apt to 
 deal in mere theoretical stuff and nonsense.' In 
 the same spirit of naive self-criticism, he divides 
 his travelling fellow-countrymen into the two 
 untranslatable classes of Bummler and Philister; 
 and as the term Philister approaches ' fogy ', and 
 Bummler hovers between ' loafer ' and 'flaneur ', 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 483 
 
 we may well agree with him that these are not very 
 imposing extremes. Especially sickened was he 
 by finding that the Germans forget their home so 
 soon, their language so soon ; and again and again 
 he pauses in his description of the glories of the 
 tropical world, to express his disgust at the German 
 emigrants, who do not even teach their children 
 German, so that 'the tow-headed little Teutons can 
 talk nothing but a snuffling Portuguese. His native 
 tongue he loved with a fervor rare in the race. A 
 simple Guten Morgen, as it greeted his ear on the 
 South American Cachoeras, a toast in broken Ger 
 man from his kind host in Gibraltar, went straight 
 and sunk deep into his heart. This man, so 
 intensely German, was the prince selected for a 
 ' Latin ' people. And how did he like the ' Latins ' ? 
 And first, of the French. Toward the French he 
 entertained if we are to judge by his ' Sketches ' 
 a decided antipathy, and, as he himself says, ' anti 
 pathy is further from friendship than is hate '. His 
 admiration of Napoleon was purely personal, and 
 in no wise extended to the grande nation with its 
 gloire and its elan and its drapeau civilisateur and 
 its mission civilisatrice. The disgust of the French 
 literary gentry at the discovery of this ingratitude 
 is almost comic. Of course, they console them 
 selves for their ' disillusionment ' by reflecting on 
 the number of times the French had drubbed the 
 Austrians, and find it after all quite natural that a 
 scion of the House of Habsburg should not be cor 
 dially in love with his conquerors ; but really they 
 were not quite prepared for such manifestations. 
 And of these manifestations there is no end. ' Was 
 
484 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 there ever a woman so unfortunate as Maria The 
 resa's lovely daughter ? And the people that broke 
 this flower is called the chivalric ! How do these 
 two things tally ? ' ' Thank God, French will 
 vanish more and more in Vienna, as the Emperor, 
 with a just self-respect, discourages the use of 
 French in conversation.' In Spain he exclaims, in 
 his admiration of national costumes, ' Happy the 
 land in which Romance has not been quite suffo 
 cated by French fashion '; and again he moralizes 
 over an engraving after Eugene Sue's ' Wandering 
 Jew ' which he found in a humble posada : ' So 
 the Golden Peninsula too has been overrun by the 
 poison of France, which, like the glittering, voluble 
 drop of mercury, turns the noble metal into a dull, 
 grey mass.' A bitter vein shows itself throughout 
 his trip to Algiers, and a pang of mortification 
 shoots into his gay style as he catches sight of the 
 French fleet, which he knew too well from the time 
 of the blockade of Venice. No wonder that a ' con 
 scientious analysis ' of these sketches has raised 
 doubts the most grave in the minds of illustrious 
 Gallic critics as to Maximilian's sanity, and that 
 Keratry begins to understand why Maximilian 
 made it a rule to appear in public as rarely as pos 
 sible with Frenchmen in his suite. But if he does 
 not disguise his antipathy to the leading represen 
 tative of the so-called Latin race, neither does he 
 conceal his contempt for two others the Italian 
 and the Portuguese. Of the Portuguese language 
 he has a horror, which he tortures his own flexible 
 tongue to express : ' He who has not heard Portu 
 guese does not know how the devil talks with his 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 485 
 
 dam, for such sniffling and snuffling, grunting 
 and scrunching, such a thick-tongued, flat-palated 
 nasality, such a combination of all low, vulgar, 
 unpleasant sounds, could have been invented only 
 by the devil in his wrath ', ' a language better fit for 
 bellowing servants of Baal than for the worship 
 of God.' Of the Portuguese themselves he has 
 nothing more kindly to say than this : ' We found 
 the people, as everywhere in Portugal, sneakingly 
 obliging (kriechend freundlich), awkward, lazy and 
 stupid. Of the revolting ugliness of this race, 
 which oscillates between the mulatto and the ape, 
 it is impossible to form an adequate conception.' 
 Toward the Italians he feels as an Austrian prince 
 would naturally feel, and while his severest thrusts 
 are aimed at Southern Italy, he is often sweeping 
 enough in his condemnation. Nor was his experi 
 ence as viceroy in Lombardy and Venice calcu 
 lated to lessen his bitterness, nor, we may add, to 
 heighten his confidence in his capacity for man 
 aging a member of the Latin race. Called to the 
 viceroyalty in the spring of 1857, he found his two 
 years' apprenticeship an annoying struggle between 
 his liberal tendencies and the direction in which he 
 was forced to move by the repressive policy of the 
 Austrian government. He came, eager to con 
 ciliate, hoping to win these rebellious subjects of 
 Austria to a true allegiance. The populace shouted, 
 but the lovers of Italy, the Italian nobles, in short, 
 the national party, remained cold, and all the 
 ' liberal sentiments ' which were attributed to him 
 would not make them forget that their ruler was a 
 hated ' Tedesco '. He went away, to be succeeded 
 
486 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 by Gyulai and Victor Emmanuel ; he went away to 
 repeat his experiment in the art of government and 
 to fail more fatally. Now, although he may have 
 hoped to do good in Italy he never liked the 
 people, and indeed seemed to glory in their hatred 
 to his line as a compliment to the power of the 
 Habsburgs. And so violent is his prejudice that it 
 extends even to the Italian language, and faint is 
 the praise that the tongue of Dante and Machiavelli 
 and Filicaja finds at his hands. ' It is a strange 
 thing, this Italian. No language so low and vulgar, 
 especially when it comes blurting out of the mouth 
 of a genuine Italian ; then again it sounds like the 
 childish babble of a squeaking Punch, but some 
 times it has chords that force their way with might 
 to the heart like the tones of an yEolian harp.' And 
 singularly enough, the words of which he says this 
 are such as might suit his own tombstone and his 
 own creed : Pregate per un infelice, che implora 
 pace e misericordia. But while he might pray for a 
 dead Italian he could not compliment a living one, 
 except at the expense of his nation. ' The best thing 
 about him is that you can't recognize in him the 
 Southern Italian.' ' No population in Europe, 
 except, perhaps, the Laplanders, so low down, so 
 demoralized as the Sicilians.' ' What we Germans 
 in our humility call a " house ", the bombastic 
 Italian straightway entitles a " palace ".' ' This 
 enervated people makes a disgusting pastime out 
 of everything, even out of death.' But if Maxi 
 milian dislikes the French, sneers at the Portuguese, 
 and abhors the Italians, he makes up in a measure 
 for all this ill-feeling toward the ' Latin race ' by an 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 487 
 
 admiration of the Spaniard that amounts to ' fanati 
 cism ', as one of his French critics justly remarks. 
 Everything suits him in Spain ; he likes the type of 
 the people ; he is enamored of the national game of 
 bull-fighting ; he adores the national costume, the 
 climate, the scenery, the olla podrida ; and it was 
 doubtless the Spanish element of Mexican popula 
 tion that constituted the attraction of his people. 
 Toward the Indians he was cold ; his observation 
 in Brazil had cooled all the romance that he had 
 drawn in from Cooper's novels ; and his French 
 critics emphasize especially as one cause of his 
 failure his neglect of the Indian element. But 
 Frenchmen are not good judges of race, and show 
 an incredible philosophy in the matter of amalga 
 mation. Those nations that keep their blood pure, 
 that refuse to blend with an inferior stock, are those 
 that are destined to the mastery ; and ' Latin ' 
 America owes most of its misery to the degradation 
 of race. There are some thirty-two mixtures in 
 Peru, each with its distinct name ; and in his travels 
 Maximilian met with the following combination, 
 which a Frenchman like Michelet might admire, 
 which the good sense of a man of Germanic stock 
 can regard only as a curiosity not deserving of 
 repetition : * Antonio was an interesting fellow from 
 an ethnographic point of view. The son of a white 
 Brazilian and a full-blood Indian woman, there 
 fore of an olive complexion, with abundant black 
 curls and a tolerably full beard, he married a 
 mulatto woman. The result of this four-fold cross 
 is a strikingly handsome youth of seventeen years, 
 as tall and slender as a poplar, with soft features and 
 
488 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 sparkling eyes. His complexion is not red, not 
 black, not olive, not bronze, not light, not dark, a 
 mixture of all conceivable colors. Corinthian brass 
 may have looked that way copper, gold and 
 bronze all mixed together.' But we of the United 
 States are fast developing in this direction, and if 
 report tells the truth, the crosses in California of 
 Indian, Chinese, Negro, Kelt and Anglo-Saxon 
 promise results which will throw utter contempt 
 upon Maximilian's specimen of mixed breed. 
 
 Before we turn from these ' Sketches of Travel ', we 
 have yet to notice one point which we have pur 
 posely reserved for the last. We have yet to gather 
 together Maximilian's political confession of faith. 
 He is commonly classed as a Liberal, and it is said 
 that during his viceroyalty in Italy he indulged in 
 expressions which would have cost any other man 
 ten years at Spielberg or Olmiitz. But his Liber 
 alism is far from being democracy. The one-man 
 power is his ideal. * A government that will not 
 and cannot learn the voice of the governed is 
 rotten and hastening to its fall,' but the government 
 to be a government must be in the hands of one. 
 ' The people ', says he, ' as a mass, have no under 
 standing, but an unfailing instinct ; if the govern 
 ment guides that instinct to gradual self-develop 
 ment, we have peace and prosperity. If the instinct 
 is systematically disowned for the momentary satis 
 faction of the policy of an hour, there follows, as 
 you would naturally expect, colossal absurdity and 
 revolution. To recognize, try, and guide this in 
 stinct requires understanding, and this is given only 
 to the individual.' On this determining influence 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 489 
 
 of the individual he is especially emphatic. ' The 
 life of nationalities develops itself in a mighty irre 
 pressible stream. Truly great men fixed their eyes 
 on this stream, studied its strength and direction, 
 and then dug a channel for it to run in for the 
 future. So they made themselves masters of the 
 situation, and stamped their characters on the cen 
 turies. Common people sit on the bank of the 
 stream and make moan over its strength and speed ; 
 madmen dam it up, are washed away by it, and 
 leave as a legacy an inundation/ Through all this 
 rhetoric, and there is more of it, his ideal comes out 
 plainly. His system is the imperial ; he believes in 
 the people as he believes in an elemental force ; it 
 is the hero alone that can guide that force into a 
 healthful and useful activity. He is a hero-wor 
 shipper, and to some extent a self-worshipper, for 
 he thought that he recognized in himself a guiding 
 spirit, a man of working power, a pfurfoios dvfo. 
 Keratry says that what the Mexicans wanted was a 
 Louis XI or a Cromwell marching straight to his 
 goal, his mind fixed on the country before bestow 
 ing a thought on individuals, and not 'this chiv- 
 alric, undecided character'. And yet no more 
 ardent admirer of vigorous, trenchant action than 
 this man, whose softness and gentleness are said to 
 have been his ruin ; no more ardent apostle of Car- 
 lyle's Gospel of Might. Harsh and stern historical 
 figures have a peculiar fascination for him ; and 
 after giving an account of some extravagances of 
 that genius of blood-drinking, Don Pedro the Cruel, 
 he stops to tell us that ' this Pedro the Cruel and 
 Philip the Second, the man of iron, of all the 
 
490 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 sovereigns of Spain are those that enjoy the 
 greatest popularity; although Pedro was terrible 
 and Philip inexorable, yet they left great, historical 
 memories in the land ; and consequently, they are the 
 right sort of kings in the eyes of the Spaniards.' In 
 Portugal he pays his tribute to Pombal, the famous 
 Prime Minister, in these words : ' Pombal was a 
 tyrant who incited to what was good and vigorous, 
 and that is the man that degenerate nationalities 
 need.' But bold, incisive action, even in an inferior 
 sphere, commanded his regard. So in Algiers he 
 fell in love with a native tiger in the French service, 
 and tells us more of ' Yusuf ' than of anything else 
 seen in his trip. So in his ' Bit of Albania ' he 
 dwells with peculiar complacency on the character 
 of his pilot Vassili (Basilius), a Greek corsair, whose 
 exploits in the Greek war of liberation were of a 
 character to dampen the blaze of enthusiastic sym 
 pathy with the rebellious Candiotes. This Vassili, 
 'an earnest man ' with much 'forceful' directness 
 and ' freedom from cant ' in the ' conduct of him ', 
 used to rehearse with great glee the roasting alive 
 of two white prisoners and one black, and wind up 
 the tale of the Turks he had killed by adding in his 
 broken Italian : Ho amazza un Ebreo che non cunta 
 * I have kill a Jew, which no count.' But all this 
 might be attributable to the boyish taste for pirates 
 and robber-chieftains ; and it might seem unfair to 
 insist too much on such testimony : only the same 
 views recur at a riper age. In his ' Sketches of 
 Travel in Brazil ', he tells us what Brazil wants ; and 
 gives us to understand what he would do if he 
 were Pedro the Second. Of course he would have 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 491 
 
 emancipated every slave at once, and have reduced 
 the country to a howling wilderness ; and then he 
 would have made the Empire a power by reducing 
 everybody else to slavery. ' What Brazil wants is 
 a regenerator of iron firmness, a wise tyrant who 
 bases his principles on equity \equitad en lajusticia], 
 treats with no party [breaks with the Clericos\ and 
 in case of necessity interposes with iron severity 
 [decree of October 3, 1865]. He would have the 
 sad fate of not being understood by his times, of 
 being hated by his fellows in Brazil ; but history 
 would assign him a lofty place among those who 
 build for the future : his name would interweave 
 itself with all the new ideas of Brazil, and would be 
 blessed by coming generations.' Who can doubt 
 that such was his conception of the part which he 
 had to play in Mexico ? Do we not see in the 
 decree of outlawry which condemned every dissi 
 dent taken in arms as a brigand, do we not see in 
 that famous decree the ' inexorable interposition ' of 
 which he speaks ? Keratry says that the decree was 
 his death. Domenech says that after a little while 
 it was perfectly null. Like so many of his measures 
 it was potent only for his own ruin. Maximilian, 
 indeed, seems to have lacked the hardness of mental 
 or moral constitution necessary for his own ideal of 
 a ruler in that unhappy land ; and his apologists 
 must content themselves with showing that he 
 wanted what he lacked ; while his critics may say, 
 if they choose, // riosait pas ce qu'il voulait. 
 
 Of these critics the most formidable we have 
 seen is M. de Keratry most formidable, because he 
 possesses the gift of disenchantment, because he lets 
 
492 MAXIMILIAN; 
 
 in the white light of fact on the decorations of the 
 theatre, and dissipates the nimbus which invests the 
 distant and elevated. Of course he writes well (the 
 Emperor is the only Frenchman, and he a French 
 man by indulgence, who is allowed to lumber), and 
 his array of unpublished documents is imposing. 
 But ' General Slaugter and his twenty-five thousand 
 Confederates ' first gave us pause ; and then this 
 astounding piece of intelligence, which will be news 
 indeed, to most of our readers, that 'the rebels of 
 the South were impatient to kill the republican form 
 of government in order to inaugurate a military 
 dictatorship, the future head of which had opened 
 negotiations on the subject in the city of Mexico 
 itself.' It is dangerous for a man's credit to be too 
 well-informed ; and we must confess that our faith 
 was somewhat shaken by this exhibition of too pro 
 found a knowledge of the affairs of the Southern 
 Confederacy. In short, we suppose that Keratry 
 had a thesis to maintain, and not a result to deter 
 mine. The latter should precede the former ; but 
 every writer knows how common self-deception is 
 on this score, and we do not think that we are doing 
 injustice when we say that the object of the book is- 
 to justify Marshal Bazaine, to damn Napoleon, and 
 to represent Maximilian as a poetic adventurer, 
 whose transcendental nature was not fit for the rude 
 task he had undertaken, whose noble qualities of 
 head and heart were neutralized by an unsteady 
 will, whose very tragedy lacked its appropriate 
 close. ' He should have died sword in hand,' says 
 the dramatic Frenchman. Will he say here too, 
 ' // n* os ait pas ce qu'il voulait ' ? It may be an acci- 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 493 
 
 dent, but we must confess to a strange suspicion 
 when we saw the names of the same famous Leipzig 
 firm, Duncker and Humblot, on the covers of 
 Keratry's book and of Maximilian's sketches. Can 
 it be that the publications are part of the same plan ? 
 Is Keratry the interpreter of Maximilian's char 
 acter, the suggestive commentator of Maximilian's 
 writings ? There is much outward mourning at 
 the Austrian court, and the journals tell us of the 
 deep grief of the Emperor. But the stories of 
 those early quarrels, the wide discrepancy of the 
 characters of the two brothers, the troubles of the 
 vice-regal period, the intrigues of the court against 
 Maximilian as Admiral, the forced renunciation of 
 the right of succession, the hateful dispatch of 
 Eloin, which more than hints at the abdication of 
 Francis Joseph, and the counter-despatch of the 
 Austrian government, which distinctly forbids 
 Maximilian to return to Austrian soil with his 
 Imperial title all these things force themselves in 
 unavoidable association on the mind ; and some 
 times it almost seems as if this monument to a dead 
 rival were meant as much in rebuke of his preten 
 sions as in honor of his genius. If this can be true, 
 the tragedy has a deeper depth a deeper darkness. 
 But our task has reached its limit. With the 
 dramatic accessories of the final scene we have 
 nothing to do. The details of the nineteenth of 
 June are fresh in the memory of every reader, and 
 we shall not attempt to make amends for our short 
 comings in the more difficult task of tracing the 
 obscure lines that formed the net-work of Maxi 
 milian's fate by the cheap assemblage of uncertain 
 
494 MAXIMIL IAN ; 
 
 statements, of harrowing particulars. Let the 
 protagonist of our tragedy die behind the scenes. 
 Himself has said, ' Expectation is worse than reality. 
 Death itself is not as terrible as it is represented '; 
 and, indeed, the real tragedy is the life. 
 
 In a previous study we ventured to call up the 
 shade of the last of the heathen emperors the shade, 
 and only the shade, for the real substance eluded our 
 necromancy. But, after all, the uncertain wavering 
 of the outline may have been the best portraiture of 
 a man in whom the elements of strength and weak 
 ness, greatness and littleness, were so strangely 
 blended ; and if we have failed again to bring out 
 a clear, living image of a more modern hero, the 
 failure may in like manner be due to the mistiness 
 of the subject as well as to the feebleness of the 
 incantation ; for the two heroes are alike ; and 
 across the interval of fifteen centuries the two great 
 visionaries speak to each other in their sleep, the 
 Romanticist on the throne of the Caesars and the 
 Romanticist on the throne of the Montezumas. 
 True, the dreamers are less like each other than 
 their dreams. The one so cold with all his fire, so 
 hard with all his cultivation, so unpoetic with all his 
 enthusiasm : unfortunate, yet so little loved ; great, 
 yet so grudgingly admired. The other, a man 
 whose sympathetic nature envelops us with love 
 even against our will ; whose errors, grave as they 
 may be, bribe us into apologies, whose genius lights 
 up the common-places of existence with its own 
 aureole, gilds promise into seeming performance, 
 and crowns with the halo of martyrdom the divine 
 doom of him that taketh the sword. And yet, 
 
HIS TRAVELS AND HIS TRAGEDY. 495 
 
 unlike as are the two men in their persons, they are 
 so much alike in their historical relations that a 
 comparison is not only suggested, but demanded. 
 The grandson of Constantius Chlorus and the 
 descendant of Charles the Fifth were both reac 
 tionists : the one consciously, the other uncon 
 sciously. Both believed themselves divinely com 
 missioned to be the regenerators of an empire. 
 Both served an apprenticeship to the business of 
 government. Both were crossed and thwarted by a 
 malign court influence ; and if Julian's career in Gaul 
 was far more brilliant than Maximilian's in Italy, 
 we must at least in all fairness remember that Maxi 
 milian was more hampered than Julian, and make 
 some little offset for the activity of the Imperial 
 Admiral who prepared for Austria the glory of 
 Lissa. Both showed, in the actual administration of 
 an empire, a strange mixture of practical good sense 
 with theoretical absurdity ; and, what is the strangest 
 part of the parallel, they both incorporated, the one 
 into his politics, the other into his religion, elements 
 of fatal incongruity. The chosen of the clerical 
 party, Maximilian was penetrated with liberal 
 notions : the longed-for of the pagan priests, Julian 
 devoted himself to a reformation which was tanta 
 mount to destruction. Both perished in pursuit of 
 a phantom ; both deceived by lying oracles ; one 
 certainly betrayed, the other possibly assassinated ; 
 and yet, the end of both was not without honor. In 
 the month of June, the chivalric Emperor of Mexico 
 fell with his faithful followers. In the month of 
 June, the chivalric Caesar fell for his. Yet few 
 mourned for the one ; how many are sorrowing for 
 
496 MAXIMILIAN. 
 
 the other ! Few care what dreams of glory filled 
 the brain of the heathen Emperor ; what words of 
 madness or wisdom escaped his quivering lips. 
 That last cry of Maximilian's loving human heart 
 finds its echo everywhere, in every ear, in every 
 heart except the heart and the ear of Lotte ! . 
 
OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES 
 
ON THE PRESENT ASPECT OF 
 CLASSICAL STUDY. 1 
 
 The chance that made me the first professor 
 appointed to a chair in this university has made it 
 my duty to represent the School of Letters on this 
 festal day, which has been chosen for the commem 
 oration of the first completed decennium of our 
 existence as an institution. The work of the uni 
 versity, so far as it can be expressed by lectures 
 and by publications, by the number of teachers and 
 of students, by the hours spent in laboratory and 
 seminary, is all of record. Judged even by the 
 census standard of facts and figures, it will be 
 granted that what has been done here in the last 
 ten years does not fall short of the standard which 
 was set up in 1876. Less measurable, but not less 
 certain, are the indications of our influence on the 
 whole circle of university work in America, and 
 whatever we may have failed to do, we have assur 
 edly not failed in rousing to greater vigilance and 
 stimulating to a more intense energy in other parts 
 of the wide field, and whether in the way of ap 
 proval or in the way of protest, our example has 
 made for life and growth and progress. This life 
 and growth and progress have found a material 
 expression in the erection and equipment of model 
 
 1 Address delivered on the tenth anniversary of the Johns 
 Hopkins University, April 26, 1886. 
 
5OO CLASSICAL STUDY. 
 
 laboratories for biology, chemistry, physics. De 
 partments that are less tangible in their material 
 and in their methods have little to show the visitor 
 except a few books and a goodly number of men 
 ardent students, who are busy with old problems 
 and new, enriching themselves with the spoils of 
 the past, laying up store for those who are to come 
 after them, in the present neither envious nor afraid. 
 As to this whole department of letters, then, that 
 department which has naturally fallen most under 
 my own observation, I can truly say that the healthy 
 increase in the schools of language and literature is 
 something that has transcended my most sanguine 
 expectations. In numbers we outrank many of the 
 minor German universities, and in the more abstruse 
 and recondite studies, such as Assyrian and San 
 skrit, we hold our own with some of the leading 
 schools of Europe. As- for our American sisters, 
 it is not so easy to separate graduate work from 
 undergraduate work in other American universities 
 as it is here, and hence the comparison of numbers 
 might not be fair, and might be misinterpreted ; and 
 instead of emphasizing too much our large number 
 of graduate students, it may be better to say in 
 regard to all the schools of the country in which 
 higher work is done, that we count their success as 
 our success, for we are all helpers one of another. 
 And here I would take occasion to echo the wish 
 which I have often heard expressed of late, that 
 the university departments in all American institu 
 tions of learning might be so organized that students 
 could pass from one to the other in the prosecution 
 of a line of study just as they do in Germany, much 
 
CLASSICAL STUDY. 5<DI 
 
 to the advantage of their breadth of vision, their 
 freedom from local or personal influence. For my 
 own part, I have always congratulated myself that I 
 was brought under the influence of three distinct 
 and markedly distinct philological schools, Berlin, 
 Gottingen, and Bonn, and I have no doubt that 
 when the time comes, there will be a university 
 exchange that will help us even more than the 
 measure of it that we have thus far enjoyed. We 
 then of the department of letters have our success 
 to speak of on this day when a little ' self-esteem 
 grounded on just and right' may be pardonable, 
 if not, as Milton says, profitable. But it is a success 
 that carries with it the gravest responsibilities. The 
 ark we bear contains more sacred vessels than it 
 held when we set out, and on an occasion like this 
 it becomes us not only to exchange hearty con 
 gratulations that we have been helped thus far on 
 our way, but to renew our hold with greater vigor, 
 and to plant our feet more firmly, with a clearer 
 view of the path to be trod and the burden to be 
 borne. 
 
 To some, I do not know to how many, certainly 
 to some of those whom I am addressing, the special 
 line of work to which my own life has been devoted 
 may seem to have had its day ; and to plan for the 
 future of Greek is to plan for an elaborate structure 
 on the foundation of some Table Rock, destined at 
 no distant time to fall and disappear in the restless 
 current of modern life. A monument was erected 
 some years ago to the memory of the last old 
 woman that spoke Cornish ; and it would require no 
 great stretch of imagination on the part of some of 
 
5O2 CLASSICAL STUDY. 
 
 our friends to fancy that some youth may be present 
 here to-day who shall live to see the cremation of 
 the last successor of Sir John Cheke on this side of 
 the Atlantic, of the last old woman, trousered or 
 untrousered, that shall have discharged the office 
 of a Professor of Greek in an American university. 
 People who have reached a certain age and have 
 become somewhat reflective and prophetic generally 
 console themselves with Hezekiah's words. But I 
 cannot content myself with the thought that there 
 will be peace and truth in my days. There has 
 not been much of either of these commodities in 
 my first half-century, and I do not expect the market 
 to be glutted with them in my second. Surely there 
 is no sign that there will be any peace about Greek 
 or truth about Greek in any period that I can 
 reasonably hope to reach. But the peace and the 
 truth that may be denied me from without are 
 vouchsafed me abundantly from within ; and while 
 many of my fellow-workers are in woe for the silver 
 shrines of Diana, and mourn for the abandonment 
 of Greek, and sorrow that the trade in text-books 
 languishes, I am serenely standing where I stood 
 many, many years ago, when I published my first 
 article on the * Necessity of the Classics Y a title 
 not to be confounded with the ' Necessities of the 
 Classics ' about which one hears far too much ; and 
 I still live in the abiding assurance that what is in 
 wrought in the structure of our history and our 
 literature must survive so long as the history of 
 our race and the history of our language shall sur 
 vive. To disentwine the warp of the classics from 
 
 1 In the old Southern Review for July, 1854. 
 
CLASSICAL STUDY. 503 
 
 the woof of our life is simply impossible. One 
 mediaeval writer every one must know, and meas 
 ured by modern standards Dante was not a classical 
 scholar of the first rank ; his perspective of antiquity 
 was false, his estimate of the poets of the past was 
 far from -being just, and yet what is Dante if you 
 loosen his hold on the classic time? I will not 
 speak of Milton, steeped in classic lore; I will 
 speak of Shakespeare. None but those who have 
 read Shakespeare with the eye of the classical 
 scholar know how much the understanding of 
 Shakespeare is dependent on training in the clas 
 sics, and more than once when I have hesitated as 
 to whether it was pedantry or not to use a Greek 
 word in my English discourse, I have turned to 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Is this the judgment of a man who can see only 
 through his own narrow casement ? Scarcely had 
 I set down those words when the following passage 
 fell under my eye. It is to be found in the recent 
 introductory lecture of the Professor of Poetry in 
 the University of Oxford. ' The thorough study 
 of English literature, as such literature, I mean, as 
 an art, indeed the finest of the fine arts, is hopeless 
 unless based on an equally thorough study of the 
 literatures of Greece and Rome. When so based, 
 adequate study will not be found exacting either of 
 time or of labor. To know Shakespeare and Milton 
 is the pleasant and crowning consummation of 
 knowing Homer and ^Eschylus, Catullus and 
 Vergil. And upon no other terms can we. obtain 
 it.' 1 
 
 1 F. T. Palgrave, Province and Study of Poetry. 
 
504 CLASSICAL STUDY. 
 
 To be sure we have promise of mountains and 
 marvels if we break with the past. What satisfied 
 us in our boyhood no longer suits the fastidious 
 taste of the present ; and the Phoebus Apollo of our 
 youth, clad as to his dazzling shoulders with a classic 
 cloud, is shown up as nothing better than a padded 
 dandy. Our adored Thackeray is no longer fault 
 lessly attired in a garb of perfect English, he is simply 
 a stylistic old beau ; the plots in which we once took 
 delight are nothing but vulgar tricks, and the lifting 
 of a tea-kettle lid and the setting down of the same 
 are intrigue enough for the conduct of a two-year 
 long novel. All this new literature has nothing to do 
 with the classics. Far from it. And yet I am not 
 at all shaken by the self-satisfied edicts of those who 
 rule so large a portion of the reading world, and I 
 maintain with unwavering confidence that all healthy 
 literature must be kept in communion, direct or 
 indirect, with the highest exemplars of our Indo- 
 European stock ; and if anything could prove the 
 necessity of a return to healthy human nature, with 
 its compassed form, its fair red and white, it would 
 be the utter wearisomeness of so much recent fine 
 writing, in which there is no blood, no sap, nothing 
 but division and subdivision of nerve-tissue. 'A 
 pagan suckled in a creed outworn ' is a joy and 
 delight in comparison with the languid, invertebrate 
 children of the great goddess Anaemia. 
 
 I have watched with much interest the develop 
 ment of the study of artistic composition in English 
 during the last few years. Indeed, it would have 
 been necessary to stop one's ears to keep out the 
 shrilling cicada-sound of ' art for art's sake ', and 
 
CLASSICAL STUDY. 505 
 
 all the theoretical buzz of aesthetic criticism. The 
 interest has not been unmingled with amusement 
 because the apostles of progress are preaching very 
 old doctrine a doctrine which I shall be glad to 
 reinforce so far as I can before I acquit myself of 
 this function. Art for art's sake involves the very 
 hardest, the very driest study, the very kind of 
 study for which we philologians and grammarians 
 are contemned. The accomplished master in the 
 Art of Dipping, who delighted the world a few 
 weeks since by his ' Letters to Dead Authors ', made 
 his swallow-wing strong in the larger ether of the 
 Elysian fields ; and those who should hold him up 
 as an example of the kind of classical scholar we 
 ought to have, little know to what severe studies is 
 due that easy grace. It is so cheap to talk about 
 gerund-grinding and root-grubbing, as if gerund- 
 grinding did not lead to the music of the spheres 
 and root-grubbing to the discovery of the magic 
 moly that guards against the spells of Circe, of 
 ' euphrasy and rue ', that purge * the visual nerve '. 
 He who neglects the elements lacks the first condi 
 tions of the artistic life. In the old times great 
 artists did not disdain to prepare their own var 
 nishes and the old paintings stand fresh to this day, 
 while many of their modern rivals, scarce a genera 
 tion old, are falling into decay beyond a hope of 
 recognition. The fair dream was embodied in 
 machine pigments, and the machine pigments flake 
 off and with them the fair dream vanishes. If 
 grammatical research is pressed with regard to 
 truth, to that which is, then the gerund-grinding, as 
 the color-grinding, not only has its warrant in itself 
 
506 CLASSICAL STUDY. 
 
 as a useful exercise, but it is sure to be available for 
 higher purposes ; and if it is not given to every one 
 to make use of grammatical results for artistic ends, 
 still no organic fact is without its value, none will 
 fail of its appropriate place in the completed system 
 of art as of science. To me, as an ardent lover of 
 literature, as one who was led through literature to 
 grammar and not through grammar to literature, 
 the fairest results of a long life of study have been 
 the visions of that cosmic beauty which reveals 
 itself when the infinitely little fills up the wavering 
 outline and the features stand out pure and perfect 
 against the sky of God's truth. Now for the study 
 of literature as an art we have everything to learn 
 from the old critics, and what our own Sylvester, 
 our own Lanier have re-discovered as to the science 
 of verse is a chapter from antique rhetoric. Mr. 
 Lowell has recently pointed out the great secret 
 of Gray's abiding popularity. That consummate 
 master did not disdain the close analysis of the 
 sensuous effect of sound, and the melody of Cole 
 ridge is due in a measure to a conscious though 
 fitful study in the same line. Of late an author, 
 whose charm of style was first appreciated in this 
 country, has written an essay in which he applies 
 phonetic analysis to the works of our great prose 
 writers, and strikes the dominant chord of what 
 seems unconscious music. The essay might have 
 been written in the beginning of the first century as 
 well as at the end of the nineteenth, and have been 
 signed Dionysius of Halicarnassus as well as Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. 
 
 Whether, then, it be for the historical unity of the 
 
CLASSICAL STUDY. 507 
 
 race, whether it be for the human sanity of classical 
 literature, whether it be for the influence on form 
 either as example or precept, there is no danger 
 that the ancient classics will be displaced from the 
 list of studies necessary for the highest and truest 
 culture. Nor do I think that the so-called hard and 
 dry and minute research in this and cognate prov 
 inces of study will ever be abandoned in favor of a 
 mere bellettristic phrasemongery about half-under 
 stood beauties. What is hard, what is dry, what 
 is minute depends very much on the spirit in which 
 it is approached. Some years ago I attended a 
 lecture by a great master. The theme was the 
 vanishing of weak vowels in Latin. Candor com 
 pels me to state that although I pride myself on 
 being interested in the most uninteresting things, I 
 should have chosen another subject for a specimen 
 lecture. Candor compels me to state also that I 
 very much question whether the illustrious teacher 
 would accept all his own teachings to-day, such 
 progress do grammarians make in devouring them 
 selves as well as one another. I was much struck 
 with the tone in which he announced his subject. 
 It was the tone of aman who had seen the elements 
 melt with fervent heat, and the weak vowels vanish 
 at the sound of the last trump. The tone, indeed, 
 seemed entirely too pathetic for the occasion, but 
 as he went on and marshalled the facts, and set in 
 order the long lines that connected the disappear 
 ance of the vowel with the downfall of a nation 
 ality, and great linguistic, great moral, great 
 historical laws marched in stately procession before 
 the vision of the student, the airy vowels that had 
 
508 CLASSICAL STUDY. 
 
 flitted into the Nowhere seemed to be the lost soul 
 of Roman life, and the Latin language, Roman 
 literature and Roman history were clothed with a 
 new meaning. And so we of the language depart 
 ments do not intend to be disturbed in our work by 
 criticism of the arid details of our courses ; nor on 
 the other hand are we unmindful of the larger and 
 more popular aspects of the wide field of culture 
 which we occupy. There is no form of art, no phase 
 of philosophy, of ethics, no development of physical 
 science that is alien to the student of language, and 
 the student of physical science in his turn needs the 
 human interest of our study to save his life from an 
 austere and merciless quest of fact and principle in 
 a domain where man enters only as a factor like any 
 other factor. But first and last, the scientific standard 
 must be upheld for the university man, be he a student 
 of letters, be he a physicist; and that standard is the 
 absolute truth, the ultimate truth. ' Nothing imper 
 fect is the measure of anything ', says the prince of 
 idealists. 1 
 
 1 Plato, Rpb. vi. 504 C, areXes yap ovdfv ovdevos ptrpov. 
 
ON THE GREATNESS OF THE 
 GRADUATE. 1 
 
 Our President has requested me to say a few 
 words to the new graduates of the Johns Hopkins 
 University, and our President, as most of us have 
 found out by this time, is not a man to be denied. 
 A gentle but fatal insistence, and I am here ; and 
 yet I could have wished that he had waited until 
 next year. Then I should at least have known how 
 to begin my speech. Forty years would have 
 looked down on me from the apex of my own bach 
 elor's degree ; for forty years I should have been 
 sitting, if not on the throne of Solomon, at least on 
 the throne of one who is wiser than Solomon to 
 begin with ; or for forty years I should have been 
 wandering in the wilderness of ' practical life ', of 
 which baccalaureate orators have so much to say. 
 But what can an orator do with the number thirty- 
 nine unless he takes for his text the forty stripes 
 save one, which have indeed a certain Scriptural 
 sacredness, and unless he applies the trebly unlucky 
 three times thirteen to the scourgings of life those 
 scourgingsthat figure in the Greek motto of Goethe's 
 autobiography : 
 
 6 fir) dapels avdpwnos ov TraiSeuerm, 
 
 'Address to the Graduating Class of 1888 of the Johns 
 Hopkins University. 
 
510 GREATNESS OF THE GRADUATE. 
 
 or as it might be translated for this occasion only, 
 
 The man who is not skinned alive gets no degree. 
 
 But the ' scourgings of life ' would not be a cheerful 
 theme even in the retrospect for such a time as this, 
 and I will not seek any longer for personal coinci 
 dences wherewith to begin or to end my discourse. 
 Whatever changes a man passes through only to 
 forget, he never forgets the time when he takes an 
 academic degree, and the mere juggling of numbers 
 has nothing to do with this Arcadian fellow-feeling. 
 He who has never known it is poorer by a peculiar 
 experience. We talk, and talk justly, of the great 
 university of life, of the wider and deeper culture 
 that men often get without the college walls ; but 
 after all there is something apart in the seclusion and 
 the consecration of the academical novitiate, whether 
 spent in tending the seven lean kine of trivium and 
 quadrivium or in the piping of Major and Minor 
 moods in the green pastures of the Johns Hopkins 
 B. A. course, or in the long wrestling of Principal 
 with Subordinate, mother-in-law against daughter- 
 in-law in our happy family of Ph. D.'s. In any 
 case there has been a certain overcoming, a certain 
 endurance of boredom, a certain compression and a 
 certain expression that go to make a mint-mark ; 
 and instead of falling into the usual vein of speakers 
 on such occasions, instead of telling you that life 
 has much worse things in store for you than exami 
 nations and lectures, let me tell you honestly that 
 in all those scourgings of life of which I have 
 spoken there is to me no more terrible memory 
 than that of the time when I was searched to the 
 
GREATNESS OF THE GRADUATE. 511 
 
 bottom of my consciousness as to the exact rela 
 tion of two words in the Odes of Horace, Lib. I, 
 Carm. I, or when, years afterwards, a grim inquis 
 itor wanted to know all about all the Leges Corneliae. 
 So far from telling you that you know nothing of 
 the burden and heat of the day, I can honestly say 
 that the mechanical drudgery of the school-task and 
 the Tophetic glow of the examination-room are the 
 worst things that civilized man has to go through, 
 as they are the best things that civilized man has to 
 go through. To be sure, modern theorists tell us 
 that learning ought to be made delightful, that we 
 ought to absorb it unconsciously, that the teacher 
 who does not make his teachings interesting is a 
 failure, and so on. My young friends, my old 
 friends, teaching is a surgical process. You may 
 administer an anaesthetic, an anodyne. You may 
 perform your sleight-of-hand trick while your 
 patient is under the influence of laughing-gas, but 
 the healthy human being feels the after-effects, and 
 no matter whom the pupil has studied under 
 momentous preposition he has had to endure, and 
 that this is all over I congratulate you most 
 heartily. You will find people enough to sneer 
 at the college-bred man. It is a sneer begot of 
 envy. Remember that and take comfort. You 
 will find people mean enough to ask you, as I was 
 asked when I took my Ph. D. degree and had 
 attained a height from which I have been steadily 
 declining ever since, 'What are you going to be?' 
 As if a Ph.D. degree were not an answer to all that ! 
 Never mind. Major and minor, principal and sub 
 ordinate, can never vex you more, for you are free 
 
512 GREATNESS OF THE GRADUATE. 
 
 of the guild, and you have gained your freedom by 
 that submission to law wherein alone true freedom 
 resides. Heaven forbid that I should mar your 
 just pleasure by telling you of all the lions in the 
 path. The lions whose mouths you have already 
 effectually stopped are among the grimmest you 
 will ever have to encounter, and the zeal and ear 
 nestness and patience with which you have under 
 gone the heroic tests set before you are sufficient 
 proofs that you do not need the sermonizing that 
 men in my position think themselves qualified to 
 inflict on those who have taken the first great step 
 forward to active life. It would rather become us 
 oldsters to ask ourselves whether we should have 
 done as well in your case, and to show that despite 
 all our own failures most of which the Great 
 Examiner hides until we graduate from this world 
 and even beyond to show, I say, that despite all 
 our own failures we have sweetness of temper 
 enough left to rejoice with them that do rejoice 
 ay, and justly rejoice. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 In spite of my philosophical and impersonal preface, 
 as I look through the sheets of this collection, I am 
 seized with a sudden fear lest worse things may have 
 escaped me than the omission of the word ' life ' after 
 the second 'public and private' on p. 22, than the 
 trailing ' h ' which the German goddess Hulda has 
 stolen from the Hebrew prophetess, pp. 169, 185, than 
 the second ' Xerxes ' on page 279, for which read 
 ' Nero ', than the transfer of Sirmium, p. 384, from 
 Pannonia to the adjoining province. As for printers' 
 errors, I notice with sadness, tempered, it is true, by 
 long and bitter experience, that the second cv0a on 
 p. 1 7 1 has lost its accent despite its neighbor's virtuous 
 example, that a sacrilegious t has availed itself of the 
 cover of the circumflex to creep into the last syllable, 
 or, to keep up the figitre, into the oTrio-^o^o/uoy of the 
 word 'ITJOOVS, p. 1 8 1 , and that in the first foot-note 
 on p. 209 ' Xanthippe ' has needlessly been raised to 
 the second power. 
 
 Aliter non fit, Avite, liber. 
 
 B. L. G. 
 
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